It's Truly The 11th Hour - Millions of Tons of Methane Being Released in the Arctic Speeds Warming

by Robert Wilkinson

Mission Control, we have a serious problem on planet Earth! Don't want to alarm anyone, but methane is 20 times more potent than CO2 and being released from Arctic permafrost faster than previously known. It is already warming up more permafrost releasing even more in a feedback loop that will definitely have major environmental effects. This is truly "an intersection of fate and free will." But there are things to be done that can help all this shift direction.

I've been following this for a while, since the melting of Arctic sea ice speeds the warming of the region due to decreased reflectivity of solar rays. Now it's mainstream news and a confirmed major league problem due to increased emissions of methane trapped beneath the ice. I don't really have a solution, since we've definitely set forces in motion that require the entire Earth to figure out that we're all here together. But solutions will definitely be found out of sheer necessity. Some immediate possibilities are discussed a few paragraphs down.

From the Independent UK story The Methane Time Bomb by Steve Conner via TruthOut, a brief piece of what's up:

Underground stores of methane are important because scientists believe their sudden release has in the past been responsible for rapid increases in global temperatures, dramatic changes to the climate, and even the mass extinction of species. Scientists aboard a research ship that has sailed the entire length of Russia's northern coast have discovered intense concentrations of methane - sometimes at up to 100 times background levels - over several areas covering thousands of square miles of the Siberian continental shelf.

In the past few days, the researchers have seen areas of sea foaming with gas bubbling up through "methane chimneys" rising from the sea floor. They believe that the sub-sea layer of permafrost, which has acted like a "lid" to prevent the gas from escaping, has melted away to allow methane to rise from underground deposits formed before the last ice age.

They have warned that this is likely to be linked with the rapid warming that the region has experienced in recent years.

Methane is about 20 times more powerful as a greenhouse gas than carbon dioxide and many scientists fear that its release could accelerate global warming in a giant positive feedback where more atmospheric methane causes higher temperatures, leading to further permafrost melting and the release of yet more methane.

The amount of methane stored beneath the Arctic is calculated to be greater than the total amount of carbon locked up in global coal reserves so there is intense interest in the stability of these deposits as the region warms at a faster rate than other places on earth.

This is only one of the many related problems we have due to believing we're separate from Nature. While up to now humanity thought it could act however it wanted to, now we're faced with an accelerating reality that our world is out of balance. When you're done with this article, please go to the one above and read the whole thing, since there's more there than I could reprint here.

At this juncture anyone who wants a sense of a bigger picture and some of the players who are actually trying to make a difference both globally and locally, please check out or buy a copy of "The 11th Hour." This is an amazing documentary narrated and produced by Leo DiCaprio and features quite a few sane and useful suggestions from globally respected voices for how we can turn this mess around fairly quickly.

The only thing is that the first half is very grim. I was getting quite bummed out until the second half, when a more positive focus is achieved. While the first half shows us the enormity of the interrelated problems, the second half is actually a really good sketch of more than a few possibilities to make all kinds of differences.

One thing - it seems there are several movies called "11th Hour," so be sure to persevere in finding the right one. This is a documentary that has to be viewed several times, especially with regard to the solutions and possible ways to shift directions to slow down this runaway train.

I'll leave you with one thought - we can make a difference, both in big ways and small. And we have been told by ancient sources that human life WILL go on, though much changed from anything we've ever known up to now. The Age of Waste, Greed, and Destruction is passing, and the heresy of separateness is being shattered by what we're learning of our interconnectedness with All-That-Is, the basis of Life Itself.

Copyright © 2008 Robert Wilkinson

Comments

[Micheline]

well I am not sure if its doing any good to the entrie earth, ,but I did not take any planes for five years, i do not own or drive a car, i only use the public transport system and i ride my bike everywhere to get away from having to sit on crowded trains and because i like the freedom......we need a huge reform in the way we live, everthing we make and buy is wrapped in plastic, things that we buy are made with plastics, the machines that make them us oil not just electricity....
there is an interesting site called after the oil crisis
unfortunately it paints a pretty grim picture....
i usually try to only buy second hand books
thanks Robert
but what i am doing is just not enough we need to really change the way we live

[Valerie]

Yeah, what bothers me every day is how much we throw away. Every bag of garbage I take out to the dumpster, I multiply by the world population and feel guilty. I recycle, but where do the papers end up- in layers several yards high, and not breaking down because there is no air at the bottom. I re-use glass and plastic. But our world is totally out of control. Our descendants will live on top of landfills. I try to keep up with earth-care but guess what? I drive 25 miles every day on a super-highway to make a living, and I work for a newspaper! How's that for generating waste and air pollution! I hope in my next life I will come back as an environmental scientist and come up with solutions. Maybe by that time there will be no oil or gas left and we will have adapted to travel on foot once again... or grow wings on our backs...

[Robert]

Hi Micheline - Well, we all do what we can when we can if we care. In your 5 years of no car, you lessened the amount of particulates put into the local atmosphere. I agree we're awash in plastics that are clogging the oceans and land at insane levels. We're all learning to voluntarily simplify and become aware of our waste, and the timeline is shortening radically. Truly, oil is obsolete!

Hi Valerie - Yes, we'll know we've hit a major breakthrough when we move beyond thinking we're recycling just because we sort our garbage! Landfills will be mined in the future for materials that haven't decomposed and could be reused, like old bundles of newspaper for building materials and other obvious "innovations." I suspect solutions will be found quickly once humanity awakens to the fact that everything must change NOW to ensure future survival.