The
sub
title of this article is, perhaps, a bit unfair in
singling out the honorable
former vice
president. Many other people have similar
opinions to Mr.
Gore. Also,
he is doing his best.
Tipping
point
The
tipping point referred to in this article is when we have, in the
climatic
sense, passed the point
of no return.
Many people believe that
this point where we cannot stop the
increasing temperatures from
continuing to rise because of the type
of positive feed back mechanism
referred to in the article: "The
Methane Gun"
is in the distant future. Some
of us think that it is in the near future.
In my (unpublished) book "A Bad Boy"
I
put this point
of no return at 2017. Most people would put it either
in
the more distant future, or believe that it does not exist.
However,
in this article I am putting forward the even more
frightening idea that the point of no
return is in the recent past.
If
so, all the debate about reducing our Carbon Dioxide output is
irrelevant,
and we are in for a much hotter world very soon.
Can we survive?
Humans
are very adaptable and we can survive many things. The trouble is that we do not really
know what is going to happen.
What CAN We Do?
We
can hope and pray that Mr.
Gore and the millions of people with similar
opinions
are right
and we are not too late. We can also continue studying the
climate. Much of the problem is that we do
not really know what is
happening.
As pointed out in the article"Is Global
Warming
Real?"
There is a huge range of
theories on what is going to happen,
including one school of thought
that suggests we are going into another
ice age very soon.
Another thing we can do is
prepare for what
is going to happen.
Once again, this is more difficult to do if we do
not know what is
happening.
Sources
Climate
Change 2009 By Will Steffen
(http://www.anu.edu.au/climatechange/wp-content/uploads/2009/07/climate-change-faster-change-and-more-serious-risks-final.pdf)
"Long‑term
feedbacks in the
climate system may be starting to develop now; the
most important of
these include dynamical processes in the large polar
ice sheets, and
the behaviour of natural carbon sinks and potential new
natural
sources of carbon, such as the carbon stored in the permafrost
of the
northern high latitudes. Once thresholds in ice sheet and carbon
cycle
dynamics are crossed, such processes cannot be stopped or
reversed
by human intervention, and will lead to more severe and
ultimately
irreversible climate change from the perspective of human
timeframes."
Note
that Will Steffen was not saying that the thresholds have
been reached, but is confirming that they exist.
"Methane
levels rose in 2008 for
the second consecutive year after a 10-year
lull. Atmospheric
concentrations increased by 4.4 molecules for every
billion molecules
of air, bringing the total global concentration up to
1788 parts per
billion, according to NOAA data."
NOAA also states that the
Carbon Dioxide levels continue to rise exponentially despite the global
recession.
The
Methane
concentration of the atmosphere is dependent on a lot of
different
factors. One possible reason for the "10-year
lull" is the
widespread
droughts that dried up many wet lands.
New Scientist, 25 March 2009 from an article by Fred Pearce
Magazine issue
2701
"I AM shocked, truly shocked," says Katey Walter,
an ecologist
at the University
of Alaska in Fairbanks. "I was in
Siberia a few weeks ago,
and I am now just back in from the field in
Alaska. The permafrost is melting fast all
over the Arctic, lakes are
forming everywhere and methane is bubbling
up out of them."
Back
in 2006, in a paper in Nature,
Walter warned that as the
permafrost in Siberia melted, growing methane
emissions could
accelerate climate change. But
even she was not
expecting such a rapid change. "Lakes
in Siberia are five times bigger
than when I measured them in 2006. It's unprecedented. This is a global
event now, and
the inertia for more permafrost melt is increasing."
The dramatic changes in the
Arctic Ocean have often been in
the news in the past two
years.
Unfortunately,
the events speculated about in The
Methane Gun
may already be happening.
