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Alright, I'm angry - fucking angry!
If it's good enough for Australian media, in the land of climate change denier #2, to talk about this - Rupert Murdoch's media to boot - why is the WHOLE NEW ZEALAND media silent about all of this.
Just have a look at the trivia they produce, any day of the week - Radio New Zealand obsessed with their pathetic polticians while the earth burns.
It is time to call them out - not just corporate print media and television that panders to the very lowest common denominator.
First and foremost those that claim to be 'serious' media but have an editorial policy to exclude this from their programming, and a science editor who goes along with this policy.
What a pathetic lot!
It's time to start calling a spade a spade and start talking about it.
Wake up New Zealand, fucking wake up to what's happening in this country. What's worst than living in a country for which the main quality is complacency. Even the fascist prime minister is complacent.
If it's good enough for Australian media, in the land of climate change denier #2, to talk about this - Rupert Murdoch's media to boot - why is the WHOLE NEW ZEALAND media silent about all of this.
Just have a look at the trivia they produce, any day of the week - Radio New Zealand obsessed with their pathetic polticians while the earth burns.
It is time to call them out - not just corporate print media and television that panders to the very lowest common denominator.
First and foremost those that claim to be 'serious' media but have an editorial policy to exclude this from their programming, and a science editor who goes along with this policy.
What a pathetic lot!
It's time to start calling a spade a spade and start talking about it.
Wake up New Zealand, fucking wake up to what's happening in this country. What's worst than living in a country for which the main quality is complacency. Even the fascist prime minister is complacent.
Are
Siberia’s methane blow-holes the first warning sign of unstoppable
climate change?
WHAT
do three enormous craters in the Siberian wastelands have to do with
a terrified American climate scientist? Methane. And that’s
something to scare us all.
30
July, 2014
WHAT
do three enormous craters in the Siberian wastelands have to do with
a terrified American climate scientist? Methane. And that’s
something to scare us all.
The
end of the world could be starting right now — in a frozen Siberian
wasteland known as Yamal. It translates as “The End of the Land”.
The
first mysterious crater was spotted by oil workers earlier this
month. It was an 80m wide cavern that reached deep into the earth.
Since
then, the Siberian Times reportsgoatherds
have found a further two enormous vents in the ground.
Russian
researchers have returned from their investigation of the first find
and taken water and soil samples to help resolve how the hole was
formed.
Some
say aliens. Some say they’re “hellmouths” — gateways to the
undead.
But
scientists already have a pretty good idea.
Explosive
vents of vast quantities of methane gas.
Now
a new, ominous, name could be attached to them: Dragon’s mouths.
Here’s
where a blog posted by American professor in glaciology Dr Jason Box
at the weekend comes in: “The
dragon breath hypothesis has me losing sleep.”
3:43 AM - 30 Jul 2014 Copenhagen, Danmark
Dragon’s mouth ... a crater recently discovered in the Yamal Peninsula, in Yamalo-Nenets Autonomous Okrug, Russia. Russian scientists said that they believe the 60-metre wide crater could be the result of changing temperatures in the region. Source: A
THE DRAGON’S BURP
Dr
Box highlights signs of alarmingly huge spikes of methane being
released into the atmosphere above Siberia.
It’s
what that means which has him alarmed.
He’s
not mincing his words.
He’s
issued a no-holds barred call to action.
“This
is an all hands on deck moment,” he writes. “We’re in the age
of consequences.”
And
he has the “WTF” results from atmospheric measurements to back
him up.
Siberian anomaly ... an incredibly high spike in methane reading recorded in 2013. Source: Supplied
Siberia
has a single ground-based climate observing station, at a place
called Tiksi.
But
the numbers coming out of the remote research post are startling —
and they’re backed up by similar stations in Alaska and Canada.
“I
can tell you (these are) really high end,” Dr Box writes.
It’s
the erratic, but enormous, spikes in methane readings coming from
Tiksi — which Dr Box ominously calls “dragon breaths” — that
may be tied to the enormous blow holes now appearing in Siberia’s
desolate landscape.
He’d
much rather the “dragon” remains dormant.
Rising trend ... the “dragon’s breath” methane spikes have been recorded eight times in the past 22 years. Source:Supplied
EMPTYING
AN ANCIENT CARBON DUMP
Siberia’s
Yamal region contains some of Russia’s largest gas reserves. It’s
little coincidence that the first vent hole appeared about 40km from
the nation’s largest gas field — Bovanenkovo.
Since
then another crater has been identified nearby. This one is smaller:
Some 15m in diameter. Locals first found it in September last year,
but it has only now come to the attention of authorities. A third —
this time only 4m wide — was found several hundred kilometres away
on the Taymyr Peninsula.
