Zero-Fare Canada

The climate tipping point - time for a revolution

2012-01-04T03:12:00.000-05:00

The climate tipping point: "I agree with Gazette writer William Marsden that "it's time for a revolution" in our destructive treatment of our planet and in the Earth's need for us to radically change course so that it can heal itself.

We need free public transportation to greatly reduce the individual use of cars."

'via Blog this'

Fare/Fair: CT Senior's Pass

2011-12-30T16:51:00.000-05:00

New year, new transit fares. Calgary's transit rates are going up (from $90 to $94 for my monthly pass), but the big story is the senior's pass increase, which is going from $35/year to $55/year. (Low-income seniors are still able to ride for $15/year, and it should be noted that a senior's pass cannot be used for Access Calgary rides.) Meanwhile, in Halifax, the push is for seniors to ride transit for free, with a petition appearing on the mayor's website this week.

Personally, I'd like to see no fares for transit (recognizing that this would mean transit funding would likely come from increased taxes for all Calgary citizens, including myself). And because I work with seniors, I am very aware that their costs are increasing faster than their incomes are (even those not yet retired).

However, in this case, I think that the City of Calgary has made the right move. If we are to develop a transit system that works for everyone, it needs to be fairly supported by everyone. Giving seniors a break on the pass rate simply because they're 65+, in a world where more and more seniors continue to work after that age, no longer makes sense.

Instead, I'd like to see a move toward two transit rate categories (regular and low income) and then look at how transit fares can be reduced and/or eliminated so that more people can use transit effectively. This is what should be really be part of the discussion on Calgary Transit priorities in 2012 and beyond.

(Cross posted at Witch-Ways, where I've been crafting magic on the internet since 1994.)

Quebec exports millions for cars and gas

2011-12-06T19:54:00.000-05:00

Henry Aubin: Proposal to cut cars by 20% makes sense: "- The Quebec economy would benefit if some of the billions of dollars that Quebec motorists now spend every year on 100,000 additional cars and on 12 billion litres of gas - most of which money flows to manufacturers and oil producers outside the province - were instead used to purchase local services and made-in-Quebec goods. More jobs here, more tax revenues from people with those jobs, more prosperity for all."

'via Blog this'

CUTA | Public transit ridership shows impressive increase in first half of 2011: CUTA

2011-12-03T19:29:00.000-05:00

CANADIAN URBAN TRANSIT ASSOCIATION | Public transit ridership shows impressive increase in first half of 2011: CUTA: "TORONTO, Nov. 29, 2011 /CNW/ - Canadian public transit ridership statistics for the first six months of 2011 show an increase of 4.93% as compared to the same January to June period in the previous year, according to the Canadian Urban Transit Association."

'via Blog this'

Ottawa Students Stand Opposed to 24% Transit Fee Increase | STUDY Magazine

2011-11-25T14:12:00.000-05:00

Ottawa Students Stand Opposed to 24% Transit Fee Increase | STUDY Magazine: "10,000 Students Against 70 dollar U-Pass Hike
Written by Ryan Leclaire
Thousands of students are united in their outrage over a proposed 24% increase to the price of the Universal Transit Pass (U-Pass).
They are equally upset that Ottawa’s transit commission has also recommended the elimination of the student semester and annual pass."

'via Blog this'

Transit ridership doubles in Strait area - Local - The Cape Breton Post

2011-11-24T01:31:00.000-05:00

Transit ridership doubles in Strait area - Local - The Cape Breton Post: "SYDNEY — Strait Area Transit has almost doubled its ridership for the transit service it offers in Port Hawkesbury and throughout areas of Richmond and Inverness counties."
http://www.townofporthawkesbury.ca/strait-area-transit

'via Blog this'

Campaign to stop Winnipeg #transit fare hikes

2011-11-18T15:00:00.000-05:00

Why This Is Important

Many sustainable lifestyle choices are easily motivated with financial initiatives; and choosing public transportation is no different. So why has Winnipeg city council approved yet another 25 cent fare hike to pay for rapid transit? A proper move by a city council would be to motivate their residents to choose sustainable transportation; instead of penalizing those who make this choice.

In rush hour, there’s an average of 1.2 persons per car. At that rate 2 buses can carry as many people as a hundred cars. In a single lane the cars would stretch over a third of a mile; the buses only 90 feet – and that can reduce congestion, noise and air pollution by over 90%. [SOURCE]

Why is this important?

Adding lanes and expressways brings more cars, more congestion--and of course--longer commutes in the long term. In addition, car traffic is, indirectly, the most expensive burden there is for urban taxpayers. City budgets are stretched all over the continent - not just here in Winnipeg.

Coun. Justin Swandel made the motion for the fare hike on Wednesday, saying it is one way to cover the expense of speeding up the construction on the city's rapid transit routes. A transit fare increase would have to be endorsed by the Manitoba government and Premier Greg Selinger appeared supportive of the idea.

Obviously: better transit systems are the most effective way of improving traffic flow. It benefits drivers and transit riders. Most North American cities have learned the inefficient way that emphasizing car traffic over other modes of transportation actually makes things worse for drivers.

Why do we need to petition for this?

As residents of Winnipeg, we also pay taxes. The more cars there are, the more sprawl, and the less efficient your infrastructure is. You have more and more kms of roads serving a lower and lower population density--which is bad for your wallet, and the environment. The relative costs of maintaining this infrastructure skyrockets too.

Everyone subsidizes the roads in the city, even those of us who choose not to live in the the typical suburbs and drive our SUV everywhere. Make your voice heard today, and help make a Change in our beautiful city.

The cities that are doing well in terms of commute times, costs, budgets and tax burdens are the ones that have fought back urban sprawl and congestion with dense communities and effective transit.

Please sign if you endorse a better transit service and to put a stop to rapid and unreasonable increase of bus fares in Winnipeg, Manitoba.

Link to Petition

L'avenir du transport collectif passe par les redevances sur les cardurants, plaide le groupe TRANSIT | Montréal | Radio-Canada.ca

2011-11-08T20:38:00.000-05:00

Un bus de la Société de transport de Laval

L'avenir du transport collectif passe par les redevances sur les cardurants, plaide le groupe TRANSIT | Montréal | Radio-Canada.ca: "Pour doter les services de transport publics des ressources nécessaire pour faire face à l'augmentation croissante de leur clientèle, TRANSIT demande à Québec de multiplier par cinq la redevance sur les carburants et les combustibles fossiles.

Selon TRANSIT, une telle mesure permettrait de faire face à une augmentation d'au moins 40 % de l'achalandage dans les transports en commun d'ici 2020.

« Manifestement, le public est au rendez-vous, mais si on veut qu'il continue à préférer le transport collectif au transport individuel, il faudra qu'il y trouve son compte, c'est-à-dire que l'offre réponde à la demande en qualité et en quantité. » —
Karel Mayrand, directeur général de la Fondation David Suzuki"

'via Blog this'

What if transit were free?

2011-11-08T01:22:00.000-05:00

Metro:

This city spends tens of millions on planning, building and maintaining roads every year, primarily for the benefit of private automobile owners.
The new Transportation Master Plan calls for $2.1 billion in new roads and bridges to be built over the next 20 years. Billions more will be needed to maintain our existing crumbling streets.

But we could potentially save much of that expense if we could simply get more people out of their cars and on to transit.

It wouldn’t be cheap; we’d need more buses, more drivers and more public-operating subsidies. But the benefits are clear. It would reduce traffic congestion, speed up everyone’s commute and eliminate the need for more road capacity. It would benefit the environment, encourage more compact development and enhance mobility for people who can’t drive or afford a car.

Montrealers using public transit like never before

2011-10-26T20:50:00.000-04:00

Photograph by: Vincenzo D'Alto, The Gazette

Montrealers using public transit like never before: "MONTREAL - Never before have Montrealers used public transit as much as they do today.

In 2011, Société de transport de Montréal expects 405 million trips to be taken on its buses and the métro, STM president Michel Labrecque announced Tuesday.

That will beat the previous record: 398 million trips, set in 1947, when the city had an extensive tramway network. The tramway was gradually removed before being eliminated in 1959."

'via Blog this'

Montreal - #transit investment pays big dividends

2011-10-11T04:02:00.000-04:00

FOR THE RECORD: Fund transport and boost the economy | iPolitics: "For over 150 years, public transit has been instrumental to Montreal’s economic development, boosting productivity and economic activity for the region’s businesses and agencies. With over 1.2 million trips daily, the STM helps Montrealers commute to work, attend school and patronize businesses.

Public transit also helps reduce road congestion, which each year costs Metropolitan Montreal $1.4 billion, or 1% of Montreal’s GDP. Less road congestion means reduced travel times for all Montrealers, including non-riders. Each public transit user means one less car on the roads, thereby cutting down travel time for goods and people (BTMM, 2010)."

'via Blog this'

Chow calls for national transit strategy - Canada - CBC News

2011-09-30T20:27:00.000-04:00

Olivia Chow, the NDP's transport and infrastructure critic, says the lack of a national public transit strategy is hurting Canada's economy and environment, and putting pressure on big cities. Canadian Press

Chow calls for national transit strategy - Canada - CBC News: "NDP MP Olivia Chow says Canada needs to join other G8 and leading industrial nations and adopt a national transit strategy."

'via Blog this'

Child-friendly neighbourhoods - About Kids Health

2011-09-22T19:59:00.000-04:00

Child-friendly neighbourhoods - About Kids Health: "Where not to live
If you and your kids sat down to invent the place you would least like to live, the list of features might include: nowhere to play, nowhere to go, nothing to do, no stores, no friends nearby, speeding traffic, lots of crime, and a long drive to school and back every day."

'via Blog this'

Oil-Rich Emirates all about transit even #freetransit

2011-09-15T18:05:00.000-04:00

MoF encourages employees to use Dubai Metro by providing them with free Nol cards | Al Bawaba: "In line with its commitment to support important environmental and development projects, and marking the launch of Dubai Metro’s Green Line on September 9, 2011, the Ministry of Finance (MoF) has provided its employees with free metro Nol cards (used for all public transport modes in Dubai). Carried out in partnership with the Roads and Transport Authority (RTA), MoF aims to encourage its staff to use public transportation, particularly the Dubai Metro, when travelling to and from their Dubai headquarters. "

'via Blog this'

Fare-free transit and sensible liquor laws among policy initiatives passed by Greens | Green Party of Manitoba

2011-09-07T02:06:00.000-04:00

Fare-free transit and sensible liquor laws among policy initiatives passed by Greens | Green Party of Manitoba: "Fare-free transit and sensible liquor laws among policy initiatives passed by Greens"

07/24/11

A Fare-free transit policy for all urban centres in Manitoba passed with unanimous support at the Green Party of Manitoba's Special General Meeting held this past weekend in Winnipeg.

A round trip on the bus in Winnipeg is nearly $5.

“That is $5 which will be spent in the local economy. This policy is good for Manitobans and it's good for business,” said James Beddome, Leader of the Green Party of Manitoba.

“At this moment, the City of Winnipeg and province are planning on spending $10 million on new fare collecting equipment – let's invest that money in better service for everyone who uses the road,” added Beddome.

The GPM also adopted policy to modernize outdated and onerous liquor laws to permit market freedom to independent liquor merchants and reduce over-regulation of the hospitality industry, among other polices.

FOR MEDIA INQUIRIES:
CONTACT:

Caitlin McIntyre
204-999-4064
secretary@greenparty.mb.ca

The shocking truth about electric cars - The Globe and Mail

2011-09-03T09:33:00.000-04:00

The shocking truth about electric cars - The Globe and Mail: "Here’s another catch: Electric cars aren’t necessarily green at all. Electric vehicles require large amounts of electricity – so much that Toronto Hydro chief Anthony Haines says he doesn’t know how he’d get it. “If you connect about 10 per cent of the homes on any given street with an electric car, the electricity system fails,” he said recently."

'via Blog this'

Free Transit first on the list for Socialist Party of Ontario

2011-08-31T15:56:00.000-04:00

The party itself was founded earlier this year with a core platform of:

• Free accessible public transit

• A $15-per-hour minimum wage,

• Civilian oversight for the police, courts and jails

• Public pharma, dental, and eye care for everyone

• Comprehensive public housing and anti-poverty strategy

Min Reyes » Archive » a silent story of invisible people

2011-08-28T05:42:00.000-04:00

Min Reyes » Archive » a silent story of invisible people: "a story not mine to tell
but it must be told
for some stories are buried with bodies
and while remaining untold
not the rotting flesh nor bones, nor the silent soul
will stop haunting those who seek truth"

'via Blog this'

CONSEIL REGIONAL DE L'ENVIRONNEMENT DE MONTREAL | Crise des infrastructures de transport : Sans investissement massif dans les transports collectifs, le sud du Québec sera paralysé

2011-08-24T18:31:00.000-04:00

CONSEIL REGIONAL DE L'ENVIRONNEMENT DE MONTREAL | Crise des infrastructures de transport : Sans investissement massif dans les transports collectifs, le sud du Québec sera paralysé: MONTRÉAL, le 24 août 2011 /CNW Telbec/ - TRANSIT, l'Alliance pour le financement des transports collectifs au Québec, a été créée aujourd'hui à Montréal, afin de décrire l'état de la situation et tenter d'influencer les décisions budgétaires publiques. Ses membres fondateurs ont rappelé que si la présente crise du réseau routier révèle le sous-investissement chronique en matière de grandes infrastructures de transports, les transports collectifs subissent cette même dynamique.

CTV Ottawa- Arrests made at oilsands protest in Washington - CTV News

2011-08-20T16:18:00.000-04:00

CTV Ottawa- Arrests made at oilsands protest in Washington - CTV News: Alberta's embattled oilsands are at the centre of a mass protest that began this weekend with arrests in front of the most prominent government building in the United States.

Crowds descended upon the White House early Saturday morning, prepared to spend two weeks hosting daily sit-ins to denounce a proposed pipeline that would transport oil from Alberta's infamous tarsands to a refinery in Texas.

Green Policy Asks: To Make Public Transportation Fare Free! | Green Party of Manitoba

2011-08-13T17:50:00.000-04:00

Green Policy Asks: To Make Public Transportation Fare Free! | Green Party of Manitoba: "The City of Winnipeg should hold off on plans to spend as much as $10 million on new electronic equipment for collecting bus fares from Winnipeg transit riders, says James Beddome, Leader of the Green Party of Manitoba.

'Any commitments that Winnipeg's Council has made in this matter should be delayed till after the public has had an opportunity to vote for zero fare bus service in Manitoba, by voting Green with their October 4 election ballots,” said Beddome.
“I fully anticipate that the Green Party of Manitoba will raise the issue of fare free bus service in the next general election,” said Beddome
“Free public transportation is as Canadian a concept as user free public education, and user free public health care,” Beddome went on to say."

Futurity.org – Tundra fires may speed climate change

2011-08-02T19:59:00.000-04:00

Futurity.org – Tundra fires may speed climate change: "The 2.1 million metric tons of carbon released in the fire—roughly twice the amount of greenhouse gases put out by the city of Miami in a year—is significant enough to suggest that Arctic fires could impact the global climate, says Mack, an associate professor of ecosystem ecology at the University of Florida."

Free transit in Kingston? Let's do it!

2011-07-12T12:56:00.000-04:00

Photo from skew-t

What if Kingston… – Kingstonist: "Do you think many Kingstonian’s would relinquish their automobiles in favour of a free, lifetime public transit pass? Would taxpayer funds be better spent on offering free transit service rather than spent on lane expansions and third crossings? Not only do I think the answer to both of those questions is yes, but I believe the positive ramifications would far exceed beyond curing traffic congestion and greenhouse gases, as the result could include more bike lanes, business opportunities for car sharing, and increased levels of personal fitness. By leading the way and becoming the first Canadian city to adopt a free transit system, Kingston could set itself apart from other sustainable wannabes and reap the benefits."

The Radio Ecoshock Show: KILL THE CAR

2011-07-07T07:54:00.000-04:00

The Radio Ecoshock Show: KILL THE CAR: "It is a mark of our deep insanity that politicians keep promising and building more roads, highways, freeways, and bridges for the last days of the private car, the last decade or two of oil. Tell them to stop! Stop wasting our money, the last of the oil, our atmosphere, and our future!"

Speak up for pedestrians - Cars are not gods

2011-07-02T07:31:00.000-04:00

Drawing Attention to Pedestrian Safety is Appropriate – From My Bottom Step: "The incidence of vehicle/pedestrians collisions, and the percentage of those collisions that result in injuries to pedestrians, is apalling.

What’s even more apalling is the apparent lack of police enforcement of pedestrian rights in this City and the way that pedestrian issues are given so little attention by our City Council."

James Hansen slams Keystone XL Canada-U.S. Pipeline: “Exploitation of tar sands would make it implausible to stabilize climate and avoid disastrous global climate impacts” | ThinkProgress

2011-06-12T21:22:00.000-04:00

James Hansen slams Keystone XL Canada-U.S. Pipeline: “Exploitation of tar sands would make it implausible to stabilize climate and avoid disastrous global climate impacts” | ThinkProgress: "The Canadian tar sands are substantially dirtier than conventional oil as the chart above shows (longer analysis here). They may contain enough carbon-intensive fuel to make stabilizing atmospheric concentrations of carbon dioxide at non-catastrophic levels all but impossible.
And that is the point of Dr. James Hansen in a must-read essay on the proposed Keystone XL Pipeline to bring that dirty fuel into this country, “Silence Is Deadly: I’m Speaking Out Against Canada-U.S. Tar Sands Pipeline.”"

New Transit Planning Tool - Mapnificent!

2011-06-04T13:47:00.000-04:00

I just heard (on Twitter) about a great new tool - Mapnificent - for transit users like me. Type in an address, pick a time estimate, and you'll see how far you can go in that time on your local transit system.

So, just to compare, here's what I can get to from Bow Cliff Seniors in 15 minutes:

And here's what I can get to from my neighbourhood in 15 minutes:

Of course, this is an estimate and doesn't take delays/etc. into account. Still, I can see it being a useful tool for trip planning when thinking about changing work/home locations, for nonprofits thinking about where to locate in relation to clients, etc.

(Cross posted at Witch-Ways, where I've been crafting magic on the internet since 1994.)

Stop Signs: Cars and Capitalism, Public Forum May 12 Toronto

2011-05-09T19:25:00.000-04:00

Stop Signs: Cars and Capitalism, Public Forum May 12: "In North America, human beings have become enthralled by the automobile: A quarter of our working lives are spent paying for them; communities fight each other for the right to build more of them; our cities have been torn down, remade and planned with their needs as the overriding concern; wars are fought to keep their fuel tanks filled; songs are written to
praise them; cathedrals are built to worship them." Read More on Facebook

CAA-Québec - Take advantage of free public transit on April 22!

2011-04-22T12:56:00.000-04:00

CAA-Québec - Take advantage of free public transit on April 22!: "The Avec un ami (with a friend) initiative, proposed by Quebec Earth Day, is a first-of-its-kind campaign across Quebec to promote public transit use. Eleven Quebec transit networks are offering people the chance to try their services free of charge on Earth Day, April 22."

Métro Montréal - La piétonnisation bientôt en marche

2011-04-17T13:18:00.000-04:00

Métro Montréal - La piétonnisation bientôt en marche: "Les automobiles seront de nouveau exclues des rues Sainte-Catherine et Saint-Paul cet été. L’arrondissement de Ville-Marie a annoncé jeudi, que ces deux artères seront réservées aux piétons à compter du 18 et 20 mai, respectivement. Elles le demeureront jusqu’au 13 et 26 septembre."

Choices (Political and Transportational)

2011-04-14T23:49:00.000-04:00

I'll admit it - I have a political crush on NDPer Megan Leslie (who's running for re-election in Halifax). Why?

She was voted "Rookie MP of the Year" in 2009.
When she spoke on Bill C-449 (giving seniors free access to transit in off-peak hours) she talked about the impact of free transit ("Free transit would greatly increase the quality of life by removing the terrible choice between rent, food, or heat and bus tickets.") and called for the development of a National Transit Strategy for Canada.
She's had some great clips recently on CBC because of her role as NDP spokesperson on health.

But, most of all, she's running a carbon-neutral campaign that includes transit, cycling and carsharing. It's nice to see someone who actually gets it - how we do the work matters as much as the work we're doing. I look forward to the day when this is the norm, not the exception. Until then, I'll work on convincing people that I'm not a saint just because I use Calgary Transit to get to work-related events, ok? (I'll point out the other reasons instead, hehe.)

**Bonus points for her reference of climate-change discussions in this election campaign as an "issue of inter-generational equity" because, really, isn't it?

(Cross-posted at Witch-Ways, where I've been crafting magic on the internet since 1994.)

The Real Weapons of Mass Destruction: Methane, Propaganda & the Architects of Genocide | Part IV

2011-03-31T13:39:00.001-04:00

An investigative report. [Part I: http://bit.ly/fV8slf | Part II: http://bit.ly/gMITca | Part III: http://bit.ly/gMrxw9 | Part IV: http://bit.ly/eVOWDf]

Published on Political Context March 26^th, 2011.

By Cory Morningstar

This is the fourth and final instalment of an investigative report uncovering and analyzing a global plan to capture and utilize the ocean's store of methane hydrates. The investigation reflects upon the decades of planning coordinated by the world's most powerful institutions, including the global banking and investment corporations, global fossil fuel energy corporations, United Nations, the OECD, the United States (US) Department of Defense, US Department of Energy, the administrations of each of the leading greenhouse gas-emitting states, and powerful NGOs. The report details why and how the coordinated planning evolved while keeping the public-at-large in the dark. Finally, the report explains why methane must be considered the most lethal contributor to climate change, according to the most recent and relevant science.

Destination – Hell. Are we there yet?

Drilling and Earthquakes

16 June 2004: Overwhelmed: Tokyo Electric Power Company Managing Director Akio Komiri cries as he leaves after a press conference in Fukushima. 19 March 2010.

16 June 2004: US Department of Energy meeting summary: "Alternatively, an undersea earthquake today, say off the Blake Ridge or the coast of Japan or California might loosen and cause some of the sediment to slide down the ridge or slump, exposing the hydrate layer to the warmer water. That in turn could cause a chain reaction of events, leading to the release of massive quantities of methane. Another possibility is drilling and other activities related to exploration and recovery of methane hydrates as an energy resource. The hydrates tend to occur in the pores of sediment and help to bind it together. Attempting to remove the hydrates may cause the sediment to collapse and release the hydrates. So, it may not take thousands of years to warm the ocean and the sediments enough to cause massive releases, only lots of drilling rigs. Returning to the 4 GtC release scenario, assume such a release occurs over a one-year period sometime in the next 50 years as result of slope failure. According to the Report of the Methane Hydrate Advisory Committee, “Catastrophic slope failure appears to be necessary to release a sufficiently large quantity of methane rapidly enough to be transported to the atmosphere without significant oxidation or dissolution.” 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."

Since writing the first 3 instalments of this investigative series, the race to drill methane hydrates has begun in Japan. New Zealand, in a joint venture with Germany, is the next in line to commence.

1 February 2011: "Seabed drilling exploration for methane hydrate in coastal waters, utilizing a world-class deep sea exploration vessel, is scheduled to start Saturday. In the planned exploration, the Chikyu is expected to drill 100 meters to 400 meters into the seabed, which lies at a depth of 700 meters to 1,000 meters. The geological structure of layers surrounding the hydrate, and the degree of stability regarding drill holes and pipes, are among the subjects to be surveyed. The Chikyu uses state-of-the-art equipment able to drill as deep as 7,000 meters under the seabed."

On 11 March 2011, the world witnessed one of the most powerful earthquakes since 1900, devastating the country of Japan. It has resulted in a nuclear catastrophe still unfolding. Lethal tsunamis followed the earthquake, and were not limited to Japan. A wildlife sanctuary situated on a tiny atoll near Hawaii lay victim to one such resulting tsunami, wiping out thousands of endangered seabirds and other animals. Exposure to radiation continues to threaten citizens as far away as California.

The video below features Dr Helen Caldicott speaking in Montreal, Canada: UN lies about nuclear threat. Caldicott has been named one of the most influential women of the 20th Century by the Smithsonian Institute. (Filmed on 18 March 2011: 5:06)

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=65ptQASTKCk

On 3 September 2010 and 22 February 2011, the world witnessed two deadly earthquakes in Christchurch, Aotearoa (New Zealand).

What is not widely known, is the fact that Japan announced it would commence drilling methane hydrates on 1 February 2011. Also not widely known, is the fact that on 1 June 2010, the corporate giant Petrobras was awarded an exploration permit to drill for oil and gas in the Raukumara Basin of earthquake prone Aotearoa. The Raukumara Basin sits on a major and active fault line. In the last 30 years, there have been 108 earthquakes exceeding the 5 magnitude scale in this basin, and since 1989, this basin has experienced 6 earthquakes exceeding the 6 magnitude scale. Aotearoa, has been identified by conservative think-tank Fraser Institute as the second most attractive country to invest in for petroleum exploration. To describe Aotearoa as 'the new fossil fuel frontier' is beyond reckless as the entire country of Aotearoa is situated on a major fault line. Offshore exploration in Aotearoa has become extensive, with projects planned from the tip of the North Island down to the bottom of the South Island. One must consider that the recent seismic exploration for oil, gas and mining may have contributed to the vast number of earthquakes. The invasive techniques undertaken in such exploration include mass construction, drilling, dynamite, reflection seismology, inducement of seismic waves and 'artificial earthquakes'. One must also consider that the invasive exploration techniques within the Aotearoa Canterbury Plains, and the offshore Canterbury Basin have contributed to the 'newly discovered fault' which scientists believe to have caused the devastating earthquakes. After the September quake, geologists at GNS Science began examining drill-hole data held by Ecan and on-land seismic recordings made by oil and gas exploration companies. The Petrobras permit grants access to 12,330 square kilometres within Raukumara Basin, extending from 4 kilometres off the Aotearoa coast to 110 kilometres from the coast. The Raukumara Basin, a high seismic activity area, covers 25,000 square kilometres, extending about 300 kilometres north and around 100 kilometres wide off East Cape in the North Island. (20 August 2010: Govt's petroleum permit ignored environment) Petrobras claims they are about to begin seismic data collection of the Raukumara Basin. What is most interesting, is the fact that the June 2010 permit (Crown Minerals), gave Petrobras permission to drill, almost immediately. From the legal document: "Within 60 months of the commencement of the permit, the permittee SHALL drill one exploratory well." Councillor Manu Caddie, has made the public aware that there is no legal requirement for Petrobras to apply for a further permit before commencing drilling. It is critical to bear in mind that the catastrophic Gulf of Mexico BP disaster was the result of an exploratory well. As of 1 December 2009, Petrobras had a market capitalisation of US$221 billion. The power and influence of Petrobras runs deep having funded and partnered with 120 universities. (See part III - Universities as Bedfellows | Moral Nihilism)

The scientific community has long suspected that sonar and seismic technology (from survey vessels) creates suffering and anguish for whales and marine life. As fossil fuel corporations in Aotearoa have expanded their invasive techniques of exploration, for further oil and gas production, the frequency of stranded whales upon beaches has dramatically increased: 22 August 2010, 73 pilot whales washed up on Kaitaia beach, Aotearoa – 58 dead; 23 September 2010, 80 pilot whales stranded at Spirits Bay, Aotearoa. 40 dead; 21 January 2011, 24 pilot whales died after becoming stranded on the North Island of Aotearoa;7 February 2011, 82 pilot whales stranded in Golden Bay area, for the 3^rd time in 3 days. 17 dead. 20 February 2011, forty-eight hours prior to the Christchurch earthquake, more than 107 pilot whales washed up on Aotearoa’s South Island. All died. On 4 March, 7 days prior to the catastrophic earthquake in Japan, 50 melon-headed whales washed up on the eastern shore of Kashima.

Although mass beaching of whales have been common to Aotearoa in the past, the drastic increase in these tragic events, coupled with the proximity of the earthquakes themselves, in both Aotearoa and Japan, raises many questions. The tectonic plate shifts that occur prior to earthquakes is often cited as a possible cause of such mass beachings. Yet, one must consider the distinct possibility that such tragic events are, more often than not, caused by human interference. In 2009, scientists reported that seismic surveys used for oil and gas prospecting are a disturbance for blue whales, the world's biggest animal and one of its rarest species. Seismic testing employed by the survey vessels has been linked to past events. In June 2003, 100 whales became trapped in a bay in the north of Madagascar, near an area where ExxonMobil was carrying out a seismic survey. Despite denying any responsibility, under intense media scrutiny, Exxon halted its surveying programme. In a world addicted to lethal fossil fuels, such occurrences have become common. The East Cape area in Aotearoa is as a key marine mammal migration area from autumn through to spring, which is the period in which Petrobras will be using underwater sonic shock waves to explore potential oil exploitation of and gas deposits in the area.

On 24 January 2011, a group of international and New Zealand scientists drilled directly into South Island's Alpine Fault - a massive fault line to investigate its structure, mechanics and evolution.

