By David G Eselius
Natural gas is a gas consisting primarily of methane. Natural gas/methane is carbon energy sources. Most natural gas is created by two mechanisms: biogenic and thermogenic. Biogenic gas is created by methanogenic organisms in marshes, bogs, landfills, and shallow sediments. Deeper in the earth, at greater temperature and pressure, thermogenic gas is created from buried organic material. Coal, oil, natural gas, and methane (aka, coal bed methane) were formed as part of the thermogenic process.
For many tens of millions of years, leaking of oil and gas into oceans under pressure and low temperature has formed very vast stores of methane clathrates (hydrates) that are now out gassing into the atmosphere due to increased global warming temperate. Increased atmospheric methane levels are very serious problems that will lead to the destruction of the human races 2050-2099.
Methane Formation - When temperatures of the organic-rich sedimentary rocks exceed 120oC (250oF) the organic remains within the rocks begin to be "cooked" and methane, oil, and natural gas are formed from the organic remains and expelled from the source rock. It takes millions of years for these source rocks to be buried deeply enough to attain these maturation temperatures and additional millions of years to cook (or generate).
Methane (CH4) prior to industrialization fluctuated between 350 and 800 parts per billion (ppb). Present-day methane levels are about ~1,770 ppb. Methane has a global warming potential that is 72 times greater than carbon dioxide (CO2). To a large extent, ocean/atmosphere properties govern methane and carbon dioxide gas sink and source activity. Wave action and temperatures significantly govern ocean/atmosphere gas exchanges.
Combined methane and carbon dioxide produce a carbon dioxide equivalent (CO2-eq) that results in significant global warming/cooling activities.
Methane and Carbon Dioxide – pre- and post-1750 AD
It is necessary to understand Earth’s “normal” interglacial temperature regulation to understand existing and future global warming. If humanity wishes to preserve a planet similar to that on which civilization developed and to which life on Earth is adapted, paleoclimate evidence and ongoing climate change suggest that methane and carbon dioxide equivalent (CO2-eq) will need to be reduced from its current levels to pre-1750 AD radiative forcing (Wm-2) levels, but likely less than that.
The largest uncertainty in the global warming target arises from possible changes of non-CO2 forcings such as methane. An initial ~450-ppm CO2-eq target may be achievable by phasing out coal use, except where carbon dioxide is captured and contained and adaption of agricultural/forestry practices sequester carbon. If the present overshoot of this target CO2-eq is not brief, there is a possibility of seeding irreversible catastrophic effects.
The increase in numbers of human beings and the Industrial Age’s (post-1750 AD) staggering amount of use of carbon energy (coal, oil, natural gas) has resulted in increased global warming greenhouse gas emissions far and above historical “normal” interglacial high temperature levels.
Existing combined greenhouse gases methane (CH4) and carbon dioxide (CO2) form a carbon dioxide heating equivalent (CO2-eq) that is the largest uncertainty in the target for possible changes of non-CO2 forcings.
Long ice core records show a strong correlation between local temperature in Arctic and Antarctica and the globally mixed gases carbon dioxide and methane, but the causal connections between greenhouse gas variables is not yet clear.
Relationships of methane and carbon dioxide and carbon dioxide equivalents (CO2-eq) of the preindustrial interglacial periods vs. industrial period (post-1750 AD) appear not established. To understand better paleoclimate temperature cycles vs. future global warming temperature increase, it is necessary to establish the over time comparative CO2-eq levels, or comparative values of radiative forcing (Wm-2).
Due to existing global warming trends, it is very unlikely that the Earth will naturally enter another ice age for at least 30,000 years. Considering trends of population growth, increased carbon energy use (coal, oil, and natural gas), increases of methane level, and increased carbon dioxide level, Earth’s average temperature before 2099 will be a life terminating +6°C higher than interglacial high warming period.
Increases in atmospheric carbon “tripped” Earth’s “normal” temperature regulation into existing global warming temperature increase while methane increase rapidly followed. For more than 60 million years, carbon dioxide and methane levels has never been this high before.
Variations of Sun/Earth orbit and greenhouse gas concentration and human activity are clearly consistent. However, it is not always clear as to what drives what changes.
METHANE
The historic rate of methane intake/out gassing between ocean and atmosphere appears to correlate with resultant Sun/Earth orbit mechanics, as identified in Sun’s angle of incidence equations of the Milankovitch Earth/Sun Cycle. That is, an air-water solute appears to move smoothly and systematically from high-concentration areas to low-concentration areas.
The Sun is the primary source of energy for Earth’s global warming climate system. Without the Sun’s warmth, Earth gets very cold very quickly.
For more than 60 million years, the warming period of the ~100,000 year interglacial cycle, resulted in greenhouse gas peaks of methane ~300 ppm to ~800 ppb. Due to human activity, at existing ~1,770 ppb, Earth’s global warming methane is now ~970 ppb greater than “normal” interglacial peaks of methane.
