THE SOLUTION TO THE VENUS SYNDROME (Part 15)

This is the final part of The Venus Syndrome.

Under even the worst case scenario, we will not personally be significantly affected by the Greenhouse Effect. Unless, of course, you live at sea level, or happen to be in the path of a Category 5 hurricane triggered by climate warming. But even pessimists feel that much of the real damage will occur in our children’s children lifetime, if not later. Remediation of global climate warming is a generational responsibility to insure for a better future.

Say a premature Venus Syndrome does begin to transpire as depicted in the previous section. The prospects of accelerated mining/harvesting of methane from the permafrost, marine clathrates, peat bogs and the like, as an emergency measure, are not realistic as a corrective measure. To artificially cover these deposits would similarly be impractical. All this might make for an interesting TV movie, but, the cure is in the prevention.

There is scientific proof that the atmosphere warmed AFTER supposed historical methane catastrophes. Thus, first, this will happen again if there was no humanity. Earth has always recovered. The difference this time is that WE are probably warming the planet, and by doing so, could very well trigger the Big One, the version which does turn Earth to Venus. What, then, is the simple solution for the Venus Syndrome? Very simply, reduce global warming.

But who do you believe? The environmentalists? Wired graded them:

o Environmental Defense A-
o Natural Resources Defense Council B+
o Sierra Club B-
o Greenpeace C+
o Friends of the Earth International C

But what is Wired and why listen to them? It doesn’t matter, all these organizations decry global warming and blame the White House. We can also add us to the list.

Who, then, can be the savior? Well, what about Al Gore? His An Inconvenient Truth documentary and book tell it all. He might just make investments in the greening of the world profitable, and as a by-product, convince the common man about the seriousness of global warming. In a note to his mailing list, James Hansen said that, while he had his differences with the former Vice President, the movie was gripping and the book a perfect complement. To quote: “Al Gore may have found a recipe for the Silent Spring of global warming.” Hanson further hints that Gore might well be the Winston Churchill we need now to save our planet. Jim also had a disclaimer, indicating that his opinions as expressed are personal views under protection of the First Amendment of the United States Constitution. There is the White House, you know.

All it takes is the will of the people, but this has to begin somewhere. Gore could become a catalyst, but take Wal-Mart, for instance, the biggest company in the world…yes, even larger than ExxonMobile. Known by some as Wal-Bad, or the corporate equivalent of Saddam Hussein, Wal-Mart has a reputation for crushing the local competition, outsourcing its products to foreign competitors, paying low wages, and more. But you could, a few years ago, purchase a year’s supply of kosher dill pickles, Vlassic, mind you, a whole gallon, for $2.97. But no family could finish the pickles, much was thrown away, and in 2001, Vlassic filed for bankruptcy. Maybe Wal-Bad begins to make sense. Suppliers still contend, though, that it is worse not to do business with them, and people keep buying things from them.

One of two things happened, and probably both. Either all the public backlash got corporate headquarters to improve its public relations, or, maybe, Wal-Mart decided that it was their responsibility to improve Planet Earth, for, beginning in 2005, this company started holding its suppliers to be more accountable for environmental and social standards at foreign factories. A more punctilious Lee, Wall-Mart Chief Executive H. Lee Scott, Jr., said the public was beginning to target their stores, not the suppliers, about these issues, so that it was smart corporate policy to be conscientious.

The most important person in the world is the President of the United States, who, until the end of 2008, will be George W. Bush. On May 17, 2006, The Honolulu Advertiser reported that April was the warmest month ever, 4.5°F (2.5°C) higher than the norm. On the same page in the very next column was a headline, “New lows for Bush, GOP in latest poll.” Bush’s approval rating dropped to 33 percent, and Democrats were now favored to handle all 10 issues measured in the Post-ABC News poll. Surely enough, in November, both houses of Congress came under the leadership of the Democrats. Hmmm, maybe the people are becoming concerned. Nah, that had more to do with the Iraq War.

The simple solution to the Venus Syndrome is to prevent global warming. Is our society capable of doing so? Maybe not, but we do vote and can otherwise make our views known. Who knows, maybe the only solution to the Venus Syndrome might well be the Free Hydrogen Age, described in an earlier blog. The solution, thus, is a network of activities, concepts, leaders, etc., making the effort far from simple. Look for The Venus Syndrome: the Novel.

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Hurricane Ike is now back up to 97 MPH, should increase to at least 120 MPH in two days, making landfall Saturday morning anywhere from the Mexican border to Galveston, with Corpus Christi still the likely target, then turning northward towards Houston by Sunday morning.

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Tropical Depression Lowell at 35 MPH did make that expected right turn, and should hit Baha in 36 hours.

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Typhoon Sinlaku is at 125 MPH and should move towards Taiwan, but largely keep offshore and towards Okinawa.

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Crude oil is holding steady at $113/barrel, while the DJI rose 38 to 11,269. The U.S. Senate is hosting an energy summit on Friday, but expectations are low that an actual energy bill can be passed by September 26, when they adjourn for the year.

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THE VENUS SYNDROME (Part 14)

The following represents the backdrop of a novel entitled The Venus Syndrome, to be published next year.

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August 17, 2012, was a bad day for Planet Earth, in fact, the worst day ever for homo sapiens since Mr. Tubo erupted 71,000 years ago, dropping our population to 15,000 or so. The temperature had finally reached 110°F in Washington, D.C., breaking the record set last year by 2°F. But the temperature itself was not the problem; it was more the accumulation of the past three years being the hottest for the entire globe. Global climate warming was not only happening, but getting worse.

Hurricane Valerie has stormed through the District and Hurricane Zeke is heading for Hawaii, with Alberto close on heels (yes, the Pacific, for the first time, cycled through and came back to A). Worse, something is forming just south of the Big Island, and the meteorological conditions suggest that the movement could well turn north instead of west, as have the half dozen Category 5 hurricanes which formed in the mid-Pacific over the past five years. Only three Category 5 hurricanes hit the U.S. Mainland (Camille in 1969, Andrew in 1992 and Igor in 2010) in the fifty years prior to this, but already three have struck this year (Debby in May and Tony last month). However, Hurricane William, located in the Gulf of Mexico, and seeking New Orleans, has the lowest minimum pressure ever of 878 mb (millibars, with the previous low being an unnamed 1935 hurricane at 892 mb), with sustained winds of up to 200 miles per hour. The Army Corps of Engineers warned that funds were not made available to shore up the dikes beyond Category 3 after Katrina, so only the worst is anticipated.

Of particular concern to scientists, though, is that the thermohaline circulation might have stopped today. These currents kept certain coastal regions cool and others warm. They also kept the marine methane hydrates (MMH) below critical temperature. Expected now is a steep increase in ocean temperatures in many of those shelf areas heavy in MMH deposits.

Both the north terrestrial and magnetic poles are now over ocean, with the seafloor 13,000 feet (4000 meters) below. Normally, only half the ice melts. As of today, there is no ice in the Arctic around the poles.

The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) met last month in an emergency session to declare that the permafrost of the U.S., Canada and Russia is, indeed, melting, and the 10.4°F (5.8°C) temperature rise by 2100 will now occur by 2025. The International Arctic Research Center (IARC) of the University of Alaska at Fairbanks reported that the northern ecosystems hold one fourth to one third the world’s soil carbon, and much of it is carbon dioxide and methane trapped in the ice. Over the past 200 years, the atmospheric concentration of methane has tripled. Now, this ice is thawing with the deeper solid turning into slush, and, the expectation is that the effect of CH4 on global climate warming will in a few years exceed that of CO2. A 2°C increase in permafrost temperatures amplifies methane flux by 120%, and there is a real danger that taliks, or thawed permafrost, are disintegrating, to further accelerate the effect.

The IARC also will soon release the results of the joint Russia-U.S. cruise investigating methane plumes found in the East-Siberian Sea. The speculation is that methane gas hydrates are melting at the bottom of the sea. As there is one million times more natural gas (methane) in these permafrost reservoirs than the normal methane annually released from the northern ecosystems, the implications are frightening.

Ten years ago (Alaskan Science Forum, January 3, 2001, Article #1523 by Ned Rozell), it was reported that 50% of Russia and Canada, 80% of Alaska, 20% of China and all of Antarctica is underlain by permafrost. In northern Siberia this permafrost is 1,600 meters (5,250 feet, or a mile) thick. A decade ago, this permafrost had warmed to within one degree Celsius of thawing in Alaska. Major melting was expected by 2040. It is occurring now.

The global system then even further positively reacts by melting the permafrost, contributing more carbon dioxide and a lot more methane into the atmosphere, which speeds up the process. Even an idiot would be able to determine that this is not a smart thing to foster.

