Wild Free and Happy Sample 56

 

[Note: This is the fifty-sixth sample from my rough draft of a far from finished new book, Wild, Free, & Happy.  The Search field on the right side will find words in the full contents of all rants and reviews.  These samples are not freestanding pieces.  They will be easier to understand if you start with sample 01, and follow the sequence listed HERE — if you happen to have some free time.  If you prefer audiobooks, Michael Dowd is in the process of reading and recording my book HERE.

[Continued from Climate Crisis 01 Sample 55]

Super Seeps

Valeria Sukhova and Olga Gertcyk wrote an update on sea floor methane seeps.  Scientists have been doing research in the Laptev and East Siberian seas, where there are large deposits of offshore permafrost and methane hydrates.  Numerous seeps are releasing methane into the atmosphere.  In the air above the water’s surface, methane levels are 16 to 32 ppm (parts per million).  This is 15 times higher than the average methane content for the world atmosphere. 

Over a thousand large seep fields (super seeps) have been found so far.  “They probably are not having a large impact on atmospheric CO₂ or methane yet.”  Meanwhile, the Arctic climate is rapidly warming, the ice continues melting, the water continues warming, and there are large deposits of seabed hydrates that have not yet thawed. 

Methane Craters

Methane craters are massive holes in the tundra that are caused by methane explosions.  As the climate warms, thawing permafrost leads to methane releases that can accumulate in underground pockets.  The holes are also called gas emission craters, blowout craters, funnels, and hydrolaccoliths.  Methane craters not the same as thaw slumps caused by subsidence, when the land surface softens and sinks due to thawing permafrost.  Slumps sometimes fill with water, creating lakes or ponds.

Anna Liesowska reported that methane craters are a recent surprise, appearing on the Yamal and Taymyr (Gyden) peninsulas of northern Siberia.  The first one was discovered in 2014, by a plane passing over tundra in the middle of nowhere on the Yamal peninsula.  Until this sighting, these craters were unknown.  She mentioned this 2014 discovery in a July 2020 article that announced the discovery of the seventeenth methane crater.  It was about 164 feet (50 m) deep. 

Her article included a number of stunning photographs.  They included two photos of pingos, large mounds created by rising pressure.  The Pingo article in Wikipedia will further illuminate your understanding.  Pingos are only found in permafrost regions.  There may be 11,000 of them on Earth.  One region in Canada has permafrost that’s more than 50,000 years old.

Richard Gray created an excellent article for the BBC.  It is recent (November 2020), provides a deeper discussion of methane craters, and includes a number of dramatic photographs.  Satellite images, taken over multiple years, indicate that the site of the seventeenth crater (2020) had previously been a pingo that first appeared in the autumn of 2013.  In northwest Siberia, the exploding pingos are apparently created by concentrated pockets of methane, and they develop in a few years.  They are located in regions located above deep deposits of gas and oil. 

The explosions can be very exciting.  “Local reindeer herders reported seeing flames and smoke after one crater explosion in June 2017 along the banks of the Myudriyakha River. Villagers in nearby Seyakha — a settlement about 20.5 miles (33 km) south of the crater — claimed the gas kept burning for about 90 minutes and the flames reached 13 to16 feet (4 to 5 m) high.”

In this region of northern Siberia, satellite images taken from 1984 to 2007 indicate a five percent change in the landscape, as the climate warms, and more permafrost thaws.  The Arctic is warming twice as fast as the global average, so permafrost will continue thawing in summer months, and more methane will be released.  How many more craters will explode in the coming years?  How much more methane will be released into the atmosphere?  Also worrisome is that craters are exploding in a region of gas and oil extraction.  There are many pipelines running across the land, and some are close to pingos.  There is potential here for eco-catastrophes. 

Portia Kentish reported on impacts caused by the 2020 heat wave in Siberia, “where melting permafrost means the ground is no longer able to support structures built on it.  For many, this raises particular concerns over the oil and gas industry, which is the primary economic sector in the Arctic Circle.  Pipelines, processing plants and storage tanks on unstable and thawing ground become a serious threat to the natural environment.”

In 2019, the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) released a report.  It found that “45 per cent of oil and natural gas production fields in the Russian Arctic are located in the most hazardous and at-risk region.  Moreover, areas of discontinuous permafrost could see a 50-75 per cent drop in load bearing capacity over the period from 2015-25 in comparison to 1975-85.”  Stuff like roads, bridges, power grids, and towns are vulnerable. 

Undersea Craters

Nancy Bazilchuk reported on research in the Barents Sea, which is a region of the Arctic Ocean located between Norwegian and Russian territorial waters.  In the 1990s, scientists discovered craters that blew out of the seafloor 12,000 to 15,000 years ago.  Recent research has discovered hundreds more ancient craters.  Some are 300 to 1,000 meters (328 to 1093 yards) in diameter, and blasted out of solid bedrock.

Karin Andreassen and team have been doing this undersea research, and they published a very detailed paper.  Over the eons, there have been numerous glaciations (ice ages).  When regions freeze, methane is trapped beneath ice sheets, and solidifies into methane hydrates.  When warm periods return, some of the frozen methane can thaw and be released.  Releases can be gradual, in streams of bubbles, or they can be abrupt, with crater-making explosions. 

The incredible genius of humankind now allows us to cleverly disrupt the climate in a remarkable number of ways.  Andreassen assures us that there are still enormous amounts of methane stored in sea beds and terrestrial permafrost.  “It is apparent that extensive sub-glacial hydrate accumulations exist beneath the Antarctic and Greenland ice sheets today.”  She expects more methane craters will explode. 

Life as we know it is moving into the rear view mirror.  The Hot Age just got out of bed, yawning, making coffee.  Nobody knows how hot it will get, how long it will last, and what it will remain when it’s over.

Ocean Heating

Cheryl Katz discussed how oceans have been softening climate impacts by soaking up excess heat that has been trapped in the atmosphere by greenhouse gases.  By keeping the atmosphere a bit cooler for a while, this has delayed our inevitable head-on collision with reality.  Currently, up to half of our CO₂ emissions are absorbed into seawater.  Also, heating up the oceans has accelerated acidification and deoxygenation (more on these below). 

Experts are learning that the surface waters are now warming faster and deeper than ever.  The situation was worse than they thought.  Heat gain had been underestimated by as much as half — too little attention had been devoted to the Southern Hemisphere, where 60 percent of ocean water resides.  Most of the heat gain was happening well south of the equator.  At the same time, the Arctic Ocean is heating especially fast, as its ice cover melts and shrinks. 

When water gets warmer, it expands.  So, warmer oceans contribute to higher sea levels, as does the huge volume of water flowing out of melting glaciers and icepacks.  The art of accurately predicting upcoming sea level changes has yet to be perfected.  The world is far more complex and capricious than the programmers of computer models can imagine.  There are limits to how much heat oceans can store.  As their ability to absorb heat maxes out, they may stop absorbing heat, and begin releasing stored heat into the atmosphere.

Paul Ehrlich and John Harte noted that in a warming climate, higher ocean temperatures can power more intense storm events, and the warmer atmosphere has the capacity to store more water, so rainstorms are more intense.

Tierney Smith notes that oceans absorb between 35 and 42 percent of CO₂ emissions.  They also absorb around 90 percent of the excess heat energy that results from the warming climate.  This elevates surface temperatures, and a warmer surface will absorb less of our CO₂ emissions.  So, more carbon will continue to accumulate in the atmosphere, further warming the planet.

Timothy Lenton wrote, “Ocean heatwaves have led to mass coral bleaching and to the loss of half of the shallow-water corals on Australia’s Great Barrier Reef.  A staggering 99% of tropical corals are projected to be lost if global average temperature rises by 2°C, owing to interactions between warming, ocean acidification, and pollution.  This would represent a profound loss of marine biodiversity and human livelihoods.”

Todd Woody reported on the findings of the IPCC’s 2019 Special Report on the Ocean and Cryosphere in a Changing Climate.  It noted that the rate of ocean warming has doubled since 1993.  Extreme flooding of coastal areas will likely occur at least yearly by 2050.  Fish populations face collapse thanks to a combination of ocean acidification, loss of oxygen, and warming of the ocean’s surface, which blocks the flow of nutrients to and from the deep sea.

