In the fine print of the 2012 National Defense Authorization Act, passed just before the holidays, it turns out that in addition to being now legally able to seize without charge and hold indefinitely without trial any U.S. citizen, the government and the military also have the authority to use rendition on U.S. citizens. This was a policy originally enunciated by the Bush Administration to enable the CIA and the military to take suspects from one country to another for interrogation and torture, thus enabling U.S. officials to sidestep any human rights restrictions. Rendition was initially conceived as an extra-legal instrument in the war on terror. Now it is the law of the land and potentially applies to any and all U.S. citizens deemed "suspects."
Ironically, the Act was passed on the 220th anniversary of the passage of the Bill of Rights. It was signed into law by a president who went to Harvard to study the Constitution. All that remains is to activate the FEMA camps, some 600 nationwide, and 2012 becomes 1984.
This level of cynicism by our national leaders about our constitutionally guaranteed "inalienable rights" and the ability of a free people to determine their own future is staggering in its implications. One particular note concerns the media, which was largely silent until right at the very end, essentially after the Act had already passed both the House and the Senate. The United States just officially transitioned into a totalitarian democracy and the fact was barely noticed. I would guess that less that 15% of the public even knew it happened. After all, the Act passed with little debate and substantial majorities, a very rare event these days, and had the backing of the president. Much more present has been the bickering about the payroll tax extension, the jostling among Republican presidential candidates, and the holiday spending spree.
Synchronistically, during the very week the 2012 NDAA was passed, the Russian scientist Dr. Igor Semiletov reported that methane plumes over 1000 meters across were erupting in the Arctic Ocean and that he had mapped over 100 eruptions of lesser size in a 10,000 square mile area. He speculated that there were perhaps thousands more methane eruptions over a much larger expanse. The East Siberian Arctic Shelf is a methane rich area comprised of over 2 million square miles of seafloor under the Arctic Ocean. Most of the seafloor is quite shallow and flat, about 50 meters in depth, which means that the methane shoots right up directly into the atmosphere before it can be absorbed by the ocean. Methane is one of the green houses gases and is 30 times more potent than carbon dioxide in terms of global warming.
The import of methane spewing into the atmosphere is as bad for our climate as the 2012 NDAA is corrosive for our freedom. Indeed, the fact of their simultaneity indicates our governing elites are escalating the preparations for marshal law just as our climate is creating the turbulence they could use to justify it. Massive releases of methane into the atmosphere mean that climate turbulence is going to radically escalate and do so increasingly destructively, causing major breakdowns in our economic and social order.
It is important to note that as recently as the 2007 IPCC report, methane was not even mentioned because it was barely noted in the literature. That's a measure of how little we actually knew about what was really happening, even among those who were most concerned. By 2008, scientists were reporting methane releases across Siberia and the Arctic but only as bubbles and small bursts coming to the surface through the melting permafrost. Three years later, it is gushing out as plumes a third of a mile across, releasing millions of tons into the atmosphere every day.
We all need to internalize that even as our elites are completing the construction of national security states, the climate situation on planet Earth is rapidly spinning out of control. Over the next 24 - 36 months, the gushers of methane are going to radically increase and pretty soon our whole atmosphere is going to be saturated with methane. Methane is highly flammable. As global temperatures continue to increase, lightning strikes will also increase. Sooner or later, most likely sooner than later, there are likely to be explosions in the atmosphere as lightning strikes hit particularly dense plumes of methane. It is worth remembering that it was a bubble of methane gas that erupted on the BP platform that ignited the largest oil disaster in history. That event may turn out to be the cautionary tale of our time.
That and the fact that 2011 set the record for setting records. It saw over 2,500 records in either temperatures or extreme weather events across the United States alone, causing over $50 billion in property damage and thousands of people injured or dead. When you add similar statistics in countries around the world, you begin to get a measure of what the addition of massive releases of methane into the atmosphere is going to trigger in the climate. We are heading into a radical destabilization of weather and society as we know it.