Nearly twenty years ago in 1992, Jeremy Leggett, the scientific director of Greenpeace International’s Atmosphere and Energy Campaign, had warned that as the oceans warm, they will be less able to absorb carbon dioxide and will become thermally stable, reducing the circulation of nutrients and population of phytoplankton, further decreasing carbon dioxide uptake, and this gas will begin to get released into the atmosphere instead of absorbed. Then the tundra will melt, discharging methane and reducing the albedo, meaning less sunlight will be reflected back into space. The hydroxyl reservoir that oxidizes methane will be moderated and the more dangerous methane will remain in the atmosphere for longer periods, exacerbating the problem. Droughts will occur and photosynthesis will drop, meaning that carbon dioxide will not be absorbed as much. All these positive feedbacks will mount until the runaway effect becomes uncontrollable.

All this heat finally resulted in portions of the ocean going hyper-critical with respect to temperature, and the danger point for runaway water vapor was finally exceeded on this August day in 2012. That in itself was not the trigger, for, in itself, it should have taken many millennia to get to the Venus Syndrome.

The problem was that this critical condition occurred over portions of the warmer Pacific, which sat over huge deposits of marine methane hydrates (MMH). It was purely coincidental, but in the Ring of Fire, at a spot off Peru, a major subsea earthquake rated at 8.9, triggered a massive underwater volcanic eruption, which served as a fuse to destabilize the hydrates, beginning the release of copious amounts of methane into the atmosphere. A major tsunami is expected to hit the Pacific Rim, but that has now become a minor irritant. A sizable MMH deposit off Guatemala, possibly catalyzed by a related earthquake, also went metastable. Unexpectedly, there was a huge reservoir of methane gas below the clathrates that just came to the surface. Thus, in a matter of 24 hours, Planet Earth had its hottest day ever, a sudden influx of methane from the ocean, and an atmosphere where methane superseded carbon dioxide as the primary agent for global warming. The Great Ocean Conveyor Belt stopping was particularly ominous, for the ocean surrounding these MMH beds would further warm.

It had to take the Global Warming equivalent of a Perfect Storm to catalyze an expedited Venus Syndrome: portions of the ocean surface at critical positive feedback temperature; cessation of the cooling currents thus warming the marine methane hydrate (MMH) deposits; a major subsea earthquake combined with a cataclysmic undersea volcanic eruption; resultant tsunami which instantaneously lowered the sea level over the MMH deposits near the coastlines; and, most importantly, crossing over of the dynamic equilibrium pressure-temperature condition allowing marine methane to explode to the surface.

Scientists at the International Marine Methane Hydrates Research Institute at the University of Hawaii calculated that one teraton, a million times a million, of methane will be released into the atmosphere over the next year or two. The early Eocene, 55 million years ago, experienced a similar event, resulting in a temperature rise of about 16 degrees Fahrenheit across the now populated regions of the world.

An emergency session of the United Nations, panicked by these developments, was called for August 20, where members of the IPRCC were summoned to participate. Computer models over the past week were refined with the latest worst case scenarios, and a new progress report was presented to the General Assembly at 10AM that fateful Monday. New York City, badly enough, was already at 102°F that morning, but the news was particularly devastating.

The chairman of the IPRC, reported that we had reached and tripped over the tipping point. The Venus Syndrome had begun, and, now, could probably not be stopped. Humanity at large, and most of life, would cease to exist within a century, providing a short period to develop solutions for survival, the only rational one being to leave Planet Earth, although emergency efforts are being planned to release air pollution particulates and sulfute aerosols into the atmosphere. Fortunately enough, the Search for Extraterrestrial Intelligence (Book 2) program had recently detected signals from an advanced civilization in the Orion constellation. The data is being interpreted and….

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A long time ago, according to Greek mythology, there was a very beautiful princess of Troy by the name of Cassandra. Her younger brother Paris was the character who kidnapped Helen, the wife of the King of Sparta, and brought her to Troy. Apollo, son of Zeus, fell in love with Cassandra and gave her the power to know the future if only she were to marry him. She was given that power, but refused to marry him, so Apollo put a curse on her predictive capabilities, and doomed her to despair, for while her powers remained, no one would believe her. Sometimes I feel that I have Cassandra’s curse.

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Hurricane Ike is now only barely a hurricane after incapacitating Cuba, but is just back in the ocean, where it could strengthen to a Category 3 storm, and cross this weekend over what looks like the coastline between Brownsville and Corpus Christi.

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Tropical Storm Lowell is at 45 MPH, but should slightly weaken and make a right turn to Baha.

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In the western Pacific, Typhoon Sinlaku has strengthened to 85 MPH and appears headed north away from the Philippines and east of Taiwan. It is projected to make landfall in south Kyushu late this weekend.

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In the face of Hurricane Ike, the price of crude oil dropped to $102.26/barrel, a five month low. Why? The Dow Jones Industrials tanked 280 to 11,230.

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THE PLANET VENUS (Part 13)

Venus was named for the Roman goddess of love and beauty. It’s almost the size of Earth, but is 67 million miles from the Sun, as opposed to our 93 million miles, and has a year 225 days long. But it takes more than a year for a day—that is, it takes 243 days to rotate once. It is hot, about 860°F (460°C), enough to melt lead, with clouds of sulfuric acid, and an atmosphere 96% carbon dioxide resulting in a surface pressure 90 times that of Earth. Venus is Hell, and is furthermore said to be the #1 UFO false alarm, because it can be seven times brighter than any other star or planet. I haven’t, but, with a practiced eye, you can actually see Venus in broad daylight.

The Aetherius Society (aetherius.org), founded a half century ago by George King, said he was telepathically contacted by an alien intelligence that Jesus and Buddha were from Venus. Well, maybe this is enough, for NASA Mariner 2 in 1962 showed what is now known to be hostile life conditions. But it is interesting nevertheless to reflect that one of the selected battlegrounds of the Soviet Space Program was Venus, for Cold War public relations purposes, and, in 1975, a camera on board a Soviet craft did send back the first photograph of the surface of Venus.

NASA Magellan flew in 1989 to map the surface of Venus, and, over four years, returned data showing that the planet was unlike Earth. The entire surface was relatively young, about 500 million years old, and uniform. NASA Cassini, in 1998 and 1999, on its way to Saturn (where the close encounter was made and transmitted for television audiences in July of 2005), added to the information base. However, scientists still cannot explain how the surface of Venus got that way.

But, it is surmised that Venus once had oceans, and water. What happened? Why is Venus Hell and Earth the Garden of Eden? The Goldilocks Paradox essentially says that Mars is too cold, Earth is just right and Venus too hot for the necessary life conditions, beginning with water.

This has all to do with runaway positive feedback (RPF). A well known example of RPF is the howling sound from an audio system. Negative feedback is good, as for example, in an air conditioner, which turns the cool off when a certain minimum temperature is reached, and then turns it back on, when a certain maximum temperature is reached. Positive feedback usually destabilizes systems. An example of positive feedback is when a heater reaches a maximum temperature, and the system reacts by adding more heat. This is what is happening in global climate warming. Our civilization is insanely contributing to positive feedback by burning more fossil fuels. But is there any danger of a runaway?

Theoretically, according to a NASA study, evaporation loads the atmosphere with water vapor, which traps thermal energy coming from the Earth, and in a chain reaction loop, results in further warming of the ocean, leading to higher evaporation rates, trapping more water vapor, etc. However, it just turns out that sea surface temperatures never reach more than about 87°F (27°C), the critical temperature at which a runaway effect could occur. On Earth, today, we are, maybe, safe, if there were no human activity.

One theory regarding Venus is that it is closer to the Sun, so that the critical ocean temperature was exceeded. With the clouds gone, carbonates and other carbonized compounds decomposed, maybe through volcanic eruptions, sending carbon dioxide into the atmosphere to start another Greenhouse Effect, resulting in the present condition. Another speculation is that of a planet-wide upheaval half a billion years ago took place—perhaps sudden volcano eruptions—changing the atmosphere and causing extreme climate warming, again, through the Greenhouse Effect.

In any event, we don’t want our atmosphere to be like Mars, and especially not that of Venus. But is this possible? Well, Stephen Hawking was asked at a seminar in Beijing in June of 2006 about his thoughts on the environment. He responded that he was afraid that Earth, “might end up like Venus, at 250 degrees centigrade and raining sulfuric acid.” Tomorrow, the final part of THE VENUS SYNDROME.

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Hurricane Ike struck eastern Cuba, is now back in the ocean, and should pass through western Cuba over the next 24 hours. Ike dropped to 80 MPH from a high of 135 MPH, and should weaken a bit more on its second land passage. However, all models show a re-strengthening in 4 days to 115 MPH. Landfall in the Galveston area is projected for Saturday. On the other hand, hurricanes have been known to confound predictions.

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Tropical Storm Lowell is at 45 MPH and is still expected to make a right turn towards Baha in a few days.

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Tropical Storm 15 formed in the North Philippines Seas, and will soon be named. It should skirt the northern part of the Philippines and head in the general direction of Taiwan.