Ocean Deoxygenation

Karin Limburg reported that oxygen levels in the oceans have been declining for about 70 years.  This is gradually suffocating saltwater ecosystems (“oceans are losing their breath”).  Low oxygen conditions exist in a number of coastal sites, semi-enclosed seas, and the open ocean.  At the extreme, the Baltic Sea has regions of water with too little oxygen to measure (anoxic).

More than 700 coastal sites are experiencing low oxygen conditions (hypoxic).  They are overloaded with nutrients, like nitrogen and phosphorus, runoff from fertilizer and sewage.  We call them dead zones, but they aren’t completely dead.  They are home to large mobs of wee microbes that thrive in nutrient rich water.  Algae (phytoplankton) are wee aquatic plants that feast on the nutrients, explode in number, and create algal blooms.  In the process, they emit lots of oxygen.  When the nutrients run low, the algae die and decompose.  Then, blooms are often followed by a surge of wee aquatic animals (zooplankton) that feast on the rich stew of dead algae and absorb the abundant oxygen.  Depleted oxygen = dead zone.

Polluted water is not caused by climate change, it’s the result large swarms of untidy primates that dump staggering amounts of crud into waterways.  Skanky water is one cause of deoxygenation.  Another cause is climate change, which is affecting open waters that are not nutrient rich. 

Rising temperatures make water close to the surface warmer and lighter, which intensifies thermal stratification.  This reduces the mixing of warmer surface water with deeper water that is denser and colder.  Colder water is able to absorb more oxygen, but the warmer water above inhibits its exposure to airborne oxygen.  Also, climate change is melting more and more ice, sending lots of freshwater into the salty sea.  Freshwater is less dense than salt water, so it stratifies above colder, deeper water — another obstacle.

So, compared to earlier times, less oxygen is now available in deeper waters.  Some sea animals are able to survive in zones of minimal oxygen, others are forced to move.  Animals having a high metabolism, like tuna or sharks, move to shallower depths, where they are more likely to be caught.  Migration introduces some chaos into traditional food webs, as more species become crowded together.

Ocean Acidification

Cody Sullivan and Rebecca Lindsey of the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Association (NOAA) wrote about how oceans are being affected by human-produced CO₂.  Oceans are the only long-term sink for manmade CO₂ emissions.  Colder waters tend to absorb CO₂, while warmer waters tend to release it back into the atmosphere.  Since 2000, the overall net increase in CO₂ absorption has been trending upward at a robust rate.  Unfortunately, the higher uptake of carbon also encourages ocean acidification.

Cheryl Katz studies ocean acidification (“global warming’s evil twin”).  In the Arctic, and in the Southern Ocean surrounding Antarctica, lots of ice is busy melting away, exposing the water below.  In cold polar waters, CO₂ is more soluble, so more of it can be absorbed.   Some of it reacts with the water to form carbonic acid.  Consequently, the frigid waters near both poles are becoming highly acidified.  Conditions in the polar regions are getting close to a tipping point into extreme acidification.

The area of increasingly corrosive water is expected to expand into the North Atlantic and North Pacific, impact the ocean food web, and threaten important fisheries.  Already, oysters are dying off in the U.S. Pacific Northwest.  Shell-building organisms need carbonate minerals.  In the past, carbonate ions in the water provided a buffer against the acids.  As these ions are depleted, acidity is able to rise.  Creatures with shells are having a harder time building and maintaining shells, because they corrode.

Increasing ocean acidification is a severe threat to the planet.  It is expected to have a big impact on fisheries in Alaska and throughout the Arctic.  As waters warm, species like Atlantic cod are migrating toward the cooler Arctic, where acidification is high.  Fish populations are likely to decline, impacting the global food supply for humans.

Stephanie Dutkiewicz and team studied the impact of acidification on phytoplankton (algae), the tiny plants that are the foundation of the marine food web.  They absorb CO₂ and emit the life-giving oxygen that’s necessary for the existence of animal life.  Oceans absorb about 30 percent of manmade carbon emissions, and this intensifies acidification.  Their analysis concluded, “At the level of ecological function of the phytoplankton community, acidification had a greater impact than warming or reduced nutrient supply.”

Dahr Jamail noted that “phytoplankton photosynthesis produces half the total oxygen supply for the planet.”  Growing acidification will eliminate some species, and disturb vital ecological balances.

Thermohaline Circulation

Ocean current circulation is a very big deal.  It has a major impact on regional climates, because it moves heat.  In plain English, it’s called the global conveyor belt.  In science speak, it’s called the thermohaline circulation (THC).  The THC moves heat around the world via a long and winding pathway.  Wikipedia provides a nice plain English description of the THC [HERE].

The flow of the current is driven by seawater density, which is determined by variations of surface temperature and salt content (salinity).  Warm water is less dense than cold, so it rises to the top.  Freshwater is lighter, less dense, so it stays close to the surface.  Salt water is denser and heavier. 

Today, melting ice sheets, glaciers, and sea ice are pouring huge amounts of cold freshwater into the ocean, which throws a monkey wrench into the traditional operation of the current.  Global warming will increasingly have an impact on ocean circulation.  These changes are expected to eventually alter the traditional patterns of the THC as we know it.  Some experts are contemplating the possibility of a slowdown or shutdown of the THC.  Wikipedia discusses the possibilities [HERE]. 

Atlantic Meridional Overturning Circulation (AMOC)

One segment of the global thermohaline circulation is the Atlantic Meridional Overturning Circulation (AMOC).  As the name implies, this involves the currents moving north and then south in the Atlantic Ocean.  The AMOC is fed by warm and salty water flowing past the cape of Africa, heading northwest to the Caribbean, then up the coast of North America, then northeast to Iceland and Scandinavia.  In the far north, the current loses much heat, and sends cool water back down toward the South Pole.

The segment of the AMOC that moves warm water from the Gulf of Mexico toward the Arctic is called the Gulf Stream.  It keeps the climate of the eastern U.S. and northern Europe warmer than is typical at such a high latitude.  This allows modern agriculture in these regions.  Some worry that the melting arctic will increase the frigid freshwater flowing into the AMOC, and this could lead to a slowdown or shutdown of the current, and possibly a chillier future for the eastern U.S. and western Europe. 

Some have presented evidence that the AMOC is slowing down.  Others don’t find this evidence to be compelling, and they don’t expect a slowdown in the near term future.  Much is not known about ocean currents, and controversies abound.  Scientists are far from full agreement on what is happening, and what might happen in the future.

Nicola Jones wrote an easy to understand description of current AMOC research and debates.  Undersea instruments that measure the current’s flow are indicating a significant slowdown.  Experts aren’t sure if this is worrisome evidence of climate change, or simply reflects normal variations. 

“Should the AMOC shut down, models show that changes in rainfall patterns would dry up Europe’s rivers, and North America’s entire Eastern Seaboard could see an additional 30 inches (76 cm) of sea level rise as the backed-up currents pile water up on East Coast shores.”  This hasn’t happened yet.  For now, data collection continues, and the debates rumble on.

Overheating

David Wallace-Wells wrote that the five warmest summers in Europe since 1500 have all occurred since 2002.  Rising heat will have the most dramatic impacts in the Persian Gulf and Middle East, where record temperatures have soared to frightening heights.  In 2015, temps as high as 163°F (73°C) were recorded.

Matthew Lewis described how rising numbers of people are dying because extreme heat events are becoming more common.  “Deadly heat is cooking us alive.”  When our bodies get too warm, we sweat, which helps us shed excess heat as it evaporates.  If you’re lucky, this keeps your body temperature in the normal range. 

We evolved our ability to sweat on African savannahs, where the humidity is typically low (“dry heat”).  So, we can survive for a few hours of 120°F (49°C) in Death Valley, California.  It’s a different story in super-humid Florida, where “a single day of 120-degree temperatures in Palm Beach would be a mass casualty event.  Dead bodies would pile up in the morgues, victims of hyperthermia, or heatstroke — cooked, alive, in their own bodies.”  Alas, the cooling powers of sweating have limits.

Tara Santora explored the maximum amount of heat that the human body can endure.  Air temperature is the scale of heat that a thermometer displays.  Wet bulb temperature is produced by a thermometer covered in a water-soaked cloth.  It takes into account both air temperature and the humidity level.  She reported that the limit we humans can endure is a wet bulb temperature of 95°F (35°C).  You probably wouldn’t last three hours.

