NOVEMBER 2005

Greenhouse-effect is starting to turn into Venus-effect
By Dr. Siegfried E. Tischler,


NOW we are staring REAL PROBLEMS in the face! No amount of cognitive dissonace will make this one go away!

Sergei Kirpotin of Tomsk State University in western Siberia and Judith Marquand of Oxford University report in New Scientist on 11 August 2005, that the vast expanse of western Sibera is undergoing unprecedented thawing that could dramatically increase the rate of global warming. The area, which covers the entire sub-Arctic region of western Siberia, is the world's largest frozen peat bog and scientists fear that as it thaws, it will release billions of tonnes of methane (locked up in "methane-ice", a clathrate - gas hydrate - which freezes at +7deg. C) into the atmosphere.

Methane is a greenhouse gas 20 (or more) times more potent than carbon dioxide. It is a scenario climate scientists have feared since first identifying "tipping points" - delicate thresholds where a slight rise in the Earth's temperature can cause a dramatic change in the environment that itself triggers a far greater increase in global temperatures.



For decades already climatologists had been puzzled about the steady retreat of glaciers the world over; an amazing array of possible causes was concocted in order to not have to face the obvious - the ever accelerating warming of global climate. 

A report, <Meeting The Climate Challenge>, aimed at policymakers in every country, from national leaders down, has been timed to coincide with Tony Blair's promised efforts to advance climate change policy in 2005 as chairman of both the G8 group of rich countries and the European Union - but it has been largely ignored.

In remarkably blunt language it spells out the "Countdown to Global Climate Catastrophe": when the current avagerage CO2 content of the atmosphere of 279 ppm will have reached the magic number of 400, the irreversable "Venus Effect"(as the present author has termed it in his lectures) will set in. 

Solar thermal energy received by the Earth (as sun-rays) is in the visible part of the spectrum of electromagnetic waves;  the heat radiated back into space from Earth is of infra-red wave lengths.  Gas molecules like carbondioxide (CO2) or methane (CH4) block such radiation. Heat trapped by
the atmosphere by "greenhouse-gases" will lead to run-away temperature increases.  They in turn will cause the melting of ice in the Western Antarctic and Greenland (not to mention the thermal expansion of water in the oceans!) and cause a sea-level rise of in excess of 10m. 

The influx of fresh-water will turn off  (or alter - which amounts to the same thing) "thermohaline conveyor-belts" (like the Gulf-stream in the Atlantic and El Nino in the Pacific). The feed-back caused thereby will lead to out-of-control warming of global climates and ultimately eradicate life
"as we know it". (Michael McCarthy, 24 January 2005, The Independent). 

Some climatologists venture, that without the warming from the changed thermohaline "central heating" system, parts of the globe will undergo marked cooling.  As contradictionary as it may appear - global warming will cause drastic cooling in certain regioins.  These regions, as it happens,
are home to a large fraction of humanity. 

Will history repeat itself - will there be a mass migration of people(s)? But will mass-migration be a solution? Some 80% of all humans live (practically) at or close to the present-day sea level. What is worse, is that many of the largest agricultural regions lie also just a few meters above sea level. 


www.hi.is/~oi/ siberia_photos.htm
At the present rate of CO2 increase in the atmosphere of 3-4 ppm per annum, we will have reached the dreaded threshold in ~30 years. If the thawing of the tundra in western Siberia is for real, then it is surely not restricted to this area alone, but will equally affect eastern Siberia, Alaska and Canada (has anybody bothered to check)? If this thawing is not only local (which were bad enough), the ~30 year "grace period" for human Life on Earth (as we know it - a.k.a. "civilization") will shrink to a mere fraction of this time-span.

Can we stop this, reverse the trend? In all probability - NO!  Prayer (as a substitute for real spirituality) being just an ineffective excuse is certainly not going to help.

MAYBE (...... just maybe) the campaign of Professor Maathai (Kenya's deputy environment minister and winner of the 2004 Nobel Peace Prize) to plant trees, IF taken up by EVERY human on Earth, MIGHT let the children of today become grand-parents! 

Contrary to common belief it is not (so much) the emission of "greenhouse gases" by human activity and the human modus vivendi overall,  that is really causing the climate change!  Deforestation and pollution of the worlds oceans are the real reasons for the run-away climate change.  While humans will very soon have "amputated" half of the "lung" of Gaia (the living Earth) - its forests, the other half - the worlds oceans,  become rapidly a diseased organ unable to function properly due to pollution.
 
The beginning thawing of the tundra is finally bringing justice into it all:

it will not be our(grand-)children who will have to pay for our ways of life, but it seems possible, that we ourselves are not only writing the bill, but will also have to settle it in our life-time!

This was originally written some two weeks before Katrina caused the kind of devastation hurricanes bring with ever greater frequency to the Caribbean
region. Being preoccupied with trying to comprehend the damage to the people of the southern USA and the bayou region, the next scientific report that should let us all pack our emergency-kits and head for the hills went unnoticed by the media: Steve Connor, Science Editor of The Independent on 16 September 2005 reports that
satellites monitoring the Arctic have found that the extent of the sea ice this August point on record,

www.hi.is/~oi/ siberia_photos.htm

dipping an unprecedented 18.2 per cent below the long-term average. Experts believe that such a loss of Arctic sea ice in summer has not occurred in hundreds and possibly thousands of years. It is the fourth year in a row that the sea ice volume in August has fallen below the monthly downward trend - a clear sign that melting has accelerated. The record loss of sea ice in the Arctic this summer has convinced scientists that the northern hemisphere may have crossed a critical threshold beyond which the climate may never recover.

Katrina (and the breach of levees which flooded the city of New Orleans) may become yet another large-scale contributor to global warming:  the vast quantities of toxic waste that have been "disposed" of by the flooding and which are now being pumped out into the ocean entirely untreated, will kill any sort of life over large parts of the Gulf of Mexico.  These anoxic conditions will leave the CO2-laden exhaust of part of the biggest polluter unscrubbed - another effect of the "American Way of Life" that will get externalized into other parts of the globe.

The time for political correctness (i.e. where one can speak the truth only in hushed tones and then only to the "right" people) is way past: just as the article regarding the melting tundra was not splashed across the front-pages of the newspapers, so was the evidence for the climate having "flipped" - in all probability irreversibly - simply stuffed down the memory hole. 

Only a concerted global effort to demand of the USA to(finally) act like a responsible member of the global family of nations may still halt the untreated "disposal" of the possibly largest ever accumulated mass of toxic waste.

Dr. Siegfried E. Tischler, Visiting Professor - Ethics of Science
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