by Cid_Yama » Fri 09 Sep 2016, 13:46:22
THERE...IS...NO...BLAME. 8000 years ago, we, just through the actions of providing for so many of us in the course of our daily lives, prevented the return to a glacial world. We disrupt the cycle just in the course of living. We had reached overshoot.
The continental shelves submerged. The new subsea regime was warmer. The permafrost began to degrade, and hydrates, due to the warmer regime above and geothermal flux from below began to dissociate, the free methane remaining trapped below the relic permafrost cap.
But now, 8000 years later, that subsea permafrost has degraded to the point that it no longer acts like a cap.
The methane is beginning to release. And that release is accelerating and there is no way to stop it.
The ESAS covers 2 million sq km and at an average depth of 50 meters, the methane does not interact with the water column, but is released directly to the atmosphere, where it quickly rises to the upper atmosphere.
In the stratosphere, the methane breaks down, adding water vapor to the stratosphere forming PSCs. These clouds both act like a blanket keeping the heat in, and as a substrate upon which ozone destroying chemicals form.
Just 1% of the available methane released from the ESAS will cause catastrophic warming.
Since the methane is already releasing in greater and greater quantities and there is no way to shut it off, we are already in an Extinction Level Event, that will run it's full course.
My prediction has always been that this will lead to global crop failures, initiating famine, pandemics, water shortage, and wars over such, leading to a massive die off by 2020.
Looks like we are right on track.
"For my part, whatever anguish of spirit it may cost, I am willing to know the whole truth; to know the worst and provide for it." - Patrick Henry
The level of injustice and wrong you endure is directly determined by how much you quietly submit to. Even to the point of extinction.