When the air temperature is 115°F (46.1°C) and humidity is 30%, the wet bulb temperature is 87°F (30.5°C).  When the air temperature is 102°F (38.9°C) and humidity is 77%, the wet bulb temperature is 95°F (35°C).  When the wet bulb temperature is close to your normal body temperature, you still sweat, but this doesn’t cool you.  You can also overheat at lower temperatures if you are exercising and/or exposed to direct sunlight.  As the climate warms, the risks of overheating increase. 

Janet Larsen noted that a warming climate is expected to increase the number and intensity of heat waves in the coming years.  In 2003, a blast furnace heat wave caused the deaths of more than 52,000 people across Europe.  It was the hottest weather in at least 500 years.  Temperatures were over 104°F (40°C) for up to two weeks.  Fatalities rose to 2,000 per day in France.  The higher the humidity, the higher the death rate.  City folks were most at risk, because urban areas are heat islands.  Jean-Marie Robine and team did additional research and estimated that the actual mortality in 2003 was more than 70,000.

John Gowdy added, “During the record heat in Europe in Summer 2003, maize production fell by 30% in France and 36% in Italy.  A 2008 study found that southern Africa could lose 30% of its maize crop by 2030 due to the negative effects of climate change.  Losses of maize and rice crops in South Asia could also be significant.”

Extreme heat dries out the land, making it more flammable.  Wikipedia noted that the 2003 European heat wave corresponded with a series of fires in Portugal that destroyed 1,160 square miles (3010 km²) of forest, and 170 square miles (440 km²) of agricultural land.  In southern Portugal, the temperatures reached as high as 117°F (47°C). 

Deepa Shivaram reported on a heat wave that hit British Columbia in July 2021.  Along the coastline of Vancouver, on one beach alone, the rocky shore was covered with hundreds of thousands of dead mussels.  It also killed barnacles, clams, crabs, sea stars, and intertidal anemones.  Overall, an estimated one billion sea creatures died from the heat.  Other animals that depend on sea life for food were also affected.  During the same heat wave, 180 wildfires ignited.

[Continued in Climate Crisis 03, Sample 57]

Wild Free and Happy Sample 55

[Note: This is the fifty-fifth sample from my rough draft of a far from finished new book, Wild, Free, & Happy.  The Search field on the right side will find words in the full contents of all rants and reviews.  These samples are not freestanding pieces.  They will be easier to understand if you start with sample 01, and follow the sequence listed HERE — if you happen to have some free time.  If you prefer audiobooks, Michael Dowd is in the process of reading and recording my book HERE.

CLIMATE CRISIS

The focus of this book is human eco-history.  Climate change has influenced our journey since day one, when our tree-dwelling ancestors had to move onto the savannah.  Today’s crisis is climate change on steroids.  It’s doing things that humans have never experienced before — countless huge, accelerating, scary, uncontrollable changes that we don’t fully comprehend.  Our beloved techno magic is incompetent to cleverly swish the bad stuff away.  Say hello to a thrilling future of big surprises.

For many folks, the climate crisis is not chasing them down the alley every day, snarling and viciously snapping at their asses.  Now and then we hear stories and see some pictures.  News sources tend to quietly step around the embarrassing subject.  Too much yucky news can make their audience uncomfortable and unfaithful.  We get some peeks at reality now and then, but most of the story remains behind closed curtains.

For many, the crisis can seem like a wee dark cloud on the distant horizon.  Day to day life in the cubicle farm, or the family room, is rarely affected.  But, if you make an effort to listen, the jungle drums are regularly talking about highly improbable flash floods, hundred year storms, persistent droughts, unprecedented heat spells, landslides, etc.  These weird stories from outer space can often seem impossible, unbelievable, and deniable.

The climate crisis is not a sudden asteroid-strike event, like the destruction of the World Trade Center towers in 2001.  It’s a vastly bigger and stronger disturbance that will eventually be affecting everyone, everything, everywhere, to a breathtaking degree, and causing much irreversible damage.  It’s the unintentional result of way too many people, living way too hard, for way too long.

Hopium addicts jabber about “solving” the climate crisis, and looking forward to a sustainable green future.  There is nothing that the magicians of technology cannot fix.  Hope fiends have blind faith that “it’s not too late.”  Buy an electric car, put solar panels on your roof, shop like there’s no tomorrow, and enjoy a long and fabulous life. 

The dreamy perceptions of these hope fiends reflects a deficit of understanding, in combination with the Tinker Bell Effect.  In the Peter Pan story, Tinker Bell is the fluttering fairy of magical thinking, “Just think a happy thought and you can fly!”  Albert Bartlett was amused by the popular fantasy that if you called something “sustainable” enough times, then <shazaam!> it was!

Megan Seibert and William Rees did an excellent job of explaining why sustainable alternative energy visions are neither sustainable nor possible.  Their report describes why “the pat notion of ‘affordable clean energy’ views the world through a narrow keyhole that is blind to innumerable economic, ecological, and social costs.”  Alice Friedemann examined the alternative energy options, and described why none of them were an effective or realistic solution.

In addition to the hopium addicts are the shameless bullshit hucksters.  They are supported by wealthy interests that want to keep the planet-thrashing status quo on life support ventilators for as long as humanly possible.  Their cash cows produce generous profits, but exist at the expense of the family of life.  Bullshit artists have been highly successful at sowing the seeds of doubt.  Climate change is a hoax promoted by devil worshippers!  We’re regularly splattered with a firehose of deliberate misinformation.

The unfortunate reality is that 7.8 billion people cannot simply think a happy thought and become ecologically harmless.  Climate change is the stinky steaming 100 ton turd in the swimming pool.  It horrifies us, because it rubbishes our fantasies of human supremacy, endless progress, and the best is yet to come.  It makes our beloved “high standard of living” look like an insanely stupid hallucination (which it is) — a reckless high speed joyride that leaves the planet in ruins.

The climate crisis is an enormous fast-moving subject that is generating a staggering amount of articles, reports, books, and videos.  The future has yet to be written, but a number of current trends have a clear trajectory — warming climate, melting ice, thawing permafrost, rising seas, extreme weather events, etc.  I’m not going to play the prophet game, but I do feel obligated to point out some critical climate-oriented trends that obviously appear to be on a treacherous path. 

The information on the following pages is a very rough sketch, like a cop’s bodycam video of a chaotic crime scene.  It’s written at one moment in time, from one perspective, and is far from complete.  My plan here is to present a sampler of core ideas, and toss in links to interesting sources.  Readers who want to further explore the issue can follow the links, and feed their hungry brains. 

Albedo

When incoming sunbeams hit white regions of ice and snow, some of the heat is reflected away from the planet, back into outer space.  This ability to reflect is called albedo.  Fresh snow, which is very white, reflects 80 to 90 percent of incoming heat.  So, it has an albedo of 0.8 to 0.9.  Ice that has been bare for a while accumulates soot and dust, which makes it darker, less reflective.  It has an albedo of 0.4 to 0.7.  Sea water and dry land are darker, absorb more incoming heat, and then radiate it.  Open water has an albedo of 0.1. 

When albedo reflectivity is diminished, more heat can enter the atmosphere and accumulate.  Ice gets thinner, breaks up, and retreats.  Then, more solar heat can hit more open water or bare ground.  More of the thick ice that used to exist year-round now melts away during the warmer months.  The duration of ice-free summer periods is lengthening.  This pattern is called a positive feedback loop — more warmth, more melting, more warmth, etc….  It’s the engine of runaway warming, the arctic death spiral.

Arctic Ice

In 1968, the Apollo-8 mission orbited the moon, and took the first photo of the Earth rising above the moon’s horizon.  In that photo, Earth was white around both the north and south poles.  Today, when it’s summer in the Northern Hemisphere, the view from outer space shows a white Antarctic, and a blue Arctic.  As it melts, the ancient northern ice sheet is gradually becoming an open ocean.  With a stampede of well-intended, highly-destructive booboos, human cleverness and runaway warming are changing the planet, and the future.

Peter Wadhams has been studying Arctic ice for 50 years.  He has a way-above-average understanding of the danger we’re in.  He’s been working hard to alert us, but not many are getting the message.  Arctic ice is extremely precious, because it’s essential for maintaining vital climate balances.  Its cool temperature, and highly reflective whiteness, have enabled the existence of life as we know it. 

Over the last 70,000 years, climate trends have typically been a zigzag pattern of frequent erratic swings, hot-cold-hot-cold….  Today, we are living in the rear end of an 11,700 year era of unusually stabile warm temperatures — a weird deviation that enabled the emergence of fairly reliable agriculture, and allowed 7.8 billion people to survive at the same time (temporarily).  The long-term trends imply that we’re long overdue for a new ice age.  Fat chance!  Instead, we’re speeding out of control down the hot lane.

