The Post Peak Oil Historian

NASA scientists have detected large releases of methane - a highly potent greenhouse gas - from the crumbling Arctic sea ice.

The researchers found significant amounts of methane being released from the ocean into the atmosphere through cracks in the melting sea ice. They said the quantities could be large enough to affect the global climate. Previous observations have pointed to large methane plumes being released from the seabed in the relatively shallow sea off the northern coast of Siberia but the latest findings were made far away from land in the deep, open ocean where the surface is usually capped by ice.

Eric Kort of Nasa's Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, California, said that he and his colleagues were surprised to see methane levels rise so dramatically each time their research aircraft flew over cracks in the sea ice.

"When we flew over completely solid sea ice, we didn't see anything in terms of methane. But when we flew over areas were the sea ice had melted, or where there were cracks in the ice, we saw the methane levels increase," Dr Kort said. "We were surprised to see these enhanced methane levels at these high latitudes. Our observations really point to the ocean surface as the source, which was not what we had expected," he said.

"Other scientists had seen high concentrations of methane in the sea surface but nobody had expected to see it being released into the atmosphere in this way," he added

http://www.independent.co.uk/news/science/danger-from-the-deep-new-climate-threat-as-methane-rises-from-cracks-in-arctic-ice-7669174.html

The temperature analysis released by the U.S. government each month usually isn't all that riveting, but the one that came out Monday is a doozy -- and not just for weather wonks. Highlights for the contiguous U.S. (excluding Alaska and Hawaii) include:

Last month was the warmest March on record (records go back to 1895) at 51.1 degrees; this is 8.6 degrees above the 20th century average, according to the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration.

January-March was the warmest first quarter on record; the average temperature of 42 degrees was 6 degrees above average.

April 2011-March 2012 was the warmest stretch of those 12 months on record; at 55.4 degrees, that period was 2.6 degrees above average.

In March, 15,292 records were broken for warmth; 7,775 were new daytime highs in cities across the country and 7,517 were new nighttime highs.

Comparing March to the longterm average and seeing an 8.6 degree spread, he added, "that's huge."

"It's not only what happened in March in North America," he said, "it's the context: the extremity of this extraordinary early-season heat in the U.S. and southern Canada, plus Norway and Scotland breaking their March high temperature records; Texas and Oklahoma in 2011 having their hottest summer on record, even hotter than during the Dust Bowl; the off-the-charts 2010 Russia heat wave along with approximately 20 countries setting high temperature records that summer; and Canada having its warmest winter and year on record in 2010."

"All of this happening with such frequency," he added, "provides overwhelmingly convincing evidence that the overall increased warmth is making the atmosphere more conducive to these sorts of heat extremes."

http://usnews.msnbc.msn.com/_news/2012/04/09/11098960-us-sees-record-for-warmest-march-and-first-three-months-of-a-year?lite

In December it emerged that China sold Iran, for $11 billion, advanced DF-31 ICBMs which are capable of reaching U.S. soil with nuclear warheads. North Korean engineers are helping to get the missile system up and running.

http://news.yahoo.com/iran-rattles-sabers-11-000-missiles-ready-launch-183107536.html

China is circumventing international sanctions against Iran by enlisting North Korea’s help in providing the Islamic state with its most advanced intercontinental ballistic missiles and the technical expertise to make those nuclear warhead-capable missiles operational. And now the Communist giant is threatening to come to Iran’s defense should the missile or nuclear sites be attacked.

Media outlets quote Chinese Maj. Gen. Zhang Zhaozhong as warning that in case of attack, China should not hesitate to protect Iran, even if it means launching World War III.

The Iranian-owned state media ran big headlines recently quoting Chinese President Hu Jintao as saying that he has ordered the Chinese Navy to prepare for war and that, in case of an attack on Iran, China will defend Iran.

http://wwwfoxnews.com/opinion/2011/12/14/china-is-helping-to-arm-iran-and-sidestep-sanctions-thanks-to-assist-from-north/


This is part of the overall "Big Picture". It isn't just Iran obtaining nukes, or a threat to Israel. It's the SCO challenging the economic hegemony of the Western powers.

Just as WWI foreshadowed the end of the British Empire, even though the allies won, this is the desperate last attempt by the West to maintain their grip on power. To TPTB in the West this is an existential threat.

To ensure that we understand what led up to the start of WWIII, we need to recognize what is really happening, as it's happening.

Russian Prime Minister Vladimir Putin lashed out yesterday at “arrogant world powers” as he hosted his Chinese counterpart Wen Jiabao for a regional security summit Moscow bills as a counterpart to NATO.

Russia’s likely new head of state after next year’s presidential elections accused Western nations of hypocrisy for backing revolutions in North African countries that previously enjoyed their strong support. “It really is just like you said -- these are arrogant world powers,” Putin said in response to remarks from Iranian Foreign Minister Ali Akbar Salehi made during the Shanghai Cooperation Organization (SCO) summit in Saint Petersburg. “They also supported the old North African regimes,” news agencies quoted Putin as saying in a clear reference to European powers and the United States.

“But what is interesting, they also supported the North African revolutions as well, the ones that overthrew the old regimes.” Russia strongly opposed NATO’s air campaign in Libya and has warned the West against acting tough towards its close Soviet-era ally Syria.

The 10-year-old SCO joins Russia and China with the four ex-Soviet states of Central Asian in a loose security union that Moscow hopes to develop into a more powerful force rivaling the Brussels-based NATO bloc. Iran is one of three nations along with Pakistan and India to have applied to join the organization. “Russia would welcome the positive review of applications to join our organization in one form or another from any interested nation,” Putin was quoted as saying.

http://www.hurriyetdailynews.com/default.aspx?pageid=438&n=putin-welcomes-iran-pakistan-to-join-sco-2011-11-07


The vast show of firepower... involved some 6,000 personnel from the six countries of the Shanghai Cooperation Organization (SCO): China, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Russia, Tajikistan and Uzbekistan....

The exercises come after Thursday's summit where SCO leaders underlined their common opposition to perceived US hegemony. The summit was held in the former Soviet state of Kyrgyzstan, with Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad observing.

The exercises - coordinated from separate command centers in Russia and China - featured movement of Chinese forces across Russian rail lines, joint special forces activities, and fly-overs by the Chinese Air Force over Russian airspace. The sophisticated operations concretely formalized the military alliance between China and Russia designed to prevent further penetration into Central Asia by the United States. Nothing could convey this objective more clearly than the presence of the Iranian President at the summit.

The capability to transfer large-scale military contingents across vast distances is essential should Moscow and Beijing decide on joint military action in the event of a possible American military operation against Iran spilling over into the Caspian and Central Asian regions.

Notwithstanding the U.S. pressure to scale down its engagement with Iran, official sources here said the country not only remains an important source of oil for India, but is crucial to opening up routes to Central Asian and Caucasian countries, where New Delhi's quest for hydrocarbons and minerals is gathering critical mass.

“We recognise that Iran is the key to connecting with Central Asia,” said the sources while referring to a major meeting last month on a proposed Russia-Iran-India promoted North-South corridor that would originate from Bandar Abbas leading to Russia and other countries via the Caspian Sea.

India has “taken the lead” and is “pushing hard” to put the missing rail links in place so that a seamless route from Bandar Abbas port to Russia and Central Asia opens up by next year by when the customs union of Russia-Kazakhstan-Byelorussia would have expanded to include other Eurasian countries.

Customs procedures

Besides the three original signatories, over 15 countries have joined the north-south project. In addition to putting in place missing railways links of about 200 km, all the sides will have to harmonise their customs procedures to make the endeavour workable. Currently Indian goods enter Russia through the Baltic ports of St. Petersburg and Kotka, the European port of Rotterdam and the Ukrainian ports of Illychevsk and Odessa.

Iran, said the sources, was also critical to stabilising Afghanistan as part of the Shanghai Cooperation Organisation (SCO) grouping after the NATO forces scale down their operations in 2014. Nearly all the countries surrounding Afghanistan are either members or observers to the SCO and they said, “we take it [the SCO] as an important platform to discuss the post-2014 situation in Afghanistan.”

http://www.thehindu.com/news/national/article2947231.ece


In 1888, the Oriental Railway from Austria, across the Balkans via Belgrade, Sofia, to Constantinople, was opened. This linked with the railways of Austria-Hungary and other European countries and put the Ottoman capital in direct communication with Vienna, Paris, and Berlin. It was to be significant for later events.

The Sultan, Abdul Hamid II, on November 27, 1899, awarded Deutsche Bank, headed by Georg von Siemens, a concession for a railway from Konia to Baghdad and to the Persian Gulf. In 1888 and again in 1893, the Sultan had assured the Anatolian Railway Company that it should have priority in the construction of any railway to Baghdad. On the strength of that assurance, the Anatolian Company had conducted expensive surveys of the proposed line. As part of the railway concession, the shrewd negotiators of the Deutsche Bank, led by Karl Helfferich, negotiated subsurface mineral rights twenty kilometers to either side of the proposed Baghdad Railway line.[22] Deutsche Bank and the German government backing them made certain that included the sole rights to any petroleum which might be found. The Germans had scored a strategic coup over the British, or so it seemed. Mesopotamian oil secured through completion of the Berlin-Baghdad Railway was to be Germany’s secure source to enter the emerging era of oil-driven transport.

A German-built rail link to Baghdad and on to the Persian Gulf, capable of carrying military troops and munitions, was a strategic threat to the British oil resources of Persia. Persian oil was the first crucial source of secure British petroleum for the Navy.