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Crude oil stayed relatively steady near $107/barrel. But Ike is coming. The Dow Jones Industrials shot up 290 to 11,511 on news of housing rescue.

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THE TIPPING POINT (Part 12)

There is a book called The Tipping Point, with a sub-heading: How Little Things Can Make a Big Difference. The author, Malcolm Gladwell, was a reporter for The Washington Post for a decade, and during the past ten years has been a staff writer for The New Yorker. The tipping point is that threshold when all hell breaks loose, as when water is heated to 212 degrees Fahrenheit, and liquid boils into vapor. Gladwell writes that the FAX machine is a good example, which was first introduced by Sharp in 1984, selling 80,000 of them. The growth was slow, but in 1989, sales suddenly jumped to over a million. Cellular phones are another example. At first, only the rich techie had it, then, suddenly, in 1998, everyone had one. Well, in my case, I finally got a Samsung in 2006, but that was more to keep my schedule.

There are three characteristics that cause something to tip:

o contagiousness,
o the fact that little causes can have big effects, and
o that change happens not slowly, but dramatically.

That dramatic moment is the Tipping Point. The book goes on to say that you need connectors (people who know a lot of people), mavens (accumulators of information) and salesmen (those with a special winning personality) to orchestrate the activity, but what is the product or social epidemic in global climate change?

The fact of the matter, actually, is that most just don’t care that much. Many are willing to shell out a hundred dollars to attend a professional football match, sometimes in freezing weather, half the time to be disappointed. But saving Planet Earth? The problem is that global change, with hurricanes and hot summers being random exceptions, occurs very slowly. You can’t see the sea rise. A five degree Fahrenheit rise in 50 years is one-tenth of a degree each year.

There are connectors, mavens and salesmen like Al Gore and James Hanson, but the epidemic is not directly killing anyone. The cherry blossoms might bloom in Japan two weeks early, but that’s fine.

The Guardian in 2005 reported, “Warming hits tipping point.”The trigger was said to be the Siberian frozen peat bog, about the size of France and Germany combined, which was thawing, releasing methane gas, said to be 20 times more potent than carbon dioxide. But nothing much came of this news blurb.

Perhaps there is something I can do. Why don’t I write a best selling book to trigger a societal tipping point? Let me call it, oh, The Venus Syndrome. Then, too, a subsequent boffo movie would help.

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Tropical Storm Hanna has left the USA and will skirt Canada, still at around 50 MPH. Hanna killed more than 500 in Haiti, but just caused some sport event cancellations and flooding in this country.

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Hurricane Ike, though, is a Category 4 monster at 135 MPH and seems destined to hit the Gulf Coast along the path of Gustave. This time, models predict Ike weakening over Cuba, but re-gaining strength in the Gulf of Mexico and head towards Galveston, although Ike could easily turn slightly north and hit New Orleans. Cuba will bear the brunt, but could well serve to help spare the U.S. Ike should seriously impede domestic oil production. Thankfully, #10 Josephine dissipated.

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In the Pacific, #12 Lowell formed off Mexico at 52 MPH, could strengthen to 60 MPH over the next couple of days, but should then turn towards Baha/Mexico and weaken. The Western Pacific remains quiet. However, there have been 12 named storms in this region, with the most recent one being Nuri (Karen) last month, making a total of 24 for the Pacific this year.

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JUST HOW DANGEROUS IS METHANE (Part 11)

To recap, methane is most of the energy in natural gas, is the simplest hydrocarbon, has one carbon and four hydrogen atoms—CH4—and can be utilized to cook food, power a car and be converted into ammonia (NH4), the base from which fertilizer is produced. A cow produces this gas, with carbon dioxide; decaying woody material decomposes mostly into carbon dioxide, but also methane; and the globe is warmed by its presence in the atmosphere. In fact, it is from 20 to 62 times more dangerous than carbon dioxide in causing the Greenhouse Effect, depending on which reference you use and the parameters of consideration. Of course, nitrogen dioxide has a global warming potential (GWP) of 296—where carbon dioxide is 1—hydrofluorocarbon HFC-23 is rated 12,000, trifluoromethyl sulfur pentafluoride is 18,000 and sulfur hexafluoride, used as a high voltage insulator, has a GWP of 22,200. Thankfully, there are only trace amounts of those gases in the air. CO2 is needed by plants as we need oxygen, and, all in all, is a reasonably benign gas. It’s just that we produce so much of it. Well, actually, fossil fuel burning is responsible only for 14%--nature is responsible for the rest.

David Archer of the University of Chicago has written a series of papers dealing with MMH and anthropogenic climate change. Part of the following includes some of his writings.

The worst mass extinction in history, killing off 95% of all marine species and 70% of terrestrial life, occurred 251 million years ago, according to Gregory Ryskin of Northwestern University. Methane from bacterial decay or from frozen methane hydrates, stimulated by a meteorite impact, earthquake or volcano, could have triggered a catastrophic eruption of methane gas. Ryskin calculated that the energy liberated could have been 10,000 times greater than the world’s entire nuclear weapons stockpile. He did say he had no proof and it was just his hypothesis. More recent evidence shows that an asteroid crashing off Australia might have triggered the event.

In January 2005, two teams of scientists, from Curtin University of Technology in Perth, Australia, and the University of Washington, reported that the “Great Dying,” 250 million years ago, was caused by volcanic eruptions, which caused atmospheric changes. Plus, this all took place over as much as 10 million years. While the volcanic gas was mostly carbon dioxide, there was also speculation that large stores of methane gas frozen on the ocean floor might have been released to trigger runaway greenhouse warming. Clearly, something happened a quarter billion years ago.

In 2000, Nature reported on “Methane Linked to Mass Extinctions,” when a violent explosion of methane gas from the ocean floor 183 million years ago killed off 80% of some deep-sea species. The article expressed particular concern about drilling for marine methane and the harm that would cause.

The Science Daily reported on December 12, 2001, “Methane Explosion Warmed the Prehistoric Earth, Possible Again.” There was another abrupt warming 55 million years ago, caused by the sudden release from the ocean of frozen deposits of methane. “The massive perturbation to global climate and the carbon cycle during the Paleocene/Eocene Thermal Maximum may have been forced by a catastrophic release of methane gas from hydrate deposits on the continental slope,” said Gavin Schmidt and Drew Shindell of the Goddard Institute for Space Studies. Movement of continental plates may have initiated the release. Ocean temperatures soared by up to 13 degrees Fahrenheit (7 °C), within 1,000 years, by some estimates, but lasting 100,000 years. More than half of deep sea species died. However, it was also reported that primates (apes) suddenly appeared.

There was a puzzling period only 3 to 4 million years ago when carbon dioxide and methane were in the atmosphere at about the same concentration as today, but the temperature was 3 °C (5.4 °F) hotter and sea level 25 meters (82 feet) higher. There was something about the El Nino and the ocean that triggered the warming.

Around 8,000 years ago, the Storegga submarine landslide occurred on the Norwegian continental margin, caused, most probably, by methane hydrate destabilization. While global warming was not a consequence, this landslide did cause a tsunami (sea wave), and is a link to the next chapter on “Six Hours to Seattle.”

To recap, a carbon dioxide atmospheric composition of 380 parts per million and methane of 1.8 parts per million means that there are about 200 times more CO2 than CH4 in the air. However, CH4 is 20 times more dangerous than CO2, so, the effectiveness factor with respect to global warming of CO2 is about 10 times greater. However, Drew Shindell believes that methane is underestimated in the above comparison because it is a reactive gas, unlike carbon dioxide, and, instead of accounting for one-sixth of the total effect of well-mixed greenhouse gases on warming, should be one-third, or twice that currently utilized in climate change models. Shindell’s colleague at GISS, Gavin Schmidt, has said that, under inflated concentration conditions, the methane can linger for hundreds of years, much longer than the decade normally expected.

In a parallel paper regarding methane from wetlands, Shindell says it another way: “Methane increases have contributed about 0.7W/m2 to global radiative forcing since preindustrial times (0.5 W/ W/m2 directly, plus an additional 0.2 Wm2 indirectly via tropospheric ozone and stratospheric water vapor), roughly one-half the forcing from CO2.” Clearly, methane is important.

The literature reports that the oceans release only 10 tons of methane per year. Termites produce 40 tons/year, cattle 60 tons/yr, rice paddies 70 tons/yr and wetlands 115 tons/yr. But no one really knows how much methane is coming from the seas.

This has been one of my primary points of focus over the past few years. Why, if this gas is so potentially dangerous, is so very little being done about knowing more. The two Hawaii workshops chaired by James Hansen in 2003 and 2005 provided opportunities to ask questions, leading to some of the interchanges previously mentioned. I also asked these experts if it was possible that marine methane was entering the atmosphere at a dangerous rate. The general consensus was no, so it’s not a fundable area.