The planet is sliding down the path to a largely ice-free Arctic.  A few decades ago, the North Pole as covered with ice 10 to 12 feet thick.  No more.  “With the steady disappearance of polar ice cover, we are losing a vast air conditioning system that stabilized the climate for thousands of years.”  We have been living in “the Goldilocks climate” — not too hot, not too cold, just right!  That pattern has been disrupted by rapidly overloading the atmosphere with ancient carbon.

Wadhams lamented, “We are fast approaching the stage when climate change will be playing the tune for us while we stand by and watch helplessly, with our reductions in CO₂ emissions having no effect.”  In 2016, he wrote a short and easy to understand summary of his findings, with excellent illustrations.  I strongly recommend checking it out [HERE].  YouTube also has many Wadhams videos.

Morgan McFall-Johnsen described the rapid melting of Greenland’s ice in 2019.  That year, in just five days, 55 billion tons of melt water rushed out of Greenland’s ice sheet, “enough to cover the state of Florida in almost 5 inches of water.”  In their most pessimistic scenario, scientists had predicted that this level of melting would not be reached until 2070.  We did it 50 years ahead of schedule!  “The Arctic is warming almost twice as quickly as the global average.”    The times are changing.  Trouble ahead. 

Greenhouse Gases

Under normal natural conditions, CO₂ is precious.  If there was no CO₂, there would be no plants or animals.  During photosynthesis, plants take in CO₂ and emit oxygen.  At the same time, animals breathe in oxygen and exhale CO₂.  It’s a harmonious circle dance, normally.  But the balance gets blasted when we extract millions of years of ancient carbon from deep underground, burn it, and totally overload the atmosphere.

The atmosphere is also precious.  It allows incoming solar heat to pass through, and warm the planet below, which enables the survival of the family of life.  It also allows some heat to escape back into outer space, but not as much as it lets in.  So, the atmosphere acts like a comfortable greenhouse.  Wadhams noted that if Earth had no atmosphere, it would be a lifeless frozen planet.  The moon is a frigid place because it has no atmosphere, and its average temperature is -4°F (-18°C).  Earth’s lovely atmosphere enables an average temperature of 59°F (15°C).

There are several compounds that help the greenhouse maintain a happy climate.  In normal times, the greenhouse is wonderful magic act.  In crazy times, greenhouse gas overloads can disrupt the global party.  The four main greenhouse gases are carbon dioxide (CO₂) methane (CH₄), nitrous oxide (N₂O), and water vapor (H₂O).  CO₂ is responsible for maybe 55 percent of the current imbalance.  In preindustrial times, CO₂ levels in the atmosphere were 280 ppm (parts per million).  In 2021 they reached 420 ppm — estimated to be the highest concentration in more than 3 million years (or 4 million, or 15 million).

Methane levels are also soaring, from preindustrial 700 ppb (parts per billion) to around 2,000 ppb in 2019.  Methane remains in the atmosphere for 7 to 10 years, during which its impact can be 100 to 200 times worse than CO₂.  Then, it breaks down into CO₂, which can remain in the atmosphere much longer.  When methane’s brief existence is calculated within a hundred year timeframe, its impact is 23 times worse than the hundred year impact of CO₂. 

Nitrous oxide is a minor offender, found at about 300 ppb in the atmosphere, where it can remain for 120 years.  Its source is primarily synthetic nitrogen fertilizers. 

Water vapor can act like an insulating blanket.  As the Arctic warms, its air can hold more moisture, and a layer of water vapor (clouds) helps to retain warm air.

The bottom line here is that manmade carbon emissions have been working hard to turn the delightful greenhouse into an overheated hothouse.  Too much heat is being retained in the atmosphere, frigid regions are melting, and a slippery hideous crisis has popped out of the womb screaming.

The good news here is that we are beginning to learn a very important lesson.  Mistakes can be fabulous teachers.  The bad news is that we are learning this at a time when a growing number of experts believe that the crisis is already past the point of no return, off the leash, sprinting away, disregarding our frantic commands.  Far too late, the wizards have discovered that the unusually warm and stable climate that we used to enjoy was possible because of a priceless treasure of snow and ice, which is now riding off into the sunset. 

Clouds

Fred Pearce described how clouds also play a role in the greenhouse magic act.  When the sun is shining, bright clouds can reflect away 30 to 60 percent of incoming solar heat.  Over the seas, stratus and stratocumulus clouds shade the ocean, so less heat is absorbed by the water.  During the day, low clouds provide cooling shade, but after sunset they become a heat retaining blanket. 

Whether clouds make shade or trap heat “depends on how reflective they are, how high they are, and whether it is day or night.”  Until recently, experts believed that the conflicting effects of clouds were about equal, so they balanced out.  That belief is going extinct.

Satellite data from NASA indicates that since 2013, cloud cover over the oceans has declined, at the same time that global average temperatures have risen sharply.  Other studies indicate that in warmer years, there are fewer low-level clouds in the tropics.  This indicates that in a warming climate, clouds are expected to get thinner, completely burn off, or not form at all.  This would lead to even higher temperatures, and faster global warming — a positive feedback loop of more heat, less clouds, more heat….

Pearce wrote, “Recent climate models project that a doubling of atmospheric CO₂ above pre-industrial levels could cause temperatures to soar far above previous estimates.”  In pre-industrial times, CO₂ levels in the atmosphere were 280 ppm.  Double that would be 560 ppm.  In 2021 they reached 420 ppm.  The higher they go, the hotter it gets, the fewer the clouds….

Carbon Emissions Skyrocket

As described in earlier chapters, our ancestors began acting like odd animals long, long ago.  Our quirky path picked up momentum with fire making, the domestication of plants and animals, and the emergence of civilization.  The turbo thrusters ignited with the arrival of the Industrial Revolution, when we plunged headlong into the brave new world of fossil energy.  With this shift, more and more carbon was emitted by human activity, and absorbed by the oceans, atmosphere, and greenery.

The twentieth century was radically different from all previous time.  Foolishly raiding a massive 500 million year treasure chest of highly potent energy enabled the rapid development of countless planet-thrashing technologies.  Unencumbered by foresight, dangerously clever humans looted the ancient hydrocarbon cemeteries, hauled much of the buried treasure into the daylight world, and burned it — to enjoy a brief, fantastically ridiculous, explosion of childish decadence.

In 2000, environmental historian J. R. McNeill wrote an eco-obituary for the twentieth century, Something New Under the Sun.  This book revealed the nightmares that exploded during that century from hell.  Later, as the years clicked past, McNeill realized that his book did not say enough.  The years following World War II were so spectacularly insane that they made the first 45 years of the century look somewhat wholesome.

So, in 2014, McNeill and Peter Engelke published The Great Acceleration, which focused on the era after 1945, when the poop slammed hard into the fan.  This era was the freak show in which I have spent my life’s journey, the freak show when the human population more than tripled, the freak show that the living generation perceives to be the normal way of life.

They wrote that in 1750, when the Industrial Revolution was still in diapers, 3 million tons of carbon were released into the atmosphere each year.  By 1850, emissions soared to 50 million tons.  It was 1,200 million tons in 1950, 4,000 million in 1970, and 9,500 million by 2015.  How smart was that? 

Steven Koonin noted that of the CO₂ we emit today, between 30 and 55 percent will still be in the atmosphere 100 years from now, and between 15 and 30 percent will remain for 1,000 years.  It does not promptly dissipate, so ongoing emissions ratchet up the concentration in the atmosphere.  Reducing emissions only slows the increase.  The gearshift has no reverse.

Each year, about 37 billion tons of CO₂ are emitted.  At this rate, the concentration in the atmosphere would increase by about 2 ppm in a year.  Year after year, more is added.  A portion of these emissions remain in the atmosphere for centuries, so their concentration continuously grows.  The current trajectory of greenhouse gas emissions is on a path to double by 2075.  

Billions continue living like its 1999.  Ignorance is bliss.  John Gowdy concluded, “The effects of fossil fuel burning are irreversible on a time scale relevant to humans.”  We’ve started something we cannot stop. 