Some scientist are concerned about abrupt greenhouse gas changes while positive feed back temperature changes produces the potential for the additional release of methane stored in soils, wetlands, and oceans of Earth’s temperature regulation system.
Of particular concern are large quantities of methane stored as methane clathrate (hydrates) (water ice crystals with methane molecules trapped within them) in the sea floor and in Arctic permafrost.
The quantities of methane that could enter the atmosphere through temperature increase pathways are staggering: estimates range from 500 Gigaton of Carbon (GtC) to 10,000 GtC for methane stored in sea-floor clathrates, and from 7.5 GtC to 400 GtC for methane stored in permafrost. This may be compared with the total amount of methane currently in the atmosphere of only about 4 GtC. Releasing even only small amounts of the methane from clathrate to the atmosphere could clearly have major consequences for the Earth’s warming.
Recent research carried out in 2008 in the Siberian Arctic has shown millions of tonnes of methane being released with concentrations in some regions reaching up to 100 times above normal. Such regional positive feed back of methane releases produce increased Polar regional temperature increases, which can quickly increase the global warming temperatures.
The magnitude of these additional methane emissions is very difficult to estimate based on existing data. Sudden release of large amounts of natural gas from methane clathrate deposits is a cause of past and future geologic global warming climate changes. Possibly linked in this way are the Permian-Triassic extinction event (251.4 Ma (million years ago)) and the Paleocene-Eocene Thermal Maximum (55 Ma).
Controlling methane out gassing and re-uptake depends upon global and regional ocean/atmosphere conditions and Polar land/sea temperatures that result in methane and methane clathrate out gassing. The only control mechanism for methane gas atmospheric concentration-reduction is to reduce the global temperature to preindustrial level.
CARBON DIOXIDE
The carbon dioxide atmospheric content excursion range prior to industrialization was between 172 and 300 parts per million (ppm). Human emissions have raised existing atmospheric concentration of the carbon dioxide gas to about ~390 ppm.
Due to human activity, carbon, with a global warming potential of one, is ~90 ppm greater than “normal” interglacial peaks of carbon.
METHANE and CARBON DIOXIDE
Global warming is now 0.8°C greater than the more than 60 million year high-warming interglacial periods. Interglacial warming temperature high to low temperature excursion range is 1-1.5°C.
Methane and carbon dioxide are integral components of the global carbon cycle and its links to global warming.
The CO2-equivalent emission (CO2-eq) of a greenhouse gas is the amount of carbon dioxide the emissions from which would cause the same warming effect, over a given time frame, as the emissions of a given amount of this greenhouse gas. The CO2-eq is calculated by multiplying the amount of this gas with its so-called ‘global warming potential’ (GWP). There are additional factors to consider when calculating Earth temperature stabilization points.
It takes at least several decades for Earth’s temperature to rise to the current methane and carbon dioxide heating potential. Methane and carbon dioxide are why Earth’s global warming greenhouse gas emissions (CO2-eq) must peak 2015-2020, and than decline thereafter.
As defined by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), radiative forcing is a measure of how the energy balance of the Earth-atmosphere system is influenced when factors that affect climate are altered. The word "radiative" signifies that the factors affect the balance between incoming solar radiation and outgoing infrared radiation within the Earth’s atmosphere. Positive forcing tends to warm the surface while negative forcing tends to cool. Radiative forcing values are expressed in Watts per square meter (Wm-2) (Watt (power) = 1 joule per second).
Existing concentrations and radiative forcing (Wm-2) for (a) carbon dioxide (CO2), (b) methane (CH4) and (c) nitrous oxide (N2O): ● carbon dioxide at ~370 ppm is ~1.6 Wm-2, ● methane at ~1,750 ppb is 0.45 Wm-2, and ● nitrous oxide at 320 ppb is 0.14 Wm-2.
Identifying pre-1750 AD levels of radiative forcing (Wm-2) involves conditional assessments that are beyond the scope of this letter. Reference: IPCC AR4, 6.4.1.1 - “How Do Glacial-Interglacial Variations in the Greenhouse Gases Carbon Dioxide, Methane and Nitrous Oxide Compare with the Industrial Era Greenhouse Gas Increase?”
Existing radiative forcing (Wm-2) ratios identify: carbon dioxide as 1, methane as 0.28 and nitrous oxide as 0.09. Methane and carbon dioxide are primary forcing agents for global warming temperature increase.
Opposition to recognizing atmospheric methane AND global warming temperature increase are derived from politicians!
Many methane sources are sighted. However, the oceans’ surface conditions are the primary source for increase and decrease of atmospheric methane. Global and regional temperatures and surface ocean currents mostly affect oceans’ out gassing and re-uptake cycles. The higher the atmospheric temperature and the greater the wave action the more ocean methane is released.