So I did a bit more checking:

o “Abnormally high levels of methane gas in seafloor sediments could pose a major hazard to coastal populations within the next 100 years through their impact on climate change and sea level rise.”

o “..significant amounts of seabed CH4 are leaking into the atmosphere, enough to contribute to global warming sea level rise.

o Much of the concern, though, seems to be focused on methane in shallow and grassy beds near the coastline.

I further asked the workshop attendees, how to best measure marine methane leaking into the atmosphere. The general consensus was that no one was doing much. Upon further investigation, though:

o Acoustic survey methods can be used to detect seabed gas and that gas rising in the water column, but most of the current effort is on shallow seabed methane.

o Other methods include cameras, geochemical probe and sediment coring below sea level, and satellite and airborne laser fluorescence for the ocean to atmosphere interface.

It is this latter technique that I am pursuing as a possible high school science fair project for some curious student. Cal Poly in San Luis Obispo and Stanford University spearhead a CubeSat competition to send packages into space. I can envision a high school student designing such a system, then, advancing into a college project, refining the electronics for not only testing on a satellite, but determining that the marine methane escape rate acceleration could well be serious. In parallel, I do chide campus scientists about conducting this research, but at my advanced age, I’m looking for simple solutions, not a long, drawn out, decade-long fundamental unearthing of the situation.

Then there is the clathrate gun hypothesis, which supposes that the primary cause of the rapid historical increases of methane in the atmosphere came from an explosive release of deeper ocean marine methane hydrates, not the more generally accepted wetlands. An interesting point is that, while one would expect this release to occur at the end of a glaciation period when the sea level drops, thus lowering the hydrostatic head over the deposit, indicated is that a 100 meter drop is equivalent to only a 1°C temperature rise, so, temperature can have a more important role in setting off a massive release.

Finally, are trees good or bad? The Kyoto Protocol endorsed reforestation, where now, in Europe and, even, Chicago, carbon credits can be bought and sold for growing more trees. However, a team from Germany, the Netherlands and Northern Ireland reported in Nature in 2006 that ordinary plants produce significant amounts of methane, both in the growth cycle and the decay process. The latter was previously known, but trees being a contributor to global warming just by growing, thus contributing up to 30% of all the methane generated? That was a bombshell! So much so that the Max Planck Society floated a press release attributed to the researchers responsible for the paper within a week of publication with the title, “Global Warming – The Blame Is not with the Plants,” a somewhat weak declaration stressing that global change is real, trees have been around for a long time and have for eternity been aiding and adding to the problem, but mostly helping. Plus their findings were very preliminary, where, at worst, all these negatives will only reduce carbon uptake of reforestation by 4%. Thus, planting trees was still good. There were, however, three notes complementing the Science article:

o From the Editor: Regarding natural gas plants, this additional source of methane could account for 10-30% of the annual methane source strength and has been overlooked in previous studies.
o David Lowe: The results are startling because methane is being emitted under normal physiological conditions and that these emissions are large.
o Quirin Schiermeier: Climate researchers are amazed that they missed what is a huge methane source.

There was some follow-up corroboration from Michael Keller of the U.S. Department of Agriculture’s Forest Service, who said that while their study has not yet been published, this paper provided a plausible solution to methane measurements they made in the Brazilian Amazon. Clearly, we have not yet seen the end of this surprise.

So, anyway, what is the great danger about methane? If global warming occurs, the methane associated with frozen tundra will begin to enter the atmosphere at higher levels. Sergei Kirpotin of Russia and Judith Marquand of the U.K. described in 2005 the melting of the permafrost of western Siberia, about the size of France and Germany combined, releasing billions of tons of methane. During the past 40 years, this area has warmed 3°C (5.4°F), faster than virtually anywhere else.

For thousands of millennia, marine methane hydrates have been accumulating at the sea bottom. As the oceans warm, the dynamic equilibrium will shift to increase the escape of methane. The greatest danger, though, is the highly speculative probability that an undersea volcanic eruption or earthquake might trigger a sudden cataclysmic release, causing a mass extinction. After all, the last time this happened with any major consequence was 55 million years ago, so this is not anything worthy of particular worry. There is nothing we can do about this anyway. Well, let me take that back. We can delay the onset by preventing global climate warming.

The worrisome point of all this is attitudinal. Methane is not considered to be a particularly serious threat. The Kyoto Protocol doesn’t much mention the gas. Thus, viewpoints need to be adjusted. There has yet to be a major international gathering to review the importance of methane to global climate change. We are discussing with Hansen’s researchers the prospects of holding a workshop in Hawaii. By the time you read this, hopefully we will have learned a lot more. By then, or soon thereafter, look for The Venus Syndrome--the novel.

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Tropical Storm Hanna will hit South Carolina early Saturday morning with 70 MPH winds, not quite a hurricane, but dangerous, nevertheless. Hanna will move through North Carolina and along the Eastern Seaboard. Expect flooding.

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Hurricane Ike is at 115 MPH and should strengthen to 130 MPH over the next few days. It looks like Ike will move along northern Cuba and head straight for New Orleans. Natural gas platforms have already initiated shutdown and only the worst should be anticipated, hoping for the best.

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Tropical Depression Josephine, at 35 MPH, is weakening, but could still strengthen on her path towards Florida and the Carolinas.

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Crude oil slipped to $106/barrel, and the DJI rose 33 to 11,221, but look for some reaction to Ike.

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THERE IS SOMETHING ABOUT METHANE (Part 10)

The chemical nature of this book has thus far mostly dealt with hydrogen, oxygen and carbon, including carbon dioxide, CO2. The simplest fossil fuel is a gas, methane (CH4). Natural gas is mostly methane. When cows flatulate and burp, methane is produced as the primary gas. In fact, a State of California study reported that dairies were the number one source of San Joaquin Valley smog. Not necessarily tongue in check, with the respect to the Kyoto Protocol, it was suggested that reducing methane production made more economic sense than trying to limit carbon dioxide. Then there is the obvious uncontrollable: when forests decay, methane is naturally formed; when trees grow, they also produce methane. It’s really not all that easy to reduce the production of methane.

As a combination series of one carbon and two molecules of hydrogen are added to the compound, the gas becomes liquid, then a solid. Gasoline is essentially the liquid portion of this CH2 chain. All fossil fuels, when burned in air, produce CO2 and heat, plus, depending on the combustion temperature, nitrogen compounds, as the atmosphere is 78% nitrogen. If there are contaminants, such as sulfur, in the fuel, also produced are oxides of sulfur, both of which can form acid rain.

While carbon dioxide is the current major target to combat global warming, most people don’t know that one molecule of methane is 20 to 62 times (depending on whether you compare on a molecular weight, mass, or whatever basis, and are able to include airborne lifetime) worse than one molecule of carbon dioxide in warming the Earth. The Report of the Methane Advisory Committee on Methane Hydrate Issues and Opportunities, a U.S. Department of Energy panel, says that methane is 23 times more effective at warming than an equivalent volume of carbon dioxide over a 100 year lifetime. However, methane is 62 times more powerful as a greenhouse gas over a 20 year period when there is an excess of this gas in the atmosphere. Further, if the infusion of methane is rapid, there would be very dangerous positive climatic feedback. This is the basis of The Venus Syndrome, my attempt to provide a two by four solution to influence decision-makers about the carbon tax.

In 1859 John Tyndall of Ireland showed that methane was like a plank of wood with regards to allowing heat rays to pass. As recently as 1948, though, methane was not even measured in the atmosphere because it was deemed as insignificant. Then in 1971 an authoritative study of climate ignored methane because it had “no direct effects on the climate or the biosphere.” In 1980 V. Ram Ramanathan, when he was with NASA, published a paper surmising that 40% of the total warming could be from the insignificant miscellaneous gases such as methane, nitrous oxide, ozone and CFCs. This led to CFCs being targeted as the culprit for the ozone hole and nitrogen and sulfur oxides as bad for smog and acid rain. But no one really took methane seriously, even when ice cores from Greenland and Antarctica revealed that methane, too, had risen and fallen in step with global temperatures.

My interest in methane actually started in 1979 when I served as the staff director in the U.S. Senate for the Hard Minerals Act, which formalized the national seabed mining program. I participated in interminable gatherings of the Law of Sea Treaty, and note that a quarter century after passage of the bill that the U.S. has not yet signed on, mostly because industry thinks doing so would unduly penalize American companies. If this sounds familiar, yes, the Kyoto Protocol on global climate warming is yet another treaty we have refused to sign because the private sector said no.

