Here's a letter urging immediate action on global warming

http://jayhanson.us/page123.ht...

The letter was signed by almost *100* Nobel laureates (excluding Nobel economics and peace prize recipients) -- orders of magnitude more than then the number that signed that pathetic OISM petition. Nearly 30 of the signatories are physics Nobel laureates.

Was any action taken by any of the world leaders? ___ Nope.

We are running out of time.

among other things, as the balance of gases in our atmosphere alter, it will adversely affect our most basic functions, including our alertness and clarity of thought...as if we were doing so well to begin with...

http://philuc.hubpages.com/hub/Oxygen-Therapy-Signs-of-Oxygen-Deprivation

A "bold change in policy direction". From Obama and his fellow Earth rapers in both parties? This POS in the White House has already OKed more drilling for oil in the Gulf of Mexico and off of Alaska. He is HopeLESS (as opposed to the BS of his campaign rhetoric) and I feel more disgust with him as the months go by. I'm one of those who think that the disastrous XL Pipeline is a done deal. I took note of the fact that Barry the Liar saw fit to respond to the demonstration that surrounded the White House by playing yet another in his many rounds of golf! What a perfectly symbolic thing to do for such as he. Turn your back on this unprecedented gathering of concerned citizens by playing an elitist game that takes up large amounts of formerly verdant land and requires huge amounts of water and chemicals to keep it all green and acceptable for the "members" that plod its fairways and talk business deals.
Yes, real change must come from the bottom and I welcome any change that the Occupy movement and others can create. However, for every Prius that I see on the roads here in Washington state I see dozens of giant SUVs and Minivans, usually with just one person behind the wheel. I find it hard to believe that Amurkins will give up the bigger is better idiocy that has dominated our attitudes until we are forced to do so by what James Howard Kunstler calls "The Long Emergency". I also believe that even when it gets really bad (there was an item in the paper today about how gasoline prices are going to go way up next year) that many, many Amurkins will refuse to believe it and try and carry on as if everything will recover to what it was before the Great Recession became a permanent part of our lives.

>>""If we do not have an international agreement whose effect is put in place by 2017, then the door will be closed forever," IEA Chief Economist Fatih Birol warned today.

"Growth, prosperity and rising population will inevitably push up energy needs over the coming decades. But we cannot continue to rely on insecure and environmentally unsustainable uses of energy," said IEA Executive Director Maria van der Hoeven."<<

We urgently need to accept and implement an upper limit on greenhouse gas emissions on a GLOBAL basis. And that would mean, each country, ALL major emitters, accepting an upper limit on emissions. This GLOBAL upper limit will have to be ramped down aggressively, year after year, until the threat seems to have passed.

This is a life or death situation in every sense. Radical changes are called for, at ALL levels - from the personal to the political, individual to systemic.

Things that have been taken for granted - and this is a bloody LONG list - need to be questioned with brutal honesty.

How did this come about and what does it take to maintain it? Could this have come about without extreme violence and brutal conquest, and can this be maintained without ongoing violence and unquestioning mindlessness, without serious consequences? What would happen when more and more people have these things?

PLEASE undertake such questioning with brutal honesty. And don't be afraid of the answers and do not reject an answer just because you have never thought of it before.

It takes more courage and strength of character to live with a small ecological footprint when it is possible to have more. We need such people to lead from the front, to lead humanity from the brink of disaster, by demanding, devising and implementing a more sustainable system. Hypocrites make poor leaders. And we need true leaders at ALL levels of society.

people will take care of environment when in power, not a day earlier
people have priority

The article above (except for the headline) isn't really about runaway climate change, it's about an economic projection for irreversible growth in greenhouse emissions, which could certainly lead to runaway climate change. At any rate, the subject of runaway climate change - in particular the risk of geologic methane releases which form an irreversible feedback loop - has been raised in this comment thread.

