Atmospheric and ocean methane emission positive feedbacks

Go to youtube.com and type in "farting ice". Note the year - 2007.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=B36EoEuKjVg That's SEVEN YEARS ago. The worst news is not that there's a methane cloud over the fossil fuel industrial complex of the southwestern United States. The fermenting now unfrozen organic areas on land, with this youtube, and the frozen in ice methane under the ocean being released with ocean warming, are yielding exponential speedup of global average temperature rise.

Those in positions of authority should be declaring an earthwide state of emergency. All humanity working together with the rest of the living world has the capacity to usher in a new age of heaven on earth. Fighting in fear over "the need for" fossil fuels we don't have a shot.

We need to transition from the fossil fuel and nuclear power industries immediately, to go to electric transportation fueled by methane already escaping (no more fracking or other extraction, only what is already in exponentially increasing amounts escaping) and hydrogen fuel cells (burning methane yields co2, which is a greenhouse gas but not as strong a one as methane), to go to local natural decentralized agriculture harmonizing w/other species rather than fighting them, to stop manufacturing all the stupid things like junk "foods",...And we have to eliminate all legal conflict over patenting of non-combustion energy technologies.

From
Malcolm Light m.light@cpom.ucl.ac.uk
https://www.facebook.com/malcolm.light.50
research fellow
Centre for Polar Observation and Modelling, University College London:
EXTREME NATIONAL EMERGENCY
By Malcolm Peter Light – Earth Scientist
The United States administration is now a fossil fuel corporation – bank oligarchy. It is a totally failed democracy. Consequently all decisions made by the present US government are unconstitutional and invalid, further confirmed by the way people are transferred from the US congress to the banks. Consequently the coming Senate election will be a farce. The coming Senate election and all further elections need to be delayed until the US administration changes the rules back and can prove that the United States is once again democratic and represents the will of the people. Please see these sites:-
http://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2014/apr/21/americas-oligarchy-not-democracy-or-republic-unive/
http://www.bbc.com/news/blogs-echochambers-27074746
President Obama must declare a state of Extreme National Emergency and cease orchestrating a war with Russia. He must recall his entire army and navy personnel to the United States to begin a massive conversion of the US energy system to solar and wind power. This conversion must result in all 600 coal power stations and nuclear stations being completely shut down in the next 5 to 10 years. All surface transport, both private and public must be entirely electrified and air transport converted to methane or hydrogen fuel. If this is not done, humanity will be facing total extinction in an Arctic methane firestorm between 2040 and 2050.
The US and Canada must cut their global emissions of carbon dioxide by 90% in the next 10 to 15 years, otherwise they will be become an instrument of mass destruction of the Earth and its entire human population. Recovery of the United States economy from the financial crisis has been very unsoundly based by the present Administration on an extremely hazardous "all of the above" energy policy that has allowed continent wide gas fracking, coal and oil sand oil mining and the return of widespread drilling to the Gulf. Coast. This large amount of fossil fuel has to be transported and sold which has caused extensive spills, explosions and confrontations with US citizens over fracking and the Keystone XL pipeline. Gas fracking is in the process of destroying the entire aquifer systems of the United States and causing widespread earthquakes. The oil spills are doing the same to the surface river run off.
We are now facing a devastating final show down with Mother Nature, which is being massively accelerated by the filthy extraction of fossil fuels by US and Canada by gas fracking, coal and tar sand mining and continent wide bitumen transport. The United States and other developed nations made a fatal mistake by refusing to sign the original Kyoto protocols. The United States and Canada must now cease all their fossil fuel extraction and go entirely onto renewable energy in the next 10 to 15 years otherwise they will be guilty of planetary ecocide - genocide by the 2050's.
The volume transport of the Gulf Stream has increased by three times since the 1940's due to the rising atmospheric pressure difference set up between the polluted, greenhouse gas rich air above North America and the marine Atlantic Air. Recent work shows the giant volume of heat that now has accumulated in the North Atlantic.
The increasingly heated Gulf Stream with its associated high winds and energy rich weather systems then flows NE to Europe where it recently pummeled Great Britain with catastrophic storms. Other branches of the Gulf Stream then enter the Arctic and disassociate the subsea Arctic methane hydrate seals on subsea and deep high - pressure mantle methane reservoirs below the Eurasian Basin- Laptev Sea transition. This is releasing increasing amounts of methane into the atmosphere producing anomalous temperatures, greater than 20 degree C above average. Over very short time periods of a few days to a few months the atmospheric methane has a global warming potential from 1000 to 100 times that of carbon dioxide.
There are such massive reserves of methane in the subsea Arctic methane hydrates, that if only a few percent of them are disassociated, they will lead to a jump in the average temperature of the Earths atmosphere by 10 degrees C and produce a "Permian" style major extinction event which will kill us all. The whole northern hemisphere is now covered by a thickening atmospheric methane global warming veil that is spreading southwards at about 1 km a day and it already totally envelopes the United States. A giant hole in the equatorial ozone layer has also been discovered in the west Pacific which acts like an elevator transferring methane from lower altitudes to the stratosphere where it already forms a dense equatorial global warming stratospheric band that is spreading into the Polar regions.
During the last winter, the high Arctic winter temperatures and pressures have displaced the normal freezing Arctic Air south into Canada and the United States producing never before seen, freezing winter storms and massive power failures. When the Arctic ice cap finally melts towards the end of next year, the Arctic sea will be aggressively heated by the sun and the Gulf Stream. The cold Arctic air will then be confined to the Greenland Ice cap and the hot globally warmed Arctic air with its methane will flow south to the United States to further heat up the Gulf Stream, setting up an anticlockwise circulation around Greenland. Under these circumstances Great Britain and Europe must expect even more catastrophic storm systems, hurricane force winds and massive flooding after the end of next year due to a further acceleration in the energy transport of the Gulf Stream. If this process continues unchecked the mean temperature of the atmosphere will rise a further 8 degrees centigrade and we will be facing global deglaciation, a more than 200 feet rise in sea level rise and a major terminal extinction event by the 2050's.
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Jim McCue (St. Jim the Composter)