The Marine Minerals Technology Center of the Hawaii Natural Energy Institute, funded by the U.S. Department of Interior, served as the leading academic R&D organization of its type in the Pacific. Work on strategic metals languished, partly because of American attitudes and the unfavorable economics of such a venture, but the effort has recently picked up because of marine methane hydrates (MMH)

One of the resources at the bottom of the sea is MMH. In 1991, I joined a group of ocean experts in Berlin to write a book, entitled, Use and Misuse of the Ocean. I served on the chapter dealing with offshore hydrocarbons, chaired by Peter J. Cook, who at that time directed the British Geological Survey. We came up with a wild guess that the “marine gas hydrate layers could contain about twice as much reduced carbon as all other fossil-fuel reservoirs.” In reality, the potential amount of energy forecasted in the literature varied by at least two orders of magnitude, so the true amount remains a huge unknown. It was further noted that freshwater was tied up in these clathrates (or gas hydrates), providing a double benefit to society. We did not mention the double-edged sword danger of this methane regarding global warming, mostly because we then were unaware of the effect.

More recently, the International Center for Climate and Society at the University of Hawaii, a sister unit of the International Pacific Research Center (IPRC, a joint U.S.-Japan alliance, located on the fourth floor of the Pacific Ocean Science and Technology building, where I have been enjoying a favorable corner office for more than 6 years now), has partnered with various academic and research organizations in Alaska to take a closer look at the energy and environmental implications of MMH. Also, too, researchers in the Oceanography Department have refined their observation of the ocean, and have measured the omnipresence of methane, in certain locales to be at supersaturation.

These MMH—methane locked in ice at the sea bottom—are in dynamic equilibrium with the ocean. One cubic meter of fully saturated MMH contains 164 cubic meters of methane (at standard temperature and pressure) and 0.87 cubic meters of water. These hydrates are less dense than seawater, so, if they are somehow jiggled loose, say by an undersea earthquake or volcanic eruption, they rise to the surface. After all, ice and gases only go up when in water. How did they get there? When marine life dies, it descends to the bottom of the ocean. Bacterial degradation of organic matter in low oxygen environments produces methane, which under cold, deep ocean conditions are latticed into ice, and trapped there as long as conditions do not change. If the climate warms enough, then the forcing function will ultimately release methane, which, if not biologically consumed, will make its way to the atmosphere.

Some of the public releases on this subject have been almost inflammatory, so I will attempt to be circumspect. Part 11 will summarize the current state of thinking regarding the potential danger of methane in global climate warming.

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Tropical Storm Hanna is now following the predicted northward path parallel to the Florida Coast, and should slightly increase from 60 to 70 MPH over the next two days, making landfall on Saturday, most probably the Carolinas, but moving northeast after that to remain along the Eastern Seaboard. Hannah is now not expected to reach hurricane status, but winds are nevertheless high, plus flooding will occur.

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Hurricane Ike is at 130 MPH, but should weaken over the next few days because it will encounter some cooler waters churned up by Hanna. At some point, some restrengthening should occur. Ike should threaten Florida by the middle of next week as a Category 2 or 3 hurricane.

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Tropical Storm Josephine is at around 45 MPH and should slightly weaken over the next couple days, but could strengthen a couple of days after that to 50 MPH, following a west northwest path north of the other two storms and a few days back.

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In the Pacific, Tropical Depression Karina has weakened to less than 30 MPH, lost organization, and should become a remnant in a couple of days.

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Crude oil slipped down to $107.80/bbl, but the DJI really dropped, 345 to 11,188. Wall Street was confused as to why.

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THE STATE OF GLOBAL CHANGE IN THE MEDIA (Part 9)

The following is largely excerpted from Chapter 5 of SIMPLE SOLUTIONS for Planet Earth.

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When you muddle up politicians, scientists and environmentalist, the jumble is unpredictable. A rather inflammatory issue had to do with an earlier mentioned ocean sequestration of carbon dioxide project. One would think that something to reduce global climate warming would be embraced by environmentalists. In 1997, as one of the approved Kyoto Protocol projects, the Pacific International Center for High Technology Research took the lead for an international project involving the U.S., Japan, Norway, Canada, Australia and private supporters to plan for storing carbon dioxide off shore at the Natural Energy Laboratory of Hawaii Authority (NELHA) on the Big Island. I won’t use his name, but a leading engineer on the team, called it “environmental stupidity” for the NELHA Board, Department of Energy and their world counterparts to cancel the project in 2003 after a sum of $5 million was spent on planning. Technically, the project was sound and safe, but environmentalists, led by Greenpeace, prevailed. More than anything else, they were concerned that approval of injecting carbon dioxide from power plants would prolong usage of fossil fuels.

Michael Crichton (Jurassic Park, The Andromeda Strain) has taken a swing at the notion of global warming with his State of Fear, suggesting that environmentalists are exaggerating these negatives. In 2005, Senator James Inhofe (R-Oklahoma), when he was then chairing the Senate Environmental and Public Works Committee, featured Crichton, a medical doctor, but really, these days, only a science fiction writer, in a hearing, but refused to allow Peter Webster, atmospheric scientist from Georgia Tech, to testify. Webster nevertheless went to D.C. the day before and briefed congressional staffers. Yes, Senators have their own agenda, too. Scientists responded by calling Crichton’s novel more silly than scary, and truly science fiction. Even then, William Schlesinger, Dean of the Nicholas School of the Environment and Earth Science at Duke University said, “the best peer-reviewed science since Jurassic Park.” The consensus, though, is overwhelmingly negative about Crichton’s attempt at bringing balance to the field. In private communications to his peers (yes, even I get these), James Hansen explained why he just had to take a whack at Crichton, for this kind of ignorance should not be ignored.

A couple of months before Crichton’s, in 2004, there was also Meltdown, by Patrick Michaels, research professor of environmental studies at the University of Virginia, past president of the American Association of State Climatologists, winner of the American Library Association’s worldwide competition for public service writing, and 2003 “Paper of the Year” award winner from the Association of American Geographers. The subtitle says it all: “The Predictable Distortion of Global Warming by Scientists, Politicians, and the Media.” James Glassman, Resident Fellow of the American Enterprise Institute, was quoted in print to say, “Pat Michaels, a gifted climatologist, tells the straight truth about the hysteria and ignorance surrounding climate change and how the scientific establishment has been led astray.” Hey, this is not an attempt by a fanatical best selling author who has no background in the subject.

No, instead, it is from a senior fellow in environmental studies at the Cato Institute. Cato Institute? Oh, it is a libertarian organization which wants to abolish minimum wage, end the prohibition of drug use and eliminate restrictions on racial and gender-based discrimination. The Institute draws from Republican writers and lobbyists. The American Enterprise Institute is one of the leading architects of Bush the Younger’s public policies and more than two dozen of AEI alumni have served in some capacity with our 43rd President. Some might recall that my “pal” Lee from Exxon from Chapter 1 was instrumental in creating AEI. I might finally add that 20% of funding for the World Climate Review, Michaels’ newsletter on global warming, is funded by fossil fuel sources. Now you know why some say there is no problem with global climate warming.

How did the U.S. react to the Kyoto Protocol officially became International law when President Putin and Russia ratified the Act in 2004, placing the 55 percent of total greenhouse gas emissions of all industrialized countries combined at 59%? Not at all, adding another bullet to the list of grievances against President Bush.

By then James Hansen, himself, was being muffled by the Administration, for his written statement of May 5, 2006, on “The Case for Action by the State of California to Mitigate Climate Change” started with:

“James Hansen submits this report as his personal opinion as a private citizen.”

Subsequently, in one of his regular messages to colleagues (June 13, 2006) he starts his piece to the New York Review of Books, reviewing The Weather Makers: How Man is Changing the Climate and What it Means for Life on Earth (Tim Flannery), Field Notes from a Catastrophe: Man, Nature, and Climate Change (Elizabeth Kolbert) and An Inconvenient Truth: The Planetary Emergency of Warming and What We Can Do About It (Al Gore, including the film directed by Davis Guggenheim) with, “as personal views under the protection of the First Amendment of the United States Constitution:”

o A study of 1000 species found an average migration rate to both poles in the fifty year period up to 2000 at 20 miles, but isotherms showing temperatures moving 140 miles. The result will be a lot more extinctions because animals and plants are not moving fast enough.

o Half a million years ago when our Earth was 10°F (5.6°C) cooler, the sea level was 400 feet lower. Three million years ago, when 5°F (2.8°C) warmer, the sea level was 80 feet higher than today. This would mean that 50 million Americans, 150 million Indians (in India) and 250 million Chinese would be under water. But, of course, this will take centuries to occur, so cities will build walls or vacate.

o About 55 million years ago, there was a 10°F (5.6°C) temperature rise, which was caused by the release of frozen methane. (Hansen’s concern, though, is for the permafrost, not the deep ocean marine methane hydrates.)

o In 1974, chemists Sherry Rowland and Mario Molina started the information chain that led to chlorofluorocarbons (which damaged the ozone layer) being boycotted by the public, leading to the Montreal Protocol. The point here is that the public started it and governments followed. (SO THERE IS HOPE FOR GLOBAL WARMING!)

o Unfortunately, the global climate change burden on the fossil fuel industry has forced their hand into confusing and distracting governments. Hansen cites Michael Crichton (State of Fear) and U.S. Senator James Inhofe as particular pawns of the White House and fossil world.

o Al Gore is nominated as the Rachel Carson (Silent Spring successfully publicized the dangers of DDT) of global warming.