Terrestrial Permafrost

Peter Wadhams noted that permafrost is buried under dry land across the Arctic, spread across an area of 7.3 million square miles (19 million km²), something like the combined land area of Russia and Argentina.  As Arctic temperatures soar, the permafrost is rapidly thawing (it does not “melt”).  Soils in this permafrost contain lots of organic carbon, plant material that lived in ages past, but froze before fully decomposing.  Unlike offshore (sea bottom) permafrost, terrestrial permafrost does not contain frozen methane.  But when it thaws and decays, microbial life can then create and emit CO₂, methane, and nitrous oxide. 

Susan Natali, an Arctic ecologist, studies permafrost, climate change, and greenhouse gases.  In the Northern Hemisphere, about 25 percent of the land area sits above permafrost, a layer of frozen soil, rocks, water, and organic material.  Some of it has been frozen for up to 40,000 years.  Permafrost contains about 1,500 billion tons of carbon — twice as much as the carbon already in the atmosphere, and three times as much as the carbon stored in the world’s forest biomass.

Temperatures in the Arctic are rising twice as fast as they are in the rest of the world, a trend likely to continue indefinitely.  This warming is thawing the upper layers of permafrost.  “Not all of the carbon that’s in permafrost will be released.  Our current expectations is about 10 to 15 percent of that carbon will be released into the atmosphere.  That said, if all of the carbon of permafrost was released, at that point, this is not going to be a habitable planet for humans.”

Craig Welch also commented on the daunting speed at which Arctic permafrost is thawing.  Until recently, scientists expected the rate of thawing to be gradual.  Reality disagrees.  When forest soils thaw and soften, trees get wobbly as root systems destabilize.  These “drunken trees” will eventually fall down.  When frozen slopes thaw, landslides happen, exposing the bones of mammoths and other ancient critters. 

Abrupt thaw increases the number of massive ground slumps.  These depressions collect melt water and rain, creating new ponds and lakes.  Bubbles of methane and CO₂ rise up out of the mud beneath the water.  As the climate warms, and Arctic lakes grow in size and number, greenhouse gas emissions from permafrost could triple.

Ed Struzik notes that permafrost consists of up to 80 percent frozen water.  When permafrost thaws, the land can turn to mud.  Craters up to the size of football stadiums are forming in the tundra, as the land sinks.  The Batagaika Crater in the Yana River Basin of Siberia is 0.6 miles (1 km) long, and 109 yards (100 m) deep.  These thaw slumps or landslides are increasing.  Stream flows are changing, and seashores are collapsing.  In the Northwest Territories, when a rapidly thawing cliff bordering the shores of a tundra lake collapsed, the 800,000 gallon lake drained in two hours.  In the Mackenzie River Delta, up to 15,000 of the 45,000 lakes are expected to dry up. 

With warming, willows and shrubs are now displacing tundra vegetation, which includes cranberries, blueberries, cloudberries, shrubs, sedges, and lichen.  This is affecting wildlife.  In 2006, there were 3,000 caribou on the Tuktoyaktuk Peninsula, now there are half as many.  They have less lichen to eat.  Musk oxen in Canada and reindeer in Siberia seem to be dying from ancient pathogens that are coming back to life. 

The U.S. Geological Survey wrote an excellent 68 page report on thermokarst.  This is a fairly new landform in the Northern Hemisphere that has come into existence since the 1980s.  Thermokarst is created as permafrost thaws, and the land surface changes in 23 different ways.  Common characteristics include lakes, sinkholes, pits, landslides, collapsed pingos, etc.  (See Wikipedia’s thermokarst page for breathtaking photos of massive permafrost melting.)

Louise Farquharson and team studied thermokarst development in the Canadian High Arctic.  They studied land that had been frozen for thousands of years.  Until recently, the buried permafrost had been in equilibrium with the climate.  They were surprised to find that, thanks to rising temperatures, permafrost thawing was reaching depths that were not predicted for another 70 years.  “Our data show that very cold permafrost (<10°C) at high latitudes is highly vulnerable to rapid near‐surface permafrost degradation due to climate change.”

Dahr Jamail is a nomadic journalist who writes powerful stories from the front lines of the climate blitzkrieg.  He visited the Inupiat village of Utqiagvik, Alaska.  The original village is collapsing into the sea, because the solid permafrost it was built on thawed and turned to pudding.  The new village is also destined to tumble into the sea.  Polar bears are gone.

A gravedigger said that in the past, solid permafrost was close to the surface.  It used to take three days of chopping to dig a grave.  Now it takes five hours.  “Roads, railroads, oil and gas infrastructure, airports, seaports, all these things were built across the Arctic on the assumption that the permafrost would stay frozen.”  Ooops!

Offshore Permafrost

In addition to terrestrial permafrost, there is also offshore permafrost, which lies beneath seabed sediments.  It originally formed under dry land thousands of years ago, when sea levels were much lower.  Offshore is what gives Peter Wadhams screaming nightmares.  It contains substantial amounts of methane hydrates (also called methane clathrates), and it is especially vulnerable to thawing as sea ice retreats, and water temperatures rise. 

Methane hydrates are frozen crystals of methane that will melt and burn when close to a flame.  They look like ice.  An estimated 10,400 gigatons of methane are stored in hydrate deposits.  When hydrate crystals melt, the methane is released.  In the entire Arctic Ocean, the hydrate deposits are estimated to contain 13 times the amount of carbon currently present in the atmosphere. 

Wadhams is especially focused on the East Siberian Arctic Shelf.  In the East Siberian Sea, this shelf consists of 810,000 square miles (2.1 million km²) of shallow water, of which 75 percent is less than 130 feet (40 m) deep.  In the good old days, the entire sea used to be covered year round with surface ice, which kept the water frigid or frozen.  This changed in 2005, when summer sea ice began disappearing, exposing seawater to the atmosphere.  Sunlight could now penetrate directly into the water and warm it.  Shallow waters warm faster than deeper areas.

For the first time in tens of thousands of years, warmer water could reach shallow regions of the seabed, causing permafrost to thaw.  As permafrost thawed, the frozen methane hydrates began melting, releasing plumes of methane bubbles.  In waters deeper than 330 feet (100 m), the methane oxidizes while rising, and the plume disappears before reaching the surface.  In the shallows, bubble plumes make it to the surface, and methane is released into the atmosphere. 

In a 2016 article, Wadhams described the possibility of a sudden catastrophic methane release from the East Siberian Sea.  Researchers “fear that a pulse of up to 50 gigatons of methane — some 8 percent of the estimated stock in the Arctic sediments — could be released within a very few years, starting soon.”  This would generate a surge of warming.  Russian scientists on site calculate that the probability of this is at least 50 percent.

[To be continued.  This chapter will contain 3 or 4 more segments.] 

The Art of Not Being Governed

 

James Scott is a political scientist at Yale University, an advocate of anarchy lite — not “smash the state” but “make the state more wise and fair.”  Originally, the ancestors of all humans were wild folks living in sweet freedom on open lands owned by no one.  Then came agriculture, private property, inequality, and the rise of creepy states, in which well-fed rulers exploited mobs of unlucky subjects and slaves.  The Art of Not Being Governed examines the power dramas between free folks and states in Southeast Asia. 

In this region, states first arose in the valleys and lowlands, especially in locations suitable for growing rice in flooded paddies.  Rice produces high yields, but is labor intensive.  Land that is ideal for raising crops only generates wealth when there is an adequate workforce of fairly obedient taxpayers and slaves.  Alas, wading in paddies, in clouds of mosquitoes, baking in the heat, constantly bent over, was not everyone’s idea of a good time.  Persistent misery inspired many non-elites to envision a beautiful alternative — escape!!!  

Most of the landscape surrounding the valley states was mountainous and rugged, unsuited for conventional agriculture, but ideal terrain for state-evading sanctuaries of freedom.  So, the higher elevations were home to small groups of hill people who preferred autonomy to subservience.  They hunted, foraged, and grew food in scattered locations.  Root and tuber foods, like yams, cassava, potatoes, and sweet potatoes, did not ripen at once, or require storage.  They could be left in the ground up to two years, and dug up as needed.  Scattered amidst the natural vegetation, they were not easy for outsiders to discover.