Vast quantities of methane hydrates collect along geological fault lines. Japan sits atop a nexus of three of the world’s largest.

On 24 February 2011, 15 days prior to Japan’s devastating earthquake, Dr Elisabetta Mariani, in an interview with BBC was asked if drilling holes in the major 'alpine' fault running through new Zealand was a good idea. She answered: "As scientists [we can say] ... there is another important drilling going on ... off shore the east coast of Japan ... and is going well and is successful and has not caused problems which the locals were concerned about so this is what we told [the New Zealanders] and what we tell you as well."

On 7 March 2011, in response to the Arkansas Oil and Gas Commission, two US gas drilling companies agreed to suspend specific operations at wells near Arkansas after their work was linked to nearby earthquakes. Both Chesapeake Energy, based in Oklahoma, and Clarita Operating of Little Rock, informed the Arkansas Oil and Gas Commission that they have halted operation of the wells near Greenbrier and Guy. 800 earthquakes have hit the area in the past six months. One was a 4.7 quake – the strongest in Arkansas in 35 years.

Is it possible, that the massive earthquakes which devastated Japan and New Zealand, can be connected to invasive deep drilling? Is it possible that the scale of seismic testing, coupled with invasive drilling and exploration techniques, provoked these massive earthquakes? Is it possible that humans failed to recognize and understand the dire warnings of what was to unfold, through witnessing the tragic deaths of the ocean’s sensitive whales?

As the late Carl Sagan, NASA Distinguished Public Service Medal recipient, has eloquently stated: Absence of evidence is not evidence of absence.

It appears that the recent drilling into the Nankai Trough fault line is not to blame in the case of Japan, as the fault line which ruptured is said to be different than that of the Tokai area, where the Nankai Trough fault line exists. However, the impact from the methane hydrate drilling, if it did proceed on 5 February 2011, as planned, is unknown. Methane hydrates, deposited on the seafloor, are present all along the Pacific coast from Kyushu to the Tokai district.

The suggestion that human activity can cause seismic activity is widely accepted in the scientific community. A paper in the journal Oilfield Review published in 2000, noted that the connection between oil production and earthquakes dates back to at least the 1920s, when geologists in South Texas noted faulting near an oil field.

In May of 2010, The Royal Society releases 12 research papers in the theme issue titled 'Climate forcing of geological and geomorphological hazards'. Top scientists call for research on climate in connection to earthquakes, landslides, tsunamis and gas-hydrate destabilisation observing that the "ongoing rise in global average temperatures may already be eliciting a hazardous response from the geosphere." From the editors introduction: "The sensitivity to climate change of gas hydrates, in both marine and continental settings, has long captured interest, in relation to its potential role in past episodes of rapid warming, such as in the Palaeocene–Eocene thermal maximum (PETM), and in the context of anthropogenic warming. In the first of a pair of papers on the subject, Maslin et al. review the current state of the science as it relates to gas hydrates as a potential hazard. The authors note that gas hydrates may present a serious threat as the world warms, primarily through the release of large quantities of methane into the atmosphere, thus forcing accelerated warming, but also as a consequence of their possible role in promoting submarine slope failure and consequent tsunami generation."

The Nankai Trough subduction zone, located southwest of Japan, is one of the most active earthquake zones on Earth. This is a region notorious for generating devastating earthquakes and tsunamis with complex geological formations caused by tectonic plate thrusts. On 31 August 2010 scientists returned from the first ever riser drilling operations in Seismogenic Zone, an operation named Nankai Trough Seismogenic Zone Experiment (NanTroSEIZE). The NanTroSEIZE expedition 332 completed expedition on 11 December 2010. Stage 1 (2007-2008) of the operation included discovery of methane hydrates. A third-party representative of the venture is Halliburton.

There are numerous methane-hydrate deposits within the oceans surrounding Japan, shown in red on the map to the far left. They are found in the Nankai Trough, on the Chyoshi Spur, the eastern portion of the Japan Sea, and the southern Okhotsk Sea. The GSJ has calculated that these deposits combined, would yield 6 trillion cubic meters of natural gas (over a hundred times the amount consumed per year in Japan). (Source: Geological Survey of Japan) Image on right represents global methane hydrates.

The overview of the first offshore production test of methane hydrate in the Nankai Trough undertaken by Japan Oil, Gas and Metals National Corporation (JOGMEC) can be read here. The final selection on the test location will be made by the end of March 2011.

The Japanese citizens have been inundated with untold pain and suffering. It is unconscionable to expect the Japanese people to further risk themselves and their children, for corporate wealth, yet, that is exactly what the Japanese government, with support from the Canadian Government and other major greenhouse-gas emitting states are expecting:

26 December 2007, Bloomberg, Japan Mines 'Flammable Ice,' Flirts With Environmental Disaster: ''Fifty-five million years ago the world's climate was catastrophically changed when volcanoes melted natural gas frozen in the seabed. Now Japan plans to drill for the same icy crystals to end its reliance on imported energy ... A mass release of methane into the sea and the atmosphere is a risk for global warming ... Massive landslides at the ocean floor must be avoided when drilling at the Nankai Trough.''

27 September 2010, The Guardian, Japan to drill for controversial 'fire ice': "Concerns had been raised that digging for frozen methane would destabilise the methane beds, which contain enough gas worldwide to snuff out most complex life on earth ... Jogmec acknowledges the problems, admitting mining of methane ice could lead to landslides and the devastation of marine life in the mining areas."

3 October 2010, autobloggreen, Japan's trade ministry seeks $1b investment to drill for controversial methane hydrates: "There's a big risk involved, too. If the drilling is unsuccessful, some experts predict the attempt could destabilize the methane beds and trigger an environmental disaster of epic proportions. So, good luck!"

15-17 November 2010, International Symposium on Methane Hydrates Resources from Mallik to Nankai Trough: "The primary goal of the symposium will be to provide an overview of recent research achievements by Japan to characterize methane hydrate in the Nankai Trough area, and by Canada and Japan to quantify the production response of permafrost gas hydrate in the Mackenzie Delta."

In 2010, the Geological Society of America publishes a report: Massive methane release triggered by seafloor erosion offshore southwestern Japan. Their analysis is strikingly similar to the Storegga Slide, an event that resulted in a tsunami as high as 25 metres, as described in part II of this investigative report: ''We hypothesize that erosion of the seafloor via bottom-water currents unroofed buoyant hydrate-laden sediments and subhydrate overpressured free gas zones beneath the anticline. Once triggered, gas-driven erosion created a positive feedback mechanism, releasing gas and eroding hydrate-bearing sediment. We suggest that erosive currents in deep-water methane hydrate provinces act as hair triggers, destabilizing kilometer-scale swaths of the seafloor where large concentrations of underlying overpressured methane exist. Our analysis suggests that kilometer-scale degassing events are widespread, and that deep-water hydrate reservoirs can rapidly release methane in massive quantities.''

Kalev Leetaru, Senior Research Scientist for Content Analysis at the Institute for Computing in the Humanities, Arts, and Social Science at the University of Illinois Coordinator of Information Technology and Coordinator of Information Technology and Research at the University of Illinois Cline Center for Democracy, is unequivocal in his paper titled Methane Hydrate: An Apocalyptic Panacea: ''In our never-ending search to quench our thirst for energy-producing resources, we could end up destroying our planet. This remote, but very real possibility is made all the more real by the global impact of methane, both in the explosive bursts it often triggers on its release, and as a greenhouse gas once it has been released into the atmosphere.''

On a side-note, scientists are planning to drill all the way through the planet's miles-thick crust to Earth's deep, hot mantle in order to retrieve samples for the first time by 2020.

Will we drill ourselves to death? It appears so. The tragedy is this - solar and wind have never been known to cause meltdowns, tsunamis, landslides, cancers or sickness. Yet we all know that a society which is self-sufficient is the greatest threat to the fossil fuel economy and current power structures that exist today. This system has been and will continue to be, protected at all costs. Human life is expendable whereas corporate profits, economic growth and quarterly gains have all become absolutely sacrosanct.

We are now past peak oil (International Energy Agency, 2006). This is leading to an investment drive for Arctic oil and gas, which holds 13 percent of the world's remaining oil and 30 percent of its gas. As conventional oil declines, the price of oil increases. Insatiable corporate lust for further profit results in dangerous high-risk drilling operations, while even the most expensive regions become economically viable.

Oil and gas corporations plan extensive drilling in the Arctic regions. In September 2010 a UK corporation, Cairn Energy, commenced drilling for oil in Greenland's Arctic waters. In January 2011, BP received approval to drill for oil off the Russian Arctic shelf.

Most revealing, on 16 March 2011, a US presidential commission charged with investigating the Gulf of Mexico oil spill issued recommendations for approval and regulating of oil drilling off the coast of Alaska.

Today: Arctic Feedback Time Bomb

“All truth passes through three stages: First, it is ridiculed; Second, it is violently opposed; and Third, it is accepted as self-evident." - Arthur Schopenhauer

Above: Geographical reconstruction for the PETM from the PALEOMAP Project (www.scotese.com). Boxes indicate reconstructed surface temperature anomalies for the PETM relative to Paleocene background temperatures based on oxygen isotopes, Mg/Ca ratios and TEX86 (compiled by Appy Sluijs). The PETM was a mass ocean extinction event, characterized by ocean warming, ocean acidification and ocean anoxia. In 2006, a group of researchers found that during the PETM, tropical algae migrated into the Arctic Ocean when temperatures rose to 24ºC. A recent study in 2010 discovered that even though the Pliocene Epoch (5.3 to 2.6 million years ago) was approximately 19ºC warmer than today, CO2 levels were only slightly higher than they are today. [21]

Ocean Ice Meltdown + Permafrost Thaw + Venting Methane Hydrates + Tundra Warming/Nitrous Oxide = Arctic Methane Time Bomb.

Today's global warming of less than 1ºC has enabled the oceans to warm to the extent that the unimaginable has happened. The fuse has reached the Arctic methane hydrates, which are melting on the ocean floor. This single factor is the most dire emergency to all life on the planet today.

Detonating the Methane Time Bomb

If this time bomb is allowed to detonate, it will wipe out life on this planet.

Dr. Ira Leifer, researcher at the Marine Science Institute:"The Arctic has enough buried methane that a one percent release would quadruple global concentrations of atmospheric methane. That's the equivalent of increasing CO2 by a factor of ten.... It would be pretty close to the end of civilization as we know it, and this could happen. It doesn't mean it's going to happen … but we want people to be aware [of the possibility]." (In a follow-up communication from Ira Leifer, for clarification, he notes that a factor of 10 has huge uncertainties, that it would probably be something like that but worse. Methane (CH4) has the same forcing on a 20 year time scale (IPCC, 2007) as CO2, but does not overlap with water vapor bands, and is not saturated in its absorption bands, unlike CO2, hence increasing factor of 4 to factor of 10.)

Although governments have been targeting a 2ºC temperature rise – which would be cataclysmic – today (barring technologies to cool the planet and remove CO2 from the atmosphere safely) we are absolutely committed to at least a doubling of today's temperature increase (which is 0.8ºC) within a few decades. (The Ramanathan and Feng 2008 paper, based on GHG emissions alone (without feedbacks), demonstrates a 2.4ºC eventual warming if atmospheric greenhouse gas forcing continues at today's levels: "Lastly, even the most aggressive CO₂ mitigation steps as envisioned now can only limit further additions to the committed warming, but not reduce the already committed GHGs warming of 2.4°C.") This paper cites a risk range of up to 4.3°C as the commitment.

All the components for the runaway scenario that James Hansen speaks of are now operant at 0.8ºC. Abrupt runaway warming adding an additional 1ºC per year is a possibility that could start anytime. This understanding comes from ice core studies of the Younger Dryas abrupt global temperature change event. The end of the Younger Dryas, about 11,500 years ago, was particularly abrupt. In Greenland, temperatures rose 10°C (18°F) in a decade or less.

Acknowledging that this rate of warming can occur from an ice age low, as terrifying as it is, is most critical to our understanding of abrupt, non-linear climate change. With the precautionary principle in mind, we must assume that such a non-linear response is more likely today than in the past, due to the continued pouring of greenhouse gases into the atmosphere during an already warm period (Shakhova et al., Extensive Methane Venting to the Atmosphere from Sediments of the East Siberian Arctic Shelf).

The Arctic Shelf is, in fact, already perforated. This means it has already reached – or gone beyond – the thaw point. The large underwater permafrost "lid" over the East Siberian Arctic Shelf, specifically, is perforated and methane continues to escape into the atmosphere (Shakhova et al.). This may cause a 12-times increase of the modern atmospheric methane burden with consequent catastrophic greenhouse warming. In 2008, Shakhova and Semiletov warned that it is "highly possible for abrupt release at any time." These findings represent the closest humanity has ever approached to a literal doomsday scenario. Venting methane represents the single most catastrophically dangerous effect of global warming to all life on Earth.

In addition to ocean warming, Shakhova is of the belief that there are other factors also contributing to the melting of the hydrates, for example, the flow from rivers. [22]

The rise in the atmospheric concentration of methane had stabilized since year 2000, however, since 2006 it has been increasing again. Climate scientists have determined that these methane emissions are carbon feedback, meaning, the warming of the planet is causing the planet to emit more methane.

Methane carbon feedbacks place us firmly on the brink of runaway global warming and climate disruption. The most feared effect of global warming has commenced. Methane carbon feedbacks are adding to the heat radiation of global warming by increasing the atmospheric methane concentration. Furthermore, the increase in the concentration of atmospheric methane continues to accelerate. The release of methane into the atmosphere is the greatest threat to date in the realm of our current climate emergency. Yet, scientists, in general, have been remarkably silent on even this issue, the gravest of risks. Some scientists have now taken the position that they cannot make any claims that this is a "new" threat without knowing whether the methane hydrate emissions are new or not. However, this position makes no difference to our plight and perhaps even makes the threat worse, as methane gas escaping from methane hydrates today will increase, most likely rapidly, as the global temperature increases.

250 Plumes of Dire Warning

Sonar data from the West Svalbard continental margin recorded in 2008 have shown the presence of methane bubbles emanating from the seabed up-slope, from the upper limit of the methane hydrate stability zone. In the same area, the ocean has warmed by 1°C during the last 30 years. In 2009, it was discovered that 250 plumes of methane gas bubbles had erupted from the seabed off the West Svalbard continental margin (Westbrook et al.). Ronald Cohen of the Carnegie Institution for Science in Washington, DC, says it is a striking result: "What's amazing is that they see such enormous quantities of methane."

The methane being released from hydrates in the 600-square-kilometre area studied likely adds up to 27 kilotonnes a year, which suggests the entire hydrate deposit around Svalbard could be releasing 20 megatonnes a year. If this process becomes widespread along Arctic continental margins, tens of teragrams of methane per year could be released into the ocean. At present, most of the methane reacts with the oxygen in the water to form carbon dioxide, another greenhouse gas. In sea water, this forms carbonic acid, which adds to further ocean acidification. The Arctic ocean water is acidifying rapidly. Research indicates that 10% of the Arctic Ocean will be corrosively acidic by 2018; 50% by 2050; and 100% by 2100. In October 2009, Professor Jean-Pierre Gattuso, of France's Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique, said: "Over the whole planet, there will be a threefold increase in the average acidity of the oceans, which is unprecedented during the past 20 million years." To date, almost none of the Arctic (or anywhere else) has been surveyed in a way that might detect methane releases like the Svalbard releases.

Two things are certain: the two shelves – the East Siberian Arctic Shelf and the West Svalbard continental shelf – are in motion to emit a massive amount of methane; and the IPCC has omitted methane feedbacks, the most dangerous aspect of climate change, from reports and models.

Shakhova's studies have been critical in understanding the dire urgency we have before us. Prior to Shakhova's findings, scientists long feared that this scenario could happen, generating huge positive feedbacks in the enhanced greenhouse effect from GHG emissions, but assumed methane escaping into the atmosphere was not a possibility for at least another century. This delay-in-release theory, now proven to be mistaken, was based upon scientists' assumptions and their models with minimal evidence. This is just one example of why we must stop modelling when we are already acutely aware we are in the greatest emergency our species has ever faced. Models, based on future predictions (which have already proven to be dangerous, optimistic and incorrect – minimizing our sense of an emergency), enable a society and state governments to deny our current reality, effectively eradicating humanity's possibility for survival.

Sergei Zimov, a scientist studying climate change in Russia's Arctic for 30 years, fears that as the permafrost thaws and as the organic matter in it becomes exposed to the air, global warming predictions will have to be drastically accelerated, even beyond some of the most pessimistic forecasts. Zimov: The thawing permafrost "will lead to a type of global warming which will be impossible to stop…. The deposits of organic matter in these soils are so gigantic that they dwarf global oil reserves." Zimov continues: "US government statistics show mankind emits about 7 billion tons of carbon a year. Permafrost areas hold 500 billion tons of carbon, which can fast turn into greenhouse gases…. If you don't stop emissions of greenhouse gases into the atmosphere ... the Kyoto Protocol (an international pact aimed at reducing greenhouse emissions) will seem like childish prattle."

The video below, filmed in January 2008, shows thin ice overlying the methane seep at Atqasuk, which is bubbling like boiling water. (2010: 2:43)

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0KlBev6N5m8

It is critical to reiterate how abrupt shifts in climate can occur in very short timescales. Ice core evidence is key. Greenland ice core records show that during the last glacial stage (100,000 – 11,500 years ago) the temperature there alternately warmed and cooled several times by more than 10ºC. This was accompanied by major climate change around the northern hemisphere, felt particularly strongly in the North Atlantic region. Each warm and cold episode took just a few decades to develop.

Most of Earth's extinction events have now been linked to extreme climate changes and for most of these extinction events, methane hydrates have been cited as playing a role. Today, we CAN reduce our CO2 emissions from fossil fuels, whereas we WILL NOT BE ABLE TO reduce methane emissions once they begin to accelerate once they begin to accelerate from carbon feedback. Such massive natural forces will take over and change our world and be absolutely out of our control. Such an event will initially likely result in the melting of the Antarctic icecap, which would raise sea levels by 50 metres, as well as, completely change the climates of the world.

It is therefore beyond obvious that today's 0.8ºC temperature rise is ALREADY too high to keep the Arctic permafrost safe. Therefore, in order to avoid the possible catastrophic methane feedback that could be imminent, we must prepare to cool down the planet immediately, instead of continuing to aim for a deadly 2ºC target – recently revised upwards by the Tyndall Centre for Climate Change Research from a dangerous level to an extremely dangerous level.

In the following video titled Methane Hydrates: Natural Hazard or Natural Resource? (2008 | 53:08) Renowned geochemist Miriam Kastner discusses whether or not methane hydrates are a hazard to climate change. 19:20 into the video Kastner shows fascinating film footage which clearly demonstrates the extreme instability of hydrates. Ultimately, melting and venting hydrates will, on our current emissions path, prove to be deadly. Ultimately, drilling hydrates to burn further gas will also prove to be deadly. The only solution is to declare a planetary state of emergency – to stop burning all fossil fuels.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mSTm6cZjO14

Compromised Science | Serving the Propaganda Machine

"It's difficult to get a man to understand something if his salary depends upon his not understanding it." — Upton Sinclair

The role of scientists in explaining the implications of non-decision is critical, yet scientists have been remarkably reticent to publicly criticize what they have privately slammed as totally unacceptable and inadequate targets. The few scientists who are vocal run the risk of being effectively ignored, ridiculed or silenced due to corporate-controlled media and the psychological manipulation of society.

11 January 2011: In an interview with Dr. Peter Carter, a founding director of the Canadian Association of Physicians for the Environment, Carter accurately conveys our dire reality: "Tragically, with few noted individual exceptions (such as John Holdren, James Hansen, Hans Shellnhuber, Kevin Anderson, Andrew Glikson), the climate scientists, and all the science organizations, are sticking to their policy of what is, in effect, dangerous climate change denial. They avoid talking 'dangerous climate change' or warning of climate catastrophe. To eradicate any doubt on accelerating climate dangers, climate scientists would have to say and explain how today's unavoidable amount and duration of global warming, climate disruption, and ocean acidification are now catastrophically dangerous to our survival and to most of life."

Carter continues: "According to Stephen Schneider, 'The IPCC does not determine risks and does not define what would constitute dangerous interference with the climate system. The IPCC says that defining the dangerous climate change is a value judgment that only the policymakers can make.' (The late Stephen Schneider's website is here and he discusses the issue in this paper.) The scientists in general are sticking to this policy. National and international climate policy discussions are being based formally on the absurd assumption that dangerous climate interference is still some time in the future that can still be avoided, so there is no emergency. James Hansen asked the climate scientists to support his 2008 public statement that 'We really have reached a point of a planetary emergency,' but none have. With no prospect of rapid drastic emissions reductions, we all need to be most gravely concerned for the future of humanity and all life. We need climate scientists to understand that public and formal silence on the catastrophic climate change dangers (or risks) to the huge, most-vulnerable human populations, to the future of civilization and to humanity is, in effect, a powerful value judgement."

It is beyond reckless for scientists to continue to insist on, thus wait for, absolute proof. Society must not accept this. Rather, we must demand action based on the risk of unparalleled magnitude, which embraces the precautionary principle. We continue to ignore methane in the same way that world governments and scientists continue to ignore the global food security crisis we will face if temperatures are allowed to further increase.

The universally recognized risk science formula is Risk = Probability x Magnitude. This is a precautionary formula when it comes to large damaging magnitudes.

The IPCC assesses probability for the policy makers, but does not include magnitude. To make matters worse, the probability results are derived from computer models invented by the climate scientists. The probability, is in fact, only as reliable as the models, and the data fed into the models. The models are all experimental – the computer runs are called experiments.

Therefore global heating due to methane hydrate presents a massive risk of planetary catastrophe – today. We are in an abrupt global greenhouse gas heating event right now, with the atmospheric concentration of global warming greenhouse gases being increased thousands of times faster than any previous heating event in the history of planet Earth. By waiting for "absolute" proof, we are effectively guaranteeing that we will have no chance in hell at preventing runaway climate change once these irreversible feedbacks are fully operation. To wait until these feedbacks are ABSOLUTELY underway just so we can say there is no scientific "uncertainty" is nothing less than progenycidal negligence.

Imagine if you will, that it is 1 a.m. You are awake in your home. You look outside only to see, to your horror, that your neighbour's house is on fire. Maybe they are sleeping – should you wake them up? Maybe they are enjoying a glass of wine and would rather not be disturbed. What should you do? What if they don't have any house insurance? Should you wait until the next day and check with them first? What if their children become frightened by the fire? You don’t know with 100% certainty that it will keep burning. It may go out on its own. Maybe it's best not to tell them. Of course this is ridiculous. You would call the emergency number immediately because you recognized an emergency. So why are we not screaming "Emergency!" at the top of our lungs, when our entire planet is burning up and all of our children are in it?

All of the climate change assessment projections are based on computer models developed by climate science modellers. If the models lack reliable data the projections cannot be relied on. All of the model results have wide ranges of uncertainty. The 2007 IPCC Report used the statistical mean of these wide ranges of results, up to the boundary of a 90 percent ‘confidence level’. The range is assumed to achieve practically full scientific certainty, however, a wide range has to mean a high level of uncertainty. This clever playing with numbers practice is in violation of the precautionary principle (adopted by the UNFCCC in 1992) which affirms that where there is a threat of climate change, the lack of full scientific certainty should not be used as a reason for postponing measures to prevent the threat. Had the IPCC respected this principle from the adoption and onset, they would have explicitly considered risks of higher temperatures and greater impacts above the mean, up to and outside the boundary of a 90 percent confidence level. They would have explicitly considered, thus included, dynamical melting of the Greenland and Antarctic Ice Sheets, and non–linear responses to drivers of climate change. This would have provided the world a far more accurate measure of the climate crisis, a crisis allowed to escalate into the emergency situation that we now find ourselves in today.

The Earth's temperature has increased 0.8ºC. While CO2 concentrations in the atmosphere have increased 34 percent, methane gas concentrations have skyrocketed – increasing a staggering 158 percent. Yet, the scientists essentially disregard methane as a major issue. Couple this with the fact that methane is 72 to 100 times more heat trapping than CO2 in the short term and the phrase "don't scare the horses" comes to mind.

The climate system turns out to be far more sensitive than the IPCC has assumed for their global temperature projection models and their global climate change assessment. All of the climate change assessment depends on the value calculated and used for the ‘climate sensitivity’. The climate sensitivity is provided from the results of computer models. All of the models give an immense range - particularly for the upper most sensitive range.

19 October 2010, Rolf Schuttenhelm: "Climate sensitivity is a term used for the expected atmospheric temperature rise for a doubling of CO2 concentrations. Combining all the relevant atmospheric research published up to the end of 2004, the IPCC in its 2007 Fourth Assessment Report (WG1, chapter 2) reached the conclusion climate sensitivity would be between 2 and 4.5 degrees Centigrade, with a 3C rise as ‘best estimate’. World leading climate researchers of NASA (James Hansen) and for instance the Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research (Hans Joachim Schellnhuber) have since argued true sensitivity could be twice as high when including slow climate feedbacks, like Arctic methane, deep-sea methane or increased biodegradation of ecosystems, leading to further CO2 emissions, all following an initial (industrial) CO2 induced temperature rise. These slow feedbacks lead to the runaway warming scenarios with exponential damage. Somewhere over the climate politics-filled years of 2008 and 2009 the world lost track of the basics of climate science. While the new insights and publications on slow-acting climate feedbacks were worrisome to many – others hoped for comfort in denying the basic triggering factor, the climate effects of high anthropogenic CO2 emissions, mostly due to the abundant use of fossil fuels. Although the IPCC report clearly mentions fast-acting climate feedbacks, like water vapour and ice albedo, as important contributors to expected temperature rises, somehow we allowed a flawed focus to develop on the molecule of CO2 itself. Meanwhile we risk losing focus on the slow climate feedbacks. If new climate research proves the findings (‘adding slow feedbacks creates another doubling of warming’ -> 6 degrees (PDF)) of people like Hansen and Schellnhuber right, then communicators of climate science should really consider to once again extent the definition of true climate sensitivity – or establish a new term that clearly includes the (long-term) CO2-temperature responses of other Earth systems than solely the atmosphere, like oceans and terrestrial biosphere. "Amongst the most obvious of climate change facts is that abrupt greenhouse gas heat energy situation is happening today, yet scientists are currently doing research into the "probability of abrupt climate change." If this is not a complete reflection of our self delusion and denialism – I'm not certain what is. Just consider the well known IPCC 10,000 year graphs of temperature and radiative forcing. The increase in today's temperature, CO2 and methane is a vertical line. This abrupt rate of heating has never happened before – indeed we are warming over 10 times faster than the ice core record, and this is will become 25 times faster by 2100. Greenhouse gas levels now exceed anything seen over the past 800,000 years or more. Scientists, after telling us for decades we must adapt to a catastrophic 2ºC, are now producing papers on how we will have to adapt to 4ºC.

This is modeling madness. By doing this the scientists are exposing humanity to a huge risk of global climate catastrophe. This madness is effectively preventing any possibility of an emergency climate response. Modelling for future catastrophe, is effectively distracting us from the climate emergency we face, dead on, today. Further madness has made its presence known. As methane hydrate melting and venting accelerates – securing our path to extinction – scientists have now begun to do modelling on the hydrates.

Recently, it appears that leading methane scientists, who have been instrumental in sounding the methane alarm (based on their observations that the warming Arctic is driving the thaw and methane venting due to anthropogenic climate change), are being pressured by other scientists to provide "absolute proof" that the thaw and venting have not been occurring for reasons other than human-made warming. If my daughter is pushed off the playground equipment, causing a broken arm – her arm needs a cast. Urgently. It makes no difference who pushed her.

Given the unparalleled enormous risks, the precautionary principle should certainly take precedence. The risk formula can be applied for such a colossal catastrophic impact, even when there is too little data to calculate a reliable probability.

The grim reality coupled with common sense tells us unequivocally that the Arctic temperature is only going one way – upward. Therefore, at some point it will hit the thaw point (if it has not done so already) and no modeling is necessary to understand this simple fact.

"Catastrophic emissions cannot be ruled out." That is a main statement when pouring over scientific papers on methane. It reads like a disclaimer along with the cautious language of possible, could, and other select language that allows us to continue denying our reality. Today, the majority of published climate science is all framed to allow the fossil fuel industry to not only survive, but continue growing and globalizing.

When reviewing scientific papers, one cannot find any references that address the absolute necessity of stopping fossil fuel combustion. The most important component of stabilizing our planet's climate simply is not addressed. It is both revealing and ominous that proponents of the exploitation, which includes scientists, are suggesting that we now have to extract the methane to make the hydrates safe. Extracting the methane is unavoidably dangerous as this would depressurize the local environment. The gas extracted from the methane hydrates will be burned to drive the fossil fuel world economy – emitting huge amounts of CO2 in the process. All of the IPCC scenarios currently used, accept that our world economies are dependent and locked into fossil fuels - thereby legitimizing the fossil fuel industry.