Historical ~100,000 interglacial changes in green house gas levels can be attributed to alterations in ocean currents, tropical wetlands, vegetation, and the advance and retreat of polar ice sheets, changes to global warming heating patterns, and the locking/release of methane/carbon dioxide within soil/oceans, and the Milankovitch Earth/Sun Cycle.
Most new carbon dioxide comes from fossil fuel reservoirs of coal, oil, and natural gas (i.e., natural gas is methane gas). Most new methane derives from oceans.
Today, the concentration of methane and carbon dioxide add to historical interglacial changes. More than 90 percent of these new methane and new carbon dioxide increases have not been in the climate system for more than 60 million years, which makes existing global warming a significant geophysical anomaly.
IPCC Assessment Reports
1995 Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) Second Assessment Report (AR2) summary report section has 28 entries concerning methane, sinks chemistry, history, and potential future of the methane molecule.
For political reasons, to minimize the political importance of global warming temperature increase and maximize renewable energy funding, promote transfer of wealth (and increase government corruption and purchase special interest support) though carbon trades, and the funding of Copenhagen 2009 COP15 wealth transfers—the importance of methane gas was dropped from IPCC reporting and Assessment Reports.
IPCC First and Second Assessment Reports (AR1 and AR2) reported methane activity. Later, as a cover and diversion to not properly representing the roll of global warming greenhouse gases, leading world leaders published a new set of political scenarios in 2000 (Special Report on Emissions Scenarios - SRES). Scenarios became global warming mitigation foundations within the IPCC’s Third Assessment Report (AR3, 2001) and within the Fourth Assessment Report (AR4, 2007).
IPCC’s Third Assessment Report (AR3) in 2001 and IPCC’s Fourth Assessment Report (AR4) in 2007 hardly mention the powerful global warming methane gas.
IPCC's Fifth Assessment Report (AR5, to be released) "will put greater emphasis on assessing the socio-economic aspects [i.e., SRES] of climate change and implications for sustainable development, risk management and the framing of a response through both adaptation and mitigation."
There is no IPCC AR5 acknowledgment of the role of methane within global temperature cycle. There is no IPCC AR5 mention of reducing global warming temperatures. The intended purpose of IPCC’s AR3, AR4, and AR5 is to covertly continue world leaders’ carbon economies of coal, oil, and natural gas.
The IPCC’s shift from global warming science to the political diversion of SRES social issues occurred during the 1990s with the development of the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) Kyoto Protocol (adopted 11 December 1997). Anti nuclear U.S. President Clinton’s administration suppressed the world’s efforts to reduce global warming temperature increase. During the same time, methane was dropped from global warming consideration.
NUCLEAR ENERGY
A significant portion of total global carbon emissions are from electricity generation - coal, specifically, accounts for up to one-third of global carbon emissions. Coal is the largest reservoir of conventional fossil fuels, exceeding combined reserves of oil and gas. Therefore, to decrease carbon emissions and thus possibly help stop extreme global warming temperature increase from occurring, phasing out coal, oil, and natural gas is required.
A 2011 federally-funded research underscores the conflicting ways in which fossil fuel burning affects the Earth's climate. It says that while coal use causes global warming via emissions of heat-trapping carbon dioxide, it also releases relatively large amounts of sulfates and other particles that, although bad for the environment, cool the planet by blocking sunlight. Complicating matters is uncertainty over the amount of methane that leaks from natural gas operations and distribution. Methane is an especially potent greenhouse gas. It would be many decades before natural gas use would slow down global warming at all, and even then it would be making a small difference.
This report indicates that reducing "emissions of heat-trapping carbon dioxide" and releasing "relatively large amounts of sulfates and other particles" may help in global warming mitigation. Although important global warming mitigation information is known, there is no UN or national government agency that is authorized to do global warming mitigation planning and implementation. Global warming responses remain dominated by the Euro-U.S. Green Neo-Communist movement.
The only realistic way to curtail carbon dioxide emissions is to phase out coal, oil, and natural gas use except where carbon dioxide is captured and carbon sequester is functional.
The coal industry has staked its future on a new process known as coal carbon-sequestration gasification. Water and oxygen mixed with the coal to create carbon monoxide and hydrogen. Hydrogen is the fuel source, while the carbon monoxide converts to a concentrated stream of carbon dioxide. There is no approved storage container for long-term storage of sequestrated carbon dioxide.
These gasification plants are not cheap to run: around one-quarter of the energy produced keeps the operation running. All indications suggest that building them on a commercial scale will be expensive and that it will take decades to make a significant contribution to power production. Electrical energy from coal carbon-sequestration gasification is much more expensive than energy derived from nuclear energy.
For technical reasons “renewable” solar and wind does not work and never did work. Renewable alternative energy is now considered an unreliable and counter productive energy source.
Only nuclear energy has adequate energy capacity to reduce human carbon emissions.