Turkey, backed and trained by Germany, had the potential, should it get the financial and military means, to launch a military attack on what had become vital British interests in Suez, the Persian route to India, the Dardanelles. By 1903 the German Reich was prepared to give the Sultan that means in the form of the Baghdad Railway and German investment in Ottoman Anatolia.

By 1913 that German engagement had taken on an added dimension with a German-Turkish Military Agreement under which German General Liman von Sanders, member of the German Supreme War Council, with personal approval of the Kaiser, was sent to Constantinople to reorganize the Turkish army on the lines of the legendary German General Staff. In a letter to Chancellor von Bethmann-Hollweg, dated April 26, 1913, Freiherr von Wangenheim, the German Ambassador to Constantinople declared, “The Power which controls the Army will always be the strongest one in Turkey. No Government hostile to Germany will be able to hold on to power if the Army is controlled by us…” [25].

As well in Serbia British military and intelligence networks were most active prior to outbreak of war. Major R.G.D. Laffan was in charge of a British military training mission in Serbia just before the war. Following the war, Laffan wrote of the British role in throwing a huge block on the route of the German-Baghdad project:

"If 'Berlin-Baghdad' were achieved, a huge block of territory producing every kind of economic wealth, and unassailable by sea-power would be united under German authority," warned R.G.D. Laffan. Laffan was at that time a senior British military adviser attached to the Serbian Army.

"Russia would be cut off by this barrier from her western friends, Great Britain and France," Laffan added. "German and Turkish armies would be within easy striking distance of our Egyptian interests, and from the Persian Gulf, our Indian Empire would be threatened. The port of Alexandretta and the control of the Dardanelles would soon give Germany enormous naval power in the Mediterranean."

Laffan suggested a British strategy to sabotage the Berlin-Baghdad link. "A glance at the map of the world will show how the chain of States stretched from Berlin to Baghdad. The German Empire, the Austro-Hungarian Empire, Bulgaria, Turkey. One little strip of territory alone blocked the way and prevented the two ends of the chain from being linked together. That little strip was Serbia. Serbia stood small but defiant between Germany and the great ports of Constantinople and Salonika, holding the Gate of the East...Serbia was really the first line of defense of our eastern possessions. If she were crushed or enticed into the 'Berlin-Baghdad' system, then our vast but slightly defended empire would soon have felt the shock of Germany's eastward thrust."

British intelligence thus instigated the assasination Of Austro-Hungarian heir to the throne, Archduke Franz Ferdinand by the Serbian Black Hand with the assistance of the Serbian Government in the hopes that it would incite Austria-Hungary to attack Serbia and break the rail link between Berlin and the Middle East.

http://oilgeopolitics.net/History/Oil_and_the_Origins_of_World_W/oil_and_the_origins_of_world_w.HTM

"If 'Berlin-Baghdad' were achieved, a huge block of territory producing every kind of economic wealth, and unassailable by sea-power would be united under German authority," warned R.G.D. Laffan.

An India to Russia railway would do the same under SCO authority.

The three allied countries Russia, China and Iran hold a significant part of the Eurasian landmass, forming a "tall wall against western mischief," as the Iranian media Press TV pointedly formulated.

With Putin as President, the West can expect Russia turning further towards Asia. He already announced that he will continue strengthening ties with the republics of the post-Soviet space and cooperate closely with SCO countries.

The Shanghai Cooperation Organization (SCO) was founded 2001 in Shanghai, People's Republic of China. Current members are China and Russia as main driving forces, together with Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan and Uzbekistan.
India, Iran, Mongolia and Pakistan have observer status. Belarus and Sri Lanka are dialogue partners, while the status of Turkmenistan is that of guest attendance.

SCO countries cooperate in security, holding regular joint military exercises in Eurasia. As Iranian writer Hamid Golpira remarked, "control of the Eurasian landmass is the key to global domination, and control of Central Asia is the key to control of the Eurasian landmass." The SCO states are paying close attention to everything pertaining to the Eurasian landmass.

China Daily wrote, "SCO member countries have the ability and responsibility to safeguard the security of the Central Asian region." Consequently, Russian and Chinese forces control the Eurasian periphery on a permanent basis.

SCO Interbank has been created to be independent from international banking systems.

Putin said at the SCO summit in 2007, "We now clearly see the defectiveness of the monopoly in world finance and the policy of economic selfishness. Russia will take part in changing the global financial structure so that it will be able to guarantee stability and prosperity in the world."

On the 23rd of November 2010, Russian Prime Minister Vladimir Putin and China's Premier Wen Jiabao agreed on bilateral trade in their national currencies, ruble and yuan. China is Russia's client for oil and gas as well as military exports, making up 30 percent of Russian foreign sales.

http://english.pravda.ru/business/finance/28-02-2012/120637-Putin_and_the_tall_wall-0/

Iran also engages in trade with both Russia and China in their own currencies. The SCO Interbank is a direct assault on the US dollar as the world's reserve currency.

Through the SCO Interbank, SCO countries can trade in their own currencies without having to use the US Dollar, and bypassing the Western powers international financial system.


See the Magic Cheque book in Robert Newman's History of Oil

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2DCwafIntj0

AIRS Methane mixing ratio charts:

January 2012

December 2011

November 2011

Compare to last year:

January 2011

December 2010

"For over a thousand years Roman conquerors returning from the wars enjoyed the honor of triumph, a tumultuous parade. In the procession came trumpeteers, musicians and strange animals from conquered territories, together with carts laden with treasure and captured armaments. The conquerors rode in a triumphal chariot, the dazed prisoners walking in chains before him. Sometimes his children robed in white stood with him in the chariot or rode the trace horses. A slave stood behind the conqueror holding a golden crown and whispering in his ear a warning: that all glory is fleeting."
- Gen. George C. Patton

This quote, when I first saw the movie, struck to the core of my being. It now applies to Mankind.

Former Secretary of State James Baker once said, "Someone asked me what was the most important thing I had learned since being in Washington. I replied that it was the fact that temporal power is fleeting." Baker went on to observe that once driving through the White House gates he saw a man walking alone on Pennsylvania Avenue and recognized him as having been Secretary of State in a previous administration. "There he was alone - no reporters, no security, no adoring public, no trappings of power. Just one solitary man alone with his thoughts. And that mental picture continually serves to remind me of the impermanence of power and the impermanence of place."

The scale and volume of the methane release has astonished the head of the Russian research team who has been surveying the seabed of the East Siberian Arctic Shelf off northern Russia for nearly 20 years.

In an exclusive interview with The Independent, Igor Semiletov, of the Far Eastern branch of the Russian Academy of Sciences, said that he has never before witnessed the scale and force of the methane being released from beneath the Arctic seabed.

"Earlier we found torch-like structures like this but they were only tens of metres in diameter. This is the first time that we've found continuous, powerful and impressive seeping structures, more than 1,000 metres in diameter. It's amazing," Dr Semiletov said. "I was most impressed by the sheer scale and high density of the plumes. Over a relatively small area we found more than 100, but over a wider area there should be thousands of them."

Scientists estimate that there are hundreds of millions of tonnes of methane gas locked away beneath the Arctic permafrost, which extends from the mainland into the seabed of the relatively shallow sea of the East Siberian Arctic Shelf. One of the greatest fears is that with the disappearance of the Arctic sea-ice in summer, and rapidly rising temperatures across the entire region, which are already melting the Siberian permafrost, the trapped methane could be suddenly released into the atmosphere leading to rapid and severe climate change.

In late summer, the Russian research vessel Academician Lavrentiev conducted an extensive survey of about 10,000 square miles of sea off the East Siberian coast. Scientists deployed four highly sensitive instruments, both seismic and acoustic, to monitor the "fountains" or plumes of methane bubbles rising to the sea surface from beneath the seabed.

"In a very small area, less than 10,000 square miles, we have counted more than 100 fountains, or torch-like structures, bubbling through the water column and injected directly into the atmosphere from the seabed," Dr Semiletov said. "We carried out checks at about 115 stationary points and discovered methane fields of a fantastic scale – I think on a scale not seen before. Some plumes were a kilometre or more wide and the emissions went directly into the atmosphere – the concentration was a hundred times higher than normal."

Dr Semiletov released his findings for the first time last week at the American Geophysical Union meeting in San Francisco.

http://www.independent.co.uk/environment/climate-change/shock-as-retreat-of-arctic-sea-ice-releases-deadly-greenhouse-gas-6276134.html


This situation can start an uncontrollable sequence of events that would make world agriculture and civilization unsustainable. It is a real threat to the survival of humanity and most life on Earth.

http://www.arctic-methane-emergency-group.org/#/emergency/4558130767

We Are The Many

Ye come here, gather 'round the stage
The time has come for us to voice our rage
Against the ones who've trapped us in a cage
To steal from us the value of our wage

From underneath the vestiture of law
The lobbyists at Washington do gnaw
At liberty, the bureaucrats guffaw
And until they are purged, we won't withdraw

We'll occupy the streets
We'll occupy the courts
We'll occupy the offices of you
Till you do
The bidding of the many, not the few

Our nation was built upon the right
Of every person to improve their plight
But laws of this Republic they rewrite
And now a few own everything in sight

They own it free of liability
They own, but they are not like you and me
Their influence dictates legality
And until they are stopped we are not free

We'll occupy the streets
We'll occupy the courts
We'll occupy the offices of you
Till you do
The bidding of the many, not the few

You enforce your monopolies with guns
While sacrificing our daughters and sons
But certain things belong to everyone
Your thievery has left the people none

So take heed of our notice to redress
We have little to lose, we must confess
Your empty words do leave us unimpressed
A growing number join us in protest

We occupy the streets
We occupy the courts
We occupy the offices of you
Till you do
The bidding of the many, not the few

You can't divide us into sides
And from our gaze, you cannot hide
Denial serves to amplify
And our allegiance you can't buy

Our government is not for sale
The banks do not deserve a bail
We will not reward those who fail
We will not move till we prevail

We'll occupy the streets
We'll occupy the courts
We'll occupy the offices of you
Till you do
The bidding of the many, not the few

We'll occupy the streets
We'll occupy the courts
We'll occupy the offices of you
Till you do
The bidding of the many, not the few

We are the many
You are the few

Sang for world leaders at APEC summit dinner

The first results of methane discharge research conducted by the expedition to the Eastern Arctic, which concluded its work on Monday, will be ready in about six months, Dr. Igor Semiletov, expedition leader and head of the Arctic Research Laboratory at the Far Eastern Branch of the Russian Academy of Sciences, told RIA Novosti.