In the past, IPCC scenarios consisted of two varying extents: i) some areas in which the world was dependent on fossil fuel for energy, and ii) a scenario (A1T) that was essentially non fossil fuel-based (as found in the 1992 IPCC assessment). One must wonder when the A1T scenario disappeared. We can safely assume why. It's not so difficult to control the information. It takes only one phone call from a CEO at the controls of a billion-dollar fossil fuel corporation to blacklist a research scientist, an institute or a university for corporate funding.

Don't Alarm the Public

"The greatest sin of our time is not the few who have destroyed but the vast majority who sat idly by." — Martin Luther King Jr.

If we wait for "100% certainty" in the midst of a planetary emergency, we are dead. But why this "don't scare the horses" approach when faced with the greatest threat to life on Earth?

i) Both scientists and NGOs wrap themselves in a blanket of denial in order to protect the current economic system.

ii) Both scientists and NGOs are fearful of climate sceptics.

iii) Both scientists and NGOs protect their funding sources at all costs.

iv) The false belief that technology will save us.

The end result is that the entire global civil society is being kept in the dark. As the scientists hide behind the claim they cannot define what constitutes dangerous atmospheric interference with the climate system as that is a value judgment only civil society can make, powerful NGOs, who (falsely) claim to speak for civil society are completely silent in order to protect their powerful brands and incoming funding. These actions are both incomprehensible and inexcusable; only a massive mobilization at breakneck speed towards a zero carbon society can possibly avert a cataclysmic mass-extinction event. The question is – who, if anyone, is going to tell the world the truth?

The Seafloor is Teeming with Recently Discovered Life – A Vital Component of Earth’s Carbon Cycle that Governs Climate

“Deep in the mud and slime of things, even there, something sings.” – author unknown

Only recently have scientists discovered that nearly one third of all life on Earth consists of microbes living under the seafloor in a dark world without oxygen. [23] And only recently was it discovered that the seafloor methane cycle, run by microbes, is that of a critical loop in the Earth's carbon cycle that governs our climate. This vital discovery remains unknown to the vast majority of citizens.

Killer in our Midst: "As scientists have continued their investigations of the Archaea, they have made some stunning discoveries. Unknown and unsuspected until just two decades ago, archaeans turn out to be major, if not dominant, constituents of the biota of oceans and soils, and significant contributors to essential biochemical processes therein. In both oceans and soils, archaeans oxidize ammonia, a critical step in the production of biologically usable nitrogen compounds (a process called nitrogen fixation). It used to be thought that this process was carried on solely by bacteria, but it is now known that archaea oxidize tens to hundreds – and, in some situations, perhaps thousands – of times more ammonia than bacteria (Leininger, 2006; Wuchter, 2006). 'Higher' plants, like photosynthesizing land plants, cannot accomplish this task on their own, and are completely dependent on microbes to provide them with this essential nutrient. In the oceans, it has been discovered, Crenarcheota 'are the most abundant single group of prokaryotes' (Wuchter, 2006)."

A tiny fraction of all the methane that is created bubbles up from the seafloor at cold seeps. Under normal conditions most of the methane never makes it into the water. Rather, it is eaten by other species of archaea, which in turn supply energy to microbial partners: bacteria that can reduce sulfate in the mud to hydrogen sulfide. It is this compound that provides food for the clams, tube worms, and other animals that cluster around cold seeps on the seafloor. This consortium has been discovered everywhere researchers have looked, including a mud volcano in the Arctic Ocean, and at cold seeps and hydrate mounds in the Gulf of Mexico. In 2002 in a crater off the Democratic Republic of the Congo, 10,000 feet down, a team discovered a magnificent cold seep with a vast field of clams and mussels, blue shrimp, purple sea cucumbers, and six-foot-long tube worms growing in bushes next to mounds of gas hydrate. The microbes were found here in the mud also. The microbe consortiums are at the base of the food chain for these incredible seafloor oases. In the Black Sea, on the other hand, the consortium is the food chain. The mats on this seafloor are a thick interwoven patchwork of methane-eating archaea and sulfate-reducing bacteria.

Imagine an Earth where these microorganisms didn't exist. All the methane that is now being converted to carbonate and biomass would, instead, be bubbling freely up from the seafloor – everywhere.

While we all understand how our Earth would be a completely different planet if not for the existence of plants, we neglect to understand what exists that keeps Earth from having a methane atmosphere.

The existence of the deep biosphere has been established. And it remains an astonishing paradox. The energy requirements necessary to simply stay alive are much higher than the energy these microorganisms have. The secret may be their incredible slowness. Unbelievably they are dividing only every thousand, ten thousand and hundred thousand years. Scientists suggest that the microbes living under the seafloor today might have survived the growth and division of our continents as well as the opening and closing of Earth's vast oceans. While humans race to their own extinction, these living creatures bear witness to our planet's evolution over billions of years – living in time with our planet's deepest, slowest rhythms. They have been living almost like rock, which is exactly what made these little creatures so easy to miss. They have always been there, buried in Earth's deepest past, but only recently have scientists uncovered their humble presence.

Seafloor mud is alive. It is powerful. It is grossly underestimated. [24]

A seafloor ecosystem alive with microbes who vigilantly control the planet's methane cycle must be considered an essential and most significant component of our planet's natural mechanisms that have allowed life to evolve. Surely an intelligent society would respect and protect such a vital and key living element of our carbon cycle – rather than risk destroying it with drilling. There is an entire world that exists that we know nothing about. We have only just discovered this cycle within an ecosystem that has existed for perhaps billions of years. Yet we understand little about it, beyond the fact that this system contributes to a cycle that allows life to exist. We do know that this fascinating cycle is also extremely unstable. Only a short-sighted, delusional and narcissistic culture would believe they can dominate nature without severe consequences. Everything is connected.

Listen carefully to the following video (2010 | 1:19) from the UNEP Global Outlook on Methane Gas Hydrates Project (as covered in part II) featuring Tina Treude, a Biological Oceanographer from IFM-GEOMAR. At the end of the video, Treude states "Then at some point maybe there will be not ... not enough methane available for these communities, so that's something we should think about, whether exploitation of gas hydrates could, at the end ... kind of, yeah ... turn off the mechanism that is driving these communities."

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tVex1UHh31I

Renowned oceanographer, Ian MacDonald, states that "the ecosystem depends on these kinds of organisms, and if you start wiping them out, you don't know what happens." Macdonald stresses the ominous predicament that many other ecologists recognize – that the entire service model is flawed. Macdonald believes that even if it was proven that ocean life such as tube worms and brittle stars "do nothing" for people, "they have their own intrinsic value – it matters that these organisms are healthy or not healthy." The world needs scientists like MacDonald.

Coconut Revolution

“How do we stop the abusers who perpetrate a perpetual-growth economy? Seeing oiled pelicans and burned sea turtles won’t move them to stop. Nor will hundred-degree days in Moscow. We can’t stop them by making them feel guilty. We can’t stop them by appealing to them to do the right thing. The only way to stop them is to make it so they have no other choice.” - by Derrick Jensen, Orion

So what would an intelligent global society do? We should, with both extreme caution and the utmost urgency, undertake everything that is absolutely necessary if we don't want to risk starting the sequence of events described above. To do this we must reduce total CO2 emissions from now onwards – at breakneck speed - until we reach virtual zero / negative CO2. In addition, we must take measures to protect carbon sinks such as the Amazon rainforest. If we continue to burn fossil fuels, we will be securing an unstoppable methane-fuelled runaway global warming event within the foreseeable future. Only major absolute reductions in CO2 emissions NOW will avoid this risk. The highest greenhouse gas-emitting developed states, including the US, Canada and Australia, have mere years to reach zero emissions if the world is to avoid an extremely dangerous catastrophic rise of 2ºC. Yet we know states have no plans to stop fossil fuel extraction, production and use and only plans to further expand their fossil fuel industries.

Outside of abolishing corporate personhoods (which will not happen as corporations now control most all governments), we have few examples of societies protecting themselves from corporate ecocide and genocide. However, we do have some examples, such as the Coconut Revolution. The award-winning documentary The Coconut Revolution tells the story of the remarkable victory of Bougainville, a tiny Pacific island community who were forced to defend their lives, their land and their children against western colonial power – the giant mining corporation Rio Tinto Zinc. Despite a military occupation and blockade, the citizens of the island won. This could be considered the world's first eco-revolution, and a good-versus-evil story of the 21st century.

Such revolutions may sound radical today to those still clinging to the illusions that brilliantly distract us, but as repression sets in and food becomes scarce, as rights and freedoms continue to be abolished, such revolutions are certain to be our future.

Greenhouse gas pollution caused by a global fossil fuel economy is now the greatest ever crime against humanity, against all life and against Earth herself. Those who are complicit in keeping the truth hidden from global society are also complicit in the most severe human rights violations and potential genocide. Scientists, governments and civil society NGOs who knowingly choose not to declare that we are beyond dangerous interference with the climate system and who choose not to declare a planetary emergency are clearly complicit.

In the end, destroying our own habitat to protect a global economy that serves few – on the backs of many – has brought us to precipices on several fronts. This has been possible because delusional psychopathic tendencies are allowed to proceed unchecked. Recently, the technology of digital photography destroyed the billion dollar industry of film processing almost overnight. With it, the market for silver crashed. But again, no problem – corporations created a new market for silver in the form of nanoparticles, which are now dangerously being pumped into our food, bodies and ecosystems. Why leave anything in the ground when you can rape, pillage and sell it? Don't need it? Create a market for it. Just call the TckTckTck creator Havas – they will help you. The insatiable quest for corporate profits has become full-blown pathological and suicidal. To save humanity, the corporations must be destroyed. The only question is how.

While We Sleep | Corporate Greed – How to Create a Market

“If those in charge of our society - politicians, corporate executives, and owners of press and television - can dominate our ideas, they will be secure in their power. They will not need soldiers patrolling the streets. We will control ourselves."- Howard Zinn

In the 1980s and 90s, silver recycling was initiated in local industries (with the passage and implementation of environmental legislation such as the Clean Water Act in the USA in 1972) and the use of silver in photography declined in a massive way due to the advent of digital photography. Recognizing that no single approach could rival the popularity of photography, in order to revive the failing market of silver, the challenge was to create a diversity – ultimately hundreds of dispersive products. These products, containing the nanoparticle (literally meaning billion; one billionth of a metre in size), would go untested for safety.

Above graphs: The silver market, 1981 -1990 and 2000-2009

Mission accomplished, the market entry of antibacterial soaps alone was explosive. Nanosilver doesn't distinguish between good bacteria and bad – rather it kills all bacteria (even essential bacteria that both humans and other animals depend upon), therefore a stealth psychological advertising campaign was key. A brilliant clusterfuck campaign was designed and framed around the subtle, underlying message of fear – fear of germs. And in reality, a campaign designed to instill fear in people – essentially fear of themselves and each other – is nothing less than brilliant. Couple this onslaught with corporate media blitzes of virus outbreaks and flus and you have created a money-printing enterprise that would make the corporate-owned Federal Reserve blush. As our shopping malls and other places of worship installed "antibacterial stations," we entered into a new realm of danger. Indeed we are playing with fire, at a time when anti-bacterial resistance is an ever increasing global medical problem.

Bloomberg Business Week, 2008: "Now it's time to start cashing in." Bloomberg reports that throughout 2005, companies large and small will be rushing more nano-based products from labs to the marketplace. Bloomberg further reports that consumers will encounter nanotechnology in the form of nick-proof trims on Hummers, Wilson tennis racquets with extra pop, even golf balls designed to fly straight.

Today, concentration of silver in aquatic systems has declined (in the developed world) as waterways struggle to recover from high levels of silver introduced by the photography industry during the twentieth century. Environmental studies have shown that many aquatic organisms were only able to survive in natural waters after the silver concentration decreased. Today, silver nanoparticle products, such as antibacterial soaps, result in highly toxic levels of silver being reintroduced into rivers and lakes through water treatment facilities. To protect and ensure corporate profits (projected annual market of approximately one trillion dollars by 2015), the vast environmental problems including health and waste are externalized onto the people. Today we have the most vulnerable peoples in the world mining silver in order to produce golf balls that fly straight, antibacterial socks, toys and hundreds of other items we have never needed in the latest corporate greed game of Russian roulette.

Looking at the present situation in which our self-described "brilliant and educated" western world finds itself, it is safe to say that science has contributed far more damage to our collective society than it has benefits. As the trained masochists we are, instead of rejecting it, we beg for more. The big winners are the corporations and the big losers, as always, are the environment and life itself. We are the rats they test on and the proles programmed to buy what poisons us. Although nanosilver is a pesticide and therefore should undergo the rigorous and extensive testing process involved in registering a pesticide (as well as carry a pesticide label), not surprisingly, Nanotechnology Industries Association and other trade groups insist that nanosilver is antimicrobial (that it goes after germs) and is not a pesticide.

Crimestop

"Until they become conscious they will never rebel, and until after they have rebelled they cannot become conscious" - George Orwell

Crimestop is a Newspeak term taken from the novel Nineteen Eighty-Four by George Orwell. It means to rid oneself of unwanted thoughts, i.e., thoughts that interfere with the ideology of the Party. This way, a person avoids committing thoughtcrime. Orwell: "Crimestop means the faculty of stopping short, as though by instinct, at the threshold of any dangerous thought. It includes the power of not grasping analogies, of failing to perceive logical errors, of misunderstanding the simplest arguments if they are inimical to Ingsoc, and of being bored or repelled by any train of thought which is capable of leading in a heretical direction. Crimestop, in short, means protective stupidity."

Crimestop, coupled with our ignorance and disrespect for a planet that graciously sustains us, apparently knows no bounds.

Blinded by greed and addiction to fossil fuel energy, the delusional are willing to stop at nothing to further drill and rape our Earth as the masses march naïvely yet obediently to their death.

Will we proceed? Are we ready to smash our TVs and start living? Consider the recent quote by Professor Kevin Anderson, of the Tyndall Centre:

"Climate negotiations continue to be informed by the astrological view, where – through either ignorance or a desire to save face – it is assumed the problem will be the same next year as this. The science, however, tells a very different story. Next year, the problem will have become worse – as it has done each and every day that we have failed to reduce emissions since the Earth Summit in Rio in 1992. The difficulty with the science is that it lays bare the inadequacy of our favoured response to climate change.... is it therefore not time for those of us who work in climate change to refrain from finessing our analysis, and instead be as blunt and direct publicly as we are prepared to be privately?"

Fuck Patience. [at END:CIV]

Who's ready?

Life or death? You choose.

End.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kILjOo-O4LE

Cory Morningstar is climate justice activist whose recent writings can be found on Canadians for Action on Climate Change and The Art of Annihilation site where you can read her bio. You can follow her on Twitter: @elleprovocateur

References | Part IV:

[21] Additional anthropogenic GHG forcing and methane emission threaten conditions approaching those of the Paleocene–Eocene Thermal Maximum (PETM) 56 Ma, when the eruption of some 1500 GtC (Sluijis et al, 2007), inferred from low d13C values (–2–3% @ 13°C), this resulted in global warming of approximately 6°C, development of subtropical conditions in the Arctic circle (sea temperatures 18–23°C — Sluijis et al, 2007), ocean acidification and mass extinction of 30–35% of benthic plankton. The recent history of the atmosphere, and the presence of thousands of GtC in metastable methane hydrates, clathrates and permafrost, suggests a CO2 trajectory toward 550 or 650 ppm, as projected by Anderson and Bowes (2008), which may lead toward mass extinction of species and breakdown of global civilization (Stipp, 2004). According to the World Conservation Union (2007): “Extinction rates based on known extinctions of birds, mammals and amphibians over the past 100 years indicates that current extinction rates are 50 to 500 times higher than extinction rates in the fossil record.” It has been estimated that continuation of carbon emissions in a “Business as usual” scenario will result in global warming of 3°C over the twenty-first century, eliminating a majority (60%) of species on the planet (Flannery, 2005; Hansen et al,2006). Scientists suggest another cause of mid-Pliocene warm period was a lower height of the Greenland-Scotland Ridge.

[22] D Nicolsky and N Shakhova, Modeling sub-sea permafrost in the East Siberian Arctic Shelf: the Dmitry Laptev Strait: http://iopscience.iop.org/1748-9326/5/1/015006/

[23] "In 1977, scientists made a stunning discovery on the bottom of the Pacific Ocean that forever changed our understanding of our planet and life on it. They discovered the first deep-sea hydrothermal vents, and—to their complete surprise—a lush community of exotic life thriving around them. Rather than photosynthetic plants, the base of the hydrothermal vent food chain starts with chemosynthetic microorganisms that use sulfur and methane (both of which are poisonous to oxygen-breathing animals) to convert carbon dioxide into organic material. Among these microorganisms are hyperthermophilic (super heat-loving) Archaea, which thrive at temperatures as high as 113š C (235š F). Archaea have now been recognized as a completely separate kingdom of life—as genetically different from bacteria as bacteria are from trees. Archaea means "ancient ones," and scientists suspect they developed early in the history of the Earth. "Discovery of the hydrothermal vent communities is one of the most exciting developments in oceanography in the past 50 years," adds JimYoder, director of NSF's Division of Ocean Sciences." | Source: http://www.whoi.edu/page.do?pid=12458&tid=282&cid=942

[24] In 2004, Robert Kunzig guides us through the incredible discovery of Archaea in an article titled 20,000 Microbes Under the Sea: In 1999, biogeochemist Antje Boetius was researching sediments (taken from the Hydrate Ridge) which were loaded with a methane eater. The methane eater was not a bacterium at all, rather it was a species of Archaea, an ancient group of microbes that diverged from bacteria billions of years ago. These microbes are as distinct from bacteria today, genetically speaking, as humans are. The discovery: Boetius was attempting to count the archaea and sulfate reducers (bacteria), to determine how many there were in her sediment samples. The cells were clumped together which made the task most difficult. She then noticed the clusters of archaea and the clusters of sulfate reducers in a very strange shape. The archaea looked like clumps – lots of cells together whereas the sulfate reducers were like shells, a circle of sulfate reducers with nothing in the middle. Then it struck her. The sulfate reducers were stuck to the archaea, forming a shell around them. The idea of a microbial consortium was compelling. Researchers later performed the same experiment that had been done so many times in vain – the injection of methane into the sediment. However, this time it vanished with sulfide appearing in its place. Each clump contained hundreds of cells. There were about 900 million clumps in every ounce of sediment at Hydrate Ridge. The archaea found in these clumps were close relatives of the archaea that further down the seabed (one quarter to a half mile down). These are the archaea that produce the methane in the first place. While the ‘methane makers’ assemble the gas (from hydrogen and carbon dioxide), the ‘methane eaters’ do something like the reverse – however, not quite, as they do not appear to give off hydrogen. In a way that remains unclear (as of 2004) they pass energy onto the sulfate reducers that surround them. What the archaea get in return is also not clear. There was found to be a delicate interaction that scientists did not understand.

Further Reading:

A Killer in Our Midst | http://www.killerinourmidst.com/

Only Zero Carbon | http://www.onlyzerocarbon.org/

Videos:

Media Education Foundation | http://www.mediaed.org/

Calgary - How about totally free public transit?

2011-03-11T08:43:00.002-05:00

The first step is to send a strong signal to people by making hopping on a bus or train absolutely free. Cost is not a deciding factor for a lot of people, but it is for some and, more importantly, anything that makes it easier and more attractive to take transit should be adopted.

The second step is to dramatically increase the places transit goes and how often it goes there. Don’t think you are making a big difference by adding a new leg to a light rail system when you really need a dozen new short and long legs that cover a city like a web. We need busses going up and down major streets every five minutes at all hours of the day. It has to be easy to jump on transit and easy to get to all sorts of places from anywhere in the city.

The third step is to build related infrastructure such as multi-level car parks at train stations, pedestrian tunnels and bridges, and express bus terminals.

Read more: How about totally free public transit? | Troy Media Corporation http://www.troymedia.com/2011/03/11/how-about-totally-free-public-transit/#ixzz1GIYFyqcd

2011 | The Race to the Bottom Accelerates

2011-02-18T14:11:00.000-05:00

Published February 17th, 2011 by Political Context

By Cory Morningstar

This piece is the latest in Cory Morningstar and Gregory Vickrey’s hard-hitting critique of corporate environmentalism, part of their book and multimedia project due out in 2011.

Illustration courtesy of Stephanie McMillan | CODE GREEN

"The Earth isn't dying, it’s being killed, and those who are killing it have names and addresses." - Utah Philips

As we now stand firmly on the precipice – staring irreversible climate catastrophe and natural resource depletion squarely in the face – the world accelerates its pace in a mad race to the bottom. Running with the baton are the world’s largest environmental NGOs - non-profit organizations. Although the industrial non-profit complex claims to speak for civil society, in reality these groups are the sanctioning agents of a planet which is rapidly becoming completely dominated by corporate control. These groups have been integral to lending legitimacy and credibility to the very corporations hell bent on destroying and commodifying what little remains of our increasingly fragile planet. What we are now witnessing is a race for the last remaining shared commons. Commons which should be protected and held ‘in trust’ for future generations – if only our governments were not mere puppets of corporate power and control.

WTF WEF: "Defining Civil Society, Once and For All"

"We are blinded, enchanted and finally enslaved by spectacle." – Empire of Illusion, Chris Hedges

In the World Economic Forum (WEF) annual meeting of 2005 one topic of significant importance was 'Defining Civil Society, Once and For All'. The moderator Bassir Pour cited there was a 15 minute delay as many of the participants had been listening to the panel titled 'The G8 and Africa: Rhetoric or Action? ' This panel had highlighted an example of 'civil society in action' in the form of a demonstration by Greenpeace, which Pour said put a smile on her lips because it was so peaceful. To be sure, there is nothing that makes a corporation or corporate-controlled government happier than a passive, unthreatening demonstration with no fighting spirit. Mind you, the same corporate entities do not uphold such similar peaceful ideologies for themselves to abide by. For example, in Columbia and other developing countries, Coca-Cola has murdered hundreds of union leaders. Dole has had no qualms in knowingly exposing banana workers to toxins resulting in sterilization. On December 26, 2009, Dora "Alicia" Recinos Sorto, age 32, was assassinated. Dora was the second anti-mining activist killed that week in the small community of Nueva Trinidad. Recinos Sorto was eight months pregnant and carrying her two-year old child when she was shot on her way back from doing laundry at a nearby river. Canadian Mining Company Pacific Rim has come under fire for these accelerating assassinations which continue today. In vulnerable countries such violence has become a daily part of life. Activists are targeted and become the invisible victims of the murderous economic system. Demonstrations have morphed from the fierce unwavering determination witnessed in the sixties to the 'acceptable' demonstrations now recognized today which are overwhelmingly ineffective. Such assembly line 'protests' undoubtedly inspire reactions from the global elite such as, "look at the cute proles who believe they can make a difference – adorable. Now let’s get back to business." Touching on today’s ineffective movements, on 3 February 2011, Mr. Fish of truthdig.org asks the question: "What do we have now? An anti-war movement that is so gutless and so savagely unimaginative that, rather than gaining purpose and momentum in the face of our government’s ever-increasing disdain for peace in the Middle East, it has proved itself to be too lazy, even too cowardly, to face down the very disease of oligarchy that it had concocted itself to cure." This statement can easily be applied to today’s environmental movement.

Pacific Rim Corporation: Above: Anti-Mining Activist Recinos Sorto - Assassinated

WEF: "Organizing Their Dream World"

One response to the question of 'how to define civil society' was that since big business foundations are incentivized by the tax code, corporations are not civil society, but foundations are. Therefore it should be no surprise the ‘big green’ groups who claim they receive no corporate funding can legitimately do so, merely because foundations serve as corporate front groups. The big greens are funded by the very foundations set up by the corporations who essentially serve as a money laundering service in what the elites proclaim as philanthro-capitalism. Others questions in the WEF discussion were: "Could an NGO formed by a corporation be part of civil society? Does acceptance of government contracts make an NGO an extension of government? Are the big NGOs still members of civil society?" In the summing up period, Pour said, Kofi Annan’s advice was the main point: to keep "organizing our dream world."

The following year, at the World Economic Forum Annual Meeting of 2006 a topic of significant importance was 'Building Trust in Public and Private Institutions'. Richard Edelman, President and CEO of Edelman, USA, reported that opinion leaders now trust NGOs more than business, media and government for information. "NGOs are the most trusted institution in nearly every market," he stated. (Edelman's Trust Barometer 2006 Seventh Global Opinion Leaders Study). He further reported that "Information conveyed by CEOs is at the bottom of the list, even lower than politicians, with organizations such as Amnesty International, WWF World Wide Fund for Nature, Greenpeace, and Médecins Sans Frontières at the top of the ranking." Guy Ryder, General Secretary, International Confederation of Free Trade Unions (ICFTU), Brussels, corroborated the Edelman survey: "Trust matters. There is a feeling of bewilderment which dramatically impacts on people's lives. They feel powerless; we do not have a means of expressing opinions. 'Trust proximity' is the thing that you are familiar with; it includes the things you understand." Ryder further explained that for the ordinary person, "NGOs seem 'more like me' and convey the things that matter to me." He noted that the fall of confidence in public institutions is the most alarming. "53% of people in the US want to be represented by trade unions, but corporate America stops this." (Corporate America certainly does stop this. Corporate power has been utilizing corporate-owned media to its absolute advantage in a major attempt to turn the public sentiment against unions – the last remaining collective to threaten corporate power. The rhetoric spewed out by the corporate media is nothing less than incredible.)

Make no mistake, NGOs are recognized by corporate power as an absolutely essential element – indispensable for ensuring corporate power can quite easily advance their agenda.

First Place: Nature Conservancy

“Advocates of capitalism are very apt to appeal to the sacred principles of liberty, which are embodied in one maxim: The fortunate must not be restrained in the exercise of tyranny over the unfortunate” - Bertrand Russell

At the front line of the race to the bottom we must recognize The Nature Conservancy for accepting the challenge of "protecting nature" in an announced new partnership with Dow Chemical who have generously gifted Nature Conservancy with a cool $10 million. Unfortunately, this 'bankrolled consent' most likely means Dow will be too financially strapped to clean up Bhopal – whose citizens continue to suffer to this day. Never mind last week it was announced that Dow’s profit has tripled. The corporation reported a profit of $511 million for the quarter ending in December 2010. Nature Conservancy’s president and CEO is none other than former Goldman Sachs Group executive, Mark Tercek. Perhaps not coincidentally, former Nature Conservancy president Henry Paulson also made his rounds through the revolving doors of the Goldman Sachs Group. Yet another Nature Conservancy board member, Muneer Satter, also originated from Goldman Sachs. You may recall the name Goldman Sachs – most known for their role in the brilliantly executed 2008 financial crisis which threw millions into poverty as the rich became even richer. As well, Nature Conservancy just hired a new marketing director in 2010 — former executive vice president for marketing at World Wrestling Entertainment. Prior to that position, he served as senior vice president for marketing at Showtime Networks. Showtime indeed. Fiction? Satire? Unfortunately not. If such organizations were not so dangerous, one would have to laugh. However, considering we are on the brink of exterminating our own children, this is truly sickening and no laughing matter. (Fyi - The Nature Conservancy has more than $3.7 billion in assets, annual revenue of $860 million – remember that when they ask you for your last 20 bucks.)

Second Place: Greenpeace International

And what does the world’s most recognized NGO plan to do in the face of cataclysmic climate change, as the opportunity to avoid irreversible planetary collapse slowly dissipates? It launches an international campaign to 'green' Facebook by Earth Day, April 22, 2011.

Enough said.

Update! 11 February 2011: "Today we need you to join a very special photo petition -- ... no, call it a competition -- The 10 most-liked photos on Wednesday, 16 February at 17:00 CET will feature in an upcoming Greenpeace activity... (say no more, nudge nudge, wink wink). We also have campaign t-shirts for the top ten, and a CD of "Amchitka, The 1970 Concert that Launched Greenpeace," featuring Joni Mitchell, Phil Ochs, and James Taylor, for the most popular photo of all. The funniest, weirdest, and most provocative photos will probably get the most 'Likes', so have some fun with it, submit your photo and get "liking" right away! Happy snapping, Team Facebook (at Greenpeace!)"

Third Place: WWF Presents National Sweater Day

"It's time to Get Sweatered!" WWF-Canada announces a brand new campaign for Sweater Day, February 17, 2011. And after this you can look forward to shutting your lights off for that one hour a year in WWF’s annual Earth Hour campaign. As always, big greens frame the conversation on what an individual can do while vehemently neglecting to discuss the root cause of climate change – the current economic system. In this campaign, our youth is led to believe that small individual actions will help solve our environmental crisis. They can’t. Further, the crisis is framed to be most unthreatening, simply because the solution proposed requires so little effort. Of course, this campaign isn’t complete without prizes to feed the insatiable need to consume – which this campaign endorses by way of participation. (WWF International’s operating revenue totalled 224.2 million in 2010. Carter Roberts, CEO and President, took home a meagre $486,394 in 2008.)