composter and biotech researcher
412-421-6496
http://facebook.com/alllifelover

Feed the People by Feeding the Soil

Last eve's Hazelwood Initiative Planning Committee meeting went swimmingly. We have hazelnuts at the Hazelwood Food Forest. Lisa Kunst Vavro talked with Steve Novotny and others about the Kaboom playground hopefully late spring next year. Jim Richter and Kyle Pattison talked about crowd-sourcing to start Hazelwood Farms. Seth Nyer presented about the food forest, including a long-term hope of building a greenhouse there (though the site has spatial limitations) and Pittsburgh Permaculture using the food forest as a template for replication in other parts of the city. Grow Pittsburgh is providing funding for signage at the food forest. Kris DePietro suggested a mural on an adjacent building. Seth spoke about the permanent agriculture model as a way to rehabilitate abandoned/damaged areas. We talked about aesthetic presentation and using green to attract to the business district. The Hazelwood Food Forest has a facebook page. Dave Brewton referred to Elaine Price's Floriated Interpretations working with the food forest. Hanna Mosca talked about the YMCA-Hazelwood Garden as a resource for the whole community. I mentioned that Alex Bodnar, Matt Peters, Daniel Wade, myself, and a couple of others one year a coupla years ago did make a first attempt at coordinating late winter production of thousands of plant starts in the YMCA greenhouse for distribution in the community. Shelly Danko Day talked about the more than one acre former Blair St. Ballfield (the old "Grove") being available for a community garden. Matt Peters talked about forests, and other community urban farm models that could include chickens, bees, larger-scale composting, vermi-composting, biochar,... The community apiary in Homewood was mentioned. Dianne Shenk referenced permaculture services, training and site installation as a valuable enterprise. Rayden Sorock spoke to Grow Pittsburgh's involvement. Reverend Tim Smith talked about the need for education, and we all talked about permanency/resiliency in view of the differing ownership situations of the various sites. Leasing, sale of land was discussed. Scenarios in which people can securely (without vandalism) work individually and/or in groups to grow with or without sales of plants or produce in mind. Shelly, Tammy Carlini and others discussed dealing with contamination past and continuing from adjacent industrial activity. I brought up vital ecosystem services such as pollinators given the earthwide decline in insect populations.
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From Pastor Tim Smith:
You are cordially invited to the premiere screening of the film
NOT FINISHED YET: Hazelwood's Perseverance in the face of food scarcity
a film by
Center of Life
presented by Carnegie Mellon University's Entertainment Technology Center
Join us on October 29, 2014 from 4 to 6 at the Kresge Theatre, College of Fine Arts Building CMU 5000 Forbes Ave. After the film there will be a panel discussion moderated by Just Harvest's Ken Regal, followed by a reception with light refreshments. Seating is limited, please rsvp by 10/22/14 to mworbs@andrew.cmu.edu or call 412-268-2012.
Produced through funding from the Heinz Endowments.
********
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Pittsburgh's Urban Forest One of the Largest in the Country
http://wesa.fm/post/pittsburghs-urban-forest-one-largest-country
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Living with Disaster: Stories from Northeastern Japan
Thursday, October 23, 4 – 6 p.m. University of Pittsburgh,
Room 3431 Posvar Hall, 230 S. Bouquet St.
http://rememberinghiroshima.org/2014/10/04/living-with-disaster-stories-from-northeastern-japan/
"... earthquake and tsunami destroyed communities along 650 km of coastline... in northeastern Japan...Fukushima Daiichi Nuclear Power Plant meltdowns spread radiation over a wide area, and thousands of people were forced to leave their homes. Three years later, many are still unable to return....stories from the disaster area,...overview of the damage and present situation,...current concerns..."
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https://www.facebook.com/HazelwoodFoodForest
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Documentary
Saint Misbehavin'
is available from the Carnegie Library system.
The song "Basic Human Needs" by Wavy Gravy
"Wouldn't it be neat if people that you meet
had shoes upon their feet and something to eat?
And wouldn't it be fine if all humankind had shelter?...deep down in the garden, in the garden of your heart...
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tU5u71DrFG0
http://www.spiritualityandpractice.com/films/films.php?id=20491
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Jim McCue (St. Jim the Composter)