Nuclear energy not expanding is due to more than four decades of anti nuclear social protest pressures and political desires to retain carbon economies. Had more than 40 years of anti nuclear protests not occurred, the global warming problem would be reduced and increased response time available. Now there is little chance that political positions about nuclear energy will change in time to effect a change to critical global warming gas emissions.
Resulting from political delays, the speed of the rapid increased methane and carbon dioxide concentration increase within the atmosphere brings the conclusion that global warming goals such as the +2-degree Celsius goal (or +1.5-degree Celsius goal) have now become a very, very ambitious goal to achieve, but are not impossible. For +2-degree Celsius goal considerations see EU’s "The 2°C target" LINK: NOTE: Due to ongoing untoward world leader suppression of critical global warming information, the link to EU’s paper on "The 2°C target" is no longer available. Falsifying UN and government department global warming public information by untoward world leaders remain standard practice since the 1990s. With U.S. President Obama in office, control of media reporting of global warming is mandatory. The problem of information manipulation has gotten bigger with the internet. Now internet hacking of websites can, and is, done by almost anyone with an ax to grind. Before, in the 1990s, untoward world leaders just manipulated official UN IPCC reporting.
There is no official government agency or UN agency addressing issues of global warming temperature increase. As far as the current crop of untoward world leaders are concerned, global warming does not exist. Continuing as has been done for the past two decades, politicians will never act to end global warming temperature increase.
Global warming temperature is to exceed life terminating +6°C prior to 2099.
WAR-GAME
A postulated military "war-game" provides insight into an extensive methane energy-battle and global warming scenario analysis.
WAR-GAME CONDITIONS - The 2035 war-game global conditions encountered is a +2°C global warming temperature rise above pre industrial (i.e., pre 1750 AD greenhouse gas levels). Global warming greenhouse gas emissions are to continue rising past year 2050 AD.
Global environmental and living conditions are deteriorating due to global warming temperature increase. Increasingly disrupted are critical global marine and land food chains. Populations are approaching 9 billion people while potable surface water and groundwater reserves are rapidly decreasing. Global warming temperature continues to increase rapidly. Energy reserves remain adequate for now. Polar regional temperatures are at record highs, which enable increased access to polar resources.
From the perspective of all eight Arctic nations, there is no established North/South Polar Regions’ “defense policy” and no “Polar military security policy.” No international structure of legal-agreements exists as to the governing North/South Polar Regions’ methane clathrate mining and increasing Arctic methane atmospheric releases.
The Arctic’s east-west marine shipping passageway is now ice free for 9 months a year and open for shipping, mining, well drilling, and military sea-access.
As to whether to continue mining of Arctic methane-clathrates energy, or to stop the mining, eight Arctic nations and national partners are dividing into opposing forces.
To continue their “needed” methane mining, "Block A" established an Arctic Ocean blockade to their Arctic east-west commercial shipping routes, military access, oil/gas wells, and methane mining sites.
"Block B" threatens to go to war over Block A continued methane mining and blocked commercial access to the Arctic sea route.
Blocks A and B established military defensive and offensive positions. Block B land forces are made ready to take over Block A’s land natural resources of oil and natural gas wells.
Arctic diplomatic relations are in a neutral country (Australia).
Politicians established spin mills to gather public support for what is a natural resource war. (Think of Dustin Hoffman’s spin in the movie Wag the Dog (1997))
WAR-GAME ENDING – Unpredicted modern natural undersea landslide events produced catastrophic releases of under water clathrates methane gas. A sea surface explosion of methane wiped out a third of Block B’s fleet of Arctic surface war ships.
Diplomats arranged agreements for a lifting of Block A’s blockade:
Secretly behind closed doors, world leaders acknowledged that there must be some problem with stopping global warming temperature increase. However, important elections are to occur in 2038. Thus, any action concerning global warming temperature increase would not be addressed until after the 2039 budget and stimulus hearings.
CONCLUSIONS
The only available solution to global warming temperature increase is to act in haste and reduce human greenhouse gas emissions. Releases of relatively large amounts of sulfates and other particles may aid in global cooling. However, existing political structures are incapable of responding to needs of human races.
Long established Euro-U.S. political movements are undermining the public concepts of global warming. Political special interest groups such as the Euro-U.S. Green-Neo Communist movement remain important as an anti nuclear influence. Since the 1990s, the Clinton administration established the failings of global warming analysis within the UN’s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) Assessment Reports and Work Groups. Now the Euro-U.S. Green Neo-Communist movement is President Obama and left-Democrat’s political life force. Undermining of UN and Euro-US global warming mitigation efforts continues.
Scientists can only propose solutions. The politicians must produce the global warming mitigation. However, there is no effective method to quickly and in a timely way alter an established path of political systems. So far, the world leaders have pushed human races further down the path of 2050-2099 total human race elimination.