The expedition of 27 Russian and U.S. scientists left Vladivostok on September 2 at short notice to study massive methane discharges from underwater gas hydrates in the Eastern Arctic. A special focus on this problem can be explained by the fact that a drastic increase of this gas in the Earth’s atmosphere can exacerbate the greenhouse effect.

According to Semiletov, the scientists detected the most powerful methane discharges in the north of the Laptev Sea. Although earlier the scientists detected only several eruptions of gas, this time they found thousands of them using state-of-the-art equipment.

http://arctic.ru/news/2011/10/data-arctic-methane-will-be-available-six-months

The stratospheric methane migration routes determined overlie regions of recent massive fires in Siberia, Texas and the Middle East. The danger of a strong link between earthquake activity along the Gakkel Ridge with destabilization of the submarine Arctic methane hydrates and the release of giant plumes of methane to the atmosphere was emphasised by Light and Solana (2002). A Russian - US expedition has just visited the eastern part of the Arctic seas (northern Laptev and Bering seas) and according to the expedition chief found powerful methane emissions into the atmosphere from methane torches connected to submarine, subcrustal methane sources activated by strong seismic activity in the region (Semiletov, 2011).

Continued opening of the angular Gakkel Ridge rift in 2011 generated compression and strike slip motion in the onshore region south of Tiksi Siberia causing earthquakes in the permafrost (Figure 5). The earthquake activity generated a massive methane plume in the atmosphere in November 2010 which was spread by stratospheric winds across Siberia, Europe and the Middle East into the Sahara and Atlantic. Other stratospheric winds have carried the methane across North America into the Gulf of Mexico, the Atlantic and the Pacific Ocean (Figure 5).

The amount of methane being emitted into the atmosphere from the Arctic region has been estimated from the rising GISS temperature gradient for each year for the next 20 years (Table 1). It is round 1.82 to 1.88 Gigga tonnes per year now but will rise to between 3.36 to 3.47 Gigga tonnes a year by 2039/2040 at which time a full 50 Gigga tonnes (Shakova et al. 1980) will have been released and mankind will be extinct.

http://globalwarmingmlight.blogspot.com/2011_10_01_archive.html

November 2010 is when Shakhova reported Leifer's estimate of 3.5 GT annual release already occurring at the Navy Dept. Symposium.

A group of Russian and U.S. scientists will leave the port of Vladivostok on Friday on board a Russian research ship to study methane emissions in the eastern part of the Arctic.

"This expedition was organized on a short notice by the Russian Fund of Fundamental Research and the U.S. National Science Foundation following the discovery of a dramatic increase in the leakage of methane gas from the seabed in the eastern part of the Arctic", said Professor Igor Semiletov, the head of the expedition.

The group consists of 27 scientists who would attempt to measure the scale of methane emissions and clarify the nature of the process.

The 45-day expedition will focus on the sea shelf of the Laptev Sea, the East Siberian Sea and the Russian part of the Chukotsk Sea, where 90% of underwater permafrost is located.

"We assume that the leakage of methane results from the degradation of underwater permafrost...A massive release of such a powerful greenhouse gas may accelerate global warming," Semiletov said.

http://en.rian.ru/science/20110902/166364635.html

During the Sangamon interglacial, rivers flowed north into the Arctic dumping organic material onto the shelves. At the start of the last stadial, ice dams formed, forcing the rivers to flow south. The sea level in the Arctic dropped exposing the shelves. The shelves remained exposed throughout the last stadial, and as the Holocene began, glacial meltwater turned the shelves first into a wetland, then with the rise of sea level, the shelves were submerged.

The permafrost that formed throughout the last stadial began to degrade even before the shelves were submerged as thermokarst lakes and rivers formed taliks. Much like is happening to terrestrial permafrost today.

Once submerged, the new warmer subsea environment, the salinity(think what happens when you put salt on a frozen doorstep), and geothermal flux from below, worked over the last 8,000 years to degrade the permafrost to the point that it now is pourous, and and even totally gone in places, over an area of 2 million sq km.

Much of the methane hydrates that formed over the last 100,000 years since the Sangamon, dissociated leaving a large reservoir of free methane gas, prevented from releasing only by the layer of permafrost which until now had acted as a cap.

Since the shelf is on average about 50 meters deep, any methane released does not interact with the water column, but releases directly to the atmosphere.

This is the end result of a geological process that has been going on for thousands of years and is a part of a natural cycle.

Without AGW and with the current placement within the Milankovitch cycles, we would already be in the beginning stages of a new stadial. This would potentially have put us in a situation where the subsea methane might not be releasing.

We have to recognize that, just like all life on the planet, we are part of the life cycle of the planet.

We as a species have been as successful as any species can be, and just like all other species, we filled our niche until our numbers outstripped our ability to survive and are about to reach the point of dieoff.

Our only difference from other species, is that we discovered fossil fuels, which allowed us to expand our population far beyond where we would normally have died back.

Throughout most of our existence, we have bumped against a ceiling of famine and pestilence which has naturally curbed our numbers.

We found a way around it, only to put ourselves in more dire circumstances when the limits were finally reached, and in doing so actually contributed to a geological scale change that would probably not have otherwise happened.

There is no blame to be assigned. It was an unfortunate convergence of geological processes, planetary cycles, and human inovation involving fossil fuels that resulted in this crisis. Had we been in the middle of a stadial instead of an interstadial, had we been at a different point in the cycles of planetary distance, orbit, and orientation to the sun, things would be different.

'Unmistakable signal,' says expert of the 41 indicators tracked in 'State of the Climate'

It's been more than 300 months since the average global average temperature was below average, scientists and the U.S. government said in the annual State of the Climate report released Tuesday.

The experts tracked 41 climate indicators, four more than in the previous year, and "they all show a continued tendency," said Tom Karl, director of the National Climatic Data Center. "The indicators show unequivocally that the world continues to warm."

"There is a clear and unmistakable signal from the top of the atmosphere to the depths of the oceans," added Peter Thorne of the Cooperative Institute for Climate and Satellites at North Carolina State University.

Carbon dioxide increased by 2.60 parts per million in the atmosphere in 2010, which is more than the average annual increase seen from 1980-2010, Karl said. Carbon dioxide is the major greenhouse gas accumulating in the air that atmospheric scientists blame for warming the climate.

The warmer conditions are consistent with events such as heat waves and extreme rainfall, Karl said at a teleconference.

Deke Arndt, chief of the Climate Monitoring Branch at NCDC, noted that every month since early 1985 has been warmer than the 20th century average for the month.

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/43565301/ns/us_news-environment/

While the current heat wave has recorded 12 all-time daily highs so far this month, it also has registered 98 all-time overnight highs, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration reported at a briefing Thursday.

That's just all-time highs.

When it comes to a record high for a particular date, 1,279 locations have tied or broken daytime records this month, while 3,128 nighttime highs have been tied or broken.

Meteorologists warned the oppressive hot spell, which has already claimed as many as 22 lives in the Midwest, could be worse than the punishing heat wave of 1995.

When temperatures overnight do not cool to levels that provide relief, it increases the stress on people without air conditioning, on livestock and on crops, said Deke Arndt, chief of the Climate Modeling Branch at NOAA's National Climatic Data Center.

In general, both daytime and nighttime temperature increases "are consistent with what we would expect in a greenhouse-warmed world," he added.

High overnight readings also increase energy consumption as air conditioning units run deeper into the night and start earlier in the morning, he said.

This problem was a major factor in the 1995 heat wave that struck Chicago, claiming more than 700 lives, Angel said.

url=http://www.recordonline.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20110722/NEWS/107220371

Right now, the mass media is just starting to catch on that things are worse than they thought.

They are not even close to understanding it's too late. Let alone how abruptly things are going to get very bad.

Our general society dumbed down over the last 35 years. Starting from the Reagan Administration they defunded higher education by just not keeping pace with rising tuition.

Then they appealed to man's baser nature, to make him direct his fear and anger against his fellow man.

So that we have a population that can't understand, and won't listen, even if you try to educate them, as they will now choose the explanation that best aligns with their biases and hatreds.

It's like 1930's lynch mobs again. They aren't acting yet, but they will.

It will turn into witch hunts against the people they have always wished they had a justification for attacking. It won't have anything to do with what is going on.

It doesn't matter in terms of doing anything. There is nothing to be done. It is too late.

But the world is about to get real ugly.

Civilization as we define it will be lucky to make it to 2020.