Honourable Mentions: Friends of the Earth International

Courtesy of Keith Farnish’s Unsuitablog

"Find out about the Good Shopping Guide application: http://bit.ly/hH44mK Plus win an iPod touch! " - Friends of the Earth via twitter

Friends of the Earth, 1970-2011
RIP

Worst Video

The video featuring a 2 minute summary of the COP16 conference and highlighting the brand TckTckTck makes light of our planetary emergency and tells the viewer... absolutely nothing. Further, the video frames Bolivia as an obstructionist to the negotiations when in fact Bolivia stood alone rejecting an agreement which will lead to mass genocide. Alone, Bolivia fought for life using powerful, ethical arguments, defending the people’s agreements adopted in Cochabamba which would protect Mother Earth, all species and future generations. All big greens have declined to endorse the People’s Agreement which places people before corporate profit. It appears this video, being promoted widely, was created by TckTckTck partner UKYCC.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=76BgKe1naFc

First Prize for Most Dangerous: Greenpeace at the World Economic Forum

“Capitalism justified itself and was adopted as an economic principle on the express ground that it provides selfish motives for doing good, and that human beings will do nothing except for selfish motives” - George Bernard Shaw

In the frontline of global economic forums such as the WEF, commonly referred to simply as Davos, you will recognize the exceptionally orchestrated Greenpeace demonstrations. This is the Greenpeace that rides today on the coat-tails of the legacy laid down by the original Greenpeace founders decades ago. A Greenpeace which in reality no longer exists. Before being co-opted by corporate power, Greenpeace consisted of grassroots activists who were not interested in discussing compromise. One such founder, Bob Hunter, wore a 'fuck off' sign around his neck in a public meetings. These real-life eco-warriors had no fear of ripping to shreds those who were destroying our planet.

A headline on an image posted on 10 January 2011 reads, "Sixty Greenpeace activists dressed in skeleton suits protest in front of the World Economic Forum conference against Dow Chemical". The banners reads, "Clean up Bhopal Now!" The images are moving. Yet, in the background something much different is going on ... behind the scenes ... for those who dance in the elitist circle ... the champagne flows almost as fast as the money.

7 February 2011, Kumi Naidoo, executive director of Greenpeace International and chair of the Havas creation TckTckTck ‘speaks to power’ in Johannesburg, South Africa. Naidoo explains that at the World Economic Forum in Davos he had meetings with no fewer than 15 chief executives of major corporations, men whose decisions help shape (destroy) our environment and affect workers' rights (exploitation) and ultimately what kind of world we pass on to our children and grandchildren (irreversible climate hell with collapsed ecosystems). Naidoo states that the first meeting was a breakfast briefing with Unilever. Naidoo states he was invited by the chief executive to speak of the curious relationship his company enjoys with Greenpeace.

Curious. Yes. It is most interesting that TckTckTck creator Havas serves the world’s most powerful clients such as Unilver and EDF (nuclear).

For an excellent briefing on why Greenpeace working with corporate power for a better world is bullshit slash greenwash, Richard Samans offers an astute analysis in "Running the World After the Crash," in Jan 2011 Foreign Policy. "Two years ago the elites were scared to death by the global crash, their economic nostrums discredited. Thousands of citizens took to the streets. Governments fell. Others desperately promised a new era of financial re-regulation, world cooperation on the environment and food crises created by neoliberalism and exponential growth. Then they regained confidence. Banks were "too big to fail". The taxpayer was told to pay the bill for the playboys of the Western world. Trillions of private debt were transferred to the taxpayer (socialism for the rich) – a bill that our children and their children will have to pay. A further consequence: there is "no money left", we are told, to finance climate action, international aid, schools, healthcare, housing, job creation and infrastructure. The elites are laughing all the way to the bank. And the high priests of the system (at Davos Jan 2011) say the next whirl of the financial wheel will be based on carbon credits."

First Prize for Most Tasteless | Greenpeace Makes Light of Tibetan Oppression

Under attack for the tasteless 30 second Super Bowl commercial using Tibet, the corporation responsible, Groupon, stepped into the defensive mode. As images of Tibet were shown, actor Timothy Hutton read, "The people of Tibet are in trouble. Their very culture is in jeopardy." The scene cuts to Hutton inside a restaurant: "But they still whip up an amazing fish curry. And since 200 of us bought at groupon.com we're each getting 30 dollars worth of Tibetan food for just 15 dollars at Himalayan restaurant in Chicago."

Although this ad is clearly distasteful and trivializes the incredibly serious issue of human rights violations in Tibet, Greenpeace, who also uses Groupon, defended the ad. "Greenpeace is happily participating in the campaign. The truth is that the 'Save the Money' campaign and the commercial are really helping us save the whales," Greenpeace's John Hocevar said in a blog post. He added, "They loved the idea of poking fun at themselves by talking about discounts as a noble cause."

People aware of how the Tibetan culture is being destroyed in the conflict with China understand struggles of Tibet deserve respect.

From the Free Tibet website: "For Groupon the commercial has generated a lot of free media coverage and it could be argued that the advert has helped raise the profile of what is happening in Tibet, after all awareness is the first step to accountability. But it does put Tibetans and their suffering at the heart of the joke and when it’s used for commercial purposes that is exploitative. The commercial also exposes that fact that across the US and arguably the world the public know what is happening inside Tibet. But that leaves the uncomfortable fact that not enough of us are holding the Chinese Communist Party accountable for the suffering in Tibet, nor for that matter are our own governments being held accountable for their failure to hold China accountable for its appalling human rights record in Tibet."

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=reLqtMb4-e8&feature=related (What Remains of Us: This film was shot without the knowledge of the Chinese authorities, using small digital cameras, during nearly a dozen secret forays into Tibet between 1996 and 2004.)

First Prize for Most Predictable

“Reformers who are always compromising, have not yet grasped the idea that truth is the only safe ground to stand upon.” - Elizabeth Stanton

Rockefeller funded 350.org wins hands down for the predictable launch of their Businesses For 350 Campaign. How to get to 350? You won’t find the answer on this site ... maybe just keep recycling or consuming. It appears Bill McKibben of 350.org neglected to read our 10:10:10 critique from October 2010.

First Prize for Most Undetected Greenwash of 2010

TckTckTck - partner of 350.org, WWF, Greenpeace and hundreds of other NGOs - was created by Havas, one of the largest marketing and PR firms in the world. Havas clients include a torrent of the largest and most powerful corporations on the planet. Given that economic growth is the root cause of greenhouse gas emissions growth (they have been neck and neck for the last 50 years); and the raison d'etre of Havas is to ensure TckTckTck founding partner corporations including EDF (the largest nuclear corporation on the planet) increase profits through economic growth; TckTckTck was fatally compromised at its inception. In the 2010 'Public Eye' campaign it states, "Organized since 2000, Public Eye reminds corporations with destructive business practices that actions have consequences, presenting 'name and shame' awards to the nastiest corporate players of the year and through these awards presents to the world the immoral nexus between corporate power and the political elite." In 2010, following the Copenhagen disaster, Greenpeace Switzerland participated in naming the Public Eye Award to "the nastiest corporate player of the year". The nominees included GDF Suez and Roche – TckTckTck founding partners. In summary, Greenpeace, partner of TckTckTck (Kumi Naidoo chairs both Greenpeace International and TckTckTck, also known as GCCA) is in partnership with these same corporations (GDF Suez and Roche). Such campaigns and organizations make a mockery of those suffering on the front lines of the climate emergency today. The layers of deceit are breathtaking.

As of today there remains a shortcut link on the Havas website to www.tcktcktck.org to "join the fight for climate justice". And business for Havas has never been better - new business remains strong. (€1.6 billion for the first nine months of the year, compared with €1.1 billion for the same period in 2009 (+42%)).

TckTckTck has removed their partner, the Corporate Leaders Group on Climate Change, from visibility on the www.tcktcktck.org website after screenshots and information of this collaboration were released to their supporters and partners using their own listserv. The TckTckTck partners within the Corporate Leaders Group on Climate Change group include Shell, Coca-Cola and RBC. RBC is the number one financier of the most destructive project on the planet – the tar sands. Over 1,000 corporate entities make up this TckTckTck partner group.

Eradicating Stupidity | Going Forward

“As for the bourgeois state, we are seeking to overcome it, to overthrow it.” Salvador Allende, 1970

Just as wearing sweaters will not make any meaningful dent in our climate crisis; just as turning Facebook green amounts to essentially nothing; just as 'green' shopping and more i-pods only serve to further destroy us; and just as the Nature Conservancy - Dow partnership will only serve to greenwash; consuming as a means of helping will not save whales or anything else. Every day, our current economic system continues brings us one day closer to cataclysmic, irreversible climate change and ecosystem collapse on a global scale.

And while we may not expect truth from the bloated NGOs, we should not accept it. Importantly, while we recognize the demise of ethics within the vast monopoly of NGOs who protect the very system that grips us securely in a stranglehold, we must also recognize that within these corporate structures are well-intentioned citizens and even activists who are just as frustrated by the censorship and symbolic 'feel good' campaigns that appeal to our society’s worst traits. Such traits such as individualism, greed, apathy and narcissism are integral for a profoundly weak and divided society. Therefore, such traits are kept fed and nourished by the corporate powers who are, in turn, completely dependent upon society’s successful indoctrination and feelings of powerlessness. Fortunately, for the ethical, yet repressed, campaigners on the inside, in 2011 we now have Enviroleaks – enabling those within the system to leak imperative documents, without fear of repercussion.

What else is new in 2011? To date, there are no mainstream NGOs who are willing to campaign on militarism and its massive contribution to climate change. One would think that this would be a sure 'win' upon which the NGOs should love to attach themselves. Really, how many people do you know that would oppose a campaign to end occupations and war? Known to most citizens, militarism in the US represents such a massive chunk of the budget, there is little money for anything else. Healthcare and education remain mere irritants of the lowest priority. Although this reckless budget will no doubt contribute to bankrupting the US sooner rather than later – only to line bank vaults of the corporations and the controlling plutocracy - the big greens are silent on the issue. It appears that millions of lives lost count for little.

And like we must stop the soothing yet false illusion that governments will someday do what they are supposed to do – represent their constituents and act in their best interests – we must also stop the false illusion that NGOs will confront the system and inspire a desperately needed uprising of the people who reject all false solutions while also demanding nothing less a new system which functions to serve only the essential needs of the people while protecting all life and our planet.

To date, the big greens refuse to tell supporters what the most critical aspects of climate change are, in spite of the insistent urging from climate justice activists. These are the imperatives every citizen has the right to know ... and are not being told.

1) In order to stabilize the planet, the world must achieve zero carbon emissions. Zero is the only number that matters and it must be achieved in a matter of years, not decades. We are in a planetary emergency at less than 1ºC rise.

2) The current economic system is the root cause of climate change.

3) A mass mobilization on a global scale is needed to convert to a clean, perpetual zero carbon economy which rejects all false solutions including green capitalism.

The destructive campaigns of the big greens highlighted within this article are just a drop in the bucket of symbolic brand-building nonsense. Therefore the easiest direct action of 2011 is this: hit unsubscribe. The industrial non-profit complex claims to represent and speak for you in economic forums and government institutions around the world. They don’t. And if they have no members of civil society, they immediately lose their power to speak for us. If they no longer speak for us, they can no longer use civil society as a tool allowing the expansion of the corporate agenda.

The pursuit of profit verses our responsibility to protect nature brings us to a tragic reality that is difficult to accept. Decades of doing nothing means it is now too late to stop climate change. Yet, perhaps it is not too late (we hope) to avert the magnitude of long-term impacts by cutting emissions to zero at break-neck speed. If we miss this closing window of opportunity, feedbacks take over, at which point cataclysmic climate change becomes irreversible. Nature takes over, and our planet becomes a living hell.

Message to the Youth: do-or-die

"But we won’t spend a buck a dime a single cent to preclude disaster for our children. As a mother and a grandmother this is the line that grips my heart. I see this as ageism gone viral. We don't really care about our kids just our credit rating and OUR pensions. I guess Queen Victoria was totally effective when she said, "Children should be seen and not heard. Our so called economic system doesn't hear the children at all. I guess soon we won't have to see them either. Good for us adults, our campaign is a BIG success.” – FB comment

Why does society expect the next generation to clean up this mess of unparalleled magnitude – especially considering instead of being given essential tools for life skills, they were given remotes, posters of corporate prostitots, and truckloads of made-for-landfill plastic stuff bursting with toxins, chemicals and everything else that makes one ashamed to be human. This apocalyptic nightmare should never have been left to a generation of youth who have been raised and indoctrinated by corporate America – yet here we are – and the wrath of insatiable greed is about to grab our youth by the throat.

While we listen to Maude Barlow and other wise owls who tell us the next generation is the one that will change everything, we must recognize that today’s youth have become a reflection of our morally bankrupt society – beautiful children who have succumbed to become, most comfortably numb. Millions have come close to over-dosing on social media such as Facebook and texting. Ironically, social media is a wet dream for the globe’s largest marketing public relations firms who represent the world’s most powerful corporations. Marketing executives and corporate super-powers are salivating over what they envision as the greatest opportunity to exploit the planet’s youth. The corporate powers are masters in the art of acclimatizing civil society into believing that we have no control. They methodically hypnotize us to believe resistance is hopeless and therefore should be given up. This very system that enslaves us can continue its existence only if we accept that resistance is futile. Not unlike pedophiles who prey upon children, the plutocracy preys upon and is dependent upon a society easily lured with candy.

Things can change. 2011 marks a paradigm shift. The Egyptians have taught the world how to use the very social media tools corporate gods had hoped would serve to manipulate, control and distract us – and use these tools, instead, as weapons of mass-resistance. We now have WikiLeaks and Anonymous, bound to inspire creativity, coupled with revolt, in ways not yet imagined. The Egyptians have also taught the world what a revolution requires – nothing less than the courage and conviction of hundreds of thousands and even millions of bodies in the streets that refuse to leave until victory is achieved.

Today’s youth have, not only a right, but a moral obligation, to rebel and destroy the current power structures that exist. This is necessary in order to salvage what is left of a raped and pillaged planet on the brink of ecological collapse. Martin Luther King once said that "you cannot commit an act of violence against a non-sentient object." Today, police states and corporate controlled governments protect property, corporate interests, and industrialized economic growth over life itself. Drastic times require drastic measures; thus, our youth have the right to destroy the suicidal structures now threatening humanity. Echoing the words of Malcolm X, they must defend that right "by any means necessary". And we must support them as they seize this right, for we have failed them.

"Liberties are not given, they are taken." - Aldous Huxley

Go forward in self defence. No longer can we passively witness the rape, abuse and desecration of our Earth Mother. No longer can we passively witness the exploitation, violence and oppression subjected on our brothers and sisters. In our fight for survival and for all life, love is the guiding principle, illuminating the centre of our struggle. We will not negotiate life. We reject all compromise. We will practise non-violence in the spirit of the Buddhist concept of aggressive non-violence understanding that one cannot commit an act of violence against a non-sentient object. Although we will exercise compassionate wrath, we recognize we have the right to defend ourselves and our Earth Mother. We intend to do so. Self-defence is not a crime. We will attack the economic system – as this is the only language it understands. We will collectively fight to reclaim our dignity and power. The burning flame at the heart of our fight for life will not be smothered, rehabilitated, co-opted, or psychologically marginalized. There will be no dilution of our fervour, no lowering of the flames, or any muting of our essential collective voice. And if our fire destroys, it is for the sake or protection and healing and bringing us together as one. Our love will burn brilliantly. The time is now.

“Individually we may see ourselves as free, yet as a collective, we are slaves. The point where we free ourselves from our own animal is that moment when we become enlightened, where we see ourselves not as a person at a single point in time, but as a continuity in blood and in thought, spanning generations and time.” Harold One Feather

It is past time to start enacting civil disobedience on a massive scale. Knowledge is the weapon and it is time to arm the masses. Fuel distribution centres, pipelines, the industrial-military-complex, banks, the stock exchange: all must be targeted. Go forward. Don’t look back. Be courageous. Be strong. The truth is on our side. Our parents could not find the courage, which means we must. The Earth, and all life on this planet, pumps through our veins. To feel it, go outside and lie under a tree. Look up at the sky. We are nature. Nature is us. Our time is running out.

"None are more hopelessly enslaved than those who falsely believe they are free." - Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

InsideHalton Article: Wrong time to raise transit fares

2011-02-16T20:16:00.000-05:00

InsideHalton Article: Wrong time to raise transit fares: "It is socially irresponsible for the Town’s budget committee to consider raising transit fares.
Raising fares or cutting transit service would effectively balance the budget on the backs of seniors, youths, new immigrants and low-income families who rely on this public service for work, shopping, school, healthcare and more.

The price of an adult pass has already jumped over 50 per cent in the past decade; an even higher price for passes really hurts riders on fixed incomes who are trying to save that extra little bit.

Unfortunately, inadequate federal and provincial transit funding in Canada has created a situation where the average rider pays 53 per cent of the costs of transit.

Many European cities have low or free fares to encourage ridership, given the many benefits of public transit.

Last year’s fare freeze and service improvements in Oakville resulted in a seven per cent increase in ridership, which should be seen as a success to build on.

Focusing solely on revenues ignores the other positive effects, such as improving air quality, decreasing congestion and making Oakville a more affordable and livable community for all its residents.

As the cost of such necessities as food, rent and heating continues to increase (and we are being hit with the HST to boot) why would the Town seek to make living here even less affordable for its residents?

James Ede, Oakville Federal NDP Candidate "

The Real Weapons of Mass Destruction: Methane, Propaganda & the Architects of Genocide | Part III

2011-02-10T18:41:00.000-05:00

An investigative report. [Part 1: http://bit.ly/fV8slf | Part II: http://bit.ly/gMITca | Part III: http://bit.ly/gMrxw9 | Part IV: http://bit.ly/eVOWDf ]

By Cory Morningstar

Part III

The Spin Doctors | Spinning the Potential for Abrupt and Catastrophic Climate Change

"Facts do not cease to exist because they are ignored." – Aldous Huxley

It is now beyond obvious that those who control the world's economy are hell-bent on burning all of our planet's remaining fossil fuels – including those that not long ago, were considered impractical to exploit. Corporate-colluded states, corporate-controlled media and corporate-funded scientists will be red-lining the well-oiled engine of the propaganda machine as it works overtime.

They will try to convince you the methane hydrates in the world's oceans are deep enough that the inevitable increased temperature will not affect them. (Think again. Take a look at the map – the methane hydrates, even outside of the Arctic, are almost all located on shallow continental shelves.) And if that doesn't work they will try to convince you that mysterious bacteria will rapaciously devour all methane gas.

In the following paragraphs, the danger that this misinformation presents is outlined. Layered upon the aforementioned spin, at the same time they will try to convince you that because the methane hydrates are now destabilizing and melting (because governments have done nothing for decades to halt global warming), we have no choice but to extract the methane and burn it – for the safety of humanity. If the misinformation contradicts itself, this in itself is of little to no importance – as long as the key message is allowed to weave itself into the collective subconscious. The key message being: "There is no emergency. Methane risks are non-threatening."

The truth is, there is one option, and one option only. We must stop burning fossil fuels. Completely.

"In an energy hungry world any new fossil fuel resource will only lead to additional carbon emissions." – Kevin Anderson, professor of energy and climate change at the Tyndall Centre at Manchester University, January 2011

Corporatized states, media and scientists who have pledged allegiance to protect the current economic system will try to convince us that methane hydrates will provide society with a "clean," "sustainable" fossil fuel. [14] Make no mistake – they are not clean or sustainable. Nor are they renewable. [15] The burning of fossil fuels – including natural gas/methane - creates CO2. All the spin in the world will not make this fact any less true. On 14 January 2001, Dr. Gideon Polya explains that a further phony approach that is now being implemented on a massive scale around the world is a coal-to-gas transition on the basis that natural gas is "clean". He states, "The reality is that gas burning seriously threatens the Planet because (a) humanity should be urgently decreasing and certainly not increasing greenhouse gas (GHG) pollution; (b) Natural Gas (mainly methane, CH4) is not a clean energy greenhouse gas-wise; and (c) pollutants from gas leakage and gas burning pose a chemical risk to residents, agriculture and the environment." The asserted "clean-er" status of gas as a fossil fuel is contradicted in the recent analysis by Professor Robert Howarth of Cornell University, who has concluded that " A complete consideration of all emissions from using natural gas seems likely to make natural gas far less attractive than oil and not significantly better than coal in terms of the consequences for global warming. " It is grossly negligent to spend billions of tax dollars on a dangerous scheme that will lock humanity into what is essentially a promissory note for the annihilation of our children, grandchildren and all life. Polya states: "Top climate scientists state that we must urgently reduce atmospheric carbon dioxide concentration from the current damaging 392 parts per million (ppm) to a safe and sustainable 300 ppm for a safe and sustainable planet for all peoples and all species." This is absolutely true. It is also true that only zero carbon can achieve any reduction in atmospheric CO2; only zero carbon can reduce ocean acidification.

If we do not stop burning all fossil fuels, the runaway greenhouse scenario will be upon us. The global scheme to drill methane hydrates ensures that there will be no real transition to clean, safe, renewable energy alternatives. Arctic carbon feedbacks are heating the oceans – enough to melt the slightly deeper methane hydrates on all of the continental shelves. Today, there are methane hydrates (for example, off of California) emitting methane gas into the oceans. Methane seeps have been identified along many passive and active continental margins. It will take very little additional warming (perhaps even no additional warming is needed) to add more methane emissions via methane hydrate feedback into the oceans. It is true that in relatively deeper water, much more methane will be dissolved and relatively less will be emitted to the air. (Yet this also produces catastrophic results in the form of further ocean acidification.)

This is why the stability of Arctic methane hydrates is so critical; they do not have this depth of water, therefore they are able to emit far more easily into the atmosphere. The East Siberian Arctic Shelf represents 25% of the Arctic Shelf and 8% of the total area of the World Ocean's continental shelf. Of this shelf, 75% is shallower than 50 metres in depth (the mean depth of the continental shelf is 130 m); this provides a very short conduit for methane to escape to the atmosphere with almost no oxidation. The Arctic shelf methane hydrates are more vulnerable because they have naturally been experiencing warming by as much as 17°C, while deep oceanic hydrates have been warmed by less than 1°C. [16] Methane hydrates are only stable under specific pressure and temperature conditions.

Most scientists continue to ignore the oceans. Scientist David Archer, who has been pivotal in minimizing methane risks of late, proposes that increased leaking of methane will all dissolve in the oceans for a hundred thousand years – therefore inferring that destabilizing methane hydrates should not be considered a high risk "within our lifetime". Yet, methane is oxidized in ocean water to CO2 – which acidifies it. It is a possibility that the increase in ocean acidification could be attributed to the melting of methane hydrates.

More acidic oceans must exchange additional CO2 to the atmosphere. Yes, methane-consuming bacteria will digest methane, however, this further depletes oxygen from the oceans and causes further acidification. The result of this is dead oceans. Dead oceans can be imagined as sewers spewing toxic gases like hydrogen sulphide into the air and onto an unrecognizable landscape void of life. Scientists continue to observe critical aspects of climate in a reductionist fashion – failing to acknowledge (or at least convey) that all elements of nature are interconnected. There will be no free lunch.

A 2010 paper addressing new constraints on methane fluxes in the Gulf of Mexico suggests that deep methane hydrates may leak vast amounts of methane into the ocean water, thus raising the concentration of methane in surface waters and ultimately the atmosphere. All of these fluxes and ocean-air exchanges are happening today, and will continue to increase. The report states: "A significant release of methane into the atmosphere could ultimately lead to a catastrophic greenhouse effect; this mechanism has been invoked as an explanation for past deglaciation [global warming] events."

If we link this information to Archer's suggestion that methane hydrates will continue to leak into the oceans for 100,000 years, we are looking at a creeping ocean catastrophe that has already commenced. Based on results of many recent studies, it appears there are now ocean regions where ocean water is supersaturated with methane, the result being more methane emitting into the air above. In one such 2010 study, scientists suggest that future sea-ice retreat may decrease the residence times of methane and nitrous oxide in the surface Arctic Ocean and thus enhance the sea-air flux of these climatically active gases.

The video below shows a large plume of methane-rich gas continuously bubbling in a tundra lake in Alaska. (2010 | 0:40)

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eM5WPl69Z18&w=480&h=390]

There is no precedent in the past for the abrupt and extreme rate of global climate forcing that this fossil fuel-based industrial civilization has created. Though the scientists are silent (except when justifying ongoing research), the fact is that we are now, most definitely, in an abrupt global climate change event, which is most likely unsurpassed in the history of life on the planet. Scientists condemn humanity by failing to call for the absolute ending of the current fossil fuel economy, as well as an ending to burning all fossil fuels – the only way to achieve zero carbon emissions – and the only way to stabilize the planet (recognized by IPCC).

Any science or policy that is accepting of any fossil fuels – inclusive of conventional oil and gas - condones and legitimizes current coal plants and drilling to continue and to expand, while ignoring the fact that nature cannot compromise. Therefore, those who accept false solutions such as CCS (carbon capture and storage) (already proven to be a spectacular failure) are complicit in protecting the current suicidal "business as usual" economic model that will bring us to a complete collapse of civilization.

Simply stated, it does not matter where methane carbon feedbacks come from. What matters is that these feedbacks will cascade and multiply – at some point causing a mass extinction event. Imagine a domino effect. It takes just one carbon feedback to add to our current state of global warming to trigger all other carbon feedbacks – this is definite. As world governments absolutely refuse to stop burning fossil fuels, continued accelerating warming of our increasingly fragile planet, caused by rising greenhouse gas emissions, will ensure such feedbacks are dead certainties.

Feedbacks that further amplify global warming (creating additional CO2 and additional feedbacks which are mostly unaccounted for in climate models and not reported as greenhouse gas emissions) include:

warming soil (CO2)
increased ground level ozone. (which reduces photosynthesis, making it toxic to all green growth)
warming peatlands (methane)
warming wetlands (methane from sources such as lakes, ponds, rivers, etc.)
forest fires (CO2 and methane)
forest die back (CO2)
thawing permafrost (methane)
melting methane hydrates (methane)
warming ocean water (dissolves less CO2)
ocean acidification (draws down less CO2)
plankton die-off (less effective ocean biological carbon pump)(CO2)
loss of sea ice (less cooling albedo)

The slightest risk/possibility of methane being added to the atmosphere from carbon feedbacks today – from any source – leaves no doubt that an absolutely expedient transition from fossil fuel energy to zero carbon energy is imperative for our survival. Yet, methane releases continue to accelerate. The fact that methane is 100 times more powerful than CO2 in the first 5-10 years after it's been emitted creates an unparalleled world emergency of massive scale. State governments, media and scientists who minimize, ignore or deny methane risks condone the massive risk to civilization's survival from methane carbon feedbacks.

Scientists and governments have known for decades that climate change accelerates the warming temperature in the Arctic far faster than anywhere else on Earth. Resulting warming of the Arctic Ocean will result in the destabilization, melting and venting of the methane hydrates. It is not surprising that we now find ourselves in a situation where we are "beyond dangerous atmospheric interference" (DAI) with the climate – as the world has done nothing to stop it. This situation will continue to accelerate even if we stop burning all fossil fuels today. This is why the emergency is unprecedented and unparalleled in magnitude.

The "laws of ecology" established by biologist Barry Commoner are essential in understanding the carbon cycle and the solutions we must seek for our climate crisis:

1. Everything is Connected to Everything Else. There is one ecosphere for all living organisms and what affects one, affects all.

2. Everything Must Go Somewhere. There is no "waste" in nature and there is no “away” to which things can be thrown.

3. Nature Knows Best. Humankind has fashioned technology to improve upon nature, but such change in a natural system is, says Commoner, "likely to be detrimental to that system."

4. There Is No Such Thing as a Free Lunch. In nature, both sides of the equation must balance; for every gain there is a cost, and all debts are eventually paid.

All life on Earth is connected by carbon. The burning of carbon – carbon that has been sequestered over millennia by the accumulation of animal-based petroleum and plant-based coal – over the course of a few hundreds of years has proven not to be a "free lunch". The relentless rise of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere is not going to stop and the relentless rise in temperature will continue. The only answer – which we resist, deny, refuse and are unwilling to accept – is that we must stop burning ALL fossil fuels. Not a reduction and not less. All. The Burning Age is over. And just as the Stone Age ended before they ran out of stones, so the Burning Age must end before we run out of fossil fuels.

Governments and global society as a whole continue to ignore safe, renewable energy sources – sentencing humanity and all life to a hell on Earth. Until we acknowledge why, nothing will change. A new foundation for a global society built on principles of sharing and the simple premise of "living well, not better" is the greatest threat to the current economic system and the current global power structures. Such a revolution is not about to be embraced by any major greenhouse gas-emitting, developed, obstructionist state who has clearly demonstrated in Cancún that the protection of economy is clearly more vital than protection of life. Make no mistake – everyday that our current global economic system is allowed to continue as is brings us one step closer to irreversible climate catastrophe and complete exhaustion of the planet's last remaining natural resources. Our current economic system will lead us, in no uncertain terms, to our own annihilation.