The comments in parentheses are mine.

The matter of Al Gore cannot be ignored. His Live Earth was incredible and Inconvenient Truth book and movie could well be his platform for greatness. He states that out of 925 recent articles in peer-reviewed scientific journals about global warming, there was no disagreement. Every article believes that global climate warming is happening. How much more convincing can one get! How do you reconcile the views of Fred Singer, John Christy, Michael Crichton, Patrick Michaels and their cohorts? Ignore them! They are mostly paid for by the oil industry or represent a distorted view to sell books or gain notoriety.

Hansen, in particular, in an e-mail sent to his colleagues on June 26, 2006, took special aim at Michaels in a draft entitled, “Swift Boating, Stealth Budgeting, and the Theory of the Unitary Executive,” where underscored is the point that his scientific position is being questioned by politicians and lawyers with contrary agendas. We all know that you hire a lawyer not necessarily to preserve the truth, but instead to argue your case. These contrarians, like Michaels, feed on oil and auto industry support, and are dedicated to creating public uncertainty. Stealth budgeting? There was a sudden retroactive 20% cut in the NASA Earth Science budget, practically a going out of business amount for Hanson’s program. Guess who is winning the intergovernmental climate change war? Here I thought the White House was finally showing some sense. But to vindictively punish Hansen and his program is stuff for movies. I can just imagine Al Gore’s or Michael Moore’s next documentary. Well, at least Gore rode the Live Earth wave.

Finally, the business-minded Wall Street Journal on June 21, 2006, ran an editorial based on a 15-year old chart of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change to refute the reality of global climate warming. The U.S. Congress, this time the House of Representatives Energy and Commerce Committee, which, of course, was then Republican-led, predictably followed in July with a hearing to substantiate the Journal’s position. Naomi Oreskes, one of the authors of one of the global warming studies earlier cited, felt compelled to respond in an op ed article (meaning, placed opposite the editorial) by citing an analogy. At one time in the 1920’s, when the science of continental drift was still being debated, distinguished Cambridge geophysicist Harold Jeffreys rebuffed that concept. By the 1950’s the overwhelming evidence was that the theory of plate tectonics was real. Jeffreys, however, died fighting this theory till his death. Not sure if Oreskes was just being kind to sincere scientists or what, but I think even she misses the point. Until it becomes absolutely necessary, industry and political parties that support them will continue to delay spending their potential profits to protect the environment, if no laws are there to stop them, especially if there are no marketing downsides.

In sync, polar researcher Peter Doran wrote a piece for The New York Times, chastising Michael Crichton and Ann Coulter (Godless) for misusing his data on the Antarctic. There is some rationale for exploitation this time, though, for 58% of this continent got colder from 1966 to 2000. It’s just that this anomaly had something to do with the ozone hole, and as we plug that leak through the banning of chlorofluorocarbons, the expected warming should return.

Thus, all things considered, there now seems to be little doubt that something terrible is happening to our climate, and we are the cause. It is also possible that we are focusing too much attention on technological fixes instead of playing the easier and more meaningful policy card. The point is made by Sebastian Mallaby of The Washington Post that the $1.2 billion the Administration has proposed to spend over five years for a particular renewable project is a laughable amount, for oil companies spend $18 billion/year just for research on future fossil fuels. Companies will make hydrogen and renewable energy a priority only when government taxes carbon or places a cap on it. While the world fiddles, this is a good time to go to methane, which really scares me. Stay tuned for Part 10.
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Tropical Storm Hanna at 55 MPH made a complete circle in the neighborhood of Haiti (killing at leasts 25) and the Bahamas, and now is appearing to head northwest on a path taking it parallel to the Florida coastline, to landfall in Georgia or the Carolinas this weekend. Hanna should attain hurricane status in two or three days.

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Tropical Storm Ike now at 66 MPH should on the September 6 (my birthday and the day Hanna is predicted to strike the USA) arrive at a spot just north of where Hannah is currently circling, but should keep heading west to where now one knows at this point. Ike should become a hurricane as early as today, by this weekend could be up to 110 MPH, and looms to be very, very dangerous.

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Tropical Storm Josephine is at 60 MPH and organizing. Because it is moving north of Hanna and Ike, Josephine could hit cooler waters, plus shear conditions, meaning that there could be some weakening by this weekend on a path towards the Carolina.

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In the Pacific Karina is now a tropical depression, and should further dissipate on a westward path.

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Crude oil dropped to $109.49/barrel today, with the DJI rising by 16 to 11,533.

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THE KYOTO PROTOCOL AND THE FUTURE (Part 8)

The following is largely from Chapter 5 of SIMPLE SOLUTIONS for Planet Earth.

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Going back in history, Earth Summits were held in Sweden in 1972 and Kenya (unofficial) in 1982, but got nowhere. The 1992 2nd Earth Summit in Rio de Janeiro created the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change. President George Bush, the father, negotiated an agreement to allow developing countries like China to be exempted, and approved ratification. The third Conference of Parties, more than 160 nations, adopted the Kyoto Protocol in 1997, in large part concerned that the Intergovernmental Panel of Climate Change predicted that an average global climate rise in temperature of up to 5.8°C (10.4°F) was possible by 2100.

Contrary to popular knowledge, the United States did sign the Protocol. So did Australia and India. The problem is that the U.S. and Australia did not ratify it. Plus, China and India, being developing nations, were exempted from the strictures. This all occurred during the Clinton-Gore White House.

In general, developed countries were ordered to reduce their greenhouse gases (GHG) to 5% below 1990 levels, with a vague penalty if they didn’t of 1.3 times higher reductions in the 2008-2012 period, when the Protocol would expire. Some countries which had already conserved, such as Japan, were clearly in trouble, so, in addition to a capping of emissions, allowance was made to permit trading, that is, buying extra pollution rights from those countries who had that luxury. Both Russia and Germany were in “good” shape, because their combined economies suffered from the fall of the Soviet Union after 1990. Then, there were large countries capable of planting trees at a distinct advantage.

Not only carbon dioxide, but methane, nitrous oxide, sulfur hexafluoride and fluoro carbons were included. Developed countries agreed to supply technology to the less able and pay for climate-related studies. Various cap and trade systems were established, but the onus fell to individual companies, not countries. Plus, there are at least a half dozen stock market type options, all different in serious ways.

When Bush the Younger, a Republican like his father, came into office, he declared that scientific uncertainty was too great to justify Kyoto’s targets and it was unfair that China and India were not included, so he called for ten more years of research, and proposed only voluntary measures to mitigate climate change until 2012. He also had the support of a Republican-controlled Congress. Not all, but most Republicans are assisted into office by industry, and Democrats like to think they are more environmentally responsible, and they generally are. The prospects of spending tens of trillions of dollars and wrecking the economy seemed logical. Yet, California, led by Republican Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger, nine other northeastern states and 187 mayors have pledged to adopt Kyoto-style legal limits, for economists have reported that not only will the Gross Domestic Product be depressed by only as much as 0.5%, but that the increased investment in new technologies might boost the GDP by 1.7%.

At around the same time in August of 2006, former President Bill Clinton, signed up 22 of the largest cities to join his international consortium to cut greenhouse gas pollution and British Prime Minister Tony Blair, fresh from yet another fete at the White House, flew on to California, to sign an agreement with California Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger to bypass the Bush Administration on their global climate change policy. What is a Republican President to do when his closest international ally and a Republican Governor thumb their noses at him? What about admitting he was wrong and re-think the whole thing? No, that did not happen.

A couple years earlier in 2004, Vladimir Putin approved the Kyoto treaty, making the Accord official on February 19, 2005. The Protocol limits emissions to a percentage increase or decrease from 1990 levels. It is said that part of the Russian motivation was that the fall of the Berlin Wall collapsed their economy, allowing for the opportunity to benefit by selling emission credits. Such is international politics, but the European Union also was affected by the demise of the Soviet Union, and, like Russia, would have no problem meeting the requirements.

The U.S. (largest polluter) and Australia (largest polluter per capita) remain as the two major impediments to progress. The Cook Islands, Niue and Nauru, islands in the Pacific, also have not signed, but only because the Protocol is not strong enough for them. China is bringing on line one major coal fired powerplant each week, and whether it is in a few years, or certainly by 2030, China will overtake the United States in GHG emissions. Oh, the population of India is expected to surpass China’s around 2050, if not earlier.