These scattered communities of hill people often had little, if any, contact with outsiders.  Their primary desire was to live in freedom.  All of them were refugees, coming from a diverse mixture of cultural, ethnic, and religious traditions.  Hill folks had no official name, so a scholar invented one.  He called them Zomians, the people of Zomia (highlands).  The numerous remote hill communities that comprised Zomia were widely dispersed across an area the size of Europe.  Zomian groups inhabited a region that spanned across five nations, and four Chinese provinces.  [MAP]

Down in the valleys, the rice producing states were often disrupted by ongoing conflicts and instability.  Scott noted that these states “tended to be remarkably short-lived.”  The lives of subjects and slaves were miserable, which is why they never stopped running off into the hills.  From most rice paddies, the hills of Zomia were always visible.  In a prison without cages or walls, freedom was just a walk away.  Physical flight was the primary check on state power.  It was usually less dangerous than revolt. 

The constant loss of manpower was a serious challenge that required constant efforts to snatch fresh replacements.  Military campaigns brought home prisoners who were forced to begin exciting new careers in slavery.  States often sent slave raiders into the hills of Zomia, in efforts to find free folks and drag them back to the rice paddies.  

Classroom history books focus on stuff like wars, empires, heroes, and progress.  Slavery gets slight mention, if any.  Students will read about classical Greek intellect, art, and architecture; not slavery.  There were times when the population in Athens had five times as many slaves as full citizens.  Around the world, slavery was a standard component of most agriculture-based civilizations, until recently, when mechanization sharply reduced the need for two-legged farm implements.  Your extended family tree likely contains more than a few slaves.  Visit Wikipedia’s article on slavery.  [HERE]

Clive Ponting published an excellent history that focused much attention on how the hungry dirty commoners actually lived, suffered, and died.  He wrote, “Until about the last two centuries in every part of the world nearly everyone lived on the edge of starvation.”  J. R. McNeill noted that in preindustrial times, horses and oxen were often luxuries that were too expensive for poor farmers.  Humans were far more energy efficient than draft animals, and they were capable of performing clever tricks, like digging up spuds, or planting rice.  Having a gang of slaves boosted the net profits for their masters.  Lords adored hoards of gold.

In the hills, Zomians were wizards at utilizing “geographical friction” to make it harder for slave raiders to find them.  Rather than courteously providing their pursuers with smooth well-marked paths, they deliberately preferred to reside in locations that were not highly visible, or easily accessible.  Some locations were perfect for defensive warfare, because they enabled a small number of guardians to block or ambush a larger force of aggressors.  The most secure refuges were places “only accessible to monkeys.”

Geographical friction is an interesting idea.  Our wild ancestors lived in lands where free movement originally had many natural obstacles.  Friction was provided by rugged mountains, swamps, dense jungles, vast deserts, rivers, seas, etc.  Friction hampered the expansion of early states.  It wasn’t quick or easy to suppress a revolt ten miles away.  Friction could be reduced by roads, bridges, boats, beasts of burden, and contraptions with wheels.  Today, far less geographical friction remains.  We have long distance travel via highways, railroads, air travel, and cargo ships.  We can instantly send info anywhere.  Scott refers to these as “distance demolishing technologies.”  With great pride, we have dumped trash on the moon. 

Scott was fascinated by the deep human desire to live in freedom.  Genetically, we are alert and intelligent wild omnivores, not dimwitted feedlot critters, or hive insects.  His discussion of Zomia revealed patterns that parallel a similar downward spiral of trends around the world.  Folks went from nomadic to sedentary, which led to plant and animal domestication, slavery, patriarchy, population growth, perpetual conflict, civilization, industrialization, and our remarkably victorious world war on everything.

For almost the entire human saga, our ancestors enjoyed the freedom of living in small nomadic groups.  Our mental equipment is fine-tuned for this way of life.  The hill people of Zomia focused on equality, autonomy, and mobility.  For them, the concept of “chief” was incomprehensible.  Lads who got too assertive sometimes had to be ethically euthanized, in order to maintain the coherence of the group.  Smooth cooperation worked far better than compulsory obedience to sharp orders from big daddy buttheads. 

Societies took a sharp turn for the worse with the shift toward private property, when the open commons got chopped into chunks of exclusive, inheritable, real estate.  Equality was displaced by hierarchies based on wealth, class, and status.  Social rank was based on wealth.  More was always better.  Strive to climb the social pyramid.  Primary emphasis shifted from “we” to “me.”  It’s like a silly goofy bratty children’s game.

When our wild ancestors evolved in the tropics, food was available year round, nobody owned it, and it was acquired when needed.  Later, when folks colonized temperate regions, food storage was required for winter survival.  This eventually inspired plant and animal domestication, which created food that was owned, and held in concentrated locations — granaries and enslaved herds.  These treasure chests of valuable grain, meat, and muscle power were “appropriable and raidable.”  They provided irresistible temptation to ruthless geeks who were allergic to hard work and honesty.

Indeed, this led to the creation of a new career path.  Stealing food required far less labor than producing it, and raiding was far more adventurous and exciting for adults who had testicles.  At this point, the need to eradicate looters led to the emergence of armed defenders, a military class.  These warriors could also serve as armed aggressors, looting the treasure chests of other communities.  Since then, the military sphere has never stopped growing in size and power. 

With the transition to hierarchy, the old fashioned tradition of mutual support took the back seat to a competition-based, winner take all culture.  When you’re a slave in a rice paddy, and your master is a cruel bastard, and your foreseeable future is perpetual misery, you begin to contemplate the meaning of life.  You can go crazy, you can flee into the hills, or you can float away into magical thinking. 

The hill people were primarily animists.  They enjoyed a life of freedom in places of healthy wild nature.  They developed intimate relationships with the surrounding flora, fauna, and landscape — here and now reality that you could see, touch, and smell.  For them, the living world was spiritually alive.  Directly experiencing this profound coherence did not require imagination or belief.  It was deeply meaningful.

The stressed and oppressed valley people were more inclined to seek solace in salvation religions, primarily Buddhism and Islam.  Christianity arrived more recently.  Slavery was an institution with deep roots in many cultures around the world.  Until recently, salvation religions treated it as normal.  Slaves must be obedient.  What these religions promised was that the sucky life you have today will pass, and your soul will continue its journey forever via reincarnation, or admittance to a beautiful eternal paradise (if you weren’t too naughty).  Religion provided something to hope for, a better future. 

Multinational salvation religions can be practiced anywhere on Earth.  They are highly portable because their focus is on great mysteries.  Worship often takes place inside buildings, shut away from the family of life.  Paradise is somewhere unseen, a faraway realm.  Some preach millenarian visions of a new and enduring era of peace, justice, and prosperity — a miraculous transition that is inevitable, and may arrive soon.  Wickedness will be destroyed, and the righteous will receive their just rewards.

Even though the hill people enjoyed some advantages over the valley slaves, nobody in the realm of Zomia enjoyed a life of bliss.  Hill folks were frequently pursued by hostile outsiders, and valley slaves were frequently abused by their masters.  Many folks passionately dreamed that their painful way of life would somehow someday be completely turned upside down, and then move in a new and better direction. 

Prophets and messiahs often fell out of the sky, describing their divine revelations, fanning the flames of resentment, and triggering thousands of uprisings and rebellions.  Make Zomia great again!  Folks desperate for any possibility of emancipation were vulnerable to the tempting promises of ambitious, slick talking, charismatic blowhards.

Sadly, a better tomorrow missed the bus somewhere down the road.  States got bigger and more powerful, and then they got blindsided by steamroller colonizers from outer space, like the empire-building British, French, and Japanese.  By 1945 it was pretty much bedtime for Zomian freedom.  Variations of this tragic drama took place around much of the world.  Today, virtually all humans are subjects of states.  Fleeing to zones of refuge is nearly impossible.  Tyrants now have fighter jets, helicopters, tanks, missiles, cluster bombs, land mines, drones, satellites.  Good luck with that rebellion. 

Scott laments the outcome.  “The future of our freedom lies in the daunting task of taming Leviathan, not evading it.”  He says that our best tool for the challenge is representative democracy.  Good luck conjuring virtuous government.  He was writing in 2009, back in the happy days when there were a billion fewer primates on the ark.  More recently, hopping mad, power-hungry, nationalist psychopaths have been popping up in nations all over the place, like mushrooms after an autumn shower. 

Oh wow!  Look!  A pair of 800 pound gorillas has jumped into the brawl — the climate crisis and resource limits — two invincible giants spawned by the unintended consequences of our obsession with idiotic cleverness.  Their plan is to act like bulls in a china shop, and smash up Fantasyland.  This should be interesting.

Scott, James C., The Art of Not Being Governed, Yale University Press, New Haven, 2009.

