Exclusive: President Trump’s war on President Obama’s regulations may kill off rules to reduce leaks of the global-warming gas methane, a partisan scheme with grave consequences for Mar-a-Lago and the world, writes Jonathan Marshall.
By Jonathan Marshall
There’s a reason – besides escaping the rising rancor of Washington – that it made sense for President Trump to hop on Air Force One and visit his Mar-a-Lago club in Palm Beach, Florida, three times during his first five weeks in office: he needs to enjoy it while he can. If global warming continues apace, in just 30 years, its ritzy grounds will be flooded most of the year due to rising sea levels, according to an analysis by Coastal Risk Consulting.
President Trump’s Mar-a-Lago club in Palm Beach, Florida. (Photo from maralagoclub.com)
However, sticking to his “alternative facts,” Trump still insists that global warming is a hoax. Faced with the recent confirmation by government scientists that 2016 was the hottest year on record, following two previous record-breaking years, the Trump administration seeks to slash funding for the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration by 18 percent.
Besides shooting the messenger, the White House also aims to shoot down previously proposed solutions to the problem. Of particular note, Trump’s new leadership at the Environmental Protection Agency is working with conservatives in Congress to dismantle Obama-era programs to restrict methane (natural gas) emissions from oil and gas drilling operations across the country.
This policy reversal will have grave consequences. Methane is an exceptionally potent greenhouse gas, capable of trapping 84 times more heat than comparable quantities of carbon dioxide. Scientists now estimate that it accounts for as much as 25 percent of the Earth’s warming.
While global carbon dioxide emissions have leveled off over the past three years, methane emissions are soaring, according to an alarming study published in December in the journal Environmental Research Letters. Methane concentrations in the air grew about 20 times faster in 2014 and 2015 than they did in the early 2000s, jeopardizing international efforts to limit global warming to a manageable level.
The Methane Threat
The reasons aren’t yet clear, but human activities create about 60 percent of all methane emissions each year. The biggest sources are agriculture, including rice cultivation and cattle ranching, and industry, led by oil and gas drilling and pipeline operations.
The Earth rise from the Moon. (Photo taken by Apollo 8 crewmember Bill Anders)
An international team of scientists, who evaluated some 400 potential measures for limiting greenhouse gas emissions, reported in Science magazine several years ago that reducing methane leakage from drilling and pipeline operations would be one of the most potent and cost-effective ways to fight global warming. They estimated that the benefits of curbing such emissions would exceed the cost by anywhere from $450 to several thousand dollars per metric ton.
Impressed by such findings, the United Nations sponsored the Oil & Gas Methane Partnership, a collaboration of governments and industry to help the environment by saving the tens of billions of dollars’ worth of natural gas wasted each year to leaks and intentional flaring.
In the United States, the Environmental Defense Fund (EDF) teamed with industry partners and academics to study the extent of gas leaks and to develop new technologies to detect them. The Obama White House endorsed these initiatives in a 2014 action plan to slash methane emissions from agriculture, landfills, coal mines, and the oil and gas sector.
What all of these initiatives have in common is the enthusiastic participation of large oil companies, gas utilities, and other companies — proving that fighting global warming doesn’t have to come at the expense of jobs or business.
I saw this first-hand while working several years ago at one of EDF’s leading industrial partners: San Francisco-based Pacific Gas and Electric Company. With 6,750 miles of gas transmission pipelines, 42,000 miles of smaller gas distribution pipelines, and more than four million customers, PG&E is one of the country’s largest gas utilities.
Industry/Consumer Cooperation
With roots in environmentally conscious Northern California, PG&E was a natural partner for EDF. More important, however, was the utility’s concern with stopping gas leaks that could pose a threat to public safety. In 2010, PG&E was responsible for one of the nation’s worst pipeline explosions, which killed eight people in the city of San Bruno.
One of the elegant rooms at President Trump’s Mar-a-Lago club. (Photo from maralagoclub.com)
Taking advantage of new detection technology developed in Silicon Valley — 1,000 times more sensitive than traditional tools — PG&E was able last summer to finish surveying one million individual properties for gas leaks in just under two years. Crews drove a fleet of 10 detection vehicles 60,000 miles to find and repair 80 percent more leaks in less time than with older methods. The American Gas Association honored this program in 2015, signaling strong industry support for the initiative.