So, will the Kyoto Protocol work? In my mind, NO! It’s the only show in town and the international spirit of cooperation has been gratifying. It’s admirable and nice that individual states and townships have declared their sincere intentions. But, the fact of the matter is that if the U.S., China and India don’t participate, the whole thing will crash, for the responsible nations will at some point begin listening to companies being saddled with a huge financial competitive disadvantage. Already, in 2006, the German government exempted its coal industry from Kyoto requirements. The UK has refused to pass legally binding legislature.

In my semi-retirement, I tried to catalyze two attempts to influence the international decision-making process regarding global climate warming, targeting the June 2007 Heiligendamm G8 Summit held in Germany. The Hydrogen Romantics, led by Jochen Winter and Nejat Veziroglu (mentioned in my chapter on hydrogen) crafted a Centennial Memorandum to the leaders of the G8 Nations. I was one of the signers. In parallel, I worked with Peter Hoffman, long time editor of The Hydrogen Newsletter (again mentioned in the hydrogen chapter), to orchestrate the equivalent of the letters Albert Einstein sent to President Franklin D. Roosevelt to build the Atomic-Bomb. This time it was not to build a better bomb, but, rather, to invoke something like a severe carbon tax.

The CM merely suggested that the world leaders consider hydrogen as a future option. But, at least, they did send that missive, and received several responses indicating follow-up. However, having worked in the U.S. Senate, it was clear that this feedback was standard protocol. I kept reminding the group that sending our memorandum was only an initial step. They needed to personally contact key staffers from all eight participating countries (among the people signing the document were citizens of all eight G8 nations). As the meeting was held in Germany, Jochen did a valiant job of getting involved, but never quite made it to the highest level of decision-making. According to him, the only reportage of hydrogen was of George W. Bush sitting around a round table with eight youngsters from the G8 nations, predicting that they would be driving hydrogen fueled vehicles when they reached his age. Inappropriately enough, a lady reporter confused the hydrogen vehicle by mentioning something called an oxygen vehicle! She was not too far off base, however, as the car would need to take oxygen from the air to combine with the hydrogen gas to produce water and energy.

The Einstein-FDR project never really got going, for we could not determine who was the ideal Einstein. A futile effort was made to have the CEO’s of the major global firms do so, as this is the group that President George Bush might actually have listened to, but the trail ended at a low corporate office in General Motors.

The target then became the next G8 gathering scheduled in 2008 on Hokkaido in Japan, and, according to Prime Minister Abe, this meeting was to focus on global climate change. My Nokodai colleague, VP Tadashi Matsunaga, mentioned to me that he had been asked to assist in the process. Both hydrogen teams did not bother to do much. You might recall that my father’s father more than a century ago left Japan for the USA. He came from Hokkaido, so maybe there was almost a karmic symbolism returning me to the scene from where my genes came. But, the Japan G8 gathering came and went, and, if anything, the world leaders backtracked a bit on their German declaration. In 2012 they will meet in the USA, so, perhaps something can be orchestrated for that year. Alas, the Venus Syndrome is scheduled for August of 2012. What is the Venus Syndrome? That comes a later part of this series.

So what is the simple solution? There was the “non-binding” Washington Declaration of 2007, when the Presidents or Prime Ministers from the major nations, including the United States, agreed in principle on a successor to the Kyoto Protocol. This was mostly talk. I’m uncomfortable being an alarmist, but millions will need to die one hot summer or trillion dollar devastation must occur during an extraordinary hurricane/typhoon season. Only then will the malingerers, like the USA, truly fall in line. Or, short of these calamities, an Al Gore, or equivalent, White House might work, for the world will then find a way to penalize China and India for not cooperating. Only then will a severe carbon tax be enacted and GHG cap and trade become as credible as the stock market.

This is a terrible chicken or the egg dilemma, for global climate change will need to become truly real before society will take any concerted effort, but by then it will be too late. As in the lack of will for renewable energy in Chapter Two, there is a similar attitudinal deficiency in this phenomenon. Distressingly, in the 2007 G8 summit in Germany, for example, the greatest stimulus for global warming was for more nuclear power plants. But, as scientific attitudes changed so dramatically from 2005 to 2008, perhaps political viewpoints can similarly transform concern by 2012, albeit too late if the Venus Syndrome occurs.

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Gustav is now causing flooding as it moves north. There was a little more than 100 deaths, at least 8 in the U.S. So far, no serious complaints about crying wolf about those evacuations. The next time, though, fewer will leave New Orleans. And there will be a next time...maybe even as early as this year.

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There are three more storms in the Atlantic, all heading for Florida:

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---1. Tropical Storm Hanna at 65 MPH might weaken over the next few hours, but should become a hurricane within 2 days and head north, running parallel to Florida, making landfall through Georgia or the Carolinas on Friday or Saturday.

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---2. Tropical Storm Ike at 60 MPH should become a hurricane in a day or two and follow a similar track as Hanna.

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---3. Off the coast of Africa, Tropical Storm Josephine has formed and shows potential for become a hurricane in two days. The track westward is a bit north of Hanna and Ike.

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There will then be three hurricanes in the Atlantic, all heading for Florida. Have hurricanes ever collided? Yes, there is the Fujiwhara Effect, where two equal sized storms would tend to bounce off each other, but if one is dominant, the smaller one is absorbed.

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In the Pacific, Tropical Storm Karina at 40 MPH has appeared off Mexico at around the latitide of Hilo, and should head west for Hawaii. However, all signs show a gradual weakening over the next few days.

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Crude oil dropped $5 to $110.48/barrel, and shows signs of sinking to or below $100/barrel in a few weeks because the "recession" is reducing demand. At some point, OPEC will lower production, but the question is when this will occur, for a slip to, say, $75/barrel, can severely undercut major renewable energy investments planned over the next few years. The Dow Jones Industrials slipped 27 to 11,517.

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SOME EARLY HISTORY OF GLOBAL WARMING (Part 7)

The following is excerpted from Chapter 5 of SIMPLE SOLUTIONS for Planet Earth.

The concept of society changing climate has been around a long time, for even Thomas Jefferson discussed the human effect on the climate in some of his early writings, not long after which, in 1824, French mathematician Jean-Baptiste-Joseph Fourier; famous for his Fourier transform in mathematics, predicted a warming climate caused by the greenhouse effect. Nearly seventy years later, Svante Arhennius, in 1896, estimated a 3°C temperature increase for a 50% increase in CO2, and a 5 degree rise for 100%. He also predicted that the greater effect would occur at night, in the winter and in the coldest regions.

From the late 1800’s through the first few decades of the 1900s, some scientists already predicted that the American Dust Bowl was a sign of the greenhouse effect. But temperatures cooled from 1940 to 1970, so climatologists began to predict a new ice age.

Yet, Roger Revelle of the Scripps Institute of Oceanography warned that humanity was upsetting the balance by releasing too much carbon dioxide. A few miles up the road, David Keeling, a student of Harrison Brown at the California Institute of Technology, began some preliminary work on measuring carbon dioxide. But this was not a high priority area, so in the International Geophysical Year of 1956, a little extra money was provided by governments, and Revelle prevailed to siphon off a few dollars, with which he hired Keeling to come to Scripps to start the project. It just so happened that 1956 was the year that a weather observatory was being built atop Mauna Loa in Hawaii. The military was also interested, and actually helped with road building for the Keeling project.

In 1965, Edward Lorenz of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology suggested that climate change could cause catastrophic surprises, and coined the term, “the Butterfly Effect,” when even slight changes in initial conditions can produce drastically different results, as for example, the flapping of a butterfly’s wings in China could alter the weather in the United States three days later.

My first experience with global warming came in the early 1980’s when I sat in on U.S. Senate hearings related to the subject. One of the testifiers, also from MIT, Professor David J. Rose, later in the 80’s moved to Hawaii and the East-West Center, where I had a chance to discuss the problem with him in some depth. In 1988, James Hanson of NASA, at a U.S. Senate committee hearing, said that he was 99% certain global warming was occurring. I later crossed paths with Dr. Hanson, very recently exchanging thoughts about hydrogen.

More specifically, my interest was two-fold. First, as most of the funding in those days (and still today) went towards computer modeling of the phenomenon, I thought that a small portion, say 5% of the budget, should go towards developing remediative, mostly biotech, prevention and curative options. If we later confirmed that something really serious was happening, we might as well have a few strategies for reversing the Greenhouse Effect. Second, having had considerable experience with ocean thermal energy conversion, I felt that a long-term solution could well be artificial upwelling to suck up carbon dioxide into the ocean and convert the gas into a carbonate, like calcite, using autotrophic coccolithophores, a type of phytoplankton, which would drop to the bottom of the ocean and remain there for many millennia. Calcite, or calcium carbonate, comprises 4% by weight of the Earth’s crust. This mineral is used as an antacid, forms the shells of snails and eggs, is also called limestone and is most of marble.