If Ira Liefer's estimate for non-gradual annual emissions of methane from the ESAS are correct, we will face 300 years of projected warming over the next decade.

That is catastrophic climate change on a scale that even the most pessimistic among us can't fathom.

We are talking the total collapse of the food distribution system as crops fail at levels of 80 and 90%. Where there just is no food anywhere on the planet to feed most of the population.

Famine, then pandemics from weakened immune systems, starvation and pestilence to surpass anything envisioned for the Apocalypse.

Human die-off could be total but will at least be above the 90th percentile.

I hope that I die before the worst comes to pass.

The East Siberian Arctic Shelf (ESAS) is a 2,000,000 km2 region. Due to amplification of global warming, the ESAS can now be 10°C or 18°F warmer than average temperatures were 1951-1980 (NASA image left).

Shakhova and Semiletov (2010) conclude that this ESAS region should be considered the most potential in terms of possible climate change caused by abrupt release of methane, and they estimate that the ESAS is now releasing 3.5Gt of methane annually.

Scientists such as Howarth et al. (2011) estimate that methane has a GWP of 105 over 20 years. Using that figure, a 3.5Gt of methane would have a greenhouse effect equivalent to 367.5 Pg of carbon dioxide.

By comparison, the entire rise in carbon dioxide between 1850 and 2000 was 174 PgC, i.e. not even half of what the ESAS is releasing now annually.

http://knol.google.com/k/sam-carana/earth-at-boiling-point/7y50rvz9924j/70#

The magnitude and feedbacks of future methane release from the Arctic region are unknown. Despite limited documentation of potential future releases associated with thawing permafrost and degassing methane hydrates, the large potential for future methane releases calls for improved understanding of the interaction of a changing climate with processes in the Arctic and chemical feedbacks in the atmosphere. Here we apply a “state of the art” atmospheric chemistry transport model to show that large emissions of CH 4 would likely have an unexpectedly large impact on the chemical composition of the atmosphere and on radiative forcing (RF). The indirect contribution to RF of additional methane emission is particularly important. It is shown that if global methane emissions were to increase by factors of 2.5 and 5.2 above current emissions, the indirect contributions to RF would be about 250% and 400%, respectively, of the RF that can be attributed to directly emitted methane alone. Assuming several hypothetical scenarios of CH 4 release associated with permafrost thaw, shallow marine hydrate degassing, and submarine landslides, we find a strong positive feedback on RF through atmospheric chemistry. In particular, the impact of CH 4 is enhanced through increase of its lifetime, and of atmospheric abundances of ozone, stratospheric water vapor, and CO 2 as a result of atmospheric chemical processes. Despite uncertainties in emission scenarios, our results provide a better understanding of the feedbacks in the atmospheric chemistry that would amplify climate warming.

http://www.agu.org/pubs/crossref/2011/2010GB003845.shtml

http://folk.uio.no/gunnarmy/paper/isaksen_gbc_2011.pdf

In 1963 there were 3 billion people on the planet. Less than half of the number now.

Life was much slower then. Back then they rolled up the sidewalks at 5 PM. Nothing was open overnight.

FM was not widely implemented and AM stations signed on at dawn and signed off at dusk.

There were 3 television stations where I lived and they were all signed off by 1 AM.

Dave Clark Five, the Beatles and the Beach Boys set the pace and defined a Generation.

It was a very innocent world. Kids fell in love with their high school sweethearts and got married. The wedding night was still a big deal.

People socialized, getting together to play cards on evenings with nothing much better to do. We read more.

The evening sky was filled with fireflies so numerous, kids had fun collecting jars full in the early darkness.

The drive-in and the beach were special outings we all looked forward to.

The future was infinite, clean and bright.

How different from today.

The world is dying. By the 1970's it was already noticibly browner.

That was when we started looking closely to see what was wrong. We knew pollution was a problem. LA was experiencing smog that was opaque purple and rolled up over the hills, blotting out everything.

Science Fiction speculated a world of the future where people lived in domed cities and the atmosphere outside was toxic.

Little did we know we could actually really make the planet uninhabitable. Man just wasn't that stupid or immoral, so we thought.

We had already passed the Clean Air Act and the Air Quality Act and President Carter was putting solar panels on the White House roof. An entire generation became ecologically conscious.

Unfortunately, the 80's brought a new generation, the Yuppies, who were interested in one thing, wealth and the things money could buy.

This was the first generation raised totally on television. Consumerism was poured into their heads right from the start. Commercials were targeted directly at them on Saturday mornings, urging them to drive their parents crazy about having to have the latest toy.

Practically no one realized the danger and insideousness of this device that had become the centerpiece in the American home.

Everyone every evening gathered around the conditioning box, watching TV families with all the luxuries they did not have, making it appear everyone had it but them, and creating an unsatiable hunger.

America went insane. Then spread it to the rest of the world.

The population was double that of 1963 in 2000. The ever increasing demand for consumer goods led mankind to totally ravage the planet, and now we have killed it.

It is too late, we are terminal. There is no way to reverse what we have done and the ecosphere is dying.

In Copenhagen, we were told to expect a rise in global temperature of 4-6C. That is a lethal fever. A death sentence.

That puts us in the same climate as the Paleocene-Eocene Thermal Maximum, a time when alligators swam in the Arctic Ocean. When all the moisture was transported to the poles and the rest of the planet became desert. A time when much of the life on the planet died.

The temperature rise will not stop there.

So I grieve for the future we will never have, for the lives that could have been, but will never be. For all the suffering that is yet to come.

Researchers say feedback mechanisms are now at work in the Arctic to increase warming. In other words, the Arctic is now reinforcing its own warming.

http://earthsky.org/earth/sober-new-report-from-200-polar-researchers-arctic-now-reinforcing-own-warming

In other words, it is out of our hands. Even if we stopped all emissions it would do nothing to stop it, as the environmental feedbacks are now reinforcing themselves, like an out of control chain reaction.

Here come the priests, each one wailing and bemoaning
Lordy, they got their heads bowed down
Here come the madmen, they're too excited for atoning:
"Burn the mosque," they're shouting, "Burn it down!"

Save me a place, surrounded with friendly faces
All of us have gathered here to share the end
To watch the world go up in flames

Please, Lord we're not ready
Give us a day
Give us an hour

Here come the kings, let's dispense with their apologizing
Just bring on the acrobats and clowns
Here comes the rumble, hang on for universal dying
Please ignore the baying of the hounds

Save me a place, surrounded with friendly faces
All of us have gathered here to share the end
To watch the world go up in flames

Please, Lord we're not ready
Give us some time to work things out
Please, Lord we're not ready
Give us a day
Give us an hour
Please, Lord we're not ready
Give us some time to work things out
Please, Lord we're not ready
Give us a day
Give us an hour

From a Symposium November 30th.

Bad news: directly observed fluxes exceed estimated by up to 3 orders of magnitude

Interpretation of acoustical data recorded with deployed multibeam sonar allowed moderate quantification of bottom fluxes as high as 44 g/m2/d (Leifer et al., in preparation). Prorating these numbers to the areas of hot spots (210×103 km2) adds 3.5Gt to annual methane release from the ESAS. This is enough to trigger abrupt climate change.

link


That's in addition to the 8 tg from non-abrupt releases. This is the figure we were waiting on. This is the estimated additional releases from abrupt non-linear sources. 3.5 Gt a year.

See Shakhova Interview


That's it. That's the doctor coming in and telling you to get your affairs in order as it's terminal. Presented in such an antiseptic manner, that once he leaves the room, you ask yourself, "Did he just say I'm dying?"


Returning to the 4 GtC release scenario, assume such a release occurs over a one-year period

In this event, methane will enter the atmosphere as methane gas. It will have a residence time of several decades and a global warming potential of 62 times that of carbon dioxide over a 20-year period.

This would be the equivalent of 248 GtC as carbon dioxide or 31 times the annual man-made GHG emissions of today. Put another way, this would have the impact of nearly 30 years worth of GHG warming all at once. The result would almost certainly be a rapid rise in the average air temperature, perhaps as much as 3°F immediately. This might be tolerable if that’s as far as things go. But, just like 15,000 years ago, if the feedback mechanisms kick in, we can expect rapid melting of Greenland and Antarctic ice and an overall temperature increase of 30°F.

For point of reference, the average temperature of the Earth (atmosphere, land and top layer of the ocean) in 2004 is around 60°F. The methane hydrate release projected here would raise the temperature to around 90°F or more. Such high temperatures would undoubtedly destabilize all of the other methane hydrates in the ocean and arctic permafrost, some 10,000 GtC or 620,000 GtC equivalent as carbon dioxide. This would have the impact of 78,000 years worth of GHG warming over a few decades. The temperatures reached and sustained would most likely cause a rapid die off in ocean phytoplankton and other sea life as well as most land plants and animals, including humans. The result would be a mass extinction and mark a major transition point in the Earth’s geological history.

link

30 years of GHG emissions every yr. Until the whole thing blows. Been happening for at least the last yr.

This week’s Science podcast features Shakhova discussing the team’s findings. transcript

…subsea permafrost acts as a lid – the seal to prevent this methane escape. And being prevented for a period of time, being sealed for a period of time, means that this gas accumulates, and it accumulates under higher pressure –- this is what we have to give an example, this is what we have, for example, this bottle of champagne. So, you have a lot of gas inside, but it’s sealed for a period of time, and when you uncork this bottle, what you can see – it’s different from a bottle of mineral water left open for period of time, it’s just little bit of different. And I think that release of methane from this kind of seabed deposits disturbed by destabilization of subsea permafrost, provides a pathway for this methane – ready to go methane – because its release does not depend on production. It’s not time-dependent, it’s not temperature-dependent, it only needs the pathway to be released.