Natural gas is a gas consisting primarily of methane. Natural gas/methane is carbon energy sources. Most natural gas is created by two mechanisms: biogenic and thermogenic. Biogenic gas is created by methanogenic organisms in marshes, bogs, landfills, and shallow sediments. Deeper in the earth, at greater temperature and pressure, thermogenic gas is created from buried organic material. Coal, oil, natural gas, and methane (aka, coal bed methane) were formed as part of the thermogenic process.
For many tens of millions of years, leaking of oil and gas into oceans under pressure and low temperature has formed very vast stores of methane clathrates (hydrates) that are now out gassing into the atmosphere due to increased global warming temperate. Increased atmospheric methane levels are very serious problems that will lead to the destruction of the human races 2050-2099.
Methane Formation - When temperatures of the organic-rich sedimentary rocks exceed 120oC (250oF) the organic remains within the rocks begin to be "cooked" and methane, oil, and natural gas are formed from the organic remains and expelled from the source rock. It takes millions of years for these source rocks to be buried deeply enough to attain these maturation temperatures and additional millions of years to cook (or generate).
Methane (CH4) prior to industrialization fluctuated between 350 and 800 parts per billion (ppb). Present-day methane levels are about ~1,770 ppb. Methane has a global warming potential that is 72 times greater than carbon dioxide (CO2). To a large extent, ocean/atmosphere properties govern methane and carbon dioxide gas sink and source activity. Wave action and temperatures significantly govern ocean/atmosphere gas exchanges.
Combined methane and carbon dioxide produce a carbon dioxide equivalent (CO2-eq) that results in significant global warming/cooling activities.
Methane and Carbon Dioxide – pre- and post-1750 AD
It is necessary to understand Earth’s “normal” interglacial temperature regulation to understand existing and future global warming. If humanity wishes to preserve a planet similar to that on which civilization developed and to which life on Earth is adapted, paleoclimate evidence and ongoing climate change suggest that methane and carbon dioxide equivalent (CO2-eq) will need to be reduced from its current levels to pre-1750 AD radiative forcing (Wm-2) levels, but likely less than that.
The largest uncertainty in the global warming target arises from possible changes of non-CO2 forcings such as methane. An initial ~450-ppm CO2-eq target may be achievable by phasing out coal use, except where carbon dioxide is captured and contained and adaption of agricultural/forestry practices sequester carbon. If the present overshoot of this target CO2-eq is not brief, there is a possibility of seeding irreversible catastrophic effects.
The increase in numbers of human beings and the Industrial Age’s (post-1750 AD) staggering amount of use of carbon energy (coal, oil, natural gas) has resulted in increased global warming greenhouse gas emissions far and above historical “normal” interglacial high temperature levels.
Existing combined greenhouse gases methane (CH4) and carbon dioxide (CO2) form a carbon dioxide heating equivalent (CO2-eq) that is the largest uncertainty in the target for possible changes of non-CO2 forcings.
Long ice core records show a strong correlation between local temperature in Arctic and Antarctica and the globally mixed gases carbon dioxide and methane, but the causal connections between greenhouse gas variables is not yet clear.
Relationships of methane and carbon dioxide and carbon dioxide equivalents (CO2-eq) of the preindustrial interglacial periods vs. industrial period (post-1750 AD) appear not established. To understand better paleoclimate temperature cycles vs. future global warming temperature increase, it is necessary to establish the over time comparative CO2-eq levels, or comparative values of radiative forcing (Wm-2).
Due to existing global warming trends, it is very unlikely that the Earth will naturally enter another ice age for at least 30,000 years. Considering trends of population growth, increased carbon energy use (coal, oil, and natural gas), increases of methane level, and increased carbon dioxide level, Earth’s average temperature before 2099 will be a life terminating +6°C higher than interglacial high warming period.
Increases in atmospheric carbon “tripped” Earth’s “normal” temperature regulation into existing global warming temperature increase while methane increase rapidly followed. For more than 60 million years, carbon dioxide and methane levels has never been this high before.
Variations of Sun/Earth orbit and greenhouse gas concentration and human activity are clearly consistent. However, it is not always clear as to what drives what changes.
METHANE
The historic rate of methane intake/out gassing between ocean and atmosphere appears to correlate with resultant Sun/Earth orbit mechanics, as identified in Sun’s angle of incidence equations of the Milankovitch Earth/Sun Cycle. That is, an air-water solute appears to move smoothly and systematically from high-concentration areas to low-concentration areas.
The Sun is the primary source of energy for Earth’s global warming climate system. Without the Sun’s warmth, Earth gets very cold very quickly.
For more than 60 million years, the warming period of the ~100,000 year interglacial cycle, resulted in greenhouse gas peaks of methane ~300 ppm to ~800 ppb. Due to human activity, at existing ~1,770 ppb, Earth’s global warming methane is now ~970 ppb greater than “normal” interglacial peaks of methane.
Some scientist are concerned about abrupt greenhouse gas changes while positive feed back temperature changes produces the potential for the additional release of methane stored in soils, wetlands, and oceans of Earth’s temperature regulation system.