Dear Subscriber

Howdy!  I’m writing to inform you of some upcoming technical issues here.  This blog allows readers to become subscribers, so you’ll automatically receive notice of future posts/comments (see the upper right corner of this page).  At the end of June, the “Follow by Email” function (provided by Feedburner) will join the dinosaurs. 

If you are currently subscribed via Netvibes, My Yahoo, or Atom, nothing should change.

I’ve downloaded the 1,380 email addresses of my Feedburner subscribers, and I’m trying to transfer them to a different service (a HUGE pain in the ass!).  If it works, great!  A new “Subscribe To” icon will appear, and the “Follow by Email” option will go to the compost pile. 

I have no idea how well Feedburner has actually served subscribers.  I have subscribed using two of my email addresses, and I have received nothing from them in the last few years.  Maybe nobody has.

I apologize for any inconvenience, and I thank you for your interest in my work.  This blog is approaching 600,000 page views.  

Unsettled

Steven Koonin’s Unsettled is an unsettling book.  I learned about it via a Facebook post, clicked my way over to Goodreads, and listened to the reader comment jungle drums.  Folks seemed to like it.  A few climate deniers wrote that the book had convinced them that the climate was actually warming.  Wow!  What could a book say that might communicate with them?  I promptly downloaded a copy of the Kindle version.

Koonin is a physicist who has worked for BP, Obama’s Department of Energy, and in academia.  He enjoys an unblemished reputation as a contrarian.  For him, climate change is “a possible future problem.”  The mainstream mindset constantly tells us that the science on climate change is settled (huge threat!).  Koonin insists that “The Science” is unsettled — reputable climate science has been highjacked by doom mongerers (but he does acknowledge that the climate is indeed warming).  The Trump administration once wanted to use him in a proposed media campaign to challenge mainstream perceptions about climate change. 

Koonin is an expert at computer modelling, and he’s very interested in climate science.  Models are given a set of rules, and then selected data is fed into them for processing.  If significant trends appear, they can provide a basis for projections of the future.  Armed with compelling graphs, and a blizzard of statistics, he shines a spotlight on little known truths.  For example, “The net economic impact of human-induced climate change will be minimal through at least the end of this century.”

Actual reality is more complex than a collection of data points.  In the Arctic, bright white surfaces, like snow and ice, are very reflective (high albedo).  Earth is bathed with incoming solar heat every day, but albedo bounces about 30 percent of the heat back into outer space, so we don’t bake.  Darker surfaces, like forests or open water, reflect much less heat (low albedo).  The 70 percent of solar heat that reaches the planet surface helps to keep the climate at temperatures that enable life as we know it.  This is an amazing balancing act.

Because the climate is warming, especially in the Arctic, the glaciers, ice pack, and sea ice are busy melting and retreating — exposing darker surfaces, like dry ground and seawater.  So, less heat is bounced away, and more is absorbed, leading to rising temps.  The warmer it gets, the faster the melting, which raises the warming, which speeds the melting — a vicious circle.

The atmosphere also plays a starring role in the balancing act.  Greenhouse gases include carbon dioxide (CO₂) methane (CH₄), nitrous oxide (N₂O), and water vapor (H₂O).  In the atmosphere, they provide a comfortable insulating blanket that retains much of the heat radiating upward from the Earth’s surface.  This process beneficially contributed to the balancing act until the industrial era, when greenhouse gas emissions intensified, and heat retention began increasing.

Warming affected permafrost.  Consider the area of the 48 U.S. states that lie between Canada and Mexico.  In the Northern Hemisphere, permafrost underlies an area almost 2.5 times as large as the 48 states.  In the Arctic, vast deposits of it, which can be many thousands of years old, exist beneath both dry ground and offshore waters.  Permafrost is a mix of frozen soil and organic material (plant and animal).  When it warms, it thaws (not melts). 

With thawing, land that was once strong and solid becomes more pudding-like.  Towns decompose, villages slide into the sea, pipelines fall apart, and hills release landslides (exposing mammoth bones).  Microbes feast on the defrosted organic matter, and then emit methane.  Methane is an extremely potent greenhouse gas.  In the atmosphere, it survives for 7 to 10 years before breaking down into CO₂, which is less potent, but can remain airborne for many centuries.

On the bottom of northern seas, permafrost lies beneath layers of sediment.  Sediments contain frozen crystals of methane hydrates (or clathrates), which look like ice, but can burn.  Seabed hydrate deposits in the Arctic are estimated to contain 13 times the amount of carbon that’s currently present in the atmosphere.  As rising temps melt the bright surface of sea ice, darker seawater becomes exposed to daylight, and absorbs heat.  When seabed waters warm, the crystals melt, and methane gas is released.  In deeper waters, the plumes of methane bubbles dissolve while rising.  In shallow waters, methane bubbles make it to the surface, and enter the atmosphere. 

As the Arctic climate continues warming, it’s possible that a catastrophic release of methane could be triggered.  Folks who pay attention to this stuff are nervous.  They are monitoring the East Siberian Arctic Shelf — 810,000 square miles (2.1 million km²) of shallow waters in methane country.  The shelf covers an area more than five times larger than California.

So, why don’t we just slow down greenhouse gas emissions?  Here, we collide head-on with a monumental bummer.  Koonin wrote (2020) that in the atmosphere, CO₂ levels are 415 parts per million (ppm).  Each year, about 37 billion tons of CO₂ are emitted.  At this rate, the concentration in the atmosphere would increase by about 2 ppm in a year.  Year after year, more is added.  These emissions remain in the atmosphere for centuries (!) — so their concentration continuously grows.  He calculated the trajectory of current greenhouse gas emissions, and concluded that they would double by 2075.

In his book, The Great Acceleration, environmental historian J. R. McNeill said it differently, “Some proportion, perhaps as much as a quarter, of the roughly 300 billion tons of carbon released to the atmosphere between 1945 and 2015 will remain aloft for a few hundred thousand years.”  By 2008, concentrations had grown by 25 percent in just 50 years.  Of the emissions caused by humans, about 85 percent was related to fossil fuels.

Koonin contemplated where the path of continuous accumulation would lead.  He reflected on humankind’s massive addiction to fossil fuels.  Would we ever willingly back away from our high impact way of life, as long as it’s still possible?  No!  We’ll bet heavily on hope, and patiently wait for technological miracles, until the lights go out.  Suddenly, a divine revelation arrived.  The notion that we could stabilize current CO₂ emissions in the coming decades was simply not plausible — and forget actually reducing them.

“Modest reductions in emissions will only delay, but not prevent, the rise in concentration.”  If greenhouse gases continue their out of control accumulation, less heat will escape, the climate keeps warming, the Arctic keeps melting, albedo keeps decreasing, and the climate keeps getting warmer and warmer.  We’ve started something we can’t stop.  Yikes!  Never fear!  Koonin pulls three “solutions” out of his magic hat. 

Solar Radiation Management (SRM) would artificially increase albedo by frequently dispersing tons reflective substances high in the sky, year after year, forever.  The Artic would quit melting, and humankind could live happily ever after.

Carbon Dioxide Removal (CDR) uses technology to extract the surplus CO₂ from the atmosphere, and put it somewhere secure, where it will cause no mischief for a million years.  A few small pilot projects are underway, and they have serious limitations so far. 

Geoengineering is a word used to describe processes like SRM and CDR.  If one or both turn out to be miraculously successful, humans could, in their wildest dreams, continue burning fossil energy, and living like there’s no tomorrow.  In reality, neither is a proven success, nor cheap, easy, or sustainable.  Both ideas make lots of people nervous, for a wide variety of intelligent reasons.  Unintended consequences are guaranteed.

Luckily, there is one tried and true, all-purpose solution that humans have relied on for countless thousands of years — adaptation.  Courage!  Migrate to a region where you won’t starve, turn to ice, roast alive, or drown in rising seas.  Learn how to walk.  Become a great forager.  And so on. 

Doom mongerers warn that human influences will eventually push the climate beyond a tipping point, at which time catastrophe will ring our doorbell.  Koonin writes that it’s unlikely that human influences will push the climate over a tipping point.  “The most likely societal response will be to adapt to a changing climate, and that adaptation will very likely be effective.”  If adaptation isn’t enough, we can always throw all caution to the wind, and fool around with geoengineering. 

So, Koonin introduced readers to the notion of albedo, rising temperatures, melting Arctic, less albedo.  Great!  He came extremely close to the powerful punch line, but then suddenly swerved off into a head spinning whiteout blizzard of statistics and graphs.  His viewpoint is based on data collections — statistics on temperatures, precipitation, storms, etc. — stuff that computers can process (36 red dots, 55 blue dots…). 