This December, PG&E became the first energy company to pilot another new, low-cost laser detection technology developed for EDF’s Methane Detectors Challenge program by a San Francisco startup. Statoil, an international energy company, is testing another similar technology at one of its Texas production facilities.
As of 2014, an estimated 76 U.S. companies were manufacturing, selling and supporting methane control technologies in some 46 states. The number has surely soared since then, boosted by the energy industry’s growing realization that the 10 million metric tons of natural gas it loses every year represent $2 billion down the drain.
The Trump administration could support new jobs and energy savings by taking nascent methane-control programs to the next level and encouraging more partnerships between government, industry and environmentalists to curb greenhouse gas emissions. Instead, its knee-jerk rejection of anything connected to President Obama threatens to needlessly damage America’s economy along with the Earth’s environment for decades to come.
That’s a lose-lose proposition none of us can afford. And it could even prove disastrous to Trump’s pride and joy, Mar-a-Lago, although Trump — who would be 100 years old in 30 years — may not expect to live long enough to see his fancy club inundated by the sea.
Jonathan Marshall is author of “Dangerous Denial of Global Warming,” “To Fight Global Warming, Canada Ponders a Carbon Tax,” and “Global Warming Adds to Mideast Hot Zone.”
I hope he is in it when it goes under.
He could give a shit – in 30 years, he’ll be dead.
For all you folks who live in the settlements from Alabama to Wyoming. Have a nice peaceful day.
The Fraudster-in chief never thinks past the next deal. I don’t think he’s capable of it. Don’t worry though, he’ll promote war just the same as his predecessors, if not even better.
Somebody mentioned “basic” science. And yes, the science is pretty basic. Thermodynamics was pretty well understood by 1900, along with a determination of how much energy is stored in covalent chemical bonds. But, being lawyers, most of our political leaders all believe that is some sort of fanciful nonsense, the stuff of which belongs to “eggheads” in effete university science departments.
Thunderstorms. I’m looking forward to them if the methane clathrates are released. Every molecule of methane will consume two molecules of oxygen to produce two water molecules and a molecule of carbon dioxide, itself a greenhouse gas. And, the bonds broken in the combustion process will release energy. “Leo the Lion goes Ger”, as they used to teach us in chemistry. Loss of electrons is oxygenation, and gain in electrons is reduction. Every lightning strike will be like a potential “fuel-air bomb”…plenty of free electrons to go around. Those were among the “weapons of mass destruction” the neocons claimed Saddam was developing: a conventional weapon with the destructive potential of a tactical nuclear weapon. The atmospheric gas ratio remains in equilibrium, though I’m not sure it has ever been scientifically established which planktonic, pelagic or terrestrial biological entity actual contributes most to its perpetuation. If that balance changes, “global warming” will suddenly be taken seriously. Until people have trouble breathing, don’t expect lawyers to get involved…unless 33% of a tort settlement is on the “free lunch” table our government provides as welfare to the rich.
But, in all seriousness, Kiza is right about cow farts – industrial meat production is still probably the biggest offender, along with Rush Limbaugh, Henry Kissinger, Madeleine Albright and Hillary Clinton – established “flatulantes” every one. Which brings us to Trumpgate, Russiagate, Hillarygate and Berniegate. Therei is only ONE TRUE STATEMENT which is accompanied by ACTUAL TRUE EVIDENCE in all this controversy: that statement would be, “The Democrats subverted the primary election to derail the Sanders campaign.” Everybody keeps talking about “liberals” and “Democrats” becoming the subversives. I’m sorry, but I consider myself an FDR/JFK Democrat, and the people pushing the “Hillary should have won” agenda are fascists and Trotskyite communists – Leo Strauss/Carl Schmitt/Kagan Clan subversives – the REAL traitors the Joe McCarthy should have been after sixty years ago. Like it or not, President Trump is the “best of a bad lot”. And, despite his delusions, I believe he is a true American Patriot. ‘Nuff said.
I never though Trump to be unpatriotic. I will tell you this, that on Trump’s worst day I will never wish Hillary had won the presidency. What does bother me about Trump is the people he surrounds himself with. Granted Trump’s Cabinet appointees having little time at their jobs, is still an unknown factor when trying to evaluate their performance. Only time and results will tell the story, I guess, but some of what I hear that is going on inside of this White House makes me nervous. Although when it comes to our government making me nervous, when hasn’t it?