Paleoclimate studies have found that the last time a geologic methane release was triggered, in the Paleocene-Eocene Thermal Maximum (PETM) 55 million years ago, global mean temperature was about 4.5°C warmer than today. This suggests a methane threshold, the real tipping point people worry about, well within the range of warming projected for this century if business as usual carbon emissions continue.

It's difficult to know much about what happened 55 million years ago with great certainty and temporal precision. Prominent researchers have estimated that PETM warming, at its quickest pace in the midst of a methane feedback loop, was 10 times slower than the current rate of human-driven global warming. That puts the global methane bomb in some perspective: current warming is already 10 times faster than the last time the methane bomb was detonated.

More recent Paleoclimate evidence is much firmer, because the tiny bubbles from ice cores and other information sources are much more detailed. The Eemian interglacial peak happened "only" 125,000 years ago. At that time, temperature was about 0.5°C warmer than today, and the ice sheets disintegrated enough to raise sea level 6 to 9 meters higher than today. But no methane feedback loop was triggered. This suggests that 0.5°C of additional warming is not enough to ignite the methane bomb. If the same sequence of geologic events ensues this time around, we'd see quite a bit of ice sheet loss before we'd see a methane bomb ignition.

Since 1990, global warming has proceeded at a pace of 0.2°C per decade. At that pace, it would take 25 years to exceed Eemian warming. But the pace of human-made global warming is expected to accelerate markedly, getting to incredibly dangerous PETM levels by century's end, if business as usual carbon emissions continue.

Thanks for your patience if you've stuck with me this far. Many old-timers like me are seeing completely unprecedented weather in their region and concluding that the tipping point has already been passed, that the climate system is already spiraling out of control. It's a reasonable, but somewhat naive conclusion. Several prominent researchers have said we may be very close indeed, but there's a crucial distinction between approaching and passing the tipping point:

If we're truly past the tipping point of runaway climate change, there's absolutely no hope.
A false message that there's no hope can become a self-fulfilling prophecy if it dissuades people from meaningful activism.

Ol’ Satan Coal
Down in his hole
Has many past souls
There collected.

Cast into their graves,
Bituminous slaves,
In these last days
Are resurrected.

In furnaces to burn,
Power to churn,
Engines that turn
The generators

(Chorus)
Prince of Darkness,
Unseen ruler of men,
Who has dominion
Over all the Earth.
Prince of Darkness,
Unseen ruler of men,
Who will have the strength
To turn away from him?

2
Higher up he flies
Into the skies ....making
.....temp’ratures rise
And climates change.

>>"As each year passes without clear signals to drive investment in clean energy, the "lock-in" of high-carbon infrastructure is making it harder and more expensive to meet our energy security and climate goals," said Birol.

There's some jargon in this statement, but it is VERY important to understand the implications:

An international treaty that puts an upper limit on a country's GHG emissions, a limit that would only go down moving forward, sends a clear SIGNAL as to the direction the economy must take.

So many changes have taken place in Germany, for example, in the renewable energy area in the last 15 years alone. Not just in technology, but in pricing, tariffs, etc., that send a clear SIGNAL to the industry and to individuals that they are better off investing in renewable energy because that's the way for the future. Sadly, some of these inspired changes are being sought to be slowed down or reversed because in a globalized economy, one country or a few countries can only go so far without losing out on competitiveness.

It is my contention that the Kyoto Protocol played some role in forcing some of the EU countries to implement certain kinds of policies. The Kyoto treaty was signed in 1997 and the first stage required only the rich countries to lower their emissions by an average of less than 6% below 1990 levels by the year 2012. The USA did NOT ratify this treaty. That gave an excuse for countries like Canada to renege on their commitment. After having signed AND ratified "Kyoto", Canada's GHG emissions, as of 2006, had INCREASED by 29% above 1990 levels, instead of on their way to decrease by 6% by 2012.

The refusal of the USA to commit to even the most modest of cuts - of only 7% below 1990 levels by 2012 has DIRECTLY led to the brazen disregard of an international treaty by its northern neighbor and this has DIRECTLY led to their aggressive development of the Alberta tarsands. Why? Because there is NO SIGNAL, no pressure to choose a different path for the economy.