And, lest we forget, along with rising extreme weather is the rising of the oceans. The methane plumes mean radically accelerating ice melt. As a quick calculus, the melting of both polar caps and Greenland means a sea level rise of 175 - 200 feet. How long this will take is directly proportional to how high global temperatures get how quickly. Rising sea levels are already underway and, like the extreme weather, are beginning to also accelerate. Coastal cities worldwide are experiencing increased flooding, and island nations like the Maldives are already sinking in the rising tides.
In the face of this, is there even a public debate? Are we preparing contingencies? Are we thinking through possible adaptations? No. Our national leaders have collectively decided to do virtually nothing. 2010 saw more CO2 spewed into the atmosphere than any year on record while our governments determined a few weeks ago at the Climate Conference in Durban essentially not to engage with climate change until 2020. While this decision was being made, most of the rest of us went holiday shopping, seeking to go about our normal lives. All of us that is except those few brave souls courageous enough to either commit civil disobedience at the White House over the tar sands issue, as damaging to our climate as methane, or Occupy our public places with the simple plea to save our future and rectify the growing inequalities that are obscenely enriching the wealthy while savagely empoverishing the middle class and the poor.
This is how we are surrendering 2011. 2012 looms ahead with a nation so bitterly divided that neither public debate nor good governance are to be seen across the land. The Republican Party is dominated by lunatics wanting to de-regulate environmental laws even further while denying that climate change even exists, and the Democrats are led by a president so feckless he has lost his way, having no vision for the future other than tactical moves through the gridlock that is Washington politics. Around the world, confusion reigns, the global economy is increasingly fragile, and politics are rent with dysfunction.
Right when we need all the virtues that our Republic was founded to nurture and protect, we have instead completed the construction of a national security state and allowed money corrupted politics to govern our land and much of the rest of the world. All while in the distant north, where rising temperatures relentlessly melt the ice cover of a once frozen ocean floor, plumes of methane now gush forth. Yet still we sleep, or rather sleep walk, no longer tending our journey through history with the attentiveness our civilization demands. We are mesmerized by a way of life fueled by an addiction to oil that poisons our politics even as it disrupts our climate, seducing us to our doom.
Some of the more ominous facts:
1. An estimated 1,400 billion tons of methane is stored in [the East Siberian Arctic Shelf, or ESAS]. By comparison, total human greenhouse gas emissions (including CO2) since 1750 amount to some 350 billion tons.
2. Methane is 20-30 times more powerful, as a greenhouse gas, than CO2.
3. Methane's weight is 32% that of CO2. Hence, the methane in ESAS can potentially increase global warming by a factor of 300 [= (1/.32)*(25)*(1400/350)]. The atmosphere wouldn't respond linearly, of course, but does it have to? This is a potential extinction event.
4. ESAS is definitely venting. The researchers who study it have been going there for 30 years, and just since their last visit have seen a significant acceleration in the venting of methane from that region.
5. None of the 'alarmist' climate models that currently predict 2-6C of warming by 2100 include ESAS methane because it's vent rate hasn't been accurately quantified. Most climatologists didn't think it would 'kick in' as an effect until after 2100. Deja vu? IPCC's estimate of global sea level rise by 2100 had to be DOUBLED four years ago because prior estimates didn't include the effect of ice-sheet melting. (Not because Greenland/Antarctica weren't melting, but because accurate estimates of the RATE of melting weren't made until ~2007).
In order to convert methane to a GHG CO2 equivalent, a suitable mass-based GHG Radiative Forcing factor must be applied. Over a twenty-year period, which period may be considered most relevant for assessing the risks of so-called Runaway Global Warming, this factor has been estimated to be either 72x that of CO2, or 120x that of CO2. The 72x factor is a general figure from 2008 and may be reviewed at http://www.global-chance.org/IMG/pdf/CH4march2008.pdf . The 120x factor is essentially a more recent and refined estimate by the “Arctic Methane Alert” Team in 2011, which reflects the local depletion of hydroxyl: it can be downloaded at http://www.arctic-methane-emergency-group.org/#/agu-brochure/4558306797.