So, what we estimated recently is our first approach – we developed this original approach to incorporate two different components of emissions. And the initial numbers we currently reporting doesn’t sound alarming – this is between the 6.5 teragram a year to 10 teragram a year. And this is initial numbers, and we did not incorporate [a] few very important components of emission, which being incorporated might change our first estimate significantly, because what we did not incorporate is nongradial emission – nongradial, sudden or kind of outbursts-like emissions, which [are] usually associated with methane emission as bubbles from the seabed through the water column and directly into the atmosphere, which is associated with destabilization of seabed deposits, I think.

So the 8 teragram figure is just the estimate of the gradual component of the release, not the total annual release from the shelf.

And for me, destabilization of subsea permafrost not even everywhere because, for example, we have areas – fold zones, reef zones, tectonically active areas and so on – and destabilization of hydrates, if it takes place, also can simulate kind of endoseismic events due to sediment settlement and adjustment. And this is not even a gradual process, as every physical process when you go from one stage to another stage, it’s never even – it’s kind of jump start. It’s, for example, when you see one day when it is ice break time, and you see one day in the evening you see the huge lake covered with broken ice. And the next morning you cannot see a single piece of ice on this lake – that means that the melting of this ice reached the melting or thawing point, and it just jump into the next stage, which is fluid.

Interviewer – Robert Frederick
So, it sounds as if it’s not a linear process – it could become…

Interviewee – Natalia Shakhova
It’s not, it’s definitely not a linear process – this is what I mean, it’s not linear. That’s why establishing this first numbers, first estimates, this is just very first phase in our work. But now, we are thinking of providing details, and we do have some materials already from 2009 expedition, which we are just very are anxious to prepare for publication. But, speaking of this current paper, this is what my thoughts [are] about.

It seems to be widely assumed that humans can adapt to any amount of warming, on the basis that humans live in such a wide variety of climates now. We show that when examined in terms of the peak value of the wet-bulb temperature (Tw), which ultimately governs the possibility of transfer of metabolic heat to the environment, the worlds present-day climates are far less variable than one might think based on mean temperature. A warming of only a few degrees will cause large parts of the globe to experience peak Tw values that never occur today; 7C would begin to create zones of uninhabitability due to unsurvivable peak heat stresses (periods when the shedding of metabolic heat is thermodynamically impossible); and 10C would expand such zones far enough to encompass a majority of today's population. It is unknown how much of our present 7- 10C cushion we can live without before experiencing significant problems, making it difficult to draw conclusions about more modest climate changes, but the limits themselves rest squarely on basic thermodynamics.

These inferences stand in contradiction to damage functions currently used in economic cost-benefit calculations. In these, climate damages increase with global mean temperature according to a polynomial form, and remain moderate (typically <30% of GDP) even for 10C or more despite the implication that most of the surface would become uninhabitable by humans and most livestock during the warm season. We suggest that more attention should be paid to the behavior of damage functions at large departures from the present climate, and that damage functions should perhaps be based on a model of interpolation from adaptability limits rather than extrapolation from calculated impacts of small changes.

http://www.scribd.com/doc/31031568/An-Adaptability-Limit-to-Climate-Change-Due-to-Heat-Stress

A new study completed by a team of US, Norwegian and German researchers may now provide some clues. Published in the scientific journal Geophysical Research Letters in November, the study posits that a dramatic change in atmospheric circulation patterns has taken place since the beginning of the decade, with centers of high pressure in winter shifting toward the north-east. The new pattern of sudden climate change is characterized by "poleward atmospheric and oceanic heat transport," the authors write in the study, a transport which drives temperature increases in the Arctic. The discovery was made using specialized filters that allow one to follow changes to high pressure centers over time.

Behind the complex language and impenetrable calculations upon which the study is based, however, is a frightening possibility: climate change in the Arctic could already have reached the point of no return. Climate researchers have long been warning of such "tipping points," and that crossing them could mean irreversible developments for eco-systems and humanity. In the case of the Arctic, that could mean a complete disappearance of ice in the region during the summer months. Such an eventuality would then further magnify global warming, due to the fact that bright white ice reflects sunlight back into the atmosphere whereas dark colored land and ocean absorbs heat.

"In the case of Arctic Sea ice, we have already reached the point of no return," says the prominent American climate researcher James Hansen, director of the Goddard Institute for Space Studies at NASA.

Winter in the Arctic has long been determined by what researchers refer to as a "tri-polar" pattern. The interaction among the Icelandic Low, the Azores High and the subtropical high in the Pacific led to primarily east-west winds, a pattern which effectively blocked warmer air from moving northward into the Arctic region.

But since the beginning of the decade, the patterns have changed. Now, a "dipolar" (bipolar) pattern has developed in which a high pressure system over Canada and a low pressure system over Siberia have the say. The result has been that Artic winds now blow north-south, meaning that warmer air from the south has no problem making its way into the Arctic region. "It's like a short-circuit," says Rüdiger Gerdes, a scientist at the Alfred Webener Institute for Polar and Marine Research and one of the five authors of the study.

Gerdes and his co-authors fear that the changes in the Arctic could mean that a "new era of global-warming-forced climate change" has begun. The volume of greenhouse gas emissions like CO2 and methane into the Earth's atmosphere could have resulted in a permanent change in the global climate system.

http://www.spiegel.de/international/world/0,1518,594461,00.html

"Thereafter, at the conjunction of two yugas [Kali-yuga and Satya-yuga], the Lord of the creation will take His birth as the Kalki incarnation and become the son of Vishnuyasha. At this time the rulers of the earth will have degenerated into plunderers." (Bhag.1.3.25)

Here in these verses we find that Lord Kalki will come as a chastiser or warrior. By this time the planet will be filled with people who will be unable to understand logical conversations. They will be too slow-minded and dull-witted, not capable of being taught much, especially in the way of high philosophy regarding the purpose of life. They will not know what they need to do or how to live. And they certainly will be unable to change their ways. Therefore, Lord Kalki does not come to teach, but simply to chastise, punish, and cleanse the planet.

Kind of sounds like now, doesn't it.

I brought several important related posts from the past to the front page for easier viewing. I've tried to organize them in a logical manner.

I never would have thought, when I created The Post Peak Oil Historian, that it would turn into a vigil on the death of the biosphere.

Ecological systems (including the global climate) are better understood as complex emergent systems. The units of environmental systems, however defined, are not nearly as important as the relationships and networks between a system’s components. Properties of the system cannot be determined simply by reference to its components, nor can the future state of a system be understood in reductionist terms. Change can occur while maintaining the integrity of the system, but the system may shift to multiple points of stability.

Such shifts, as with eutrophification of lakes, may occur quite suddenly and with little indication that conditions may suddenly ‘worsen’. Likewise, paleo-climatological studies have indicated that atmospheric temperatures can shift very suddenly, perhaps as much as 10-20 degrees Celsius within a few years.

The National Research Council’s 2002 report on abrupt climate change described several qualities of the system that creates ‘abruptness’. First, the system is nonlinear, and shifts from one condition (often measured as temperature) to another rapidly, perhaps within a number of years.

Second, this change is irreversible as measured by human time scales, a condition made even more likely by the long-term forcing of GHG emissions and atmospheric CO2 lifetimes.

Third, the changes may occur due to second-order effects of the global system, as positive feedback loops originally unrelated to the more obvious forcing (eg Arctic methane gas release caused by melting permafrost).

Finally, abrupt changes are often categorized as such due to the inability of related systems to adapt, leading to the possible description ‘dangerous’ climate change.

The effects of climate change in such situations have been conceptualized as ‘threat multipliers’, conditions that exacerbate risks and make adaptation more difficult, but not conditions which could be understood as the root causes of conflict.

Vulnerable systems, be they ecological, political or economic, may ‘fail’ completely should environmental conditions shift much more quickly than adaptation allows. (Gallopin 2007)

http://www.envirosecurity.org/news/articles/environmentalSecurity.pdf

An MIT paper appearing in the Journal of Geophysical Research online Aug. 29 elucidates how this underground methane in frozen regions would escape and also concludes that methane trapped under the ocean may already be escaping through vents in the sea floor at a much faster rate than previously believed. Some scientists have associated the release, both gradual and fast, of subsurface ocean methane with climate change of the past and future.

“The sediment conditions under which this mechanism for gas migration dominates, such as when you have a very fine-grained mud, are pervasive in much of the ocean as well as in some permafrost regions,” said lead author Ruben Juanes, the ARCO Assistant Professor in Energy Studies in the Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering.

“This indicates that we may be greatly underestimating the methane fluxes presently occurring in the ocean and from underground into Earth’s atmosphere,” said Juanes.

A grain-scale computational model developed by Juanes and recent MIT graduate Antone Jain indicates that the gas would tend to open up cornflake-shaped fractures in the sediment, and would flow quickly enough that it could not be trapped into icy hydrate cages en route.

“Previous studies did not take into account the strong interaction between the gas-water surface tension and the sediment mechanics. Our model explains recent experiments of sediment fracturing during gas flow, and predicts that large amounts of free methane gas can bypass the HSZ,” said Juanes.

Using their model, as well as seismic data and core samples from a hydrate-bearing area of ocean floor (Hydrate Ridge, off the coast of Oregon), Juanes and Jain found that methane gas is very likely spewing out of vents in the sea floor at flow rates up to 1 million times faster than if it were migrating as a dissolved substance in water making its way through the oceanic sediment — a process previously thought to dominate methane transport.

