The Methane Threat

Our planet has experienced five major extinctions over the past billion or so years when more than half of all life has died in a geologically brief period of time, and the common denominator of each one has been a sudden pulse of global warming. Increasingly, it appears that a rapid release of methane played a primary role in each one.

Methane is a far more potent greenhouse gas than carbon dioxide, and there are trillions of tons of it embedded in a sort of ice slurry called methane hydrate or methane clathrate crystals in the Arctic and in the seas around continental shelves from North America to Antarctica. If enough of this methane is released quickly enough, it won’t just produce “Global warming.” It could produce an extinction of species on a wide scale – an extinction that could even include the human race. While methane does eventually degrade into carbon dioxide, when large amounts are released over a short time period, their effect on global warming can be dramatic, since methane is such a more potent greenhouse gas than carbon dioxide. Carbon dioxide in our atmosphere has passed 400 ppm, a number never before seen in human history, but we’ve also never seen methane releases on this order in human history. And, to a large extent, the naturally occurring methane releases are the result of that 400 ppm of carbon dioxide.

 Geologists had by-and-large come to the conclusion that a sudden release of methane led to the death of over 95% of everything on Earth during the Permian Mass Extinction ( 250 million years ago). That methane is back, probably in even larger quantities, as life has been so active since the last mass extinction. More and more of it leaking from oil wells, fracking operations, melting permafrost, and even stirred up by Arctic storms. The EPA reported they may have been underestimating by half the amount of methane being produced by human activity.  Meanwhile, the National Science Foundation just released a report that methane releases from the Arctic have also been underestimated.

If we want to avoid an extinction that could approach or even rival some of the five past extinctions that have wiped out so much of life on earth, we must get control, quickly, of our man-made carbon dioxide and methane releases. It requires taking responsibility for our planet, and place its interest and our own before profits. It means changing the system. It is capitalism that is destroying the planet not some bizarre and unfounded belief that humans are somehow trying to commit collective suicide. Capitalism must devour everything. All hail the profits. Meanwhile, politicians have been paying lip service, at best, to the risk of climate catastrophe. The planet is rapidly and dangerously overheating, but elite economic and financial interests, with bought-for governments under their corporate thumbs, will nevertheless continue to do whatever they can to retain profit and power. The latest Warsaw “agreement “ proposes  a ‘global carbon market “toolbox” ‘ thus ‘making climate change targets more achievable’. The farce quickly becomes evident on further reading: ‘governments have proposed launching a framework‘ to create ‘a single voluntary platform to share ideas, with a view to eventually launching a global market to battle climate change.[SOYMB emphasis]

Adapted from here