Those who protect the current economic system – scientists in general, and "big green" co-opted environmental groups – are silent on what now constitutes a clear, unequivocal planetary climate emergency. They have played their role. Their funding is immense and secure. [18] Their professions and elite status remain secure. Ask yourself … why do environmental groups not disclose to their global audience what MUST happen if we are to avert catastrophe? Why do they ask us to buy t-shirts and high definition camcorders instead of telling us the danger that lies right outside our window? Is it so we can videotape our own demise? Ask yourself … why are those who claim to speak for civil society, who claim to represent us, not telling us we must fight for the lives of our own children? If society at large understood the unequivocal, unparalleled climate emergency about which wealthy states and key environmental groups remain silent, what would happen?

Universities as Bedfellows | Moral Nihilism

Education is …

"…one of the chief obstacles to intelligence and freedom of thought." – Bertrand A. Russell (1872-1970), English philosopher, mathematician, and writer

"…a state-controlled manufactory of echoes." – Norman Douglas (1868-1952), British writer

Universities have been transformed into modern day brothels, where corporations can hire prostitutes under the guise of scientific research. Play nice = get rich. On 1 February 2007, BP announced an agreement with University of California, Berkeley for $500 million to research biofuels at a new Energy Biosciences Institute. In return, BP was given access to the university's researchers and technology, built by decades of public investment.

Why would BP or any other corporation choose to pay for their own research institutes when they can, instead, essentially hijack a publicly funded one? BP will own all intellectual property rights of all resulting science, which it will use to effectively expand corporate profits. Such agreements most always ensure that any and all data from funded research is also owned by the funding corporation. This ensures that scientific research results that the corporations wish to be known to the public are divulged – and the scientific research results that could interfere with or even destroy corporate profit potential are buried from the public.

As neoconservative governments and governments straining under economic collapse continue to cut social programs and education, competing universities become more and more dependent on corporate funding. A brief and ultraconservative glimpse of other oil funding for university research: BP funds Princeton $15 million; Chevron funds University of California, Davis $25 million, Georgia Institute of Technology $12 million and Texas A&M, undisclosed; ConocoPhillips funds Iowa State University $22.5 million and Duke University $1 million; DuPont funds Iowa State University $1 million; and ExxonMobil funds Stanford $100 million (2007 figures). Funds provided by BP in June of 2010, after the oil spill, were dispersed to universities as follows: $5 million to Louisiana State University; $10 million to the Florida Institute of Oceanography hosted by the University of South Florida; and $10 million to the Northern Gulf Institute, a consortium led by Mississippi State University.

In June 2010, under mounting public pressure, BP agreed to provide research money to independent institutions in the Gulf region that could allocate the funds through a peer-review process – apparently with no strings attached. Writer Naomi Klein states that this is a model for research in the Gulf: paid for by the oil giants that reap the massive profits from oil and gas, but with no way for them to influence outcomes. However, BP had a back-up plan – and fortunately, there are still certain professors, scientists and perhaps universities who uphold ethics and are unwilling to compromise. On 22 July 2010, Cary Nelson, head of the American Association of University Professors, accused BP of trying to "buy" the best scientists and academics to help it contest litigation after the Gulf of Mexico oil spill. "This is really one huge corporation trying to buy faculty silence in a comprehensive way," said Nelson. "Our ability to evaluate the disaster and write public policy and make decisions about it as a country can be impacted by the silence of the research scientists who are looking at conditions.... There is a problem for a faculty member who becomes closely associated with a corporation with such powerful financial interests." Russ Lea from the University of South Alabama stated that some clauses in the contract "were very disturbing."

An article published on 14 January 2011 in Nature reports that "[a]t least as far back as September, BP began issuing a standard letter to independent researchers who requested samples, stating 'Requests for source oil will be delayed…'." Independent research has been the thorn in the side of BP and BP's allies, correcting the "official narrative" over and over again. BP's humiliation began with the oil-flow estimates and continued through to the "all clear" on seafood contamination. BP has effectively slammed the door on independent research by refusing to supply official samples of the Deepwater Horizon oil.

Corporate funding effectively silences dissent and buys legitimacy where none is deserved. The corporate influence and domination, like a virus, crushes imagination, strangles creativity and kills individual thought. Education pursued for the collective good is dead. Transcendent values – dead. The nurturing of individual conscience – dead. Ethical and social equity issues are framed and accepted as "passé." Political silence reigns. Moral independence within educational institutes is being effectively decimated. It is of little surprise that empathy has declined by 40% in college students since 2000.

"In England … education produces no effect whatsoever. If it did, it would prove a serious danger to the upper classes, and would probably lead to acts of violence in Grosvenor Square." – Oscar Wilde

In 2010, James Turk, executive director of the Canadian Association of University Teachers warns that we need to defend professors and graduate students against powerful corporations – and their own universities. He calls this The Canadian Corporate-Academic Complex. He writes: "As universities more aggressively embrace corporate values, corporate management practices, corporate labor-relations policies, and corporate money, faculty associations face troubling challenges. The new reality is particularly hostile to academic freedom, and we see that hostility in the actions of corporate funders and university administrators, often simultaneously."

Indoctrination starts early. Our children's minds are vastly deteriorating in our current education system. Ken Robinson believes that "we shouldn't be putting them asleep, we should be waking them up to what they have inside themselves. But the model we have is this: I believe we have a system of education that is modelled on the interests of industrialism and in the image of it." Robinson points to a test of 1,500 individuals – all tested for divergent thinking to show genius level. The individuals were kindergarten children and 98% of the children tested were genius level divergent thinkers. Five years later, the same children tested at 50%. His brilliant lecture is here and the transcript is here.

Economy is Sacrosanct

"How fortunate for governments that the people they administer don't think." — Adolf Hitler

To understand why it is vital for the globally elite plutocracy to protect the current power structures that exist today, pretend you have been told that you only have a short time left to live. What would you do? Most people would work far less and probably stop working altogether if they could. Our children would become our focal point, as would time with other loved ones, and with nature. Consumer purchases and shopping would be the furthest thing from our mind. This would be the greatest threat to the global economy. If you can translate these ideas into a global society that actually understands that fossil fuels are literally killing us – that we are in a planetary emergency – would a similar shift in priorities not occur? Would our priority not become a full fledged effort to prepare our children for the future, indeed to try to ensure them a future? A complete boycott of all unnecessary consumer products. Unparalleled bank runs that would bring the entire system to its knees. All of these things that would likely happen if people were made to understand the magnitude of the climate emergency are the greatest threat to the global economy, driven and dominated by fossil fuels and the plutocracy that reaps obscene amounts of monetary wealth. Keep in mind the silent fact that the wealthiest 15% are responsible for 75% of global greenhouse gas emissions.

Self-appointed environmental groups can claim all they like that the people cannot be told "the truth" as the fear will paralyze them into further inaction. We know this is not true. Yet NGOs continue to downplay the catastrophic risks of global climate change, even now as those risks are rapidly increasing. A paper for the Four Degrees and Beyond conference in September 2009 titled Psychological Adaptation to the Threats and Stresses of a Four Degree World, written by Clive Hamilton (Charles Sturt Professor of Public Ethics in the Centre for Applied Philosophy and Public Ethics at the Australian National University) and Tim Kasser (professor of psychology in the Department of Psychology at Knox College, Illinois, USA) states: "At present most governments and environmental organisations adopt a 'don't scare the horses' approach, fearful that exposing people fully to the scientific predictions will immobilise them. With climate scientists now stressing the need for extremely urgent action and spelling out more catastrophic impacts if action is inadequate, this now seems to us a dangerous approach to undertake."

In every natural disaster observed and every emergency laid in front of us, we bear witness to the deeply entrenched quality of humanity that surfaces. Although our humanity has been beaten down and crushed, it still lurks under our bar-coded, desensitized skin. And in the darkest hours, history shows that ordinary citizens have over and over again come together to help one another, often risking their own lives in the process. It is clear that people are not being told the dire reality of the climate emergency in order to protect the economy. Clean, safe, renewable and perpetual zero-carbon energy independence is the greatest threat to the status quo powers that be. Yet clean, safe, renewable and perpetual zero-carbon energy independence is the greatest key to freedom for regular people and the only chance our children have to live a full, decent life.

Ignoring the Necessity of a Plant-Based Diet at Our Own Peril

"I speak the truth not so much as I would, but as much as I dare, and I dare a little more as I grow older." Michel de Montaigne, 1533-1592

This is the section that outlines a necessary resolve, which in a healthy society most citizens would easily embrace. However, I won't delude myself with such false illusions. Knowing of the displaced anger this issue creates, I will continue writing with no illusions that such solutions that such solutions will be embraced on a global scale. And we can thank the tobacco industry for this – the industry that brilliantly created the spin of "personal rights and freedoms" to such magnitude that we can't get the monster back into the cage.

Today's corporatized society consists of consumers (formerly known as citizens) who have been told – until they believe it – that it is their "right" to pollute our shared environment … their "right" to destroy our shared environment … and their "right" to poison our children, including their own. And disturbingly, our corporatized society fights for these rights whenever corporate media signals that such "rights" are about to come under threat. We have witnessed corporations in the US – a country with one of the worst health care systems in the world – successfully convince masses of followers to fight against their own healthcare reform. In Canada, instead of fighting for the right and respect to raise and nurture our own children, we demand daycare, where the lowest paid people in society raise our children. Recently in Canada, parents fought for the right to enroll their children in school at the exceptionally tender age of three.

Also in Canada, industry mobilized Canadians across the country to "fight for their right" to continue the use and expansion of the unnecessary drive-thrus at fast food joints (the lowest possible hanging fruit). The billion dollar restaurant industry convinced Canadians and politicians that it is better to leave our vehicles running than to turn them off. Tim Hortons led the battle. Who is Tim Hortons? A corporate coffee chain that uses the branding technique of patriotism, convincing consumers to wave their coffee cups like Canadian flags. Approximately one quarter of the province of Nova Scotia's landfill is Tim Hortons garbage (2005).

The staggering number of asthmatic children (which continues to climb) and the staggering number of deaths due to air pollution were of no concern. Convenience and personal "rights" to convenience were all that mattered. And as the citizens in vulnerable countries literally die from temperatures of 52ºC, the self-entitled wealthy sit in their air-conditioned SUVs ordering McHeartAttacks and KillerCokes for their children who are now subject to an escalating health crisis of obesity and diabetes. Perhaps it is time to redefine what constitutes child abuse.

What is rarely discussed is the fact that as much as half of the annual worldwide greenhouse gas emissions contributing to climate change are now being attributed to the lifecycle and supply chain of domesticated animals raised for food. The livestock industry also contributes to massive deforestation, causing further acceleration of climate change. Due to the fact previously stated, that methane is a powerful greenhouse gas 72-100 times more powerful than carbon in the short term (5 to 20 years), how can it be that this issue is barely being discussed? Like heart disease – denying this issue constitutes a silent killer.

Livestock now accounts for up to 51% (Worldwatch Institute) of all greenhouse gas emissions. [19] Methane accounts for a vast amount of these emissions. Meat counts for more damage than all transportation combined on our finite planet. In June 2010 the United Nations issued a second urgent plea for a global united transition to a meat-free and dairy-free diet: "A global shift towards a vegan diet is vital to save the world from hunger, fuel poverty and the worst impacts of climate change." Yet despite urgent warnings from the United Nations (the first in 2006) that countries must reduce meat consumption, this is just another lifestyle change the well-off would rather not discuss, even when this massive dent in emissions would cost nothing – we could all do it today, at our next meal. We could at least begin a transition today. Especially in light that this is one of the few solutions in the mitigation of climate change where citizens are free of government-asserted control over our decision of choice. The fact that it would be more effective in the fight to prevent catastrophic climate change to eliminate animal products from our diets than it would be to eradicate the entire globe of all vehicles of transportation combined is nothing less than incredible.

The fact that we dismiss such a simple action at the cost of future generations is revealing. What it sadly reveals is an increasingly unenlightened society that is effectively becoming more and more corroded by unadulterated individualism.

The Right to Destroy Ourselves

"Nothing will benefit human health and increase chances for survival of life on Earth as much as the evolution to a vegetarian diet." - Albert Einstein

But why give fair and just transition programs and subsidies to independent farmers for making the critical transition to organic plant-based agriculture when we can just keep giving the billion dollar multinational corporations the vast subsidies to keep destroying our planet? And why give our children – who are at the mercy of our poor decisions – a healthy and compassionate diet when we can slowly kill them with an escalating epidemic of obesity and diabetes, costing the health care system billions? But hey, as long as the cost belongs to the taxpayers while the profits from disease line the pockets of the rich, what's the problem?

Let's face it, there is too much money to be made by the multinational corporations, who view our families, and especially our children, as nothing more than neon-flashing dollar signs. There is just too much money to be made on drugs, treatment and disease. Prevention is the enemy of corporate profit. And why even consider transitioning to a healthy plant-based diet when, instead, corporations can set another unknown disaster into motion – in this instance, cloned meat. Our "brilliant" species can do anything – except change the very patterns that destroy our own habitat and ultimately ourselves. Burn baby burn. Drill till we're dead. Message from corporations to consumers (formerly known as citizens): Stuff yourself with meat, hormones and additives until you explode (or the planet explodes – whichever comes first).

As an exporter of meat, dairy and wool, New Zealand's highest climate gas emission is methane, despite having a per capita car ownership that rivals California's. How to fix this? Simple – like the IPCC, the government simply accounts for greenhouse gas emissions but doesn't add in agricultural methane, even though methane is far more potent than CO2. Presto! Methane is no longer a problem.

There is no choice – if we want to continue living, there must be generous subsidies to assist a global conversion from industrial livestock farming to organic, primarily plant-based, small-scale agriculture rich in biodiversity. Intensive livestock production and the intensive food production for livestock contributes to massive deforestation and loss of biodiversity. Much of the cleared land for livestock could be reforested or returned to grassland – becoming lush carbon sinks rather than degraded lands that emit deadly methane. Conserving biodiversity, as well as feeding humanity, must be a global priority over sustaining factory-farmed livestock.

Like fossil fuels, states must eliminate the massive livestock and dairy subsidies. Such subsidies continue to be accepted and relatively unchallenged as states vie for export dollars by selling meat to other nations. Trade is set to be the number one sector of all fossil fuel consumption by 2030. Further, both the fossil fuel industry and the livestock industry must internalize the full costs of all pollution, including water pollution, CO2 from deforestation, methane from decaying animal parts (among other sources) and nitrous oxide from animal waste.

Will governments create such legislation? Not likely. For behind the red velvet curtain, the corporations run the greatest puppet show on Earth. This certain cause of CO2 and methane is the easiest (and most affordable) one to tackle – yet, almost five years after the initial UN warning we are not even discussing it.

October, 2010: Olivier De Schutter, the UN special rapporteur on the right to food states unequivocally:"There is currently little to rejoice about," and "worse may still be ahead…. Current agricultural developments are... threatening the ability for our children's children to feed themselves," he said. "A fundamental shift is urgently required…." He continued that "giving priority to approaches that increase reliance on fossil fuels is agriculture committing suicide." Today agriculture continues to decline because of accelerating climate change. Feeding factory-farmed livestock rather than feeding people is just one more slap in the face to human rights and social equity.

October, 2010: Scientists warn of a livestock greenhouse gas boom: "Soaring international production of livestock could release enough carbon into the atmosphere by 2050 to single-handedly exceed 'safe' levels of climate change.… The livestock sector's emissions alone could send temperatures above the 2 degrees Celsius rise commonly said to be the threshold above which climate change could be destabilising." They also make a more conservative estimate: "The sector will contribute enough greenhouse gas emissions to take up 70 per cent of the 'safe' 2 degree temperature rise." The authors of the study called on governments to prioritize the reining in of the livestock sector, adding that "mobilising the necessary political will to implement such policies is a daunting but necessary prospect." They suggest the world will have to reduce emissions by roughly 87 per cent relative to performance at a global scale in 2000.

And again, remember that 2ºC was never considered safe. From the 1990 United Nations AGGG report: "Temperature increases beyond 1°C could trigger rapid, unpredictable and non-linear responses that could lead to extensive ecosystem damage." The absolute temperature limit of 2°C in the same report was motivated as the limit beyond which the risks of grave damage to ecosystems and of non-linear responses are expected to increase rapidly.

We Can't Run Away from Runaway

Non-linear in this case means runaway climate change. Why was the extremely dangerous (now catastrophic) 2ºC "target" chosen? The adoption of 2ºC enabled the economic system to continue business as usual – further destruction will continue until the Earth reaches her maximum limit where catastrophe becomes unavoidable. It is now quite evident how scientists identified their role in the international climate change negotiations – to provide policymakers a danger limit rather than a limit for safety. (This race-to-the-bottom reasoning has become typical of government environmental health policymaking. Hazardous pollution and chemicals suspected of causing cancer are deemed innocent until it can be proved with virtually total certainty that they are dangerous.)

To date only James Hansen and Stephen Hawking have stated that a runaway greenhouse effect is in our realm of distinct possibility. "Runaway greenhouse effect" is a scientific term very different from the "runaway climate change" term frequently referred to. "Runaway climate change" implies an uncontrollable, rapid acceleration event – an event too extreme for humans to survive it. The scientific term "runaway greenhouse effect" means a dead Earth.

Yet scientists continue to miss the main point on what constitutes global climate catastrophe for humanity when it comes to rapid global warming and climate disruption. For humanity and animals, our survival depends on agriculture – not the Greenland ice sheet. Global climate catastrophe is already tipping agriculture into decline – yet the critical tipping point is never mentioned. All focus should be on protecting agriculture. Even the IPCC climate model ensemble states that at 3°C, our agriculture goes into decline for all crops in all regions. Even so, these ultra-conservative IPCC models do not capture approximately half of the adverse impacts. The IPCC makes the mistake of plotting crop yield change against transient temperature change rather than the full, long-term temperature change. 3°C is deadly. Therefore 2°C is deadly, because a global average temperature increase of 2ºC, along with carbon feedbacks, will lead to 3ºC. This is what makes the Arctic climate feedbacks so critical to understand. Further acceleration of global warming, coupled with the warming the planet is already committed to, sets us on a path to a certain extinction event for humanity.

A growing number of concerned scientists are now calling for urgent action to be taken on reducing methane emissions, recognizing that methane has, by far a greater and more immediate effect on the speed of temperature rise than CO2. In a world of open minds, these emissions could be dealt with in a far easier and far more expedient manner. Unfortunately, if history is any indication, instead of embracing positive change, our minds will deny the need for it – having swallowed the corporate philosophy that "personal rights trump environment" no matter what – no matter what such rights destroy in our shared environment and no matter what such rights destroy in our children's increasingly bleak, dark future.

Turning a Blind Eye to Unintended but Entirely Predictable Consequences

Instead of realizing and embracing an opportunity for cleaner water, cleaner air and healthier bodies, we would rather risk the onslaught of new viruses cropping up due to our grossly inhumane treatment of animals. Nature has come back to bite us with foot-and-mouth disease, bird flu, avian influenza (with cases reported in the Jeolla and Chungcheong provinces of Korea caused by H5N1 virus), mad cow disease, and all other diseases related to over-consumption of meat by humans. In January 2011 it was reported that South Korea was burying thousands of pigs alive due to an outbreak of foot and mouth disease. As many as 34,000 pigs have been killed in a single day. Not to mention health issues related to growth hormones and antibiotics. In the US, an estimated 70 percent of all antibiotics are fed to pigs, chickens, and cattle. American livestock consumes eight times the amount of antibiotics that humans do.

Meat production has increased a staggering 500 percent since 1950 to meet the ever-expanding demand. Factory farms supply 43 percent of the world's cows and more than half of the world's pigs and chickens for consumption. So ugly is the industry that we keep it behind closed doors, leaving the dehumanizing task for the most exploited workforce, the immigrant workforce. We do not use the language of the animals; rather we use palatable words that diminish the reality – beef, pork and poultry.

As well, the livestock industry is a primary contributor to deforestation. Since 1970, twenty million hectares (50 million acres) of tropical forest in Latin America have been cut down for livestock production. Meat production's environmental toll on wilderness destruction, soil erosion, energy waste, and pollution is of such unbelievable scale and magnitude, it can be difficult to comprehend. Yet, it is barely even discussed let alone acted upon.

More False Solutions

In 2011, the giant agribusiness corporation Cargill announced its plan for a bacteria-based system to reduce the amount of nitrogen and phosphorous released into a river by its Fort Morgan, Colorado beef processing facility. Consider that Cargill corporation saw its profits soar 86% during the worst of the 2008 food crisis – tallying more than $1 billion in the second quarter of 2008 alone. During this same time, pesticide and seed seller Monsanto doubled its earnings. False solutions do not address the root cause of problems – they only add sensational profits to the bottom line of the corporations. Cargill's bacteria system is certain to be a test-run for global distribution and patents. Destruction + pollution = corporate profit. Corporations serve to further enhance and expand their portfolios by effectively obtaining/creating government contracts that "clean up" the very destruction and environmental degradation they create. Climate degradation and climate-change-induced disasters will prove to be the ultimate shock doctrine for corporate profit.

And while our corporatized society dangerously distracts itself – by developing false-solution technologies and seeking grant money for further studies – the real issues, the root causes, remain unresolved. In Canada, rather than addressing the root of the problem – the massive environmental degradation and methane resulting from factory farmed pigs – the University of Guelph, heavily funded with corporate dollars, has created a genetically engineered "enviropig."

An accepted example of the status quo "solution" is recycling. We neglect to critically examining the root cause – which is the production of the waste in the first place. We reject real solutions such as cradle to cradle life cycle analysis and zero waste/zero emissions (ZERI) concept principles, coupled with legislation that would demand that we achieve zero waste. Rather, we recycle. Yet, even if 100% of all private households in the US recycled 100% of their solid waste, this would add up to 1% of all the solid waste produced in the US. [20] This is what happens when you have the world's largest waste management systems funding big greens such as Rockefeller's lovechild, WWF. Of course, only if we evolve to a level of enlightenment where we are able to separate our wants from our needs while flat out rejecting consumerism and green capitalism, even meticulously critiqued production will fail us.

Next: Part IV:

Today
Compromised Science | Serving the Propaganda Machine
The Seafloor is Teaming with Recently Discovered Life – A Vital Component of Earth’s Carbon Cycle that Governs Climate
Coconut Revolution
While We Sleep | Corporate Greed – How to Create a Market
Crimestop

References | Part III:

[14] Sustainable Development: ConocoPhillips: “Our company has been working on natural gas hydrate extraction technology since 2003 and is dedicating significant research and development resources to a field trial on Alaska’s North Slope. This well will be drilled to gain scientific knowledge and test a patented production technology which was developed by ConocoPhillips and the University of Bergen (Norway). ConocoPhillips and the University have been developing this technology since 2003. This trial represents the first experiment outside a laboratory of this production technology in which a carbon dioxide molecule is exchanged for the methane molecule locked up in the hydrate’s structure. The methane gas is produced, and the carbon dioxide is sequestered inside the hydrate structure. Methane hydrates hold a significant potential to supply the world with clean fossil fuel. This trial is an important step in developing a promising production technology to access this potential and ultimately to produce methane from gas hydrates while sequestering carbon dioxide.”

[15] The formation of methane hydrates takes a very long time, so they cannot be considered as a renewable energy source: the present deposits have probably been formed over a period of several million years (Davie, M. K., and B. A. Buffett, A numerical model for the formation of gas hydrate below the seafloor, J. Geophys. Res., 106, 497–514, 2001)

[16] Further information presented on 30 November - 2 December 2010 in Washington, US, by leading scientists Natalia Shakhova (University of Alaska, Fairbanks, International Arctic Research Centre, USA) and Igor Semiletov (Russian Academy of Sciences, Far Eastern Branch, Pacific Oceanological Institute, Vladivostok, Russia) is briefly as follows: 80% of the total area of sub-sea permafrost is in the East Siberia Arctic Shelf (ESAS) with shallow hydrates underlain in more than 80% of the ESAS area. Observational data suggest 80% of the ESAS sea floor serves as a source of methane to the water column. Arctic warming affects the ESAS the strongest: Observed warming on the ESAS is the strongest in the entire Arctic and the region is now 5°C warmer compared with average springtime temperatures registered during the 20th century. During the last two decades areas of flaw polynyas in the ESAS increased 5 times (flaw polynyas allow atmospheric methane emissions during the ice-covered period). One additional factor serving to enhance permafrost destabilization in the ESAS has been the warming of bottom water – up to 3°C during the last three decades. Considering the significance of the ESAS methane reservoir and enhancing mechanism of its destabilization, this region should be considered the most potential in terms of possible climate change caused by abrupt release of methane.

[17] D Nicolsky and N Shakhova, Modeling sub-sea permafrost in the East Siberian Arctic Shelf: the Dmitry Laptev Strait: http://iopscience.iop.org/1748-9326/5/1/015006/

[18] Together, the top six big greens in the US received nearly $2.1 billion in total revenue from all sources in 2008. But not to worry, the average of $160 million per group that was government funded using your tax dollars wasn't critical to the financial health of the six. This is just a drop in the bucket in the elitist non-profit industrial complex; Frederic Krupp, President of Environmental Defense Fund, $496,17; Cater Roberts, President of World Wildlife Fund, $486,394; Frances Beinecke, President of Natural Resources Defense Council, $432,959; David Yarnold, Executive Director of Environmental Defense Fund, $365,773; David Festa, V.P. West Coast Environmental Defense Fund, $360,872; Stephanie Meeks, Acting President of Nature Conservatory, $349,873; Larry Schweiger, President, National Wildlife Federation, $345,004; Eileen Claussen, President, Pew Centre on Global Climate Change, $335,099; Roger Shlickeisen, President, Defenders of Wildlife, $312,896; William Meadows, President, The Wilderness Society, $308,465.

[19] The United Nations FAO calculates the total greenhouse gas emissions attributed to livestock to be 18%: The FAO states that "livestock-related deforestation as reported from, for example, Argentina is excluded " from its GHG accounting. Second, the FAO omits farmed fish from its definition of livestock and so fails to count GHGs from their life cycle and supply chain. It also omits GHG emissions from portions of the construction and operation of marine and land-based industries dedicated to handling marine organisms destined to feed livestock (up to half the annual catch of marine organisms). Read a further explanation on why the UN calculation is lower here.

[20] C & J Plant (1991). Green business: hope or hoax. Philadelphia: New Society Publishers.

Further Reading:

A Killer in Our Midst | http://www.killerinourmidst.com/

Only Zero Carbon | http://www.onlyzerocarbon.org/

Videos:

Media Education Foundation | http://www.mediaed.org/

"Moving Beyond the Automobile" on Streetfilms

2011-02-08T15:44:00.000-05:00

How exciting! Streetfilms just posted the trailer for its new 10-part series on reducing private automobile usage. Check it out below:

A new film will be posted every Tuesday, as well as lesson plans and discussion points if you're planning a screening with a larger audience (especially nice after the DVD becomes available). I'm looking forward to the piece on carsharing, as we just had a great day-long strategic planning session for Calgary Carshare that included some exciting plans for increased visibility and membership in this city. (My to-do list includes "evaluate the membership application process", "explore new partnerships with like-minded groups" and "bribe volunteers to fill out their timesheets". And that's just the first month!)

(Cross-posted at Witch-Ways, where I've been crafting magic on the internet since 1994.)

Working Together to Get Seniors Moving (in More Ways than One)

2011-01-31T16:01:00.000-05:00

In October 2007, I started in my current position as an Executive Director of a nonprofit. As many EDs quickly discover, the job description and what you actually end up doing can be two very different things. Part of that evolution for me at Bow Cliff Seniors has been the increased emphasis on transportation issues facing our members: driving cessation, concerns about snow removal in neighbourhoods, changes in transit routes as the new West LRT line is developed, and challenges with Access Calgary and taxi wait times as a result of increased demand for these services, and so on. And, like many Executive Directors, I work best in collaboration.

One of the committees that I sit on, the ElderNet Transportation Planning Table, has been working on a mapping strategy to look at where seniors travel in our city and where the gaps are. It's been a fascinating process already: learning that the trip from one senior centre to a hospital in the same city quadrant can take up to two hours on transit, while another transit route from a hospital to several care facilities has its last bus of the evening leave 15 minutes before visiting hours are over, has us thinking about "what" people are doing when they use transit. This is starting to make the news in Toronto as well: proposed cuts to routes would impact people who are mobile (War on Roller Derby) and not-so-mobile (Fiorito: Cuts threaten bus service to Toronto's deaf-blind community).

Another collaboration opportunity has been the involvement of nursing students from the University of Calgary at our centre. This semester, the group is looking at how our members get to the centre, get groceries and get themselves to health services on a regular basis. I've also encouraged them to do a community survey to assess walking, transit and driving issues in the immediate neighbourhood, as keeping people engaged in community means being able to access it. It will be interesting to see what gaps they find here in relation to the bigger ElderNet project.