“Our model provides a physical explanation for the recent striking discovery by the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration of a plume 1,400 meters high at the seafloor off the Northern California Margin,” said Juanes. This plume, which was recorded for five minutes before disappearing, is believed not to be hydrothermal vent, but a plume of methane gas bubbles coated with methane hydrate.

http://www.physorg.com/news171116588.html

"Generally speaking, destabilization of subsea permafrost means that it fails to further prevent methane leakage from seabed deposits of methane stored in the ESAS," said Shakhova. "This provides the global carbon budget with a previously unconsidered and very specific type of methane source."

Unlike other terrestrial and marine sources, which gradually release methane as it forms, the shelf is emitting methane that has accumulated in seabed deposits for hundreds of thousands of years and until now was restricted by permafrost, says Shakhova.

"As methane has been permanently originating in the seabed since it was formed, these deposits are huge and emissions of this ready-to-go methane to the water column only depend on occurence of migration pathways (provided or not provided by permafrost)," she said. "These emissions could be non-gradual, sudden, more or less massive, they could even be abrupt."

The methane released from ESAS does not become oxidized by microbes as it passes through the water column, unlike methane released from the oceanic hydrate deposits found at depths of more than 700 m. "In the ESAS this bio-filter does not work because the water is very shallow – mean depth is less than 50 m – and there is just not enough time for oxidation," said Shakhova.

"Moreover, Arctic shallow hydrate deposits are three times more sensitive to warming than oceanic deposits," said Shakhova. "This means that three times less energy (provided by warming) is required to destabilize them compared to deep oceanic hydrates."

http://environmentalresearchweb.org/cws/article/news/42221

Link to the published paper.

http://iopscience.iop.org/1748-9326/5/1/015006/fulltext

“The amount of methane currently coming out of the East Siberian Arctic Shelf is comparable to the amount coming out of the entire world’s oceans,” said Shakhova, a researcher at UAF’s International Arctic Research Center.

“Our concern is that the subsea permafrost has been showing signs of destabilization already,” she said. “If it further destabilizes, the methane emissions may not be teragrams, it would be significantly larger.”

Shakhova notes that Earth’s geological record indicates that atmospheric methane concentrations have varied between about .3 to .4 parts per million during cold periods to .6 to .7 parts per million during warm periods. Current average methane concentrations in the Arctic average about 1.85 parts per million, the highest in 400,000 years, she said. Concentrations above the East Siberian Arctic Shelf are even higher.They found corresponding results in the air directly above the ocean surface. Methane levels were elevated overall and the seascape was dotted with more than 100 hotspots. This, combined with winter expedition results that found methane gas trapped under and in the sea ice, showed the team that the methane was not only being dissolved in the water, it was bubbling out into the atmosphere.

These findings were further confirmed when Shakhova and her colleagues sampled methane levels at higher elevations. Methane levels throughout the Arctic are usually 8 to 10 percent higher than the global baseline. When they flew over the shelf, they found methane at levels another 5 to 10 percent higher than the already elevated arctic levels.

The East Siberian Arctic Shelf, in addition to holding large stores of frozen methane, is more of a concern because it is so shallow. In the shallows of the East Siberian Arctic Shelf, methane simply doesn’t have enough time to oxidize, which means more of it escapes into the atmosphere. “The release to the atmosphere of only one percent of the methane assumed to be stored in shallow hydrate deposits might alter the current atmospheric burden of methane up to 3 to 4 times,” Shakhova said.

http://www.physorg.com/news186920485.html

We're currently around 387 ppm. And, given the lack of progress so far toward curbing fossil-fuel emissions, we'll be fortunate to stabilize atmospheric concentrations at 450 ppm.

Scientists are therefore quite interested in what the world looked like during the early Pliocene, and why. At least in terms of atmospheric CO2 concentrations, that seems to be where we're headed.

A new paper in Nature Geoscience concludes that we may, in fact, already be there.

According to current climate models, with each doubling of CO2, Earth warms around 3 degrees C (5.4 degrees F.). Scientists have deduced, therefore, that atmospheric CO2 concentrations during the Pliocene must have been between 500 and 600 ppm.

But according to this study, the fossil evidence doesn't support that assumption. Carbon dioxide concentrations in the early Pliocene, as inferred from several sources, were more likely between 365 and 415 ppm. We're already well within that range.

The implications are (at least) two-fold: 1. It takes a lot less CO2 to warm Earth than previously thought. 2. Earth's climate may be more sensitive to increases in CO2 than current climate models assume.

Atmospheric carbon dioxide concentrations during the early Pliocene were significantly lower than previously assumed. They were just 90 to 125 ppm more than preindustrial levels of 280 ppm — in other words, about where we are now.

What do these findings mean? They indicate that the Pliocene might be the best analog for the world in the not-too-distant future.

About 4.5 million years ago, during the early Pliocene period (3 to 5 million years ago), temperatures on Earth were some 3 to 4 degrees C (5.4 to 7.2 degrees F.) higher in the tropics, and perhaps 10 degrees C (18 degrees F.) warmer near the poles.

http://www.csmonitor.com/Environment/Bright-Green/2010/0108/Comparing-Earth-s-current-warming-to-the-Pliocene

Then we have a massive injection of methane into the atmosphere from hydrate sources that did not exist in the Pliocene.

Methane release 'looks stronger'

Scientists have uncovered what appears to be a further dramatic increase in the leakage of methane gas that is seeping from the Arctic seabed.

The findings come from measurements of carbon fluxes around the north of Russia, led by Igor Semiletov from the University of Alaska at Fairbanks.

"Methane release from the East Siberian Shelf is underway and it looks stronger than it was supposed [to be]," he said.

Professor Semiletov has been studying methane seepage in the region for the last few decades, and leads the International Siberian Shelf Study (ISSS), which has launched multiple expeditions to the Arctic Ocean.

The preliminary findings of ISSS 2009 are now being prepared for publication, he told BBC News.

Methane seepage recorded last summer was already the highest ever measured in the Arctic Ocean.

A worst-case scenario is one where the feedback passes a tipping point and billions of tonnes of methane are released suddenly, as has occurred in the Earth's past.

Such sudden releases have been linked to rapid increases in global temperatures and could have been a factor in the mass extinction of species.

Professor Semiletov's fellow researcher aboard the Russian icebreaker that carries the ISSS team each year is Professor Orjan Gustafsson from Stockholm University in Sweden.

He said that methane measured in the atmosphere around the region is 100 times higher than normal background levels, and in some cases 1,000 times higher.

Some estimates put the amount of carbon trapped in shelf permafrost at 1,600 billion tonnes - roughly twice as much carbon as in the atmosphere now.

The release of this once captive carbon from destabilised ocean sediments and permafrost would have catastrophic effect on our climate and life on Earth, warn the scientists.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/science/nature/8437703.stm

Experts say methane emissions from the Arctic have risen by almost one-third in just five years, and that sharply rising temperatures are to blame.

Scientists have recorded a massive spike in the amount of a powerful greenhouse gas seeping from Arctic permafrost, in a discovery that highlights the risks of a dangerous climate tipping point.

Experts say methane emissions from the Arctic have risen by almost one-third in just five years, and that sharply rising temperatures are to blame.

The discovery follows a string of reports from the region in recent years that previously frozen boggy soils are melting and releasing methane in greater quantities. Such Arctic soils currently lock away billions of tonnes of methane, a far more potent greenhouse gas than carbon dioxide, leading some scientists to describe melting permafrost as a ticking time bomb that could overwhelm efforts to tackle climate change.

They fear the warming caused by increased methane emissions will itself release yet more methane and lock the region into a destructive cycle that forces temperatures to rise faster than predicted.

Paul Palmer, a scientist at Edinburgh University who worked on the new study, said: "High latitude wetlands are currently only a small source of methane but for these emissions to increase by a third in just five years is very significant. It shows that even a relatively small amount of warming can cause a large increase in the amount of methane emissions."

http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/2010/jan/14/arctic-permafrost-methane

Global warming is forever, some of the world's top climate scientists have concluded. Their research shows that carbon dioxide emitted from today's homes, cars and factories will continue to heat up the planet for hundreds of thousands of years.

It comes as a shock because most governments, and even many scientists, have assumed that carbon dioxide emissions would work their way out of the atmosphere in about a century, enabling it to clean itself fairly rapidly once the world switched to clean sources of energy.

But one of the main researchers – Professor David Archer of Chicago University – warns that "the climatic impacts of releasing fossil fuel carbon dioxide into the atmosphere will last longer than Stonehenge, longer than time capsules, far longer than the age of human civilisation so far. Ultimate recovery takes place on timescales of hundreds of thousands of years, a geologic longevity typically associated in public perceptions with nuclear waste."

Carbon dioxide mainly leaves the atmosphere by being soaked up by the oceans, but Professor Archer says that "the pervasive notion in the climate science community and in the public at large" that this happens relatively quickly is no longer valid. He and other leading scientists spell out why in a paper to be published in the journal Annual Reviews of Earth and Planetary Sciences.

"The ocean is getting fed up with absorbing our CO2," he says. The surface waters, about 100 metres deep, which used to sop up the gas quite fast, are now getting saturated with it – turning acid in the process – and so decreasing their uptake. They need to be replaced with fresh water from deep down, but this overturning circulation "takes centuries or a millennium". And global warming is expected to slow this down: the hotter the surface layer becomes, the longer the replenishment takes.