At least one Canadian company that had developed a particular solar PV technology that was considered very attractive closed up shop and moved to Germany where they got a lot more incentives to develop and go into production. The SIGNAL from Germany was more attractive for this Canadian company, and guess who is losing out in the end?

People should understand that what happened in Copenhagen in 2009 was a criminal act of sabotage that prevented a meaningful, more ambitious successor treaty to the Kyoto Protocol. What such a treaty does is impose an upper limit on emissions based on science. And what an upper limit does is it sends a signal to the economy. That is, assuming a country bothers to respect an international treaty.

Without an international treaty, there will be all kinds of laggards and brazen criminals who would point the fingers at others doing the polluting and insist that they simply cannot afford to cut back on emissions as it would kill jobs and make them less competitive. And to some extent they would be right, too.

The "lock-in" of high-carbon infrastructure mentioned in the quote is VERY important. China has been building coal power plants like crazy. And India too, though at a slower pace. And Canada is itching to expand its tarsands production and Chinese companies have already invested there and are ready to buy the oil. Both China and India are building expressways for their cars, SUVs and trucks, instead of spending the money and resources on railways. This is the kind of high-carbon infrastructure that will get "locked-in" if a serious and credible upper limit on emissions is not imposed on countries. When companies and governments invest in this kind of infrastructure, they are not going to let them sit idly and that is obviously a dangerous thing as far as emissions go.

So no matter which way one looks at, the time to act is now. At Durban. Actually, the time to adopt such a treaty was at Copenhagen in 2009, as per the original schedule to replace "Kyoto". I hate to use the words "last chance". I really hate! So I'm hoping that something serious comes out of the Durban meeting.

Dr. Dlugokencky is in charge of NOAA's global network of methane monitoring stations stated,,, (“During the first half of 2009, globally averaged atmospheric CH4 was [approximately] 7ppb greater than it was in 2008, suggesting that the increase will continue in 2009 and continue at an accelerated pace henceforth unless the Arcitc ice stops melting as it currently is… There is the potential for increased CH4 emissions from strong positive climate feedbacks in the Arctic where there are unstable stores of carbon in permafrost”

Continued,,, Paragraph,,, ( “Frozen Arctic tundra, like this at Sermermiut in Greenland, is a ticking time bomb in terms of global warming, because it holds vast amounts of methane, an immensely potent greenhouse gas. Over thousands of years the methane has accumulated under the ground at northern latitudes all around the world, and has effectively been taken out of circulation by the permafrost acting as an impermeable lid. But as the permafrost begins to melt in rising temperatures, the lid will open – with catastrophic results.”).

(“Dr Martin Sommerkorn, Senior Climate Change Adviser at WWF International's Arctic Program said: "When you look in detail at the science behind the recent Arctic changes it becomes painfully clear how our understanding of climate impacts lags behind the changes that we are already seeing in the Arctic. This is extremely dangerous, as some of these changes have the potential to substantially increase the warming of the Earth,,, beyond what models currently forecast.").

Contiued,, paragraph,,, "Scientists learned last year that the permafrost permamelt contains a staggering “1.5 trillion tons of frozen carbon, about twice as much carbon as contained in the atmosphere,”

My words,,, I believe that means if only say a quarter of the Arctic methane burps out,,, the atmospheric Co2 level would be far above 600 ppm, as the methne is far more potent than the Co2 which is already in the atmosphere... If it all burps out?,,, Well, let's not even consider it, just 2 % released will be catastrophic.

Cont' paragraph,,, “where there’s a good discussion of how sea ice reductions spread winter warming onto the continents around the Arctic Ocean, and the potential for further positive feedback from permafrost becomes all too obvious. Carbon cycle feedbacks on that sort of scale have the potential to make any mitigation efforts we might undertake completely irrelevant.”)… End quotes

In layman’s terms,,, as the Arctic's permafrost thaws the methane (will release).. If only 2% releases, (runaway) global warming will result and any mitigation efforts we might undertake would likely be completely irrelevant.