I formed a task force for this purpose in 1989. Called “Mitigation of Global Greenhouse Warming Program,” our campus team included Victor Phillips of the Hawaii Natural Energy Institute, who served as the lead, Fred Mackenzie, Lorenz Magaard and David Karl of oceanography, and Toufiq Siddiqi of the East-West Center (EWC). Nejat Veziroglu of the University of Miami, John Appleby of Texas A&M University, Meyer Steinberg of Brookhaven National Laboratory and George Woodwell of Woods Hole Research Center were our national associates. William Kellogg and Steven Schneider of the National Center for Atmospheric Research, Hub Hubbard of the Solar Energy Research Institute, Charles Helsley of the Hawaii Institute of Geophysics, John Laurmann of the University of California at Santa Barbara and John Bardach of the EWC were supposed to serve on the scientific steering committee. Contact was made with Belgium, Japan, Peoples Republic of China, South Korea, the UK, Vietnam and West Germany. This was a team of monumental proportions with grand visions. You’d think the lesson of forming these pioneering groups would be remembered.

Seed funds were provided by the University of Hawaii and the Environmental Protection Agency, and we hosted in Hawaii the First Greenhouse Warming Remediation Workshop in March of 1989. The group prepared a $3 million proposal for Year One, which hopefully was to begin in 1991. I went to see Robert Corell of the National Science Foundation, who had been a close colleague of mine when he was at the University of New Hampshire. As an ocean engineer, he was recently named to head the interagency committee on global climate change, a scientific organization. He was mentioned in the quest for the Blue Revolution. Corell’s frank recommendation was to forget remediation at this scale for ten years until the atmospheric and marine scientists had a better handle on the science. U.S. Senator Spark Matsunaga, told me, “shoot for the stars, and if you fail, it will probably at least get you to the moon.” Taking this strategy, we thus abandoned the international/national effort, but, focusing on what we did best, natural energy, succeeding in multi-year funding for “Energy Technology Options for the Pacific Region” as a mechanism for reducing the use of fossil fuels.

My fantasy research focus was to see if artificial upwelling could be used to promote the growth of coccolithophore algae, a one-celled marine plant (phytoplankton) which had the capacity to form limestone (calcium carbonate, CaCO3, what makes up the White Cliffs of Dover), for the compound would fall to the bottom of the sea and stay there for a long time. Marine scientists kept telling me, though, that this process would add carbon dioxide to the atmosphere, something I just could not comprehend, and still don’t. As regularly happens throughout the world, in June of 2006, NASA satellite images showed that a massive growth of this plankton was seen off Vancouver Island. As 75% of the total carbon deposited in the oceans is limestone, and growth should be enhanced by the nitrates and phosphates from upwelling, someday, I will need to re-visit this concept.

A decade later, I assisted in initiating a major international effort for ocean storage of carbon dioxide, largely funded by the U.S. Department Energy and the Japanese government. The project was spearheaded by the Pacific International Center for High Technology Research. Ironically enough, the effort encountered considerable environmental opposition because such a solution, it was deemed, encouraged coal use. While I did not participate in any of this research, and, in fact, kept on the sidelines almost purposefully because I was almost sympathetic with the views of environmentalists, I agonized as the PICHTR crew kept getting lambasted in the media. But from my days as a campus ecologist when I taught “Technology and Society,” I did warn them to, as early as possible, include Greenpeace and the Sierra Club in their advisory council, something they felt was unwise. The project was eventually abandoned.

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Gustav came, and, whew, went, with some wind damage, flooding and enormous inconveniences. Well, it's not over until it's over (Yogi Berra), so we shall see later today. So, New Orleans if dodged this potential cataclysm, another one will surely again return. What to do? Category 2 Gustav made landfall around 80 miles west of the city at 110 MPH, and the vaunted storm surge caused a lot of stress, but mostly mental, for the levees held. Government can be commended for mandating evacuations (which no doubt will now be criticized because no one died--94 did in the Caribbean) and being prepared. The Republican Convention became a fundraiser for Gustav's victims, TV commentators provided the traditional, dangerous and unecessary survival show antics and attention now shifts to the Atlantic...

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...where Hanna is now a hurricane at 75 miles/hour in the vicinity of the Bahamas. Strange, but Hanna is now moving south, no, southwest, well, west tomorrow and north northwest soon thereafter. This storm should in a day or two track safely north off the coast of Florida and hit Georgia or South Carolina on Friday or Saturday, discombobulating football games and hopefully not much more as a Category 1 hurricane. Oh, there is now Tropical Depression Nine, soon to become Tropical Depression Ike, then Hurricane Ike, heading in the same general early path as Hanna.

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With 25% of domestic oil production on hold, crude prices actually dropped, to $111/barrel.

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PROS AND CONS OF GLOBAL WARMING (Part 6)

The following is excerpted from Chapter 5 of SIMPLE SOLUTIONS for Planet Earth.

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At 2PM on July 25, 2005, I typed “global climate warming” in Google and saw:

o Three Views on Global Climate Warming: (National Public Radio, Morning edition)

---§ Richard Alley (Penn State University Glaciologist): Ice cores show that global climate warming is real. “In a way we were scared silly because I think we knew this said the world is not as easy, not as predictable, as we hoped that it is.”

---§ John Christy (University of Alabama Climatologist): Global climate warming isn’t a problem worth worrying about. “If dealing with [climate change] causes wealthy countries to lose wealth because of higher costs for energy, then the Third World would find itself in worse shape.”

---§ Wallace Broecker (Columbia University Oceanographer): Advocates a far-out scheme to slow global climate warming: “We’re playing with the whole planet, dammit, just to get energy for a hundred years.”

o Ice ages linked to galactic position, as for example, when our solar system passes through a spiral arm, cosmic rays fall to Earth, forming large droplets of water vapor, thus, cooling the atmosphere.

o Kyoto Pact—Much Ado About Nothing: In a Philadelphia Church of God publication, the title says it all, and further that the treaty is unworkable.

o Methane’s Effect On Climate Change May Be Twice Previous Estimates: The concentration of methane in the atmosphere can be misleading as it is a reactive gas, and, unlike carbon dioxide, which is unreactive, has a much greater effect on global climate than would be expected by after the fact measurements.

o RTD info bores into polar research ice cores show that global climate warming most definitely is occurring

o Newsmaker interview with Fred Singer, aka the godfather of global warming denial: Global climate warming is not occurring and that the sea level has been rising for 18,000 years by about 400 feet and is continuing to increase at a uniform rate of 8 inches per century.

o Global warming – Time to act on climate change is now: U.S. President George W. Bush takes his cue from industry and refuses to admit mankind is entering a new and dangerous era as global temperature is fuelled by man-made greenhouse gasses. Yet, the impacts are already being felt, and it would be foolish of the Irish Government to ignore the advice of its own marine experts.

To tally: one against global climate change, two for; our climate is cooling; the Kyoto pact is a waste of time; methane could be more serious than we thought; yes, it is occurring; nope, it is not occurring; and yes, and we need to act now. So in the mid-summer of 2006, 2007 and 2008 I typed the same into Google box and got all—twenty out of twenty each year—concerned about the seriousness of global warming. What a dramatic change in so short a period! In Part 7 we will go back in time to illuminate what has happened only recently regarding public attitudes toward global climate warming.

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Hurricane Gustav tore through Cuba, causing considerable damage, weakened, but still at 140 MPH, now in the Gulf of Mexico, should strengthen to 155 MPH (a hurricane reaches Category 5 at 156 MPH) or so, then slightly weaken before most probably challenging New Orleans around noon on Labor Day. Here's hoping that the Army Corps did their job. However, the protective system supposedly can withstand storms only up to Category 3 (111-130 MPH). Hurricane Katrina was only a Category 3, and fortunately hit east of New Orleans, veering further east. This means that the winds will come from the exact opposite direction. First, Katrina brought only minor wind damage. Gustav's will be much stronger and will most affect those levees south and east of New Orleans. Gustav will most probably reach landfall slightly west of New Orleans, so, further, the city will face the full brunt of the storm surge. Oh my! However, there is a chance that the eye will pass sufficiently west that the city could be spared, further aiding Baton Rouge, where many escapees are staying with family and friends. Two scary dimensions, though, are that the diameter of Gustav is about 440 miles and growing, and the latest prognostication is the eye hitting Louisiana 70 miles west of New Orleans, and second, these storms generally turn slightly east near the coastline. WHILE STILL BEING DEBATED BY SCIENTISTS, I'M AFRAID GLOBAL CLIMATE WARMING WILL ONLY MEAN MORE FEROCIOUS STORMS.

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Oh, Tropical Storm Hanna is still loitering on the Atlantic side of Florida. At 50 MPH, Hanna is expected to move north up the Florida coast (although one model has the storm hitting Cuba) and within five days attaining almost hurricane status. Then what next? Not sure.

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