On the flip side of Trump is the Deep State (for the lack of a better name reference) and that crew always makes me nervous. It’s not as though our choices of picking sides is great. On one side you have a president who for all practical purposes is a bull in a china shop, and on the other side you have a lying media and a spook run coup underway, and with all of this we the people are now fighting amongst ourselves to which of these two groups we should give our undevoted support too.
About all that climate stuff you mentioned F.G. could you repeat that for me once again? Oh never mind I’ll never understand what you said anyway, but coming from you it’s believable.
Should I save you a hideout behind my false wall in my basement, and will you be traveling alone?
Joe
Joe, I can’t really claim to understand all the climate stuff either – nobody on either side of the argument can – and that’s the real gamble. Even if none of the disaster scenarios are true, behaving as if they are is still the most profitable strategy. Draw a box divided into four squares. The horizontal headers would be “true or not true”. The vertical headers would be “Manmade warming or Not Manmade warming”. Even if it’s not true and not manmade, the benefits accrued by treating it as such would still pay off in the long run. There is a finite supply of fossil energy, because the “abiotic” theory of petroleum generation is a…pardon my Western Pennsylvania crudity…”crock of shit”. If humanity survives, we’ll need to save some of it for as yet totally unimagined contingencies. Developing “green energy” now could save us, and it solves lots of other problems, like unemployment, pollution and health issues. Aside from that, overpopulation is probably a bigger threat than global warming. If we can’t control it with rational measures, wars will serve to accomplish what birth control couldn’t. Ask any right-wing religious wingnut, and they’ll tell you that wars are morally justifiable, but birth control and abortion are not. Personally, I think there might be something to the “deep state” agenda for a mass depopulation event – whether it’s a war or an engineered epidemic, they don’t really care. The Georgia Guide-stones were placed by somebody with A LOT of disposable income – a David Rockefeller type is not implausible. If I show up to spend some time behind that false wall in your basement, I’m sure I’ll be alone. NOBODY I know takes anything I say seriously. You’d probably be the first. But, mark my words, something bad is going to happen. The “price to earnings” ratio in the stock market is higher now than it was in 1929, but the economy only grew at 1.6%, our trade balance is way in the red, and our debt has exceeded GDP. The tax base is drying up due to under and unemployment, and we don’t have the manufacturing base to sustain quality of life in an economic crunch. The only way the “deep state” can keep hiding the truth is with a massive war – and Donald Trump has no control over it whatsoever. Just the way I see it…
Us Western Pa guys should try and stick together. Bringing up Western Pa is an appropriate subject all on it’s own, considering we are setting on top of abandon mine shafts, and no one is talking about it. I actually suggested once to a geologist friend of mine who works for the State of Pennsylvania how we should make transit tunnels and shopping malls, and he said that could be done….although it would be extremely deep.
I’m no scientist, but I know enough that the earth’s atmosphere and climate has really never stood still. I also take seriously the calls to avoid hurting the earth waterways, and air, by regulating man’s abuse of these precious necessities that planet earth has provided for us to survive with. I just wish all of this wasn’t so controversial, because controversy doesn’t come with solutions it only makes both sides madder at whatever it is we are arguing over.
The one place in Pittsburgh nearest my house that was once a stop off in the real Underground Railroad had as it last owner a prejudice redneck. The redneck refused to hang the historical site sign up, and for good reason, because he had the building torn down. So I only brought this up because now my house will really have to be one of those hideaways you mentioned, and my wife and I will be open for the cause…so just say the word, and you will be welcome to hide somewhere within our walls. BTW what kind of coffee do you drink, regular or decaf?
take care Captain Sanford your twice made Seaman Apprentice Joe
One more thing I forgot to mention. Just today I said to my wife, who wants to get our money out of the markets, that if I were younger I’d invest only in real estate and jewelry. Although if our IRA were to come crashing down, it wouldn’t destroy us. I don’t like putting all my eggs in anyone basket, and I believe you should invest only what you could stand to lose.
I can tell you this, the business I’m in sells to the markets of our infrastructure, and when my customers do good the whole country does good. For over the last year or so our customers have been down. In short, their hesitant attitude is brought on by a country who seems to have no aspiring projects, or call it a bad attitude to reinvest in our society. We need something big, like when we were kids, and everyone got excited over the new cars, and appliances, and going to outer space was a goal for everyone to get behind. Now we are a society hung up on reality TV, and who are worried more about ourselves than is healthy.
Although I do know small government contractors who are working on as little as 5% it seems the sky is the limit for the big corporate defense contractors, and that leaves little to spread around. Our government has folded to the big money interest more than it should.