A great benefit of Kindle books is that they are searchable.  I searched the book for a number of essential climate science keywords, and discovered zero hits for: Peter Wadhams (Arctic researcher), permafrost, methane hydrate, methane clathrate, methane craters, ocean acidification, ocean deoxygenation, East Siberian Arctic Shelf, pine beetles, tree death, threshold temperatures (too hot for agriculture), etc.  A whole bunch of essential information is absent in the book, and it may be an invisible elephant in the room.  Could doom mongerers actually be reality mongerers?

Reading this book was an interesting experience for me.  It made me question my views (all survived).  I learned a few new things.  Koonin is a purebred scientist, absolutely dedicated to the holy quest for truth.  The long and winding upward path to sacred certainty passes through numerous challenges and arguments that eventually weed out the dodgy ideas.  The Steven Koonin article in Wikipedia [HERE] provides ringside seats to the debate — links to commentaries by some of his critics who also have respectable credentials.

Koonin, Steven E., Unsettled, BenBella Books, Inc., Dallas, Texas, 2021.

 

Life After Fossil Fuels

In 2020, Jeff Gibbs’ documentary Planet of the Humans fell out of the sky.  It aimed a spotlight on the many ways in which solar and wind power were neither green nor renewable — no free pony.  In response, many “green” activists explosively soiled their britches and demanded that the film be banned.  Millions watched it.  Similarly, in 2021, Derrick Jensen and team published Bright Green Lies, which was soon followed by a documentary based on the book.  

These two projects were righteous fire-breathing exposés of the deceptions regularly made by folks promoting “green” technologies.  Passionate preaching can often get some folks to listen.  Sometimes it inspires minds to change.  Other folks prefer to have deeper understanding before revising their views.  Alice Friedemann’s book, Life After Fossil Fuels, will appeal to them. 

Without rage and condemnation, she calmly and carefully described why she thinks we would be wise to end our addiction to fossil fuels as soon as possible.  She evaluated the alternatives, and concluded that most are not free ponies.  Importantly, she carefully explained the benefits, limits, and faults of the various options, and meticulously cited the sources of her information — literally hundreds of them. 

Readers are introduced to the notion that alternative energy is not the magic key to a sustainable utopian wonderland.  The status quo is a high speed, ridiculously luxurious, one-way path into dark and treacherous realms.  We’ve been living like scruffy back alley gods on drugs.  The good news here is that no “green” solution can permanently keep the massively destructive status quo on life support — it’s going to end up where it’s headed.  “We are nearing the end of a one-time binge.”  Indeed!

So, my eyes began tap-dancing across page 1, and I was soon scrolling through a thrilling 86-page joyride.  Friedemann presented an informative and embarrassing birds-and-bees discussion of the horrific unintended consequences of our childlike obsession with living like crazy dysfunctional grownups.  I cheered with excitement with each new chapter.  It was so refreshing to experience such a sumptuous feast of clear and coherent bullshit free information. 

Readers are introduced to the important notion of EROI (energy returned on energy invested).  Each year it’s taking more and more energy to find, extract, process, and distribute fossil energy.  Imagine having a job that paid $100 per day, but the bridge toll for getting to work was $99.  For this reason, enormous amounts of fossil energy will remain in the ground forever, thank goodness!  About 65 percent of buried oil is technically or economically unrecoverable. 

The fracking industry is drilling like crazy, while more and more unlucky tycoons land with a splat in the tar pits of bankruptcy.  The richest discoveries were drilled and drained first.  “Globally, new oil discoveries have fallen for 6 years, with consumption of oil six times greater than discoveries from 2013 through 2019.”  Trouble ahead. 

In manufacturing, would it be possible to eliminate fossil energy by switching to wood-based fuel?  Take a wild guess.  Can we continue producing mountains of food when energy-guzzling synthetic fertilizers have become fond memories of the good old days?  Can industrial agriculture continue when energy-guzzling farm equipment runs out of affordable fossil energy to guzzle?  Will high speed horse carts haul fresh California veggies to Minnesota?

Can industrial civilization exist without energy-guzzling fleets of ships, planes, trains, and trucks?  “In the U.S., trucks deliver 80% of goods over 4.1 million miles of roads, with 80% of towns completely dependent on trucks.”  Can transportation systems shift to electric power?  “A truck with a driving range of 600 miles needs a battery pack weighing 35,275 pounds and can carry just 10,000 pounds.”  Oh, and cold weather reduces driving range by 35%.

“All contraptions that produce electricity need high heat in their construction.  They all need cement made at 2600°F.”  There is no known way to make concrete with electricity.  Making steel for wind turbines requires 3100°F (1700°C).  “Solar panels require 2700° to 3600°F (1500° to 2000°C) of heat to transform silicon dioxide into metallurgical grade silicon.”  Nuke plants still on the drawing board, in theory, might be able to generate 1562°F (850°C), but this is not hot enough for making cement, steel, glass, and lots of other stuff.

Friedemann’s key question is: could life as we know it continue in an alternative energy future?  By chapter 13, all contestants for powering a happy sustainable future were rejected, except one — biomass.  Prior to the fossil fuel era, heavy industry was powered by charcoal made from dead trees.  Brazil is still making steel with rainforest charcoal. 

“Biomass is the only renewable energy source that can generate the high heat needed by industry to make cement, iron, steel, aluminum, trucks, computers, electronic equipment, ceramics, bricks, and machinery.  Biodiesel is the only renewable drop-in fuel that can keep heavy-duty trucks, locomotives, and ships running.  Biomass, with a little help from hydropower, is the only renewable way to keep the electric grid up.”

Yikes!  This spooky paragraph sent a cold chill through my body.  Weird chapters followed.  I began to wonder if I had just wasted two entire days of the only life I may ever live.  But, by this point, I was aware that Friedemann had a whimsical side, so I kept reading, hoping for a sharp turn.  It came later.  Act two of the book was focused on contemplating how we could produce enough biomass to power industrial civilization, and prepare to feed the 3 billion additional folks expected for dinner in 2050.  Hope fiends will have a good cry.

Bummers obstructing the rise of a biomass utopia include climate change, freshwater scarcity, brutalized topsoil, and our addiction to countless fossil powered processes.  Turning biomass into a liquid fuel known as ethanol is idiotic.  Trucks can’t guzzle it, and it refuses to be pumped through pipelines.  It takes about as much energy to make a gallon as the finished gallon contains.  (Ethanol is a monster child fathered by gold plated government subsidies to Big Ag.) 

The bummer parade is long and unusual.  Make biodiesel with algae?  Make ethanol with seaweed, sorghum, or corn stalks?  Biodiesel could indeed replace oil-based diesel, if we were able to produce it in high volume.  This would require enormous amounts of cropland, and it would pummel the land as much as other types of agriculture.  If climate shifts blindside farm country, game over.

Bottom line: “The electric grid can not stay up without natural gas due to a lack of energy storage.  Transportation, agriculture, and manufacturing can not be electrified.  If transportation can not be electrified or run on Something Else, civilization as we know it ends.  Agriculture goes back to horses and human labor.”  When readers finally reach chapter 33 and slither across the finish line, their brains have been reduced to a bucketful of steaming glop.  It doesn’t look like we’re on the Yellow Brick Road to the Emerald City.  The sky is full of flying monkeys.  What a book!

The pisser here is that this very important book is sold by a textbook publisher, and it’s very expensive.  It won’t be able to catch much of a ride on the wave of interest generated by Gibbs, Jensen, and others.  Its modest collegiate audience is mostly the well-dressed offspring of the idle rich, and desperate students who are massively in debt.  Non-billionaires may need to rob a gas station, or get a library card.

The bigger pisser is that 12 year olds don't already know this stuff.  Maybe it would be polite to inform youngsters about the challenging future they have inherited.  I hope that Friedemann is busy working on something like a Dick and Jane primer for school kids — an affordable, competent, un-redacted, easy to read, mind-expanding introduction to actual reality, warts and all.  Imagine that.

Friedemann, Alice, Life After Fossil Fuels, Springer, Cham, Switzerland, 2021.

NOTE TO ALL: Alice Friedemann has made THIS ENTIRE BOOK AVAILABLE ONLINE FOR FREE on her website:
https://energyskeptic.com

Jeff Gibbs interview