Of particular concern are large quantities of methane stored as methane clathrate (hydrates) (water ice crystals with methane molecules trapped within them) in the sea floor and in Arctic permafrost.
The quantities of methane that could enter the atmosphere through temperature increase pathways are staggering: estimates range from 500 Gigaton of Carbon (GtC) to 10,000 GtC for methane stored in sea-floor clathrates, and from 7.5 GtC to 400 GtC for methane stored in permafrost. This may be compared with the total amount of methane currently in the atmosphere of only about 4 GtC. Releasing even only small amounts of the methane from clathrate to the atmosphere could clearly have major consequences for the Earth’s warming.
Recent research carried out in 2008 in the Siberian Arctic has shown millions of tonnes of methane being released with concentrations in some regions reaching up to 100 times above normal. Such regional positive feed back of methane releases produce increased Polar regional temperature increases, which can quickly increase the global warming temperatures.
The magnitude of these additional methane emissions is very difficult to estimate based on existing data. Sudden release of large amounts of natural gas from methane clathrate deposits is a cause of past and future geologic global warming climate changes. Possibly linked in this way are the Permian-Triassic extinction event (251.4 Ma (million years ago)) and the Paleocene-Eocene Thermal Maximum (55 Ma).
Controlling methane out gassing and re-uptake depends upon global and regional ocean/atmosphere conditions and Polar land/sea temperatures that result in methane and methane clathrate out gassing. The only control mechanism for methane gas atmospheric concentration-reduction is to reduce the global temperature to preindustrial level.
CARBON DIOXIDE
The carbon dioxide atmospheric content excursion range prior to industrialization was between 172 and 300 parts per million (ppm). Human emissions have raised existing atmospheric concentration of the carbon dioxide gas to about ~390 ppm.
Due to human activity, carbon, with a global warming potential of one, is ~90 ppm greater than “normal” interglacial peaks of carbon.
METHANE and CARBON DIOXIDE
Global warming is now 0.8°C greater than the more than 60 million year high-warming interglacial periods. Interglacial warming temperature high to low temperature excursion range is 1-1.5°C.
Methane and carbon dioxide are integral components of the global carbon cycle and its links to global warming.
The CO2-equivalent emission (CO2-eq) of a greenhouse gas is the amount of carbon dioxide the emissions from which would cause the same warming effect, over a given time frame, as the emissions of a given amount of this greenhouse gas. The CO2-eq is calculated by multiplying the amount of this gas with its so-called ‘global warming potential’ (GWP). There are additional factors to consider when calculating Earth temperature stabilization points.
It takes at least several decades for Earth’s temperature to rise to the current methane and carbon dioxide heating potential. Methane and carbon dioxide are why Earth’s global warming greenhouse gas emissions (CO2-eq) must peak 2015-2020, and than decline thereafter.
As defined by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), radiative forcing is a measure of how the energy balance of the Earth-atmosphere system is influenced when factors that affect climate are altered. The word "radiative" signifies that the factors affect the balance between incoming solar radiation and outgoing infrared radiation within the Earth’s atmosphere. Positive forcing tends to warm the surface while negative forcing tends to cool. Radiative forcing values are expressed in Watts per square meter (Wm-2) (Watt (power) = 1 joule per second).
Existing concentrations and radiative forcing (Wm-2) for (a) carbon dioxide (CO2), (b) methane (CH4) and (c) nitrous oxide (N2O): ● carbon dioxide at ~370 ppm is ~1.6 Wm-2, ● methane at ~1,750 ppb is 0.45 Wm-2, and ● nitrous oxide at 320 ppb is 0.14 Wm-2.
Identifying pre-1750 AD levels of radiative forcing (Wm-2) involves conditional assessments that are beyond the scope of this letter. Reference: IPCC AR4, 6.4.1.1 - “How Do Glacial-Interglacial Variations in the Greenhouse Gases Carbon Dioxide, Methane and Nitrous Oxide Compare with the Industrial Era Greenhouse Gas Increase?”
Existing radiative forcing (Wm-2) ratios identify: carbon dioxide as 1, methane as 0.28 and nitrous oxide as 0.09. Methane and carbon dioxide are primary forcing agents for global warming temperature increase.
Opposition to recognizing atmospheric methane AND global warming temperature increase are derived from politicians!
Many methane sources are sighted. However, the oceans’ surface conditions are the primary source for increase and decrease of atmospheric methane. Global and regional temperatures and surface ocean currents mostly affect oceans’ out gassing and re-uptake cycles. The higher the atmospheric temperature and the greater the wave action the more ocean methane is released.
Historical ~100,000 interglacial changes in green house gas levels can be attributed to alterations in ocean currents, tropical wetlands, vegetation, and the advance and retreat of polar ice sheets, changes to global warming heating patterns, and the locking/release of methane/carbon dioxide within soil/oceans, and the Milankovitch Earth/Sun Cycle.