The scales have dipped to much to one side, and not enough to the citizens to balance the equation of economics. If you are not that 1% you probably are watching the world go by, and that’s because you can’t afford anything anymore….just think of our healthcare system, which worries more about the bottom line profit that it does about our public’s good health. Once something loses sight of it’s core mission or goal, it doesn’t serve you no longer, and it’s time to get a new plan or system if you will. Once again this is a result of catering to the donor class, and forgetting the rest.
So in the coming days I may pull our investments out of this crazy market…like John Lennon once said, ‘and nothing is real’.
Sorry for the double post, but hey it’s me and I wanted to comment on what you brought up about the Stock Market…..Joe
The case for the environmentalists (those who predict an environmental disaster if we don’t change our ways) is supported by facts but their predictions are often so over blown that the cries that the sky is falling and when it doesn’t causes skepticism among many who might otherwise be persuaded. I remember a documentary put out in the 1980’s, I think, that produced graphics of flooded New York streets by the year 2000. I as reminded of that by the article that claims the President’s residence in Florida will relatively soon be flooded.
The case for the environmentalism and they most probably do have one is to tone down the rhetoric, acknowledge that their dire predictions in the past have been overblown, acknowledge the impact of non-human phenomena and create a dialogue with the skeptics to create programs to reduce pollution. I think most people agree that pollution including solid wastes are caused by people and we should all be working for a cleaner environment.
Try to remember that all skeptics are not paid by the oil companies nor are they idiots.
A national effort to create a high speed rail system to get the cars off the road might be a good place to start; kills two birds with one stone.
I’m much more concerned about melting methane hydrate than I am leaking pipes and agriculture: http://www.counterpunch.org/2017/02/10/looming-climate-catastrophe-extinction-in-nine-years/
I’ve had that Arctic News site bookmarked for some time. Despite being as pessimistic as I am, the scenario the poster described left me walking around under a cloud for several days. From your link:
Perhaps the cheerful dingleberry at wattsupwiththat will “spin” the story and correctly say that mass releases of methane will usually instantly ignite into pillars of fire as soon as they reach the atmosphere and declare the gigatons of gas are now harmless CO2. Hurrah.
Even if that event is deferred for a while, Trump and others with coastal property better keep a close watch on Greenland. That huge pile of ice is rapidly turning into slush, and there is a real possibility of extremely rapid sea-level rise as a result. My link is to a 2008 Scientific American article.
https://physics.ucf.edu/~britt/Climate/Reading6-unquiet%20ice.pdf
I don’t know what level of sea rise would make New York city and the rest of the East Coast uninhabitable, but given what has happened with recent hurricanes, it won’t take much. The US may soon see an internal refugee situation which makes Katrina & New Orleans look like a garden party by comparison. if it isn’t imminent, no matter, for this is baked into the whole situation. Wonder how the brilliant Red State Deniers will handle having to cope with millions of destitute Blue State refugees crowding into their area. I’d say there is a decent chance they’ll break out their trusty Second Amendment tools to save the day.
In the latest IPCC AR5 report, even under the worst case scenario RCP8.5 (business as usual), sea level will rise only 0.3m till year 2100, not much higher from what sea levels did in the last few thousand years, except lower values during the little ice age.
https://www.ipcc.ch/pdf/unfccc/cop19/3_gregory13sbsta.pdf
Moreover, there is very well substantiated evidence, that climate sensitivity (how much warming per doubling of CO2) is only half of the value still propagated by many with the following consequences:
If TCR really is 1.35°C then under RCP8.5 – the worst-case, business-as-usual scenario
– the end of the 21st century will be approximately 2°C warmer than today.
The meta-analysis in Tol (2009)22, of fourteen estimates from economists, suggests that
a temperature of 2°C warmer than today is likely to have a negligible impact on welfare.
http://www.phibetaiota.net/wp-content/uploads/2013/12/Nic-Lewis-Submission-to-Parliament-on-Global-Warming.pdf
Tell this to the Inuit up near the North Pole who have to keep moving their villages as sea levels rise. They’ll be happy to know that you think their underwater houses are just figments of their imagination.
The military consumes more fuel than many nations, and god knows how much CO2 is produced in all those bombs going off. The AGW party seems ok with that though.