This week I'm also meeting with the coordinator of Get Up and Go, which connects seniors with "buddies" in an attempt to get people to ride transit. I'm hoping that the program will be a fit for BCS members, both as a way of getting more people to the centre (so they can participate in programs, access services, and not be isolated!) but also as another way of sparking a transit advocacy strategy process in the community. I still think the key to getting seniors using transit is to get them on it before they're seniors, but that's going to be a bigger project. (Hmmm....)

Trying to address social isolation without looking at root causes like transportation is a futile exercise. I'm glad that there are so many opportunities to work with others in the community, and I'm glad so many of them are recognizing that our transportation systems include more than individual vehicle ownership. What a radical concept, non?

(Cross-posted at Witch-Ways, where I've been crafting magic on the internet since 1994.)

The Real Weapons of Mass Destruction: Methane, Propaganda & the Architects of Genocide | Part II

2011-01-31T09:05:00.001-05:00

An investigative report. [Part 1: http://bit.ly/fV8slf | Part II: http://bit.ly/gMITca]

By Cory Morningstar

Part II

Post Cancún: North America. The New Energy Kingdom

On 13 December 2010 directly following the disastrous Cancún conference ("one of the largest economic conferences since the Second World War" [10]), a revealing post is found on the "oilprice.com" website. The article is titled North America: The New Energy Kingdom. From the article: "Beyond shale oil and shale gas, there's the awesome energy promise of methane hydrates, frozen crystals of water and gas that lie beneath the northern permafrost and beneath oceans floors around the world in quantities that boggle the imagination."

"Assuming 1 per cent recovery," the US Geological Survey says, "these deposits [in US territory] could meet the natural gas needs of the country (at current rates of consumption) for 100 years." The obstructionist corporate-colluded states – the ones responsible for climate change in the first place – have no intention of going to zero carbon in the single decade as direly warned by Hans Joachim Schellnhuber (director of the Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research) in 2009 – what is necessary for the world to avoid reaching and exceeding a global catastrophic 2ºC. They have no intention of going to zero, ever, until the Earth is literally drilled to death – or we annihilate humanity. Whichever comes first.

NASA Has Known All Along

As we work like the busy little worker proles we are, amusing ourselves with irrelevant trivia and nonsense, the global power structures that form the plutocracy have long understood our future demise at the expense of an insatiable economy – and have kept silent. In a 2007 NASA report titled Methane Hydrates: More Than a Viable Aviation Fuel Feedstock Option, NASA unequivocally states that it is not a matter of if the methane from hydrates escapes, rather it is only a matter of when: "The unabated release of methane sequestered in these hydrates could impact the planet to the point of extinction of life as we understand it. Considering the predicted Earth thermal events, the stability of methane hydrates, and the impact of methane on the environment, the question is not will this methane be released, but when. It is suggested in this report that enhanced efforts be placed on a comprehensive program to locate, assess, and recover the sequestered methane at surface levels to meet the energy demand rather than permitting natural release into the environment." The report later states, "Still, the world energy producers and consumers are encouraged to turn to the Sun and learn to capture, store, condition, and transmit that energy to meet energy needs and to maintain planetary stability." Fat chance. Corporations would only be interested in the sun if they could drill it.

Blinded by Addiction: Methane Hydrates – The Oil of the Future

The OECD originated in 1948 as the Organisation for European Economic Co-operation (OEEC). In the early 1990s, intergovernmental negotiations soon transformed the vision of prevention into a more restricted mitigation/adaptation agenda. By 1992 it is clear that influential interest groups and powerful institutions had become heavily involved in the negotiations, including the OECD, OPEC countries, oil-importing developing nations and private industry/corporations. The OECD has been heavily criticized by several civil society groups as well as developing states. The main criticism has been the narrowness of the OECD on account of its limited membership to a select few wealthy states. [11]

An unclassified document was prepared in May 2003 by the OECD and the International Energy Agency (IEA) Secretariats at the request of the Annex I Expert Group on the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change. The acknowledgements cite Cédric Philibert at the IEA who prepared the document while thanking the US's Jonathan Pershing for the information, comments and ideas he provided.

From the unclassified document: Technology Innovation, Development and Diffusion - OECD/IEA Information Paper:

"No technology currently exists to use this enormous energy resource. Depressurisation, thermal stimulation and solvent injection are possible candidates for commercial exploitation – but a prerequisite would be to develop tools for identifying and characterising concentrated deposits. If a technology were to be developed, it could have, with respect to climate change, a kind of Janus' double face. On the one hand, it could prolong the era of fossil fuels and ultimately add a supplementary 10 000 Pg of carbon into the atmosphere (on top of the 5 000 Pg from the combustion of the currently known fossil resource base). Absent associated developments of CO2 capture and storage technologies, such uses would imply an increase in atmospheric concentrations of up to 20-fold (substantially higher than the seven-fold increase projected with full combustion of current resources). On the other hand, such developments could stimulate the near-term replacement of coal and oil." [Gas hydrates may contain three orders of magnitude more methane than exists in today's atmosphere. Because hydrate breakdown, causing release to the atmosphere, can be related to global temperature increases, gas hydrates may play an even more important role in global climate change.]

The introduction within this document correctly identifies that only zero carbon can stabilize our planet: "... the ultimate objective of the UN Convention on Climate Change: 'stabilising atmospheric concentrations of greenhouse gases.' Such an achievement is likely to eventually require near elimination of CO2 emissions. Without radical changes in lifestyles, only a massive deployment of carbon-free (or close to carbon-free) energy technologies can power the world economy and satisfy growing energy needs, especially of the developing world, while making stabilisation sustainable over the long term." Yet, the authors of this document cite the solution of "new technologies" as playing the critical role in achieving the UN objective of avoiding dangerous atmospheric interference -- outlining pages of false solutions that will continue to line the bank vaults of corporate powers and keep the power structures intact.

The truth that few wish to acknowledge is that a radical change in our economic system must be the imperative central role and task of this ultimate objective, along with the existing clean, safe, renewable technologies we already possess – the ones that serve to benefit citizens throughout the world with energy independence but which are the greatest threat to the very foundation of corporate powers. A further truth is that we are already beyond dangerous climate interference in the climate system – made clear by John Holdren in 2006.

The OECD report says "without radical changes in lifestyles" – omitting the fact that the wealthiest 15% are responsible for 75% of global emissions. The remaining 85% of humanity emit only 25% of all emissions while the poorest 3 billion emit essentially nothing. Such brilliant tactics using language and framing have been essential in ensuring that current power structures remain unthreatened. Such tactics have thus far succeeded in keeping global citizens in the dark by essentially employing "big green" co-opted NGOs who reverberate the same messages and language. These co-opted groups serve their vital purpose – to successfully lend the illusion of democracy, which is critical in ensuring the public is kept passive, thereby ensuring the system will not be threatened in any meaningful way. The message is consistent and repetitive: place the emphasis on the individual, frame the climate issue around false solutions of green consumerism and symbolic actions, keep the dialogue successfully away from the root causes of climate change – thereby ensuring business as usual and uninterrupted profits.

According to the International Energy Agency (IEA), who wrote the unclassified document mentioned above:

Fossil fuels account for almost 90% of the growth in energy demand between now and 2030. Energy trade between regions more than doubles by 2030, most of it still in the form of oil.
Global emissions grow 62% between now and 2030.
Global oil demand for transport increases very closely in line with GDP.
World emissions increase by 1.8 % per year to 38 billion tonnes in 2030 – 70% above 2000 levels.

Make no mistake that world governments have no plans of reducing our dependence on fossil fuels. Global emissions are set to soar and no one disputes this. A MIT (Massachusetts Institute of Technology) video filmed in September 2010 showcasing the views of Shell and ExxonMobil executives begins with the statement: "But the truth is that a civilization is largely defined by the energy technologies they use." If this is true, we can easily and truthfully define, at minimum, our own ethically bankrupt society 1) by the unconcealed disrespect for our Earth, which graciously sustains us; 2) as a society that commits and condones infanticide, genocide, ecocide and now progenycide; 3) as a society that condones occupations and invasions; 4) as a socially bankrupt society that easily exploits others with no empathy; and 5) as a society that places economic value over the value of life. In the film, a comment follows: " ... powering the planet we actually possess." The narcissistic tendencies of those at the centre of the energy dialogue are spectacular beyond imagination.

Below: Shell promotional video. November 2010 (3:32). Shell Arctic Exploration Program. The Next Chapter in Alaska's Oil and Gas History:

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DciyZ05SExw&w=640&h=390]

Information not made public until July 18, 2007 in a working document by the National Petroleum Council's Oil Shales and Hydrates Subgroup of the Technology Task Group of the NPC Committee on Global Oil & Gas Study showed that worldwide, only a few dozen boreholes have been drilled with most being drilled offshore Japan in 2004 and offshore India in 2006. [12][13] NPC further states that comprehensive reports of these campaigns are not in the public domain, so there is little public record available to assess the efficacy of exploration paradigms. NPC states it is unclear how much information from these tests will be made public.

Brief Timeline of Hydrate Drilling Development | Halliburton, ChevronTexaco, BP, Shell, Exxon Mobil and Friends

In 1970, Soviet scientists discussed the possibility that methane hydrates could exist in large volumes in the earth's crust. By 1972 methane hydrates were recovered from the Black Sea. Once the presence of global hydrates was confirmed and it was proven that the volume of gas was massive, the next question, for states and corporations, was how to exploit it. The US Geological Survey estimates that globally, there is twice as much methane trapped in hydrates as there is carbon in all the world's conventional fossil fuels. One can imagine that the sheer volume of these hydrates would have had corporations with corporate-colluded governments salivating over the potential profits of what will become our species' greatest assault and most reckless exploitation of our Earth to date.

1982: A US Department of Defense report states that following the discovery of massive hydrate deposits off the coast of Guatemala in 1982, the US Department of Energy (DOE), in collaboration with other organizations, embarked on a ten-year program to establish a foundation on methane hydrate science.

March 1995: Chemical Engineering News: Gas hydrates eyed as future energy source: "An icelike material that occurs in underground deposits all over the world and is composed largely of water and methane may turn out to be an unconventional energy source for the future – if scientists can find a way to tap it. Global deposits of this material, known as methane (or gas) hydrate, are estimated to contain twice as much carbon as all other fossil fuels on Earth. But tapping this enormous potential energy resource may not be as easy as drilling for oil or natural gas. Nevertheless, scientists and engineers are now beginning to develop strategies to exploit methane hydrate. And some of their ideas were aired in late February in Atlanta at the annual meeting of the American Association for the Advancement of Science."

Canada, Japan, India, and the United States launched ambitious research projects. Canada has led with university-driven research since 1985, focused mainly on the west coast and the Arctic.

In 1997, the US Department of Energy initiated a research program with intent of commercial production by 2015. In 2000, US Congress would authorize funding via the Methane Hydrate Research and Development Act of 2000. The Interagency Coordination Committee (ICC), a coalition of six government agencies, has been advancing research on several fronts. President Clinton signed the act, which authorized approximately $50 million over five years for research.

1998: Three very quiet research programs have also taken place over the last decade at the Mackenzie Delta at the Mallik research site. In 1998, led by leading climate obstructionist Canada along with Japan, the 1150 metre deep Mallik 2L-38 well was completed. For the first time, cores were brought to the surface from an Arctic methane hydrate. In 2002 the second phase of this research project commenced, this time with a country partnership: Canada, Japan, Germany, USA and India. Three additional wells were completed and the first production test was completed. This was the first time gas would be flared from a drilled hydrate. Canada conducted its efforts under its "New Canadian Gas Hydrate Research Program" supported by the Geological Survey of Canada. The Canadian gas hydrate program focused on the marine region around Vancouver Island and Arctic region around the Mackenzie Delta.

2000: The US government passed the Methane Hydrate Research and Development Act. The Act authorized the expenditure of $43 million over five years and directs the US Department of Energy in consultation with the US Geological Survey, the Minerals Management Service, the Department of Defense, and the Department of Commerce to commence basic and applied research to identify, explore, assess and develop methane hydrates as a source of energy.

2000: From the Gas Methane Hydrates – Research Status, Annoted Bibliography, and Energy Implications Final Report, prepared for the DoE: "Theoretically, it appears possible that a single explosive methane release, such as may occur with a large seafloor collapse event, could cause a significant climate change over a short time period."

2002: This marketing video (posted on vimeo 12 June 2010) chronicles the Mallik 2002 gas hydrate research well program. The video is courtesy of the Japan National Oil Corporation Technology Research Center (JNOCTRC) and the Geological Survey of Canada.

2002: The US Department of Energy and BP Exploration (Alaska), Inc. (BPXA), in cooperation with the US Geological Survey (USGS), initiated a research program on Alaska North Slope (ANS) methane hydrates.

2002-2006: Gulf of Mexico Bush Hill Project: The project consisted of two field expeditions having the acronym GHOST to research methane gas hydrates at and near the seafloor in the northern Gulf of Mexico. The first of two research cruises took place June 6-14, 2002 aboard the R/V Seward Johnson. Two sites, Green Canyon 185 (Bush Hill) and Green Canyon 234, were selected for study based on their well-mapped and well-characterized shallow gas hydrate outcrops.

The USGS estimates about 2.4Tm³ (85Tcf; 15Bboe) of undiscovered, technically recoverable gas resources within gas hydrates in Alaska. The area is mostly Federal, State, and Native lands covering 145,000 km² (the equivalent of some 25 North Sea quadrants). Photo: OilEdge.com

US Department of Defense

"The worldwide distribution of this energy resource has the potential for changing the balance of power." – Brad Tomer, Department of Defense "Future Energy Resources" Workshops, May 2003

17 December 2003: The US Department of Defense (DOD) brings forth major recommendations from a workshop series: 1) That the DOD immediately conduct an in-depth study to identify the S&T (science and technology) and later the R&D (research and development) needed to assure that its future fuel and energy needs are met. The report states: "In this regard, consideration should be given to establish a position in the office of the Undersecretary of Defense for Policy that would be responsible for future DOD energy needs. This position would report directly to the Secretary of Defense and would coordinate with the energy and fuel offices in the individual services and with the office of the Secretary of Energy. The results of the in-depth DOD study would be reported to the Secretary of Defense, the Undersecretary of Defense for Policy, and the Secretary of Energy with the necessary information upon which to establish future programs."

During the early 1990s it was recognized that more organic carbon is stored within hydrates than is present in all the world's coal, oil and non-hydrate natural gas combined. The DOD report states that "Concerns were raised on the linkage of hydrate deposits to catastrophic instability of continental shelves and to the lack of understanding of the global carbon cycle. These preliminary findings also raised the question on the role of periodic and massive dissociation of methane from hydrates over geologic time in affecting the earth's climate." A structuring of a program plan was formulated from two workshops conducted by DOE in 1998 and 2000 with the Gulf of Mexico having been a focal point for extensive studies in partnership with industries such as ChevronTexaco, Schlumberger, Conoco Phillips and Halliburton. USGS, Center for Marine Resources and Environmental Technology (CMRET) and Naval Research Laboratory (NRL) were principal participants in this study. The other focal point in the Arctic fields, in collaboration with an international partnership, has been directed to drilling and tests at the Mallik well in the Mackenzie Delta of Canada.

Within the DOD report it is identified that energy corporations are short-term focused, as evidenced in the declining corporate support on energy research during the last decade. Any investment in research is driven only by expectations of short-term returns or prevention of losses in monetary profits. Investments made by Anadarko and BP on the North Slope of Alaska in pursuit of exploiting methane hydrates resulted from the Mallik well project in Canada and the US market for natural gas. A so-called "gas bubble" during the decade between 1985 and 1995 when it is said that an excess of natural gas on the market stabilized the gas price at $1.60 per thousand cubic feet (106 BTU), rapidly accelerated from 1996 to 1999 increasing to $2.35. It continued to increase during 2000 to an average price of $3.72, the price at the time of the Department of Defense workshop. And consider this – while the Earth burns, ecosystems collapse, species are decimated and people die – oil companies' profits skyrocket. In 2007, the combined profits of Exxon Mobil, Shell, BP, ChevronTexaco and ConocoPhillips skyrocketed to $123.9 billion. In 2008, Exxon Mobil alone posted a record $45.2 billion profit. Meanwhile, ordinary citizens are left to pay for the phenomenal externalized costs ( oil-related health and environmental damage) – in the range of $232 billion annually. The United Nations reported that in 2008 the world's largest corporations caused $2.2 trillion dollars' worth of environmental damage. If these corporations were not able to externalize these costs by way of destroying and poisoning the natural environment, at least one-third of their profits would be lost.

These are perfect examples of the fact that within the corporate world, where quarterly profits are sacrosanct, a simple pollution tax – to be taxed at the source – would effectively force the energy markets to transition to clean renewable technologies almost overnight. Remember – for corporations it is only the quarterly profits that matter – little else.

Unfortunately we no longer have governments of the people – but rather governments of the corporation, by the corporation and for the corporation. The US president may, for all illusionary purposes, be a man with the brand name of "Obama" – but he is certainly not the one pulling the strings in the greatest puppet show on Earth.

June 2004: The American Geological Institute, Tapping methane hydrates in the Gulf: "For decades, oil companies have punched through large deposits of icy hydrocarbons in the Gulf of Mexico to reach the regular oil and gas deposits that sit below them. Starting this fall, after some delays, an industry-government effort will finally begin to examine those methane hydrate deposits more carefully — for their stability during drilling and their potential as a future energy source…. Funded largely by DOE [US Department of Energy], the interdisciplinary project was first broached in August 2000. ChevronTexaco organized the research in 2001, and now more than half a dozen companies and agencies participate, including Japan National Oil Company, Halliburton, India's Reliance Industries and TotalFinaElf." [August, 2010: The Energy Vampires: "The global elite know that energy is paramount to life. Control over energy means control over people. Four giant companies are now making a play to own not just all the oil, but virtually all energy sources on the planet. Royal Dutch/Shell, Exxon Mobil, Chevron Texaco & BP Amoco."]

March 2005: An International Association of Drilling Contractors paper in reference to a the methane discussion at a conference in 2004: "To achieve the longterm goals of the US Federal Government in regard to energy supplies of the US, the Department of Energy (DOE) is committed to developing the knowledge and technology base to allow commercial production of methane from domestic hydrates deposits by the year 2015…. Under changing geological conditions hydrates can dissociate and be released gradually or explosively depending on how rapidly the pressure drops or on how the temperature increases. The magnitude of this previously unknown global storehouse of methane is staggering and has raised serious inquiries…."

The Mt. Elbert-01 stratigraphic test well, Milne Point Unit on the North Slope of Alaska, collected the first open-hole formation pressure response data in a gas hydrate reservoir. This test and reservoir simulations are some of the first steps that could lead to production of hydrate reservoirs. Photo: Tim Collett, USGS | OilEdge.com

February 2007: Petroleum News: "BP-operated Mount Elbert well confirms presence of gas hydrate accumulation and enables coring and testing of gas hydrate zone. A joint government, industry and university team investigating gas hydrate deposits under Alaska’s North Slope hit the jackpot in mid-February, when the BP-operated Mount Elbert stratigraphic test well successfully penetrated several hundred feet of hydrate bearing sandstone at Milne Point. The first ever retrieval of North Slope gas hydrate well cores and the second ever test anywhere in the world of the pressure response of gas hydrates." The US DOE funded the $4.6 million test well. Due to the extraordinary amounts of hydrate, US Congress has taken a big interest in funding research, authorizing more than $200 million in spending since 2000.

2007 and 2008: Japan (JOGMEC) and Canada (NRCan) returned to the Mallik site to initiate a new testing program that focused on a full scale production draw down test. The 2007 tests were the world's first gas production from exploiting methane hydrate.

Forbes 29 August 2008: Energy's Most Dangerous Game: "Welcome to the final frontier in fossil fuels, the wild card in climate change theories and the dark horse in the scramble to secure access to clean energy. Meet methane hydrates, the world's most promising and perilous energy resource…. A substantial amount of evidence suggests that weakening the lattice-like structure of gas hydrates has triggered underwater landslides on the continental margin. In other words, the extraction process, if done improperly, could cause sudden disruptions on the ocean floor, reducing ocean pressure rates and releasing methane gas from hydrates. A mass release of methane into the sea and atmosphere could have catastrophic consequences on the pace of climate change. More than 50 million years ago, undersea landslides resulted in the release of methane gas from methane hydrate, which contributed to global warming that lasted tens of thousands of years. 'Methane hydrate was a key cause of the global warming that led to one of the largest extinctions in the earth's history,' Ryo Matsumoto, a professor at the University of Tokyo who has spent 20 years researching the subject, told Bloomberg in December."

12 November 2008: USGS Director Mark Myers states that gas hydrates research has been going on for more than 25 years.

March 2008: The Mallik 5L-38 test produced the world's first gas flare of methane from a hydrate reservoir. The test lasted six days producing 13,000 m³ of gas.

Photo: 2006-08 Canada-Japan Mallik Project - located in the Canadian Arctic off the Mackenzie Delta. Photo: OilEdge.com

2010: A small army of representatives from universities, scientists, oil executives and others write the 2005-page book titled Realizing the Energy Potential of Methane Hydrate for the United States. It includes a project summary table.

In 2010 "big green" organization WWF identifies on their website the fact that the extraction of methane hydrates from the Arctic region for energy use is banned by Arctic governments unless a comprehensive and verifiable legal agreement is in place to restrict their use to replace high carbon fuels like coal.

Video below (2010 | 0:55) created by PolarTREC teacher Bill Schmoker onboard the International Continental Shelf Survey. This was the first piston core that returned a gas hydrate sample in the core cutter. The hydrate was about 20 feet beneath the sea floor:

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nUluhIa-hzA&w=480&h=390]

Warnings

One of the largest landslides in Earth's history occurred not on land, but underwater, off the coast of Norway during the Holocene epoch approximately 8,200 years ago. This event, known as the Storegga (big edge) Submarine Landslide, caused massive amounts of sediments to slide approximately 800 kilometres down the continental slope. This event triggered a massive tsunami, as high as 25 meters, that struck both Norway and Scotland. Afterwards, the seafloor was wiped clean of all life. Scientists suspect that the entire disaster happened in a very short time - a few weeks or perhaps a few days. Perhaps two hours. At the time of the Storegga slide, the hydrate was being melted by global warming. An earthquake possibly triggered the slide. More recently, in 1998, Russian scientists discovered an unstable hydrate field near the site of the Storegga slide. Scientists believe that a rapid decomposition of hydrates, related to temperature and pressure changes at the end of the last ice age, destabilized the sediments, causing the disaster. Methane hydrates should be considered as nature's cement foundations. A frozen hydrate that cements sediments together - vital if you wish to keep ecosystems and lands intact. When you remove the methane hydrate, the seafloor destabilizes. Marine geologist James Kennett of the University of California suggests that bursts of methane from seafloor hydrates were synchronous with, and largely responsible for, virtually all the warmings the planet has experienced over the last 800,000 years. Other scientists suggest that changes in ocean currents triggered such methane bursts by channeling warmer water over continental slopes, as at Storegga.

A research paper published 21 June 2010 warns of a massive methane release triggered by seafloor erosion offshore near southwestern Japan: "Vast amounts of methane hydrate exist beneath continental margins, but whether this methane releases from sediment on a large scale and affects the oceans and atmosphere remains unclear. Analysis of newly acquired three-dimensional seismic images and drilling data from a large gas hydrate province reveal a recently eroded v-shaped depression. The depression sharply cuts through a relic bottom simulating reflection (BSR) and hydrate-laden sediments. The shape of the relic BSR indicates that the seafloor depression was once a large anticline that has recently been eroded and released an estimated 1.51 × 10¹¹ m³ of methane. We hypothesize that erosion of the seafloor via bottom-water currents unroofed buoyant hydrate-laden sediments and subhydrate overpressured free gas zones beneath the anticline. Once triggered, gas-driven erosion created a positive feedback mechanism, releasing gas and eroding hydrate-bearing sediment. We suggest that erosive currents in deep-water methane hydrate provinces act as hair triggers, destabilizing kilometer-scale swaths of the seafloor where large concentrations of underlying overpressured methane exist. Our analysis suggests that kilometer-scale degassing events are widespread, and that deep-water hydrate reservoirs can rapidly release methane in massive quantities."

2010-2011

By 2010 internet searches for the word "methane" are quietly exposing the very silent discussions, papers and investment data on the quietly emerging topic of drilling methane hydrates. No longer surprising, the most lethal component of climate change is now being viewed by multinational corporations and corporate-colluded governments as the ultimate in potential climate wealth. Most recently, in a bid to shore up its precarious energy security, Japan is to start commercial test drilling for frozen methane gas along its coast early this year. (Japan's trade ministry has requested a budget of $105.6 million (US) for the drilling.) The issue is barely controversial as few are hardly aware of it. A corporate consortium led by the Japanese government including Japan Oil and Gas and Metals National Corporation (Jogmec) will be sinking several wells off Japan's southeastern coast to assess the commercial viability of extracting gas from frozen methane. Surveys suggest Japan has enough methane hydrate for 100 years at the current rate of usage. Tokyo plans to start commercial output of methane hydrates by 2018.

UNEP Climbs in Bed with Shell and EDF Energy

25 February 2010: United Nations Environment Programme announces the "UNEP Global Outlook on Methane Gas Hydrates" initiative: "UNEP/GRID-Arendal, a collaborating center of the United Nations Environment Programme, announces the launch of a new initiative dedicated with bringing to the attention of the general public, the media and decision makers the latest knowledge research and development being conducted in relation to occurrences of methane gas hydrates." On March 4 and 5, 2010, 24 delegates from Norway, the United States, Canada, Germany, Japan, Korea and India, representing government, academia, industry and the NGO community, gathered at the offices of UNEP/GRID-Arendal in Arendal, Norway to discuss the development of the Global Outlook on Methane Gas Hydrates. Who was representing the NGO community? It was the consultant and former director of the WWF Arctic. In the 2007 Report to Congress, Richard Charter, representative of NGO Defenders of Wildlife, is listed as a member of the Methane Hydrate Advisory Committee.

Highlights of key decisions made by the steering committee in the first UNEP meeting held in March 2010 include:

• Engage with and include environmental NGOs and the media early on in the process.

• Develop a FAQ section that can be used both for marketing purposes and as a volume guide.

• Develop project material toolkits based on the different target audiences (government and industry toolkit, media toolkit, NGO toolkit, education system toolkit)

• General consensus is that a broad spectrum of the expert community needs to be engaged in the process to ensure its robustness to scrutiny.

August 2010: UNEP: "Expertise from 7 national research groups (US, Canada, Germany, Norway, Japan, India, Korea), industry (Statoil, Schlumberger) and NGOs (Forum for the Future) has been assembled to guide the development of the report. As a first milestone, a project website has now been launched." So while your favourite big green NGO continues the symbolic echoing that "we need to work harder than ever!" (never telling us the truth of what we really must do or achieve – or how much time we have to do so), and while your favourite big green works to convince you that you merely need to keep hoping, while using other strategic language that is meaningless in the face of climate catastrophe – "Forum of the Future" NGOs are and will be partnered with "some of the best-known brands in the world" including giants like Royal Dutch Shell, EDF energy and many others. [The late Godfrey Rockefeller (1924-2010) was the WWF Executive Director. Godfrey Rockefeller played a vital role in the founding and creation of WWF, which has become the wealthiest "conservation" group in the world.]

January 2011: Canada's Globe and Mail reports the UN Environment Program describes methane hydrates as "the most abundant form of organic carbon on Earth."

Sampled and inferred gas hydrates occur world wide in oceanic sediment of continental margins and in permafrost regions. Inferred gas hydrates are from bottom simulating reflectors (BSRs) on seismic profiles. The Mt. Elbert and Mallik test sites are located at the top of the map. ©USGS | Photo: OilEdge.com

Burn Baby Burn

"The era of procrastination, of half-measures, of soothing and baffling expedients, of delays, is coming to a close. In its place we are entering a period of consequences…." – Sir Winston Churchill

Countries have been exploring how to exploit methane hydrates for years, some for decades. These countries include: Russia (1969), U.S. (DoE has sponsored some research on methane hydrate since at least 1982), Canada (1985), Japan (1995), New Zealand (1997), Germany (2000), Chile (2001), South Korea (2000), Ireland (2003), China (2004), Mexico (2004), Taiwan (2004) and India (2006). United Kingdom, Norway and France also are participating in hydrate methane research though it appears they are not focusing on exploration. China and South Korea are seeking to develop the extraction technology, and each is now exploring the mining of methane hydrates from their own sea beds. In 2010, at a cost of $37 million, South Korea hired a deep-water drilling ship to sink 32 holes in a sea basin south of the Dokdo Islands, which are disputed with Japan. Japan has spent more than $260 million since 2001 on research into methane hydrates.

Recently (17 October 2009), Beijing (AsiaNews) reported that a huge methane reservoir was discovered under the tundra of Tibet. A representative of the Chinese Ministry for Land and Resources stated "The secret to energy independence for China is hidden, opening up the road to environmentally sustainable development without oil," adding "Under the ice of Tibet and Qinghai our geologists have found the largest underground reservoir of methane hydrates. Immediately after the announcement, the Shanghai market witnessed the value of the energy company shares sky rocket."