Most new carbon dioxide comes from fossil fuel reservoirs of coal, oil, and natural gas (i.e., natural gas is methane gas). Most new methane derives from oceans.
Today, the concentration of methane and carbon dioxide add to historical interglacial changes. More than 90 percent of these new methane and new carbon dioxide increases have not been in the climate system for more than 60 million years, which makes existing global warming a significant geophysical anomaly.
IPCC Assessment Reports
1995 Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) Second Assessment Report (AR2) summary report section has 28 entries concerning methane, sinks chemistry, history, and potential future of the methane molecule.
For political reasons, to minimize the political importance of global warming temperature increase and maximize renewable energy funding, promote transfer of wealth (and increase government corruption and purchase special interest support) though carbon trades, and the funding of Copenhagen 2009 COP15 wealth transfers—the importance of methane gas was dropped from IPCC reporting and Assessment Reports.
IPCC First and Second Assessment Reports (AR1 and AR2) reported methane activity. Later, as a cover and diversion to not properly representing the roll of global warming greenhouse gases, leading world leaders published a new set of political scenarios in 2000 (Special Report on Emissions Scenarios - SRES). Scenarios became global warming mitigation foundations within the IPCC’s Third Assessment Report (AR3, 2001) and within the Fourth Assessment Report (AR4, 2007).
IPCC’s Third Assessment Report (AR3) in 2001 and IPCC’s Fourth Assessment Report (AR4) in 2007 hardly mention the powerful global warming methane gas.
IPCC's Fifth Assessment Report (AR5, to be released) "will put greater emphasis on assessing the socio-economic aspects [i.e., SRES] of climate change and implications for sustainable development, risk management and the framing of a response through both adaptation and mitigation."
There is no IPCC AR5 acknowledgment of the role of methane within global temperature cycle. There is no IPCC AR5 mention of reducing global warming temperatures. The intended purpose of IPCC’s AR3, AR4, and AR5 is to covertly continue world leaders’ carbon economies of coal, oil, and natural gas.
The IPCC’s shift from global warming science to the political diversion of SRES social issues occurred during the 1990s with the development of the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) Kyoto Protocol (adopted 11 December 1997). Anti nuclear U.S. President Clinton’s administration suppressed the world’s efforts to reduce global warming temperature increase. During the same time, methane was dropped from global warming consideration.
NUCLEAR ENERGY
A significant portion of total global carbon emissions are from electricity generation - coal, specifically, accounts for up to one-third of global carbon emissions. Coal is the largest reservoir of conventional fossil fuels, exceeding combined reserves of oil and gas. Therefore, to decrease carbon emissions and thus possibly help stop extreme global warming temperature increase from occurring, phasing out coal, oil, and natural gas is required.
A 2011 federally-funded research underscores the conflicting ways in which fossil fuel burning affects the Earth's climate. It says that while coal use causes global warming via emissions of heat-trapping carbon dioxide, it also releases relatively large amounts of sulfates and other particles that, although bad for the environment, cool the planet by blocking sunlight. Complicating matters is uncertainty over the amount of methane that leaks from natural gas operations and distribution. Methane is an especially potent greenhouse gas. It would be many decades before natural gas use would slow down global warming at all, and even then it would be making a small difference.
This report indicates that reducing "emissions of heat-trapping carbon dioxide" and releasing "relatively large amounts of sulfates and other particles" may help in global warming mitigation. Although important global warming mitigation information is known, there is no UN or national government agency that is authorized to do global warming mitigation planning and implementation. Global warming responses remain dominated by the Euro-U.S. Green Neo-Communist movement.
The only realistic way to curtail carbon dioxide emissions is to phase out coal, oil, and natural gas use except where carbon dioxide is captured and carbon sequester is functional.
The coal industry has staked its future on a new process known as coal carbon-sequestration gasification. Water and oxygen mixed with the coal to create carbon monoxide and hydrogen. Hydrogen is the fuel source, while the carbon monoxide converts to a concentrated stream of carbon dioxide. There is no approved storage container for long-term storage of sequestrated carbon dioxide.
These gasification plants are not cheap to run: around one-quarter of the energy produced keeps the operation running. All indications suggest that building them on a commercial scale will be expensive and that it will take decades to make a significant contribution to power production. Electrical energy from coal carbon-sequestration gasification is much more expensive than energy derived from nuclear energy.
For technical reasons “renewable” solar and wind does not work and never did work. Renewable alternative energy is now considered an unreliable and counter productive energy source.
Only nuclear energy has adequate energy capacity to reduce human carbon emissions.
Nuclear energy not expanding is due to more than four decades of anti nuclear social protest pressures and political desires to retain carbon economies. Had more than 40 years of anti nuclear protests not occurred, the global warming problem would be reduced and increased response time available. Now there is little chance that political positions about nuclear energy will change in time to effect a change to critical global warming gas emissions.