Nobody really denies global warming, we have been in a warming trend during most of this interglacial. The natural climate over the past 2 million years has been an ice age with a constant cycle of brief periods of warmer interglacials relative to much longer glacial periods. If man indeed is causing warming, it may be delaying the inevitable glacial period which would be as catastrophic if not more so than runaway global warming (and few scientists believe in the latter)
I needed a bit if humor on a dull Monday morning, thus it was pleasurable reading the article and the comments. Do you ever wonder why nobody of the opposite view bothers reading Jonathan’s “articles”, let alone commenting on one. As I wrote – I did only to have laughs, one example:
“The reasons aren’t yet clear, but human activities create about 60% of all methane emissions each year.”
But the reasons are clear – it is the flatulence, dear Jonathan. Do you feel guilty when you let one go?
Coastal Risk Consulting!?!?!?
But not to worry, dear lefties, your kind will blow up the World in a war much before any of the gasses that we breath out or flatulate get a chance.
China is investing $360 billion in renewable energy in the next 5 years. They already have 40% of all jobs in this industry and are firmly placing themselves as the leader in this growing financial juggernaut. They predict 13 million jobs will be created as a result and are committing millions of dollars to retraining workers who will lose their jobs in the fading coal and oil industries.
The sad part of Trump’s economic plan to bring back jobs to the U.S. is that it is tied to the fossil fuel industry. This has become an unsustainable and precarious financial bubble. Fossil fuels are going to lose their value before the wells run dry and much sooner than the Koch Brothers and Putin would care to admit. The tragedy is Trump has hitched our wagon to this balloon. He can stomp and beat his chest all he wants on the climate change ‘hoax’ but the rest of the world has already moved on and are committed to renewable energy. Their boats have left our docks and are on their way to China. #sad
Mr. Trump exhibits all three of the human tendencies which cause suffering. See my reply to Bill. Too bad Trump’s an old dog in terms of learning new tricks, especially when that trick involves giving up his self-obsessed sense of identity. People don’t know that they don’t know, until they know. And sometimes this “knowing” takes a verrryyy long time. Which, unfortunately, we don’t have. The necessary learning curve is too steep, in order for him to “know” in time. Yes, #sad.
The article and following comments lead to the questions, “What causes national leaders to pursue such insane policies? Is it the pure greed that is associated with so many other sins and crimes?”
Well, Bill…I’ve come to the conclusion that Buddha was correct. Suffering is the result of three things: greed, hatred, or delusion. I’d say that any answers to questions about climate fall under one of these three tendencies. Be well…
It looks like Buddha had a point there.
Bill you asked; “What causes national leaders to pursue such insane policies?”
Jonathan Marshall brought up what I have heard many others, including Donald Trump say, to how Trump will roll back all Obama-era programs. Trump by framing his Adminstrations objectives based on demonizing Obama’s presidency is taking quite a gamble. Yes, Trump will be a hero, if all his destruction of anything and everything Obama slices to the direction of success, but what if some or all of his smashing of Obama programs goes in the opposite direction towards destabilizing failure. Trump’s mean spirited Obama rhetoric could be Trump’s undoing, and Obama’s good fortune. Trump could be just what Obama was waiting for.
Instead Trump should pursue his agenda by framing all his policies as something fresh and new, and not framed purely to what appears to many to be out of spite. I learned in business a longtime ago to leave spite and revenge out of the equation when dealing in the competitive world. Concentrate and focus only on the core of the job at hand, and success will follow. In my mind Trump is playing a fools game. To add to Trump’s uphill climb he will need to overcome a scorned media who will always make sure to weight him down, and deny him praise even when he does accomplish something good.
Wow, listen to me out thinking the unstoppable Donald Trump, but as my grandmother always told me, ‘everybody has their day’, and ‘the bigger they are the harder they fall’.
To answer your question, what makes leaders pursue such insane polices, my guess is ego, greed, and a ton of hubris they develop over themselves along their way to the top.
Climate will do what climate will do as it has for hundreds of millions of years. Meanwhile, decisions and policy need to be based on hard fact.
There are some crucial, verifiable facts – with citations – about human-generated carbon dioxide and its effect on global warming people need to know and understand at
hseneker.blogspot.com
The discussion is too long to post here but is a quick and easy read. I recommend following the links in the citations; some of them are very educational.
The climate will NOT “do as it has for hundreds of millions of years”. If you don’t understand this you have not been paying attention.