composter and biotech researcher
412-421-6496
http://facebook.com/alllifelover
http://hazelwoodhomepage.org
2/5/2009
http://bioeverything.blogspot.com/2014/01/the-greening-of-hazelwood.html
http://www.pghcitypaper.com/pittsburgh/power-plants/Content?oid=1341462
http://hazelwoodharvestinc.blogspot.com
http://hazelwoodurbangardens.blogspot.com

Pittsburgh's Urban Forest One of the Largest in the Country
As the colors of autumn entice us to do some foliage watching, many people in...
WESA.FM|BY ESSENTIAL PITTSBURGH

The Community of Life

With all the fearful and sad perspectives in the news, I'm learning to write only about the positive ways of looking at things. There is always a better way to interpret something than to just say it's bad. Here's an example:

There are reports that Earth's average global temperature increase is causing mushrooming quantities of the greenhouse gas methane (natural gas) to be released into the atmosphere. Some scientists (wanting to believe the best, naturally) are minimizing the importance of the data coming from the Arctic, which indicates that exponentially increasing amounts of methane (previously encased in ice) is being released from ocean areas .

Now, I'm not one of those people who think of a new source of natural gas as a good thing; we need to get off of fossil fuels. Those who are excited by warming-caused opening of formerly seasonally frozen shipping lanes are thinking with only one part of their brains; they're not thinking through the causes and effects of what's melting the ice. It's part of the vicious spiral of burning - causing melting - causing increasingly warming oceans due to less ice reflecting the sun - causing more melting. But I am more and more convinced that we humans are - by being increasingly able to access an infinite universal database of knowledge - able if we work together to deal with our mushrooming environmental problems.

Throughout history - and especially in modern times - breathtaking scientific advances have allowed problem after problem to be solved. Now that it's becoming common knowledge that the planet is in an extinction event, we can - by surrendering our habitual ways of thinking - look at the naked facts more clearly. But solving the problems will take changing ourselves, drastically.

Not only we humans, but all life is one community. Each life form, whether you're talking about plants or animals or microbes, works together in the web of life. We have to respect all living things and celebrate diversity. The way to help ourselves is to stop hurting Nature. The way to suppress disease, for example, is not to fight specific diseases (with, for instance, anti-biotics) - but rather to encourage a diversity of microbes via pro-biotics.

Here's a fact we don't often think about: We're arguing about whether humans can change the weather when in fact even microbes can and do affect it. Varieties of life such as bacteria and mold take gases from the air and turn them into other things. And microbes give off gases to the air. The seven plus billion of us humans who use oxygen and give off carbon dioxide when we breathe are doing the same - changing the atmosphere. And, on top of that, we burn stuff, which uses more oxygen and gives off more carbon dioxide.

Being the most powerful species on the planet (at the moment), we have the capacity to do the most harm and the most good; it's our job to do the best we can.

Grow as many and as varied plants as you can. Stop cutting down plants as much as you can. Pull yourself (as much as you can at any one moment) out of the parts of the industrial system that are destroying the ecosystem. Vote for an end to planned obsolescence. Don't participate in financial or military competition for fossil fuels. Open your heart to your human and other neighbors. We're all one family. We're not by any stretch of the imagination the only intelligent or loving species on or off the planet.

Jim McCue
(412) 421-6496
appropriatebiotech@yahoo.com