Indeed, the forthcoming paper will add, research shows that even this renewing process will not be enough to remove all the vast amounts of carbon dioxide that humanity is now adding to the atmosphere. Much of it will have to wait hundreds of thousands of years before being removed by another, infinitely slower, process: the natural weathering of rocks, which incorporates the gas into other substances. And the more pollution that is emitted now, the worse this will become.

http://www.independent.co.uk/environment/climate-change/greenhouse-gases-will-heat-up-planet-for-ever-1041642.html

The models presented here give a broadly coherent picture of the fate of fossil fuel CO2 released into the atmosphere. Equilibration with the ocean will absorb most of it on a timescale of 2 to 20 centuries. Even if this equilibration were allowed to run to completion, a substantial fraction of the CO2, 20–40%, would remain in the atmosphere awaiting slower chemical reactions with CaCO3 and igneous rocks. The remaining CO2 is abundant enough to continue to have a substantial impact on climate for thousands of years. The changes in climate amplify themselves somewhat by driving CO2 out of the warmer ocean. The CO2 invasion has acidified the ocean, the pH of which is largely restored by excess dissolution of CaCO3 from the sea floor and on land and, ultimately, by silicate weathering on land. The recovery of ocean pH restores the ocean’s buffer capacity to absorb CO2, tending to pull CO2 toward lower concentrations over the next 10,000 years. The land biosphere has its greatest impact within the first few centuries, which is when CO2 peaks. Nowhere in these model results or in the published literature is there any reason to conclude that the effects of CO2 release will be substantially confined to just a few centuries. In contrast, generally accepted modern understanding of the global carbon cycle indicates that climate effects of CO2 releases to the atmosphere will persist for tens, if not hundreds, of thousands of years into the future.

http://geosci.uchicago.edu/~archer/reprints/archer.2009.ann_rev_tail.pdf

At a high-level academic conference on global warming at Exeter University this summer, climate scientist Kevin Anderson stood before his expert audience and contemplated a strange feeling. He wanted to be wrong. Many of those in the room who knew what he was about to say felt the same. His conclusions had already caused a stir in scientific and political circles. Even committed green campaigners said the implications left them terrified.

The battle against dangerous climate change had been lost, and the world needed to prepare for things to get very, very bad.

"As an academic I wanted to be told that it was a very good piece of work and that the conclusions were sound," Anderson said. "But as a human being I desperately wanted someone to point out a mistake, and to tell me we had got it completely wrong."

Nobody did. The cream of the UK climate science community sat in stunned silence as Anderson pointed out that carbon emissions since 2000 have risen much faster than anyone thought possible, driven mainly by the coal-fuelled economic boom in the developing world.

The escalating scale of human emissions could not have come at a worst time, as scientists have discovered that the Earth's forests and oceans could be losing their ability to soak up carbon pollution.

The Southern Ocean's ability to absorb carbon dioxide has weakened by about 15% a decade since 1981, while in the North Atlantic, scientists at the University of East Anglia also found a dramatic decline in the CO2 sink between the mid-1990s and mid-2000s.

A separate study published this year showed the ability of forests to soak up anthropogenic carbon dioxide - that caused by human activity - was weakening, because the changing length of the seasons alters the time when trees switch from being a sink of carbon to a source.

Soils could also be giving up their carbon stores: evidence emerged in 2005 that a vast expanse of western Siberia was undergoing an unprecedented thaw.

The region, the largest frozen peat bog in the world, had begun to melt for the first time since it formed 11,000 years ago. Scientists believe the bog could begin to release billions of tonnes of methane locked up in the soils, a greenhouse gas 20 times more potent than carbon dioxide.

Bob Watson, chief scientist at the Environment Department and a former head of the IPCC, warned this year that the world needed to prepare for a 4C rise, which would wipe out hundreds of species, bring extreme food and water shortages in vulnerable countries and cause floods that would displace hundreds of millions of people. Warming would be much more severe towards the poles, which could accelerate melting of the Greenland and West Antarctic ice sheets.

Watson said: "We must alert everybody that at the moment we're at the very top end of the worst case scenario."

http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/2008/dec/09/poznan-copenhagen-global-warming-targets-climate-change

Earth is Goldilock’s choice among the planets, the one that is just right for life to exist. Not too hot. Not too cold.

How does the Earth manage to stay in this habitable range? Is there a Gaia phenomenon keeping the climate in bounds? A nice idea, but it doesn’t work.

The Earth’s climate becomes more sensitive as it becomes very cold, when an amplifying feedback, the surface albedo, can cause a runaway snowball Earth, with ice and snow forming all the way to the equator.

If the planet gets too warm, the water vapor feedback can cause a runaway greenhouse effect. The ocean boils into the atmosphere and life is extinguished.

The Earth has fell off the wagon several times in the cold direction, ice and snow reaching all the way to the equator. Earth can escape from snowball conditions because weathering slows down, and CO2 accumulates in the air until there is enough to melt the ice and snow rapidly, as the feedbacks work in the opposite direction. The last snowball Earth occurred about 640 million years ago.

Now the danger that we face is the Venus syndrome. There is no escape from the Venus Syndrome. Venus will never have oceans again.

Given the solar constant that we have today, how large a forcing must be maintained to cause runaway global warming? Our model blows up before the oceans boil, but it suggests that perhaps runaway conditions could occur with added forcing as small as 10-20 W/m2.

There may have been times in the Earth’s history when CO2 was as high as 4000 ppm without causing a runaway greenhouse effect. But the solar irradiance was less at that time.

What is different about the human-made forcing is the rapidity at which we are increasing it, on the time scale of a century or a few centuries. It does not provide enough time for negative feedbacks, such as changes in the weathering rate, to be a major factor.

There is also a danger that humans could cause the release of methane hydrates, perhaps more rapidly than in some of the cases in the geologic record.

In my opinion, if we burn all the coal, there is a good chance that we will initiate the runaway greenhouse effect. If we also burn the tar sands and tar shale (a.k.a. oil shale), I think it is a dead certainty.
That would be the ultimate Faustian bargain. Mephistopheles would carry off shrieking not only the robber barons, but, unfortunately and permanently, all life on the planet.

http://www.columbia.edu/~jeh1/2008/AGUBjerknes_20081217.pdf

The world has already passed the point of no return for climate change, and civilisation as we know it is now unlikely to survive, according to James Lovelock, the scientist and green guru who conceived the idea of Gaia - the Earth which keeps itself fit for life.

In a profoundly pessimistic new assessment, published in today's Independent, Professor Lovelock suggests that efforts to counter global warming cannot succeed, and that, in effect, it is already too late.

The world and human society face disaster to a worse extent, and on a faster timescale, than almost anybody realises.

He writes: " Before this century is over, billions of us will die, and the few breeding pairs of people that survive will be in the Arctic where the climate remains tolerable."

http://www.energybulletin.net/node/12126

Leading international scientists have issued a clarion call for urgent political action to curb climate change so the world does not plunge into decades of upheaval and war.
More than 2,500 experts have agreed a tough statement demanding that governments move fast as worst-case predictions of global warming start to come true.

The message to politicians, issued at an emergency climate conference in Copenhagen, warns that the world now faces 'dangerous climate change' which would be irreversible and there is 'no excuse for inaction'.

The results of failure were spelled out by former World Bank chief economist Lord Stern, whose Stern Review two years ago enumerated the cost of climate change.

'What would be the implication? Hundreds of millions of people would have to move, probably billions,' he told the conference.

'What would be the implication of that? Extended conflict, social disruption, war essentially, over much of the world for many decades.'

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/sciencetech/article-1161686/Act-fast-face-decades-upheaval-war-climate-scientists-tell-governments.html?ITO=1490

Speaking after giving a keynote speech, Stern said he feared that politicians had not grasped the seriousness of the crisis. "Do the politicians understand just how difficult it could be? Just how devastating four, five, six degrees centigrade would be? I think not yet. Looking back, the Stern review underestimated the risks and underestimated the damage from inaction."

In the conference centre that will also host the December UN negotiations, experts at this week's meeting presented a string of new studies that suggested global warming could strike harder and sooner than expected.

They said carbon emissions have risen more in recent years than anyone thought possible, and the world's natural carbon stores could be losing the ability to soak up human pollution.

The conference also heard that:

· A 4C rise could turn swaths of southern Europe to desert.

· Sea levels will rise twice as fast as official estimates predict.

· Modest warming could unleash a carbon "time bomb" from Arctic soils.

· A failure to cut emissions could render half of the world uninhabitable.

· Rising temperatures could kill off 85% of the Amazon rainforest.

Several experts at the conference warned that temperatures are likely to soar beyond the 2C target set by European politicians. "The 2C target is gone and 3C is difficult. I think we're heading for 4C at least," one said. Oxford University yesterday announced that it would hold a conference in September to discuss the implications of a rise of 4C or more.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/2009/mar/13/stern-attacks-politicians-climate-change

4C-5C

Another tipping point sees massive amounts of methane - a potent greenhouse gas - released by melting Siberian permafrost, further boosting global warming. Much human habitation in southern Europe, north Africa, the Middle East and other sub-tropical areas is rendered unviable due to excessive heat and drought. The focus of civilisation moves towards the poles, where temperatures remain cool enough for crops, and rainfall - albeit with severe floods - persists. All sea ice is gone from both poles; mountain glaciers are gone from the Andes, Alps and Rockies.