Russian
scientists examining the first blowhole found it to be 60-80m wide
and some 70m deep. It runs into the permafrost of ice and mud. There
is an icy lake at its bottom.
Earth-shattering ... Andrei Plekhanov, a senior researcher at the Scientific Research Center of the Arctic, stands at a crater, discovered recently in the Yamal Peninsula, in Yamalo-Nenets Autonomous Okrug, Russia. Plekhanov said 80 per cent of the crater appeared to be made up of ice and that there were no traces of an explosion, eliminating the possibility that a meteorite had struck the region. Source: AP
“We
can be certain in saying that the crater appeared relatively
recently, perhaps a year or two ago; so it is a recent formation, we
are not talking about dozen years ago,” said Andrey Plekhanov,
Senior Researcher at the Russian Scientific Centre of Arctic
Research.
Could
it be linked to climate change?
“Well,
we have to continue our research to answer this question,” he said.
“Two previous summers — years 2012 and 2013 were relatively hot
for Yamal, perhaps this has somehow influenced the formation of the
crater.”
Numbers of the beast ... This picture, provided to The Siberian Times by local residents, shows another recently found funnel in the Siberian tundra. Source: Supplied
Mikhail
Lapsui, a deputy of Siberia’s regional parliament, inspected the
second blowhole site.
“I
flew by helicopter to inspect this funnel on Saturday, 19 July. Its
diameter is about 15 metres. There is also ground outside, as if it
was thrown as a result of an underground explosion.”
Methane.
It’s
the lasting remains of an event which happened some 50 million years
ago. An outbreak of a tiny green weed transformed the Earth from a
virtually lifeless greenhouse by sucking the carbon out of the air
and pumping oxygen back into it.
From zero to hero? ... The Azolla water fern reversed the effects of climate change 50 million years ago. Now all its hard work threatens to be undone with the melting of Siberian permafrost. Source: AP
It
was a process which took millions of years to create the world as we
know it.
But
the methane left trapped under the Arctic permafrost is a ticking
time bomb — set to send the world into a mass extinction and set
the climate clock back by millennia.
“We
have been too long on a trajectory pointed at an unmanageable climate
calamity; runaway climate heating,” Dr Box writes.
“If
we don’t get atmospheric carbon down and cool the Arctic, the
climate physics and recent observations tell me we will probably
trigger the release of these vast carbon stores, dooming our kids’
to a hothouse Earth. That’s a tough statement to read when your
worry budget is already full as most of ours is.”
Altered landscape ... Three deep vent holes have now been found blasted into the desolate permafrost of Siberia.Source: AP
GROWING
ALARM
Dr
Box says the issue of Arctic permafrost feedback on our warming
climate was raised at the world’s largest meeting of scientists,
the AGU, late last year. The take-home message was “we just can’t
say much yet,” he said.
“That
was then …”
He
says he’s since been following blogs by other leading climate
scientists and putting it all together.
“Their
messaging is alarming, connecting dots between methane maps they
generate using IASI data and a number of rapidly changing Arctic
climate elements: declining sea ice area, duration, volume;
increasing air and sea surface temperature; wildfires.”
One
account is eerily similar to that of Siberia’s “dragon mouths”.
Bubbles
of methane have been observed rising to the Arctic Ocean’s surface
since as early as 2011.
“That’s
damn scary,” Dr Box writes.
He
fears the genie may be escaping from the bottle.
“Atmospheric
methane release is a much bigger problem than atmospheric carbon
dioxide release, since methane is ~20 times more powerful greenhouse
gas,” he writes.
It’s
a sign of a worst-case scenario cascading environmental collapse.
The
loss of the reflective bright white Arctic ice itself contributes to
warming as the ocean left behind absorbs more heat.
This
warm water further destabilises the ice sheet and allows currents to
form which “unlock” the methane trapped in the cold, shallow
seas.
This
methane erupts into the air — rapidly surpassing the effects of our
own pollutants. At this point, there is nothing left humanity can do.
“What’s
the take home message, if you ask me?” Dr Box writes.
“Because
elevated atmospheric carbon from fossil fuel burning is the trigger
mechanism poking the climate dragon. The trajectory we’re on is to
awaken a runaway climate heating that will ravage global agricultural
systems leading to mass famine, conflict. Sea level rise will be a
small problem by comparison. We simply MUST lower atmospheric carbon
emissions.
“There
are still questions, of course, but the precautionary principle makes
clear we have to keep this dragon in the ground.”
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