Icebergs are breaking away from Antarctica. Greenland’s ice sheet is melting. Global sea levels are rising and temperatures are getting hotter worldwide. Arctic ice is thinning. The ocean’s surface layer is warming. Methane gas releases from permafrost and fracking as well as CO2 emissions are polluting the air. Mammals and other species are becoming extinct at an accelerating rate. All this environmental change is occurring now on our watch.
The question of whether methane (CH4) in the atmosphere is a threat to life is extraordinarily complex and generally not well understood. But, yes, it is a serious threat, very serious and horribly real.
Okay, but don’t scientists understand this, and why aren’t they speaking out?
They are speaking out but only a very few.
Runaway global warming is far and away humankind’s biggest nightmare, and the Arctic is the likely perpetrator. If it happens, it’ll blister agricultural foodstuff before it can reach the outstretched arms of the multitudes. Then what?
Dr. Peter Gleick of the Pacific Institute of California recently warned, “What is happening in the Arctic now is unprecedented and possibly catastrophic. The evidence is very clear that rapid and unprecedented changes are happening in the Arctic.”1
Read Part 1.
LAX KXEEN — The Salmon Nation Summit led to an emphatic declaration:
In June 2008 the Community Climate Change Consortium for Ireland (C4I) produced a 118 page report entitled “Ireland in a Warmer World: Scientific Predictions of the Irish Climate in the Twenty-First Century” (supported and co-funded by Environmental Protection Agency, Sustainable Energy Ireland and the Higher Education Authority) which forecast “an increase in the frequency of very intense cyclones, and also increases in the extreme values of wind and precipitation associated with them.
God moves in a mysterious way,
His wonders to perform;
He plants His footsteps in the sea,
And rides upon the storm.
A lone polar bear on a small sheet of ice has become an iconic image of global warming. Unfortunately, the image of the distraught polar bear sends a beguiling image that renders the dangers of global warming a disservice.
A better image, or icon, would be a massive 100-foot thick naturally coagulated renegade iceberg broadsiding an oil rig. More on this truly catastrophic event later.
Water – its dearth or its abundance – is already a global problem. It manifests itself in poor countries, poor regions and poor neighborhoods first, but most assuredly will affect us all within the next generation. In 2015, the World Economic Forum (WEF) Global Risk Reports rated “Water crises” as the most important risk facing the world.
The oceans of the world are currently experiencing a “perfect storm” that is nasty, real nasty with too much warming, too much acidification, too much CO2, too much fishing, too many chemicals, too much Ag runoff, too much radiation (Fukushima), and too little ice (Arctic Ocean) bringing on too much methane (CH4). Whew!
How much can the oceans handle?
The answer to that question may be coming to surface. According to ABC News, May 19, 2014, “Mysterious Mass Animal Deaths All Over the World”:
Climate change/global warming is the main protagonist on the worldwide stage of collapsing ecosystems.
The ecosystem is a combination of living organisms in harmony with nonliving elements like air, water, and mineral soil interacting as one whole. But, what if the living and nonliving elements stop interrelating as “one harmonized whole”? Then, what happens?
As things stand today, the planet’s future is decidedly in the camp of “then, what happens?”