We cannot just give up now however… We must find a way to advise our president and the other world leaders’ that firm action to reduce carbon output in a massive way is absolutely critical and we do not have 20, or 30, or 100 years to do that.

We have to act now, bite the bullet and have a massive world wide effort to replace fossil fuel power plants with clean energy, and not nuclear energy.

Finally; some here have written that the melting Arctic sea ice has little or no measurable effect upon methane releases.... Well according to some top scientists, the melting Arctic sea ice does have a very serious impact upon methane releasing.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Arctic_methane_release

Comments from the article…. (“Sea ice loss is correlated with warming of Northern latitudes. This has melting effects on permafrost, both in the sea and on land.").

("Some studies imply a direct link, as they predict cold air passing over ice is replaced by warm air passing over the sea. This warm air carries heat to the permafrost around the Arctic, and melts it. This permafrost then releases huge quantities of methane.") ... End quotes.

Since scientists state that the Arctic will be ice free all summer long by the year 2015, I can understand why the author of this article states we have within five years for runaway global warming to occur...

I do not believ it is productive to argue that point. It would be better to inform our leaders that we have a little problem.

Good discussion by the commenters.

"Livestock’s Long Shadow – Environmental Issues and Options" is the rather lame title of a UN FAO report that came out in 2006. Here are some of the findings from that report:

>>"...the livestock sector generates more greenhouse gas emissions as measured in CO2 equivalent – 18 percent – than transport. "<<

"Transport" here refers to "all the cars, SUVs, trucks, airplanes, and ships in the world combined."

CO2-equivalent is what you get when you convert the methane and nitrous oxide amounts into equivalent CO2 amounts, based on their global warming potential.

>>When emissions from land use and land use change are included, the livestock sector accounts for 9 percent of CO2 deriving from human-related activities, but produces a much larger share of even more harmful greenhouse gases. It generates 65 percent of human-related nitrous oxide, which has 296 times the Global Warming Potential (GWP) of CO2. Most of this comes from manure.

And it accounts for respectively 37 percent of all human-induced methane (23 times as warming as CO2), which is largely produced by the digestive system of ruminants, and 64 percent of ammonia, which contributes significantly to acid rain.

Livestock now use 30 percent of the earth’s entire land surface, mostly permanent pasture but also including 33 percent of the global arable land used to producing feed for livestock, the report notes. As forests are cleared to create new pastures, it is a major driver of deforestation, especially in Latin America where, for example, some 70 percent of former forests in the Amazon have been turned over to grazing.<<

The meat and dairy industry and of course the cattle ranchers and their paid lackeys do not agree with this report. Just as the people who make a living out of the tarsands refuse to agree that they are responsible for any destruction.

This crisis calls for any and all action that is within our power - individually and collectively. PLEASE spread the message. You've got nothing to lose by giving up, or drastically cutting down on, meat and dairy, and everything to gain by switching to a vegan (or even predominantly vegan) diet. And you'll be making a difference, ever so small.

Clearing forests to make pastures for livestock has gone on for centuries. Today people think of the deforestation in the Amazon region. But it originated in Europe. Unbelievable areas of forests were cleared for cattle and sheep, and much of western Europe's forests were gone by the 16th century! But this stupidity needs to stop.

One tree, on average, can absorb only 1 tonne of CO2 over a period of about 25 years! 1 tonne of CO2 is what you get when you burn about 110 gallons of gasoline.

So we're going to need ALL the trees we can get, for years and years. The last thing we need is to cut the remaining forests for short term profits.

Do not ignore the power of small actions by a large number of people. This is in addition to the big actions that would be needed, of course - such as shutting down coal mining and coal burning.

and dont forget the book ´under a green sky´ by peter ward phd...................