A recent study of the Indian continental margin has confirmed the presence of methane hydrates in four offshore basins. They found one of the richest methane hydrate accumulations yet documented as well as the thickest and deepest methane hydrate stability zone near the Andaman Islands, both in the Bay of Bengal.

The US Department of Energy is spending at minimum $12 million to help ConocoPhillips test an experimental extraction technique on Alaska's North Slope, which will incorporate the false solution of CCS (carbon capture and storage, as with shale drilling, has already proven to be a spectacular failure). Although these Arctic hydrates could become commercially viable as soon as 2015, the US and corporations are currently enjoying massive profits from shale gas (fracking) on the backs of poisoning the people. In 2009, US available natural gas resources increased by 11 percent due to shale gas mining – the biggest single-year jump in history. But, as history shows, corporate greed is unapologetic, deadly and insatiable and the thirst to dominate this industry will soon rear its ugly head.

In 2009 Russia warned of war within a decade over "Arctic oil and gas riches". In Canada, the Harper minority government has the propaganda machine working overtime, selling the lie of "Climate Prosperity" to Canadian citizens while investing 16 billion tax dollars to friends at Lockheed Martin for F-35 stealth fighter jets. Will Korea and Iran be the next Iraq and Afghanistan – to be decimated and occupied under imperialist countries such as US and Canada? Will Japan and South Korea go to war over the disputed Dokdo Islands? Future wars over waters that hold methane hydrates, in the midst of a global water crisis, are not implausible. The Caspian Sea (a basin) is a land-locked body of salt water bordered by Iran, Azerbaijan, Russia, Kazakhstan, and Turkmenistan. Not only does it harbour oil reserves (that could exceed $5 trillion, according to some estimates), the sea also holds massive amounts of natural gas (up to 325 trillion cubic feet) as well as an immense amount of methane hydrates. The dangers of drilling in the Caspian Sea have been made clear.

Naïveté is Deadly

"Power tends to corrupt and absolute power corrupts absolutely." – Lord Acton

A scientific paper on methane hydrates in the Caspian Sea was prepared for presentation at the Offshore Technology Conference (Houston, Texas US, 6-9 May 2002) using Chevron's internal reports and samples from 1998. From the report: "The gas hydrates of the South Caspian region prove to be widespread features of the deepwater of the South Caspian Sea, buried deposits well beneath the seafloor, and accordingly, they may represent significant and previously underestimated geo-hazards….From a structural viewpoint, the Absheron gas hydrates appear to control a large (~200 m2) zone of recent and possibly ongoing deformation on the continental slope of the South Caspian Sea. Such attributes make these gas hydrates important, and perhaps previously underestimated, geohazards of the South Caspian region. Primary among these are uncontrolled release of free gas trapped beneath the hydrate seal, or disruption of the gas hydrate stability field leading to either explosive dissociation of the gas hydrate, or reduction in sediment strength, slope instability, and mass sediment transport. Association of gas hydrates with active mud volcanoes in the South Caspian Sea increases the potential for offshore flaming eruptions, as attested to in historical records."

There was a reason why the Cancún set of "agreements" was nothing more than an agreement to do nothing. Melting permafrost and venting methane hydrates – the greatest accelerating threat to all life on Earth – are seen to those blinded by stupidity, greed and psychopathic tendencies as nothing less than the ultimate climate wealth jackpot with global warming having opened up the Arctic.

Burn baby burn. Keep raping and pillaging our Earth to burn ever more earth-locked hydrocarbons as we apparently have not suffered enough to learn. And as we continue to burn the fossil fuels, burn with them the dreams of the children of those most vulnerable whose lives will be annihilated for short-term monetary wealth. The insanity is breathtaking.

Lying hundreds of metres below the sea and deeper still below sediments, frozen methane gas is exceedingly difficult and extremely dangerous to extract as the pressure is enormous. If Japan "succeeds," it will have a massive impact, equivalent to the use of shale gas now being witnessed in the United States.

Global fossil fuel subsidies amount to hundreds of billions of dollars per year ($558 billion in 2008 – the year of the stealthily planned financial crisis). To be clear, our corporate-controlled states have no intention of abandoning fossil fuels. On the contrary – in brilliant stealth – they have plans to expand fossil fuels even further. No one plans on stopping them. In contrast, union workers, citizens and activists who challenge corporate profit and power in developing countries are brutally assassinated – by the hundreds.

Without a mobilization of unparalleled magnitude to a zero carbon economy in greenhouse gas-emitting developed states such as the US, Canada, Europe, Japan and Australia – within years, not decades – the world will not avoid a catastrophic 2ºC rise in global average temperature. It's that simple. Nature will not compromise nor negotiate these terms.

Yes, Virginia – There is a Santa Claus | BP, A&M University and Corporate Media

"If we understand the mechanisms and motives of the group mind, it is now possible to control and regiment the masses according to our will without their knowing it... In almost every act of our daily lives, whether in the sphere of politics or business, in our social conduct or our ethical thinking, we are dominated by the relatively small number of persons ... who understand the mental processes and social patterns of the masses. It is they who pull the wires which control the public mind." – Edward Barnays American pioneer in the field of public relations and propaganda. Combining ideas of crowd psychology with the psychoanalytical ideas of his uncle, Dr. Sigmund Freud, Bernays was one of the first to attempt to manipulate public opinion using the subconscious.

Drilling for frozen methane will undoubtedly destabilize the methane beds, which contain enough gas worldwide to diminish most complex life on our increasingly fragile Earth. Drilling methane will also undoubtedly result in landslides and advance devastation of marine life and stressed ecosystems. Further, drilling creates heat, which turns the frozen methane into gas, which will undoubtedly leak uncontrollably through the sea into our atmosphere. Such disasters will make the BP oil spill look like child's play. After the 2010 BP oil spill, methane dead zones in the Gulf constituted gas levels as high as one million times normal.

Gulf shrimp make for exotic and quite intoxicating salad garnish now that they are self-oiling ... and small miracles do appear in corporate media. During this writing, corporate media have saturated mainstream media outlets with an anomaly – that all the methane has been eaten up by bacteria.

On 6 January 2011, the Washington Post publishes an article titled Bacteria devoured methane gas from gulf oil spill, scientists say. From the article: "Besides providing some good news for the gulf region, the finding has potential implications for climate change science, too. Methane is a much more potent greenhouse gas than carbon dioxide, and, as the earth warms, climate scientists worry that much more methane will be released from the oceans. 'What this tells us is that natural releases of methane from the seafloor with similar characteristics will not make it up to the atmosphere, will not influence climate,' Kessler says." Kessler is a Texas A&M University oceanographer. Preliminary studies from both academia, including key work at Texas A&M working with and funded by industry, have supported the methane hydrate drilling project. Thomas Blasingame of Texas A&M University serves on the Methane Hydrate Advisory Committee - an Advisory Committee member to the Secretary of Energy in the US.

The fictionary has been scoured over for the most persuasive phrases and words – carefully chosen for maximum effect. Words and phrases such as ‘devoured’, ‘gobbled up’, ‘totally disappeared’, ‘incredible disappearing methane’, ‘massive microbial munching’, etc. The stealthily chosen list of words to appease all concern is endless. Corporate media has been unrelenting in pumping out falsehoods from both BP and the Obama administration that the Gulf of Mexico is safe from the effects of the BP oil disaster.

The impression is that ‘yes Virginia, miracles do happen and even the most destructive assaults on our natural environment are nothing to be concerned about’. BP’s disastrous oil spill is cleaned up - shiny and new.

Beyond such spin, the tragic state of the Gulf of Mexico is revealed by the oil and dispersants samplings on the Mississippi Coast. On 7 January 2011, federal and Louisiana officials took a boat tour of an area in southern Louisiana that remains contaminated with oil from the BP disaster. Barataria Bay is one such area where the oil continued to eat away at the fragile marshland. No cleanup crew could be found. Affected areas varied with some measuring up to 100 feet wide. "This is the biggest cover-up in the history of America," Plaquemines Parish President Billy Nungesser told reporters. Nungesser was angered by the claims of the Coast Guard and National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) officials present who claimed that a plan was under development to clean the area. "It's like you're in bed with BP," Nungesser chided officials. "Don't tell me I got a voice in the way you put together that crappy document … It ain't worth the paper it's printed on. That is bullshit." Nungesser also told one of the federal officials, "You cover up for BP." And one could safely assume that many, including Stuart Smith, an internationally recognized attorney in New Orleans, believe that Nungesser is absolutely right. Smith's opinion is that the NOAA Claims: "Gas-Gobbling" Bacteria Consumed Nearly All of the Estimated 200,000 Tons of Methane Spewed into Gulf - is mere junk science.

There is more.

Gregory Retallack a leading scientist with the University of Oregon (cited below) has been a leading voice on methane gases for decades suggesting that methane from below the seafloor produced a postapocalyptic greenhouse event that drained oxygen from the atmosphere, leaving animals gasping.

Now look at the instantaneous ‘about face’ below:

(From the article Methane Spill from the Deepwater Horizon Cleaned Up By Bacteria) "In April 2010, a drill column of the Deepwater Horizon oil rig hit a methane bubble, causing it to catch fire and sink, which allowed oil and gas to churn into the Gulf of Mexico for 83 days. Scientists predicted that the dissolved methane would stay in the gulf for years to come. But within four months, the methane had disappeared. John Kessler of Texas A&M University took three trips out to the gulf to find the methane, but made a discovery – he couldn’t find any substantial amount because it had been eaten by bacteria. The bacteria in question, aptly named methanotrophs, are able to use methane as their only source of energy. Kessler found millions of these bacteria, which appear to have eaten all of the methane from the spill. This discovery can tell us more about earth’s natural processes regarding methane bubbles that rise from the deep ocean. Methane naturally escapes from methane clathrates (cages of ice on the ocean floor) on a regular basis. If this methane, a potent greenhouse gas, got into the atmosphere, it could have serious negative effects on the climate. However, this gas does not appear to regularly reach the atmosphere, which Kessler attributes to these bacteria. Some researchers have hypothesized that this natural methane from clathrates might have played a major role in some of the great extinctions in Earth’s history, but this is seeming less and less plausible because of these new bacterial studies, according to Greg Retallack from the University of Oregon."

The article ends with: These methane-eaters "have the ability to degrade over 300 other compounds," according to Hazen, and can help clean-up efforts for methane contamination across the world.

In a separate article: "Some scientists have suggested that methane freed from clathrates could have contributed to the climate upheavals behind some of Earth's greatest extinctions events, including the day when life nearly died – the Permian-Triassic extinction. * Greg Retallack from the University of Oregon initially backed this idea, but his mind has since changed. "I love this paper as it signals the final break with my long love affair with methane clathrate release as a cause of [the Permian-Triassic] mass extinction," he says. "It seems that marine methane cannot even make it out of the ocean because it's rapidly consumed there." ** Richard Camilli, who has studied the Deepwater Horizon oil plume, agrees. He says that Kessler's conclusions probably apply to natural methane leakages, as well as to other oil spills too. "[It] is likely to become a classic reference," he says.

At the very end of the article under footnotes it states: ** It's possible that the Permian-Triassic event might have involved methane in such large amounts that it "would have overwhelmed the methanotrophs capable of handling the small Gulf spill." But Retallack can't find enough methane clathrates in the ocean to account for such a large plume. He still thinks that methane was still involved in the Permian extinction but now he suspects it came from disturbed coal seams. [14]

The spin is intoxicating.

Such messages are not embraced by all scientists: "I despise that message—it's blindly simplified," says Ian MacDonald, a celebrated oceanographer at Florida State University. "The gulf is not all better now. We don't know what we've done to it." MacDonald’s views would be supported by scientific findings in December 2010, uncovered on an expedition led by David Hollander, marine geochemist at the University of South Florida. Such findings and opposing views are not just those of Hollander, but also of other independent scientists.

In the article published 13 January 2011 in The Nation titled The Search for BP's Oil, Naomi Klein writes that in mid-December the joint government-BP body formed to oversee the spill response, released a fat report that seemed expressly designed to close the book on the disaster. Mike Utsler, BP's Unified Area Commander, summed up its findings like this: "The beaches are safe, the water is safe, and the seafood is safe." Klein reminds us that just four days prior, more than 8,000 pounds of tar balls were collected on Florida's beaches —and that was an average day. Klein states by the end of 2010 investors were celebrating BP's stock rebound. The corporation feeling so emboldened that it then revealed plans to challenge the official estimates of the amount of oil gushed out of its broken wellhead, claiming that the figures are as much as 50 percent too high. Klein reports that if BP succeeds, it could save the corporation as much as $10.5 billion in damages. Adding insult to injury the Obama administration has just given the go-ahead for sixteen deepwater drilling projects to resume in the gulf. Klein outlines the current state of the Gulf and the dire consequences of the gulf spill as conveyed by independent scientists here.

Klein states that "perhaps not coincidentally, the most outspoken scientists doing this research come from Florida and Georgia, coastal states that have so far managed to avoid offshore drilling. Their universities are far less beholden to Big Oil than, say, Louisiana State University, which has received tens of millions from the oil giants. Again and again these scientists have used their independence to correct the official record about how much oil is actually out there, and what it is doing under the waves."

In the video below (2008 | 10:01) Roger Sassen from Texas A&M University tells us unequivocally that "when we run out of conventional oil and gas this [gas hydrate] is going to power the planet". Sassen goes on to state, "I can't escape from gas hydrate, it's like my fate, my destiny at this point, I got to go along that road – I can't escape from it."

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=h-e5uGo-r1A&w=640&h=390]

Today, we have already reached the worst case scenario of the IPCC (IPCC 2007 AR4), which assumes that global CO2equivalent emissions (CO2e = CO2 + methane + nitrous oxide + halocarbons) will grow from the current level of about 40 billion tons CO2e per year to near 130 GtCO2e/year through the 21st century. The consequences of this IPCC Special Report on Emissions Scenarios is a mean global temperature rise as high as 6.5°C by 2090-2099 relative to the period 1980-1999. However, the report takes only limited account of carbon cycle feedback effects and ice/water interaction feedback effects in raising global temperatures. It also acknowledges limited information regarding ice sheet melt and breakdown dynamics. Methane is excluded. The last time mean global temperatures reached 2-3°C above present levels, in the mid-Pliocene (3 million years ago) – an event associated with CO2 levels of about 400 ppm – polar regions were heated by nearly 8°C, and sea levels had risen by 25 metres relative to the present. This represents near-total melting of Greenland and West Antarctica Ice Sheets [Robinson et al, 2008, Pliocene role in assessing future climate impacts].

With large methane releases, most methane would reach the surface before bacteria could metabolize it. This is certainly what science tells us happened during the PETM extinction event 55 million years ago. And no magic wand appeared to create magical bacteria to eat the methane that caused such extinctions. Today, corporate forces using their furtive media techniques would like us to believe magic microbes can vapourize our stupidity. And all the corporate media reporting such wishful thinking will not make it so. The bacteria in the Arctic Ocean certainly do not appear to be as effective at gobbling up the methane that is now releasing into the atmosphere in the Arctic. Shall we cross our fingers that the Arctic Ocean will warm to the temperature to that of the Gulf of Mexico, hoping magical bacteria will be the solution to our madness everywhere? The way we are going, one need not hope. Of course, methane in the Arctic Ocean will have reached a runaway state long before the bacteria are warm enough to eat up our self-imposed nightmare, however, these are mere inconveniences – the type that Shell, BP, Halliburton, Exxon-Mobil and friends do not contemplate. And as Arctic temperatures continue to accelerate, the warming of our dying world's oceans will continue to acidify.

What corporate media powerhouse CNN et al does not report:

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_8WsIr7m-4w&w=480&h=390]

Next: Part III:

The Spin Doctors | Spinning the Potential for Abrupt & Catastrophic Climate Change
Universities as Bedfellows | Moral Nihilism
Economy is Sacrosanct
Ignoring the Necessity of a Plant-Based Diet at Our Own Peril
The Right to Destroy Ourselves
More False Solutions

References:

Part II:

[10] COP16, Cancún, Mexico. The largest economic conference in history was an epic failure for humanity. And as the world burns, the wealthy elites stuffed their custom gold-lined Brioni pockets with dreams and promises of unsurpassed wealth predicated upon climate catastrophe in the 21st century. Ottmar Edenhofer, a German economist who is co-chair of the UN Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change's (IPCC) Working Group III on Mitigation of Climate Change, stated in an interview on 14 November 2010: "The climate summit in Cancún at the end of the month is not a climate conference, but one of the largest economic conferences since the Second World War.… [I]t's a big mistake to discuss climate policy separately from the major themes of globalization.... One has to free oneself from the illusion that international climate policy is environmental policy. This has almost nothing to do with environmental policy anymore.…"

[11] In 1997–1998, the draft Multilateral Agreement on Investment (MAI) was heavily criticized by developing states. Many argued that the agreement would threaten protection of human rights, labour and environmental standards, and the most vulnerable countries. Critics argued (correctly) that the MAI would result in a "race to the bottom" among countries willing to lower their labour and environmental standards to attract foreign investment. The OECD's actions against harmful tax practices has also raised criticism. The primary objection is the sanctity of tax policy as a matter of sovereign entitlement. Saudi Arabia played a key role in interferingin and shaping international climate policy since international negotiations began in the 1990s in order to ensure that the billion dollar oil industry would not be affected. As a consequence of such interference by many powerful players who sought to ensure the economic and political power structure would not be threatened, adaptation surfaced as the primary goal in international climate science and policy, effectively replacing the goals of prevention and mitigation from the 1980s.

[12] In Japan, the "National R&D Program for Methane /Hydrate Resources" is sponsored by the Ministry of International Trade and Industry (MITI) and the Japan National Oil Corporation (JNOC). Japan launched its program in 2001 for a 5-year study of methane hydrate deposits at the Nankai Trough and Okhotsk Sea. Additionally, it has also embarked on a comprehensive plan to be conducted over a period of 16 years in three phases focused on research areas related to exploration, modeling, field testing, development technology and health-safety-environmental assistance. Japan's investment is perhaps the largest of its kind in this field of research. India has initiated its National Gas Hydrate Program (NGHP) under the Ministry of Petroleum and Natural Gas in 1997. This program was reconstituted in 2000 with the direction of the Directorate General of Hydrocarbons (DGH). Efforts addressing issues of drilling, production, geoscience, and environment are under the auspices of the Office of Natural Gas Corporation (ONGC) and the issue of transportation is under the guidance of Gas Authority of India Limited (GAIL).

[13] India has completed a preliminary survey of the prospective regions with high gas hydrate concentrations beyond the 700 metre water depth using geologic and thermodynamic data and expected to complete its resource estimates by the end of 2003 and initiate assessment of realities through various laboratory studies, deep water coring and drilling operations development of gas hydrate production pilot and economic studies.

Since 1999 the Department of Energy has designated the National Energy Technology Laboratory to develop a comprehensive R&D plan in collaboration with MMS, NOAA, NRL, NSF and USGS.

Studies: 3/4/2002-3/3/2006: Final Technical Report on: Controls on Gas Hydrate Formation and Dissociation, Gulf of Mexico: In Situ Field Study with Laboratory Characterizations of Exposed and Buried Gas Hydrates (DOE Award Number: DE-FC26-02NT41328 - Dates: 3/4/02 - 3/3/06)

[14] The paper on coal seems proposes a thesis that igniting planetary coal deposits, triggered by the extreme volcanic action of the Siberian Steppes was the major factor in the end Permian extinction event. This paper supports extreme global warming as the cause of the end-Permian extinction event with the initial trigger being massive amounts of CO2 emitted by extreme volcanic activity in the region of the Siberian Steppes. It cannot and does not exclude the contribution to extreme global warming by destabilized methane hydrates.

Further Reading:

A Killer in Our Midst | http://www.killerinourmidst.com/

Only Zero Carbon | http://www.onlyzerocarbon.org/

Videos:

Media Education Foundation | http://www.mediaed.org/

Western governments prop up brutal regime to insure access to oil

2011-01-29T23:04:00.000-05:00

The Real Weapons of Mass Destruction: Methane, Propaganda & the Architects of Genocide | Part I

2011-01-21T16:53:00.000-05:00

An investigative report. [Part 1: http://bit.ly/fV8slf]

By Cory Morningstar

Part I

World Marches to Methane Annihilation

"[T]he question is not will this methane be released, but when." – Robert C. Hendricks, NASA, November 2007

The architects of death: The Real Weapons of Mass Destruction are the melting permafrost, the destabilizing methane hydrates and the corporations such as Halliburton, ChevronTexaco, BP, Shell, Exxon Mobil who, hand in hand with the US Department of Energy and the US Department of Defense, have been planning and waiting to exploit methane hydrates for decades. Methane hydrates are considered the ultimate in climate wealth opportunity because the control of these hydrocarbons could literally shift the balance of global power (US Department of Defense). It is clear that nothing has been done to prevent catastrophic climate change – and nothing will be done. Global emissions are set to skyrocket. This article attempts to clearly articulate why, almost two decades after the first international climate change summit, the world governments have failed to protect us from dangerous atmospheric interference. As we are now living in a world that is beyond dangerous, society must be aware of, be able to critically analyze, and ultimately reject the new onslaught of misinformation that is being perpetuated by the corporate elite and the current power structures that support their agenda.

The red dots indicate where researchers have proved that gas hydrates exist and where they are suspected to exist. But no matter where researchers now drill under the sea, they find methane, often in the form of a hydrate.

What the Governments and Environmental Groups Won't Tell You

Thawing frozen soils could unleash a carbon bomb – massive volumes of carbon dioxide and methane frozen in the earth's soils are a "time-bomb ticking under our feet." – World Congress of Soil Science, 4 August 2010

For anyone interested in staying alive, the UNFCCC (United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change) in Cancún was a disaster. The world's "leaders" – aside from those in Bolivia alone – have decided to trade off the lives of billions for insatiable corporate profits. And all the corporate-funded messages of progress and hope for the future pumped out by compromised and bought off NGOs do not make this reality any less true. Make no mistake, a mass genocide is in the making.

The end of the Permian Period, which happened 250 million years ago, was the greatest extinction event in the history of life. More than 90% of the species in existence perished. The end-Permian event was accompanied by a temperature rise of as little as 6ºC. Life took 50 million years to recover the diversity that had existed prior to this mass extinction. Although extinctions such as this one occurred long ago, today nature and science clearly indicate that such an extinction event is not far away in our future. The cataclysmic release of methane from Earth's seafloor has already begun. This is our final warning – but is anyone listening? We must change our relationship with our planet – and fast. Market mechanisms and other false solutions that prey on ignorance and hope rather than acceptance of reality must be rejected. All fossil fuels must be left in the ground. There is no other way.

Gregory Ryskin, associate professor of chemical and biological engineering at Northwestern University, suggests that so much methane accumulated in stagnant seas at the end of the Permian, that when it finally erupted, it spontaneously ignited, creating a worldwide blanket of fire. He suggests that even marine organisms weren’t safe; the rising methane brought up anoxic water from the deep, suffocating them.

From Ryskin’s paper titled Methane-driven oceanic eruptions and mass extinctions: "The consequences of a methane-driven oceanic eruption for marine and terrestrial life are likely to be catastrophic. Figuratively speaking, the erupting region "boils over," ejecting a large amount of methane and other gases (e.g., CO₂, H₂S) into the atmosphere, and flooding large areas of land. Whereas pure methane is lighter than air, methane loaded with water droplets is much heavier, and thus spreads over the land, mixing with air in the process (and losing water as rain). The air-methane mixture is explosive at methane concentrations between 5% and 15%; as such mixtures form in different locations near the ground and are ignited by lightning, explosions and conflagrations destroy most of the terrestrial life, and also produce great amounts of smoke and of carbon dioxide. Firestorms carry smoke and dust into the upper atmosphere, where they may remain for several years; the resulting darkness and global cooling may provide an additional kill mechanism. Conversely, carbon dioxide and the remaining methane create the greenhouse effect, which may lead to global warming. "

For a deeper understanding of Ryskin's methane theories, he suggests to watch this short video in which he discusses methane dangers. [Viewer discretion is advised – this video contains footage of 1986 Lake Nyos Tragedy, where a cloud of CO2 asphyxiated over 1700 people.]

Hells Bells

24 November 2010: "Greenhouse gases rise to record levels in 2009" According to Michel Jarraud, secretary general of the World Meteorological Organization: "If we continue business as usual, we will not achieve the level of atmospheric concentration that would allow a two degree Celsius target." Further, Jarraud stated that to start decreasing the levels of greenhouse gases, it is necessary to "stop totally the emissions." Jarraud states unequivocally that "this means that the usage of fossil energy should be halted."

Keep in mind that the two-degree target was adopted in order to protect economic interests rather than to protect life, while the low risk recommendation in 1990 of 1ºC, recommended by the United Nations Greenhouse Gas Advisory Group (UN AGGG) was effectively buried. After the Intergovernmental Panels on Climate Change (IPCC) emerged as the global voice on climate change, it quickly became controlled, directed and dominated by corporate-colluded governments, and economic interests soon crushed the best interests of the people. The IPCC, backed into a corner from its inception, is muzzled due to the interference and influence of corporate powers that have political control over all IPCC summary reports. For example, Exxon, the global catalyst for climate denialism, has been a member of the IPCC since 1992. Two Exxon scientists attend all meetings and have held positions as lead authors. By way of the IPCC unanimity rule, Exxon has a veto over the IPCC. Therefore, all science must be watered down until all parties – including Exxon – approve. One could perhaps compare this arrangement to having the Hells Angels write the legislation to define and protect women's rights.

It's a fine day for bananafish, mind pollution, delusion and boiling oceans

"A great deal of intelligence can be invested in ignorance when the need for illusion is deep." – Saul Bellow, Canadian writer

The short story It's a Fine Day for Bananafish by J D Salinger, first appeared in the January 31st, 1948 issue of the New Yorker. [1] It tells the story of the disillusionment of Seymour (the main character) with those around him, who are preoccupied and enamoured by the superficial. Seymour tells a young girl named Sybil a sad story of innocent fish that find a hole full of bananas in the ocean. Upon finding the bananas, the bananafish become glutinous. They eat so many bananas that they become too fat to get out of the hole. Seymour ends his story with "Well, I hate to tell you, Sybil. They die." The story illustrates how affluence can foster materialism, thereby creating a life devoid of meaning. The story also illustrates how utter despair can lead one down the path of surrender. Perhaps Seymour is reflecting upon his own life – a life in high society where all too easily, he can have anything he wishes. Seymour perhaps views his own life as the banana hole where innocent fish are deceived by the appearance of a secure future – only to become trapped. Seymour is overcome with the feeling of isolation when he realizes he is no longer able to communicate in this shallow world. Perhaps believing his only hope is to escape – permanently – he sits "down on the unoccupied twin bed, [looks] at the girl, [aims] the pistol, and [fires] a bullet through his right temple." Prior to the act of suicide Seymour’s actions are most poignant and revealing: "The young man suddenly picked up one of Sybil's wet feet, which were drooping over the end of the float, and kissed the arch." Seymour longed for truth, simplicity and innocence in an isolated, superficial world of illusions. This story could be and has been interpreted in many ways – and it should be – as ultimately it is our shared humanity that connects us and challenges us. Nurturing and protecting this common thread is vital if we are to understand anything written or spoken with truth. Relentless advertising coupled with sophisticated propaganda results in mind pollution, the erosion of critical thinking and the crushing of independent thought, which effectively shuts out the truth – ultimately destroying ourselves.

Mind Pollution and Delusion

"Men die but the plutocracy is immortal; and it is necessary that fresh generations should be trained to its service." – Sinclair Lewis

In 2001, a documentary titled "The Day the Oceans Boiled" was released. Segments of the largely overlooked documentary were posted on YouTube in July 2009. To date, just over 200 people have been interested enough to watch it – on a planet of almost seven billion people. Compare this to the "New Mario Bros. Movie Trailer - The Game Station Exclusive!" video, which provoked over one million views in less than 48 hours, and which now exceeds over three million views. A Business Insider newswire reports that in 2010, Stefani Germanotta – known as Lady Gaga sold more magazines than anyone in the world. The "newswire report" features her "top 13 weirdest covers." Germanotta's covers reflect her country and mirror the underlying American culture. The New York Magazine cover caption states "I will kill to get what I need." On Rolling Stone, dressed in a thong, Germanotta wields a machine gun. Most predominant in the images are the messages of sex, narcissism, violence and sadism that dominate our culture – enticing and fueling the acquiescent corporate collective. The Vogue Japan cover features Germanotta with her mouth open (most always predominant in the sexual commercialization of women), nude with raw red meat covering her breasts, hips and head. Germanotta, famous for stuffing dildos down her pants and spreading her legs, has been named by corporate media powerhouse Time magazine as one of the "100 most influential people in the world." Corporate icon Forbes also lists Germanotta as one of "the 100 most powerful and influential celebrities in the world." Time names Germanotta's raw meat ensemble as the number one fashion statement of the year.