Your analogy with the underestimation of ice-sheet melting is right on target..."a comfortable falsehood will always win out over an uncomfortable truth".
"Sooner or later, most likely sooner than later, there are likely to be explosions in the atmosphere as lightning strikes hit particularly dense plumes of methane."
you lost me. There is significant indication that these plumes of methane are due to recent global warming and ice loss in the arctic. There is still some evidence that suggests that these plumes have always been there and are resulting from inundation 8,000 years ago.
While I believe that these plumes are a harbinger of a radical climate shift that will take over our global political and economic environment in the next 50 years, the potential for "dense pockets of methane" in the atmosphere is absolutely nil.
stick with the facts and your articles will go much farther.
One may indeed intuitively doubt the assertion of "explosions in the atmosphere as lightning strikes hit particularly dense plumes of methane". But does anyone know at what ppb methane would become combustible in this manner?
However, if any such combustion set Arctic Tundra alight, that would be extremely bad as it would induce large future releases of methane. For a disastrous example, see: http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2011/07/110727131407.htm .
someone trying to find real info insted of hyperboil is always good to encounter
F&F
Methane hydrates http://marine.usgs.gov/fact-sheets/gas-hydrates/title.html are real.
Also real are concerns that the NDAA provision that "existing law" regarding the detention of US citizens does not change under the act, may not prohibit rendition or habeas corpus suspension.
But FEMA camps for detaining US citizens? Straying far into the wacky zone there.
the mere fact that we have the patriot act, the military commissions act, that posse comitatus was ever revoked, that this new NDAA law has been implemented, that we ILLEGALLY invaded Iraq and that corporations have been given the same rights as natural human beings should tell you otherwise.
under bush our gov't DID dedicate over 385 million dollars to update these camps and they have been touted as a place to put illegal immigrants. whose to say they wouldn't be used in other ways? our culture is insane. our gov't is frighteningly moving towards fascism and totalitarianism. i discount no weird, radical action they may take. even our cops are so militarized they behave worse than criminals against the population at large.
outreach for the Arctic Methane Emergency Group. Can you tell me where the 18X ESAS figure comes from? We also need some one with expert level knowledge on methane to help develop the methane page on our website. Please get in touch. Peter Carter.
I enjoyed reading your organization's "Arctic Methane Alert", and commend you on your important work.
I have been asked to give a Seminar on this topic (even though it is not my primary area of expertise), and am in the process of preparing a detailed presentation.
I did not immediately find you on Linked-In. What is your email address please?
2011 set numerous records for cold weather in the USA.
-9647 daily record lows
-370 monthly record lows
-Records that reflected a cooler than normal daytime highs was 29,336 vs 26,244 record highs
-1,859 monthly “Hi Min” temperatures vs 1,160 “Hi Max”
http://tinyurl.com/dyk4zhv
AGW means there is more energy in the system. This means that cold systems get moved around into places where they aren't so common.
http://www.ncdc.noaa.gov/extremes/records/
And now you say it was really from NOAA all along.
False Orkney. Watts consistently spins and misrepresents. If you had intended us to see NOAA data, you would have given the NOAA link.
Now, how about all the record highs, and record storms. No more spinning and misdirection Orkney.
The rendition clause may call to mind the infamous “enabling act” passed by the Reichstag and signed on March 23, 1933, a day that should live in infamy. The law empowered Hitler as dictator. The methane matters not only because it’s a very powerful greenhouse gas, but also because, as part of a feedback loop, it can become unstoppable as a cause of climate change and thus of many difficult outcomes, including food shortages.
The challenge is to find forms of action that can be adopted, similar to the citizen contacts with the USSR that Garrison did so brilliantly in the 1980s. Otherwise, the warnings are too painful for many people to credit.