Resulting from political delays, the speed of the rapid increased methane and carbon dioxide concentration increase within the atmosphere brings the conclusion that global warming goals such as the +2-degree Celsius goal (or +1.5-degree Celsius goal) have now become a very, very ambitious goal to achieve, but are not impossible. For +2-degree Celsius goal considerations see EU’s "The 2°C target" LINK: NOTE: Due to ongoing untoward world leader suppression of critical global warming information, the link to EU’s paper on "The 2°C target" is no longer available. Falsifying UN and government department global warming public information by untoward world leaders remain standard practice since the 1990s. With U.S. President Obama in office, control of media reporting of global warming is mandatory. The problem of information manipulation has gotten bigger with the internet. Now internet hacking of websites can, and is, done by almost anyone with an ax to grind. Before, in the 1990s, untoward world leaders just manipulated official UN IPCC reporting.
There is no official government agency or UN agency addressing issues of global warming temperature increase. As far as the current crop of untoward world leaders are concerned, global warming does not exist. Continuing as has been done for the past two decades, politicians will never act to end global warming temperature increase.
Global warming temperature is to exceed life terminating +6°C prior to 2099.
WAR-GAME
A postulated military "war-game" provides insight into an extensive methane energy-battle and global warming scenario analysis.
WAR-GAME CONDITIONS - The 2035 war-game global conditions encountered is a +2°C global warming temperature rise above pre industrial (i.e., pre 1750 AD greenhouse gas levels). Global warming greenhouse gas emissions are to continue rising past year 2050 AD.
Global environmental and living conditions are deteriorating due to global warming temperature increase. Increasingly disrupted are critical global marine and land food chains. Populations are approaching 9 billion people while potable surface water and groundwater reserves are rapidly decreasing. Global warming temperature continues to increase rapidly. Energy reserves remain adequate for now. Polar regional temperatures are at record highs, which enable increased access to polar resources.
From the perspective of all eight Arctic nations, there is no established North/South Polar Regions’ “defense policy” and no “Polar military security policy.” No international structure of legal-agreements exists as to the governing North/South Polar Regions’ methane clathrate mining and increasing Arctic methane atmospheric releases.
The Arctic’s east-west marine shipping passageway is now ice free for 9 months a year and open for shipping, mining, well drilling, and military sea-access.
As to whether to continue mining of Arctic methane-clathrates energy, or to stop the mining, eight Arctic nations and national partners are dividing into opposing forces.
To continue their “needed” methane mining, "Block A" established an Arctic Ocean blockade to their Arctic east-west commercial shipping routes, military access, oil/gas wells, and methane mining sites.
"Block B" threatens to go to war over Block A continued methane mining and blocked commercial access to the Arctic sea route.
Blocks A and B established military defensive and offensive positions. Block B land forces are made ready to take over Block A’s land natural resources of oil and natural gas wells.
Arctic diplomatic relations are in a neutral country (Australia).
Politicians established spin mills to gather public support for what is a natural resource war. (Think of Dustin Hoffman’s spin in the movie Wag the Dog (1997))
WAR-GAME ENDING – Unpredicted modern natural undersea landslide events produced catastrophic releases of under water clathrates methane gas. A sea surface explosion of methane wiped out a third of Block B’s fleet of Arctic surface war ships.
Diplomats arranged agreements for a lifting of Block A’s blockade:
● Arctic sea routes are now too dangerous for commercial shipping. Commercial shipping routes will remain closed, but Arctic sea routes are to remain open for oil and gas exploration.
● Land and sea forces would return to pre blockade positions.
● Methane-clathrates mining would continue.
● The eight Arctic member nations are to adopt North/South Polar Regions’ defense and Polar military security policies.
Secretly behind closed doors, world leaders acknowledged that there must be some problem with stopping global warming temperature increase. However, important elections are to occur in 2038. Thus, any action concerning global warming temperature increase would not be addressed until after the 2039 budget and stimulus hearings.
CONCLUSIONS
The only available solution to global warming temperature increase is to act in haste and reduce human greenhouse gas emissions. Releases of relatively large amounts of sulfates and other particles may aid in global cooling. However, existing political structures are incapable of responding to needs of human races.
Long established Euro-U.S. political movements are undermining the public concepts of global warming. Political special interest groups such as the Euro-U.S. Green-Neo Communist movement remain important as an anti nuclear influence. Since the 1990s, the Clinton administration established the failings of global warming analysis within the UN’s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) Assessment Reports and Work Groups. Now the Euro-U.S. Green Neo-Communist movement is President Obama and left-Democrat’s political life force. Undermining of UN and Euro-US global warming mitigation efforts continues.
Scientists can only propose solutions. The politicians must produce the global warming mitigation. However, there is no effective method to quickly and in a timely way alter an established path of political systems. So far, the world leaders have pushed human races further down the path of 2050-2099 total human race elimination.