The question is – which no one asks – who exactly is Germanotta influencing and in what way? We know the answer to the question as to why. Governments and corporations have brilliantly and seductively kept absolute focus on the task at hand: keeping an entire global society stupefied, corporatized, numbed, dumbed down and in the dark using an onslaught of irrelevant meaningless nonsense, sophisticated propaganda and unrelenting, trivial distraction. This is an easy enough task if citizens are exhausted from working their lives away in order to pay debt that can never be paid off. This is an even easier task in the developing countries, whose exploited citizens toil daily in the grinds of the most tedious, horrific jobs in order to provide the stuff that no one needs in the developed wealthy countries. These grossly exploited people do not require the same degree of inundation and mind pollution; they are simply exhausted from the laborious, dangerous, exploitive work they must succumb to in order to feed their hungry children. Massive corporate profits, personal fortunes of the plutocracy, and the success of political efforts that will ensure the current power structures are not threatened are all at stake. Protect the current economic system at all costs. Protect the fossil fuel industry at all costs.

Above photo: Stefani Germanotta. US Brand President Barack Obama: "It's a privilege to be here tonight to open for Lady Gaga," Obama goes on to say: "I've made it!" (These remarks were made by President Obama to a receptive audience during a Human Rights Campaign dinner in Washington, DC – all while innocent civilians continue to be killed in the US occupation in Iraq which continues today. The death toll to date is 1, 421, 933.) In a UK 'Q' Magazine interview Germanotta states: "Me and my fucking dick are out there for the world." (Who knew that Obama and friends would be so receptive?) ... God bless America. While that's happening, please pass the Soma.

Toxins in, toxins out

Porn revenues top $96 billion worldwide in 2006. The more women are objectified and degraded, the higher the sales – women and young girls lose while corporate entities AT&T and General Motors 80% of the revenues. [2] Children's social skills become inept and empathy becomes eroded as video games condition society to believe/accept violence is entertainment. Video games sales reach $46.2 billion in 2008 with the US military, psychologists and Coke executives playing pivotal roles in design, marketing and funding. Gambling brings in $92 billion in 2007. In 2009, US communications and media spending alone top $890 billion – AOL Time Warner, Viacom, General Electric, Disney and Rupert Murdoch's NewsGroup control almost all of it. Yet, we have no money for clean, safe, renewable energy sources to save humanity. We have no money to feed our children healthy food – all while gluttony reins. Like the planet's failing carbon sinks, our minds are failing our collective past ability to absorb information, filter it and then emit clarity to improve our collective existence. Today our minds simply take in the pollution and regurgitate the pollution – what we give back, like the failing carbon sinks, will eventually kill us.

In the meantime, governments and corporations are very quietly at work tapping into the most dangerous aspect of climate change, which no one speaks of – the methane hydrates.

Methane's Warming Potential

Methane is a powerful greenhouse gas, approximately 23 times more powerful than CO2 over the long term (100 years). In the short term (10 years), methane is 72 to 100 times more powerful than CO2. [3]

Over a long period, methane's impact appears less threatening than CO2. However, over a short period from its release, methane’s impact is dramatic. In the first five years after its release, methane’s impact is more than 100 times as potent as carbon dioxide. In the absence of OH (hydroxyl radicals) to oxidize methane, much methane could persist locally with its full global warming potential for years, causing a dramatic greenhouse effect and thus warming locally. A recent study shows that increases in global methane emissions have caused a 26% OH decrease. This coupled with other feedback mechanisms, many of which are now operational, can dramatically amplify local warming in the Arctic, causing large-scale thawing and melting over a period of years, rather than centuries. Arctic amplification is for the most part overlooked by the IPCC which uses a period of a century to calculate methane's impact. [Carana, Sam. The Threat of Methane Release from Permafrost and Clathrates: How important is hydroxyl depletion? 2010 Mar 10.]

Below video: Methane hydrate formation and release. (2010 | 1:50). The instability is clearly demonstrated at the end of the video when the robot merely touches the hydrate.

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SiIqDLqY5TI&w=480&h=390]

Boiling Oceans

"Abrupt Planetary Catastrophic Global Warming. It’s happened before. We have the planet headed that way again." – A November 2010 statement by the Geological Society of London regarding catastrophic climate change and methane hydrates

During the Paleocene-Eocene Thermal Maximum (PETM) extinction event that took place 55 million years ago, the oceans were warming just as they are today.

The 2001 documentary "The Day the Oceans Boiled" examined what was new evidence in 1999. [4] Scientists had discovered that the expected rise in global temperature in the near future could be only the start of a much greater increase. The evidence uncovered warned that our Earth's temperature could rise by 20 degrees within the next three generations. The documentary follows scientists uncovering evidence for what caused massive, abrupt climate shifts that happened 55 million years ago. *This was the last time the Earth's temperature accelerated quickly, causing many animals to shrink, with horses becoming the size of modern domestic cats. It took the planet 60,000 years to cool down again.

Sediment samples drilled from the ocean sea floor provide scientists with the ability to uncover what took place in our Earth's history hundreds of millions of years ago. In 1999, Santo Bains of Oxford University’s Department of Earth Sciences was looking for clues as to what happened 55 million years ago during the Paleocene-Eocene. In particular, he was interested in one specific sediment core named core 690. Core 690 was to have the most detailed record of the Paleocene-Eocene climate change event. Bains took one sediment sample per centimeter of the entire core 690. Buried in the sludge along the bottom of the sea there are stories of the past. Within this sediment there are tiny sea creatures - deep-ocean microscopic foraminifera - that survived the asteroids that killed the dinosaurs. However, 55 million years ago, half of the tiny forams went extinct. Locked in their shells lies the story of why. As their shells were made of the carbon dioxide dissolved in the sea, their detailed composition revealed both the levels of CO2 in the atmosphere and the water temperature at the time of extinction. Bains dropped the tiny shells into acid, releasing the carbon dioxide that had last seen the atmosphere 55 million years ago.

Bains's scientific analysis confirmed that at the time the mammals shrank, the atmospheric carbon levels had suddenly risen abruptly – causing a rapid warming of ocean waters. As he examined more samples, Bains discovered something extraordinary. There was not just one sudden rise in temperature. There were three. Temperatures accelerated dramatically in three succinct steps over a period of just a few of hundred years for a total temperature increase of approximately 8ºC. The rise in atmospheric carbon was just as dramatic. The jumps in Bains's graph add up to one and a half trillion tonnes of carbon. His discovery was the first time this was recognized in the geological record. Where did all of the carbon come from? Methane hydrates are believed to be the only explanation. Methane hydrates quickly decomposed, releasing vast amounts of carbon into the oceans and into the atmosphere.

Bain’s research suggests that prior to the extinction, a massive release of methane caused a severe feedback, which then resulted in a second immense methane release. The second release caused an even greater amplifying effect, thereby causing a severe third release, which finally resulted in a runaway greenhouse event of mass extinction.

Methane hydrates have been formed over millions of years on the floor of our oceans and seas from decaying organic matter carried there by rivers. The methane takes the form of methane hydrates – methane gas frozen into lattices of ice (called clathrate [5]) that lie in ocean floor sediment off the continental coasts of our planet, storing massive amounts of carbon. When the frozen hydrates melt, 170 times the volume of methane gas comes bubbling out. The pressure only stays locked up if the pressure of the sea floor remains high and the temperature stays low. If this balance changes, the methane will quickly escape.

A more recent study in 2010 [6] uncovers that even though the Pliocene Epoch (5.3 to 2.6 million years ago) was approximately 19ºC warmer than today, CO2 levels were only slightly higher than they are now.

*In 2010, researchers from the University of Zϋrich found that more than 100 bird species have shrunk in size over the past half a century. Ary Hoffmann, evolutionary biologist at the University of Melbourne, says: "The surprise is that you're seeing these consistent patterns across a large number of species."

Above: A block of methane gas hydrate – the mud around the hydrate has recently been discovered by scientists to be teaming with life. [Discussed in part III]

Clathrate Gun Hypothesis

The clathrate gun hypothesis is the theory that rises in ocean temperature can trigger the sudden release of methane from the methane hydrates buried in seabeds and permafrost. Because methane is a powerful greenhouse gas, these releases would lead to feedbacks – further temperature rise and further methane clathrate destabilization – in effect initiating a runaway process as irreversible, once started, as the firing of a gun.In its original form, the hypothesis proposed that the "clathrate gun" could cause abrupt runaway warming in a timescale less than a human lifetime, and might be responsible for warming events in and at the end of the last ice age.

Methane Emergency

28 May 2008: The National Science Foundation issued an alarming press release largely ignored by mainstream corporate media. The report cautioned that methane release could cause abrupt, far-reaching climate change parallel to a catastrophic event of 635 million years ago – the ending of the last "snowball" ice age. The researchers believe that the catastrophic event was caused by the release of methane, which was released gradually at first and then very quickly from hydrates. When the ice sheets became unstable, they collapsed, releasing pressure on the hydrates, which then began to de-gas. Geologist Martin Kennedy of the University of California at Riverside (UCR), who led the research team, stated: "Our findings document an abrupt and catastrophic global warming that led from a very cold, seemingly stable climate state to a very warm, also stable, climate state – with no pause in between…. Once methane was released at low latitudes from destabilization in front of the ice sheets, warming caused other clathrates to destabilize…. Clathrates are held in a temperature-pressure balance of only a few degrees." Kennedy further states that this trigger is a major concern, because it's possible that very little warming could unleash our Earth's trapped methane, which has been frozen for millions of years. Kennedy adds that uncovering the planet's methane reservoir could potentially and rapidly warm our planet tens of degrees. "Today we're conducting a global-scale experiment with Earth's climate system," Kennedy says, "and witnessing an unprecedented rate of warming, all with little or no knowledge of what instabilities lurk in the climate system and how they can influence life on Earth…. Much the same experiment was done 635 million years ago, and the outcome is preserved in the geologic record. We see that strong forcing on the climate, not unlike the current carbon dioxide forcing, results in the activation of latent controls in the climate system that, once initiated, change climate to a completely different state." The research team found the broadest range of oxygen isotopic variation ever reported from marine sediments, which they attribute to melting waters in ice sheets as well as destabilization of clathrates by glacial meltwater.

Video below: Year round methane bubbles create ice cavern (2010:0:30):

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fc2GH_6qEVY&w=480&h=390]

This is Not the Future – This is Today

March 2010: The National Science Foundation issues world a wake-up call: "Release of even a fraction of the methane stored in the shelf could trigger abrupt climate warming." Research finds a key "lid" on "the large sub-sea permafrostcarbon reservoir" near Eastern Siberia "is clearlyperforated, and sedimentary CH₄ [methane] is escaping to the atmosphere."

The Arctic summer sea ice has now passed its tipping point to meltdown, having shifted to a new climate pattern where "normal" has become obsolete (National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, 21 October 2010).

Our oceans are warming – and acidifying. In "The Day the Oceans Boiled" (2001), a satellite image captures what is thought to be a small plume of methane escaping from the Arctic ocean. Today, just over 3 years after the first official reports of venting hydrates, we now witness melting permafrost and leaking hydrates accelerating all over the world.

With the Cancún outcome supporting a catastrophic 2ºC threshold that climate scientists consider to be, at minimum, 4ºC in real life, how will an extinction event not be repeated? A 4ºC rise will ensure the disappearance of the Amazon rainforest adding further billions of tonnes of carbon to the atmosphere. Spontaneous releases of carbon 55 million years took global temperatures to a level perhaps 15 degrees higher than human beings have ever experienced – and we are in essence choosing to repeat the past. Yet we are doing so by way of anthropogenic carbon over a period of 200 years – versus 55 million years. This pace of change is unparalleled in Earth's history. Insatiable corporate greed and the growth fetish virus have succeeded in setting the world on course for a series of events that will make this temperature rise inevitable.

Not in the future but today, the Arctic methane hydrate deposits are destabilizing, and if not re-stabilized will release vast amounts of methane into the atmosphere and add yet more acid to our oceans. The oceans will then become more acidified by dissolution of carbon dioxide from the atmosphere. This scenario will lead to the end of virtually all life on Earth. Today, the rate of ocean acidification exceeds anything witnessed in the past 65 million years. The increasing acidity reduces the amounts of calcium carbonate available to plankton and other species that require it in order to form shells and skeletons. Charlie Veron, former chief scientist of the Australian Institute of Marine Science states that "for our coral reefs, as acidification progresses, they will all suffer from some form of coralline osteoporosis. The result will be that corals will no longer be able to build reefs or maintain them against the forces of erosion. What were once thriving coral gardens that supported the greatest biodiversity of the marine realm will become red-black bacterial slime, and they will stay that way. If coral reefs fail, the rest will follow in rapid succession, and the Sixth Mass Extinction will be upon us — and will be of our making." If we continue burning fossil fuels, this will further acidify the ocean to levels not witnessed in the past third of a billion years. Organisms with calcium carbonate skeletons will be hard pressed to survive.

Recently scientists discovered that plankton, the organism responsible for every other breath we take, has been decimated in a massive way. Studies show phytoplankton have died off more than 40% since 1950 and continue to do so at an accelerating rate. "This is an almost unprecedented geological event," stated Andy Ridgwell, an earth scientist at the University of Bristol. Phytoplankton account for half of all photosynthetic activity on Earth. Thus phytoplankton are responsible for much of the oxygen present in the Earth's atmosphere – half of the total amount produced by all plant life. Climate scientist James Hansen warns that humanity is putting carbon dioxide into the atmosphere today at a rate that is 10,000 times higher than the rate during the extinction event of 55 million years ago.

Above image illustrates the vulnerability of the Amazon rain forest and the Arctic. The Met study concludes that, by the end of the century, the Arctic could warm by up to 27°F (15.2°C) for a high-emissions scenario, enhanced by melting of snow and ice causing more of the Sun’s radiation to be absorbed.

Prior to the Cancún climate talks, Nobel Physicist and US Energy Secretary Steven Chu warned of potential runaway feedback, expressing that many scientists view this as a distinct possibility:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oHqKxWvcBdg

Hansen | The Venus Syndrome

"Two degrees Celsius is guaranteed disaster," says Hansen scornfully. "It is equivalent to the early Pliocene epoch when the sea level was 25m higher." - 4 January 2011

James Hansen, chief climate scientist at NASA Goddard Institute for Space Studies, posits a possible future Earth in which a "runaway greenhouse effect" takes over. Anthropogenic global warming from greenhouse gases causes a massive increase of water vapor into the atmosphere as the heated oceans evaporate, which in turn causes further warming. Hansen (along with many other scientists from several disciplines) believes that methane hydrates played a crucial role in the largest mass extinction, the "end-Permian" event 251 million years ago.

Hansen: "The paleoclimate record does not provide a case with a climate forcing of the magnitude and speed that will occur if fossil fuels are all burned. Models are nowhere near the stage at which they can predict reliably when major ice sheet disintegration will begin. Nor can we say how close we are to methane hydrate instability. But these are questions of when, not if. If we burn all the fossil fuels, the ice sheets almost surely will melt entirely, with the final sea level rise about 75 meters (250 feet), with most of that possibly occurring within a time scale of centuries. Methane hydrates are likely to be more extensive and vulnerable now than they were in the early Cenozoic. It is difficult to imagine how the methane clathrates could survive, once the ocean has had time to warm. In that event a PETM-like warming could be added on top of the fossil fuel warming. After the ice is gone, would Earth proceed to the Venus syndrome, a runaway greenhouse effect that would destroy all life on the planet, perhaps permanently? While that is difficult to say based on present information, I’ve come to conclude that if we burn all reserves of oil, gas, and coal, there is a substantial chance we will initiate the runaway greenhouse. If we also burn the tar sands and tar shale, I believe the Venus syndrome is a dead certainty."

Melting Permafrost

"Concerning permafrost there is – as with many other systems affected by global warming – a point of no return. Once we are beyond that point, the development can't be stopped anymore. Permafrost is a slow system: The area is warming relatively slowly, but once it has started to melt, it goes fast. – Johann Stötter, geographer at the University of Innsbruck, head of the COMET K1 alpS - Centre for Climate Change Adaptation Technologies

"Warmer temperatures at high latitudes are already resulting in unprecedented permafrost degradation …Projections show that almost all near-surface permafrost will by the end of this century exposing large carbon stores to decomposition and release of greenhouse gases." - Dr. Pep Canadell, Executive Director of the Global Carbon Project at CSIRO (Australia's Commonwealth Scientific and Industrial Research Organization)

Permafrost is the vital component that has kept deadly methane safely locked away in methane hydrates for millions of years. It has been melting and continues to melt at an unprecedented and accelerating rate. The methane "vaults" (seeing as methane hydrates have become Pandora's box) are now being eyed foolishly by corporations and states as the greatest climate wealth opportunity. Ever.

Although the rate of permafrost thaw will likely triple (NCAR study), with the Arctic permafrost disappearing almost completely (90%) this century, no IPPC climate model currently incorporates the amplifying feedback from methane released by a defrosting tundra. [7] Leading scientist Shakhova and colleagues estimate that roughly eight million tons of methane are now leaking into the atmosphere each year from the East Siberia Sea. Since 1992 it has been recognized that the shallow Arctic methane hydrates would be subject to melting by global warming, releasing methane gas into the atmosphere. [8]

Permafrost currently stores more than double the amount of all carbon in the atmosphere. Will our governments stop counting their GDP numbers long enough to comprehend the simple fact that there is absolutely no way we can possibly refreeze melting permafrost and the hydrates that are further deteriorating as I write? With the exception of Bolivia, the answer is no. Our governments were bought and sold long ago. We are on our own.

Arctic temperatures are rising 4 times faster than the global average. 50% of the permanent sea, ice that has existed for 64 million years, has disappeared since 1980. NASA predicts that the Arctic ice sheet will be gone by 2030. Others predict the Arctic Sea ice will disappear completely by as early as 2013. The loss of polar sea ice will further melt the Russian and Alaskan tundra. The release of tundra methane hydrates has the potential to double total atmospheric GHG emissions, adding 6,000 billion tonnes of CO2equivalent. By contrast, the total of atmospheric CO2 is projected to be 386 billion tonnes by 2030.

Permafrost serves as nature's "cement" holding our "foundations" intact … a glue that holds steep mountain slopes together. Its degradation leads to not only venting hydrates, but to hazards such as falling rocks, "drunken" forests, landslides, broken pipelines, collapsing buildings and buckled highways like what we see happening already in the Arctic. Melting permafrost in northern Russia could lead to radioactive leaks from storage facilities and presents deadly scenarios for the radioactive dump-sites on Novaya Zemlya, a former nuclear weapons testing range. More than half of Alaska's surface, including its water, sits on permafrost. "The stability of Arctic ecosystems depends on the ice that holds them together," according to University of Alaska–Fairbanks (UAF) permafrost scientist Vladimir Romanovsky.

According to scientists, such permafrost melting does not constitute a gradual change – it is a phase change, meaning that the ecosystem in such areas could be shifting within just a few years to an entirely different ecosystem. Scientist Dave Klein (UAF) explains, "So you could likely have a rapid transition from boreal forest to a grassland savannah, with groups of trees scattered around." Permafrost, like the Boreal Forest, like peat, all former carbon sinks, have become carbon emitters, because we have failed to act. In Canada, our permafrost has moved north 80 miles in the past 50 years. In 2006 scientists announced that nearly 90 per cent of the permafrost in Arctic soils could melt in the coming century.

Consider this: if only 10% of the permafrost melts, scientists state that this will release enough carbon into the atmosphere to add a further 0.7°C of warming in addition to our current 0.8ºC of warming. This 10% melt consequence will be equivalent to all the warming that has already taken place since the beginning of the industrial age. Permafrost melt, even without methane hydrates destabilizing, could easily cause our planet to pass the tipping point where future melting becomes irreversible. If an additional 0.7°C is the result of 10% of permafrost melt, imagine what will happen if it all melts. And imagine, if you can, what will happen when the existing venting methane hydrates (below the currently frozen permafrost), already destabilizing at today’s temperatures, rapidly release the gases that have been locked up for 65 million years.

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YegdEOSQotE&w=640&h=390]

Brief Timeline on Venting Methane Hydrates

7 September 2006: As the permafrost melts in North Siberia due to climate change, carbon sequestered and buried there since the Pleistocene era is bubbling up to the surface of Siberian thaw lakes and into the atmosphere as methane, a greenhouse gas 20 times more potent than carbon dioxide.

8 September 2006: Frozen bubbles in Siberian lakes are releasing methane, a greenhouse gas, at rates that appear to be "... five times higher than previously estimated" and acting as a positive feedback to climate warming.

17 September 2007: Lakes Boiling With Methane Discovered In Alaska.

26 October 2007: A team of scientists has identified a new likely source of a spike in atmospheric methane coming out of the North during the end of the last ice age.

April 2008: A Storehouse of Greenhouse Gases Is Opening in Siberia. It's always been a disturbing what-if scenario for climate researchers: Gas hydrates stored in the Arctic ocean floor – hard clumps of ice and methane, conserved by freezing temperatures and high pressure – could grow unstable and release massive amounts of methane into the atmosphere. Until now this idea was mostly academic; scientists had warned that such a thing could happen. Now it seems more likely that it will.

April 2008: NOAA - Carbon Dioxide, Methane Rise Sharply in 2007.

10 June 2008: Permafrost Threatened by Rapid Retreat of Arctic Sea Ice, NCAR Study Finds

23 September 2008: Exclusive: The methane time bomb: Arctic scientists discover new global warming threat as melting permafrost releases millions of tons of a gas 20 times more damaging than carbon dioxide

25 September 2008: Hundreds of methane 'plumes' discovered. British scientists have discovered hundreds more methane 'plumes' bubbling up from the Arctic seabed, in an area to the west of the Norwegian island of Svalbard. It is the second time in a week that scientists have reported methane emissions from the Arctic.

March 2009: A sleeping giant? "These deposits rival fossil fuels in terms of their size. It's like having a whole additional supply of coal, oil and natural gas out there that we can't control." A temperature rise of as little as 1°C at the sea floor could dissolve shallow subsea clathrates. If temperatures in the deep ocean were to rise by about 3°C, nearly a trillion tonnes of carbon could be released from subsea clathrates.

1 July 2009: "The research shows that the amount of carbon stored in soils surrounding the North Pole has been hugely underestimated….Warmer temperatures at high latitudes are already resulting in unprecedented permafrost degradation…. Projections show that almost all near-surface permafrost will disappear by the end of this century exposing large carbon stores to decomposition and release of greenhouse gases."

September 2009: Methane gas likely spewing into the oceans through vents in sea floor. [In this video University of Alaska Fairbanks scientist Natalia Shakhova discusses the East Siberian Arctic Shelf area:

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eD8hU-lbqpE&w=640&h=390]

September 2010: Nevada researchers find receding permafrost in Siberian Arctic: "We see the permafrost receding hundreds of yards each year, and the ancient carbon from Pleistocene era plants and animals being unleashed into the air, soil and water."

August 2010: Frozen CO2, methane a time bomb: experts – Massive volumes of carbon dioxide and methane frozen in the earth's soils are a "time-bomb ticking under our feet," soil scientists say.

September 2010: A ticking time bomb in Siberian marshes. "The fact is that the permafrost covers millions of kilometers of swamps. While melting, swamps send to the atmosphere tons of methane, which, in turn, leads to more significant changes in the climate. In the pseudoscientific press, this process has already received the name "methane bomb" and "methane flywheel."

November 2010: "Abrupt Planetary Catastrophic Global Warming. It's happened before. We have the planet headed that way again." A statement by the Geological Society of London regarding catastrophic climate and methane hydrates.

22 November 2010: Siberian Methane Marks Climate Tipping Point: "Yet awareness of methane leaks from permafrost is so new that it was not even mentioned in the seminal 2007 report by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, which warned of rising sea levels inundating coastal cities, dramatic shifts in rainfall disrupting agriculture and drinking water, the spread of diseases and the extinction of species."

So why do states and "co-opted green" greens continue to stay silent on declaring a global planetary emergency, called for by esteemed climate scientists John Holdren and James Hansen since 2006 and 2008 respectively? [9] The answer is always the same. Just follow the money.

Our world is securely on the path to global methane hell.

This is not the future – this is now.

We may be doomed if we face the truth but we are certainly doomed if we do not.

Next: Part II:

Post Cancún: North America. The New Energy Kingdom
NASA Has Known All Along
Blinded by Addiction: Methane Hydrates – The Oil of the Future
Brief Timeline | Halliburton, ChevronTexaco, BP, Shell, Exxon Mobil and Friends
US Department of Defense
Warnings
UNEP Climbs in Bed with Shell and EDF Energy
Burn Baby Burn
Naïveté is Deadly
Yes, Virginia – There is a Santa Claus | BP, A&M University and Corporate Media

References:

[1] It's a fine day for bananafish - by JD Salinger | http://www.miguelmllop.com/stories/stories/bananafish.pdf

[2] The statistics are truly staggering. According to compiled numbers from respected news and research organizations, every second, $3,075.64 is being spent on pornography. Every second, 28,258 internet users are viewing pornography. In that same second, 372 internet users are typing adult search terms into search engines. Every 39 minutes, a new pornographic video is being created in the United States. It's big business. The pornography industry has larger revenues than Microsoft, Google, Amazon, eBay, Yahoo, Apple and Netflix combined. 2006 Worldwide Pornography Revenues ballooned to $97.06 billion.

[3] Over a 20-year period methane's GWP will be 72, while over a 100-year period its GWP will be 21, and over a 500-year period, its GWP will be 7.6. In AR4, the IPCC upgraded methane's GWP to 25 over a 100-year period.

[4] Documentary – The Day the Oceans Boiled | http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iDBt07skLbQ

[5] Clathrate is derived from the Latin word for cage. Methane hydrates consist of molecules of methane trapped in cages of H₂0. Typically, six water molecules surround a single methane molecule, and many of those cages linked together form a crystal.

[6] Funded by the National Science Foundation, the Natural Science and Engineering Research Council in Canada, the Netherlands Organization for Scientific Research, and the European Research Council.

[7] U.S. Geological Survey Marine and Coastal Geology Program, Gas (Methane) Hydrates – A New Frontier, September 1992.

[8] According to another study by David Lawrence, this means that the rate of permafrost thaw will likely triple.

[9] John Holdren on 3 November 2006: "Climate change is coming at us faster, with larger impacts and bigger risks, than even most climate scientists expected as recently as a few years ago. The stated goal of the UNFCCC – avoiding dangerous anthropogenic interference in the climate – is in fact unattainable, because today we are already experiencing dangerous anthropogenic interference. The real question now is whether we can still avoid catastrophic anthro-pogenic interference in climate. There is no guarantee that catastrophe can be avoided even we start taking serious evasive action immediately; But it's increasingly clear that the current level of anthropogenic interference is dangerous: Significant impacts in terms of floods, droughts, wildfires, species, melting ice already evident at ~0.8°C above pre-industrial Tavg. Current GHG concentrations commit us to 0.6°C more." Holdren is advisor to President Barack Obama for Science and Technology, Director of the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy, and Co-Chair of the President's Council of Advisors on Science and Technology.

Further Reading:

A Killer in Our Midst | http://www.killerinourmidst.com/

Only Zero Carbon | http://www.onlyzerocarbon.org/

Videos:

Media Education Foundation | http://www.mediaed.org/

Land fizzing like soda pop: farmer says CO2 injected underground is leaking - Winnipeg Free Press

2011-01-13T22:06:00.000-05:00

Yet another false "solution" fails. The fossil-fuel and autosprawl industries keep trying to come up with ways to save their subsidized gravy train. One by one, REDD, Ethanol, Geothermal, and now CCS, their "solutions" keep failing. Before we look for alternatives -- why not STOP producing 50 million new autos per year? Stop building houses reachable only by auto? Stop spending billions for energy wars? Stop soaking the taxpayer to pay for this insanity?

Land fizzing like soda pop: farmer says CO2 injected underground is leaking - Winnipeg Free Press: "A Saskatchewan farm couple whose land lies over the world's largest carbon capture and storage project says greenhouse gases seeping from the soil are killing animals and sending groundwater foaming to the surface like shaken soda pop.
The gases were supposed to have been injected permanently underground."

your heart's on the left: From Henry Ford to Rob Ford: auto-destruction, and possibilities of a car-free future

2011-01-08T01:13:00.000-05:00

your heart's on the left: From Henry Ford to Rob Ford: auto-destruction, and possibilities of a car-free future: "From car assembly-line pioneer Henry Ford, to Toronto's new pro-car mayor Rob Ford, we are living in an auto-dependent and auto-destructive society that is harming our health and our environment. But a healthy and green, car-free world is still possible.

KILLING US SOFTLY
During every hospital shift I see people who have been directly injured by cars—from whiplash and bruising, to broken bones, to fatalities. Car crashes are so common as to be simply part of the daily hospital routine. Listening to the radio traffic report outside the hospital is no better: collisions are presented as daily nuisances to be avoided, their human toll hidden."