5C-6C

Global average temperatures are now hotter than for 50m years. The Arctic region sees temperatures rise much higher than average - up to 20C - meaning the entire Arctic is now ice-free all year round. Most of the tropics, sub-tropics and even lower mid-latitudes are too hot to be inhabitable. Sea level rise is now sufficiently rapid that coastal cities across the world are largely abandoned.

6C and above

Danger of "runaway warming", perhaps spurred by release of oceanic methane hydrates. Could the surface of the Earth become like Venus, entirely uninhabitable? Most sea life is dead. Human refuges now confined entirely to highland areas and the polar regions. Human population is drastically reduced. Perhaps 90% of species become extinct, rivalling the worst mass extinctions in the Earth's 4.5 billion-year history.

http://u.tv/News/Climate-change-explained-the-impact-of-temperature-rises/ac1f282e-250b-49a2-96cd-88dae8e1e26c

The total area of submarine permafrost within the Siberian Arctic shelf is estimated to be more than one and half million square kilometers. Amount of methane hydrate deposited beneath and/or within submarine relic permafrost is estimated to be at least 540 Gt. Amount of free gas, accumulated beneath the hydrate deposits, is expected to be about 2/3 of the amount of hydrates or 360 Gt. Additionally as much as 500 Gt of carbon could be stored within as minimum as a 25 m-thick permafrost body of this type. The total value of ESS carbon pool is, thus, not less than 1,400 Gt of carbon.

...we consider release of up to 50 Gt of predicted amount of hydrate storage as highly possible for abrupt release at any time. That may cause ~12-times increase of modern atmospheric methane burden with consequent catastrophic greenhouse warming.

http://www.cosis.net/abstracts/EGU2008/01526/EGU2008-A-01526.pdf

But climate change has occurred with frightening rapidity in the past and will almost certainly do so again. Perhaps the most famous example is the reverse hiccup in a warming trend that began 15,000 years ago and eventually ended the last ice age. Roughly 2,000 years after it started, the warming trend suddenly reversed, and temperatures fell back to near-glacial conditions; Earth stayed cold for over a thousand years, a period called the Younger Dryas (named for an alpine wildflower). Then warming resumed so abruptly that global temperatures shot up 10 °C in just 10 years.

Because civilizations hadn’t yet emerged, complex human societies escaped this particular roller-coaster ride. Nevertheless, some form of abrupt climate change is highly likely in the future, with wide-ranging economic and social effects.

“When the national lab participants first met to decide on the most significant potential sources of abrupt climate change in future, the first thing we had to do was define what we meant: a large-scale change that happens more quickly than that brought on by forcing mechanisms – on a scale of years to decades, not centuries – and that persists for a very long time.”

The IMPACTS team will initially focus on four types of ACC:

1) instability among marine ice sheets, particularly the West Antarctic ice sheet;

2) positive feedback mechanisms in subarctic forests and arctic ecosystems, leading to rapid methane release or large-scale changes in the surface energy balance;

3) destabilization of methane hydrates (vast deposits of methane gas caged in water ice), particularly in the Arctic Ocean; and

4) feedback between biosphere and atmosphere that could lead to megadroughts in North America.

http://newscenter.lbl.gov/feature-stories/2008/09/17/impacts-on-the-threshold-of-abrupt-climate-changes/

Ancient plant life recovered in recent Arctic Ocean sampling cores shows that at the time of the last major global warming, humidity, precipitation levels and salinity of the ocean water altered drastically, along with the elevated temperatures and levels of greenhouse gases, according to a report in the August 10 issue of Nature.

The Arctic Ocean drilling expedition in 2004 allowed scientists to directly measure samples of biological and geological material from the beginning of the Palaeocene/Eocene thermal maximum (PETM), a period of rapid, extreme global warming about 55 million years ago. It has given researchers a direct resource of measurable information on global warming -- from a time when the overall global temperature was higher and more uniform from the subtropics to the arctic.

"Analysis of carbon and hydrogen isotopes in the recovered fossil plants told us a lot about the way water is transported in the atmosphere and its effect on the climate," said Mark Pagani, professor of geology and geophysics at Yale and principal author of the study. "The isotope traces we measured indicated that a large-scale alteration in the water cycle occurred and that future alterations may leave us poorly equipped to predict our water supply."

"Without being hysteric, it is important to realize that the impact of global warming is not just about searing hot summers -- it is about water as a resource. It is about when and where it rains and how much we have to drink," said Pagani. "This is a red flag"

Pagani and his collaborators show that water and atmospheric water vapor are a major indicator of the "greenhouse" changes. Rather than just looking at changes in ocean water -- that can be influenced by many factors -- the researchers measured carbon and hydrogen isotopes in the fossil plants and reconstructed the pattern of precipitation and characteristics of the ancient arctic water.

"We are all familiar with what happens when atmospheric fronts from the tropics meet cool northern fronts -- there is a "rainout" -- water leaves the atmosphere," said Pagani. "When that happens, the water vapor isotope level becomes more negative. We were able to measure that as traces in the plant fossils."

"In the PETM, because there were no sharp warm and cold fronts meeting to triggering rainfall, massive amounts of water got transferred from the tropics and sub-tropics to the arctic," said Pagani. "That drastically increased humidity and precipitation in the arctic. In turn, it led to increased river runoff that lowered the ocean salinity, changing its oxygen capacity and the plant life in the region. It also probably left the middle latitudes a lot dryer."

http://earthobservatory.nasa.gov/Newsroom/view.php?old=2006081122857

It has become clear that rainout greatly diminished in the temperate latitudes and combined with greater evaporation and deglaciation, water sources disappeared.

Today, we also have the problem of depleted aquifers, so that large portions of the planet will become uninhabitable due to lack of reliable or year-round water resources.

The last time the world experienced temperature rises of this magnitude was 55 million years ago, after the so-called Palaeocene-Eocene Thermal Maximum event. Then, the culprits were clathrates - large areas of frozen, chemically caged methane - which were released from the deep ocean in explosive belches that filled the atmosphere with around 5 gigatonnes of carbon. The already warm planet rocketed by 5 or 6 °C, tropical forests sprang up in ice-free polar regions, and the oceans turned so acidic from dissolved carbon dioxide that there was a vast die-off of sea life. Sea levels rose to 100 metres higher than today's and desert stretched from southern Africa into Europe.

While the exact changes would depend on how quickly the temperature rose and how much polar ice melted, we can expect similar scenarios to unfold this time around. The first problem would be that many of the places where people live and grow food would no longer be suitable for either. Rising sea levels - from thermal expansion of the oceans, melting glaciers and storm surges - would drown today's coastal regions in up to 2 metres of water initially, and possibly much more if the Greenland ice sheet and parts of Antarctica were to melt. "It's hard to see west Antarctica's ice sheets surviving the century, meaning a sea-level rise of at least 1 or 2 metres," says climatologist James Hansen, who heads NASA's Goddard Institute for Space Studies in New York. "CO2 concentrations of 550 parts per million [compared with about 385 ppm now] would be disastrous," he adds, "certainly leading to an ice-free planet, with sea level about 80 metres higher... and the trip getting there would be horrendous."

Half of the world's surface lies in the tropics, between 30° and -30° latitude, and these areas are particularly vulnerable to climate change. India, Bangladesh and Pakistan, for example, will feel the force of a shorter but fiercer Asian monsoon, which will probably cause even more devastating floods than the area suffers now. Yet because the land will be hotter, this water will evaporate faster, leaving drought across Asia. Bangladesh stands to lose a third of its land area - including its main bread basket. The African monsoon, although less well understood, is expected to become more intense, possibly leading to a greening of the semi-arid Sahel region, which stretches across the continent south of the Sahara desert. Other models, however, predict a worsening of drought all over Africa. A lack of fresh water will be felt elsewhere in the world, too, with warmer temperatures reducing soil moisture across China, the south-west US, Central America, most of South America and Australia.

All of the world's major deserts are predicted to expand, with the Sahara reaching right into central Europe. Glacial retreat will dry Europe's rivers from the Danube to the Rhine, with similar effects in mountainous regions including the Peruvian Andes, and the Himalayan and Karakoram ranges, which as result will no longer supply water to Afghanistan, Pakistan, China, Bhutan, India and Vietnam. Along with the exhaustion of aquifers, all this will lead to two latitudinal dry belts where human habitation will be impossible, say Syukuro Manabe of Tokyo University, Japan, and his colleagues. One will stretch across Central America, southern Europe and north Africa, south Asia and Japan; while the other will cover Madagascar, southern Africa, the Pacific Islands, and most of Australia and Chile.

http://www.newscientist.com/article/mg20126971.700-how-to-survive-the-coming-century.html?full=true

http://4.bp.blogspot.com/_9ZzZquaXrR8/SaxMMgGf-uI/AAAAAAAADB0/8PrkNuOPMOg/s1600-h/FourDegrees.jpg

How fast can our planet's climate change? Too slowly for humans to notice, according to the firm belief of most scientists through much of the 20th century. Any shift of weather patterns, even the Dust Bowl droughts that devastated the Great Plains in the 1930s, was seen as a temporary local excursion. To be sure, the entire world climate could change radically: The ice ages proved that. But common sense held that such transformations could only creep in over tens of thousands of years.

In the 1950s, a few scientists found evidence that some of the great climate shifts in the past had taken only a few thousand years.

During the 1960s and 1970s, other lines of research made it plausible that the global climate could shift radically within a few hundred years.

In the 1980s and 1990s, further studies reduced the scale to the span of a single century.

Today, there is evidence that severe change can take less than a decade.

http://afgen.com/climate3a.html