You know about Eunice Foote right? An American scientist who in the mid 1850 put various gases into glass jars, put them in the sun and found the the jar with CO2 in it heated up the fastest and cooled down the slowest. The oil companies have been unable to duplicate this expensive and complicated experiment. Now we are putting about 40 billion tons of CO2 into the atmosphere as well as the more potent methane that may be 25% of the problem.
If you think that putting this much crap into the atmosphere will allow it to do what it has always done then your logic gene is broke!
One problem is that as the earth warms especially that change in the north, the permafrost melts and is a great source of methane gas adding to what we ourselves are producing.
A great site, and one that TRUMP should visit is that of the New Scientist magazine:
https://www.newscientist.com/article/dn11462-climate-change-a-guide-for-the-perplexed/
I should add that many politicians don’t take steps to reverse the situation because the cures are unpopular among the masses. Man often waits until it is too late on matters like this.
I appreciate any story about Climate Change, but focusing on “Trump” as a unique Evil Person in the drama is a mistake. Obama waited until his second term to make his token efforts on the subject. It’s like those damned “Paris Accords”, almost entirely bull shit, and almost certainly so by design. Obama was a puppet and a hack. No way under heaven was he going to really harm any of his puppeteers.
The Big Obama Program to “restrict methane (natural gas) emissions from oil and gas drilling operations” supposedly attacked an entire 34% of the US methane emissions. Big Oil was given a decade to elect a Trump-type to reverse it or to kill the program in the courts. The key parts were done by Executive Order, for the Nobel Peace guy wasn’t about to try to win real citizen support with a whirlwind Bully Puppet program. But enough about the hack, what if we were talking about Wonder Woman Hillary.
“8 things you need to know about Hillary Clinton and climate change”
1. She understands the science. I doubt it, for the 69-year-old Hillary was trained as a lawyer and has been too busy smashing small nations for Israel to have kept up on her basic “science” Trump’s new State Secretary “understands the science too, but being one of those Corporate Psychopaths he ignored it in the pursuit of more money for Exxon. (Google “Roaming Charges: Exxon’s End Game Theory”)
2. She thinks the politics of climate change are daunting. In other words, it was too “hard” to actually do anything besides acting concerned every now and then. BTW, Hillary thought the worthless Paris Accords were just spiffy.
3. She fully supports Obama’s landmark power-plant rules. It was difficult for me to find out what these “rules” were, but I finally did locate the “goals”.
. Paraphrasing Benny Hill, That’s Amazing, Grace. A whole 30 percent reduction. Assuming the number isn’t inflated. Assuming the complicated system doesn’t fail from Power Company lawsuits or US State lawsuits or general non-compliance.
4. She connects climate change to women’s rights. The essay I’m using simply has to be a desperate effort to make Hillary look as good as possible, for while Clean Cookstoves may have a lot to do with women’s health, there is essentially no connection to Climate Change.
5. She promoted fracking abroad while secretary of state. So the author was honest after all. World-wide fracking will cause so much methane to be released that any US restrictions will be as meaningless.
6. Her family’s charitable foundation takes lots of oil money. Proof positive Hillary wasn’t going to bite the hand which slipped her money. But so long as she only “pretended” to be concerned, it was O.K.
7. She has supported offshore oil drilling.
8. She avoids saying anything about Keystone XL. The woman may have eventually pretended to oppose Keystone. Same way as she pretended to do a U-Turn on the TPP trade treaty.
Don’t get me wrong – Trump is a walking & talking disaster regarding Climate Change. Since he is a stubborn ignoramus, we’re not likely to get any help from the man. My point is this: how is he any different from Monica’s Boyfriend, the Texas Torturer, or the dark-skinned Nobel Hero in real terms?
More and more people are coming to the conclusion we’re walking dead men. Back in 1966 is was still possible for Oriana Fallaci to write this response to the death of a friend – a US astronaut.
That optimism just isn’t possible fifty years later. We’re coming up on the Earth’s death, at least as a place where we humans and most of the rest of life can live, but there probably won’t be any escape to space, not even for the billionaires. That’s because the climate crisis gives every appearance of accelerating.
Yesterday at the Naked Capitalism site: “Gaius Publius: Massive Permafrost Thaw Documented in Canada, Huge Carbon Release May Be Coming”
Oh, it’s coming all right, and the only remaining mystery is “when”. Perhaps a real effort could mitigate the worst effects, but Trump isn’t going to do that. The reason I’m writing this post is to give as my opinion that President Hillary might have talked differently, but her actual actions regarding the coming disaster wouldn’t have been worth a plugged nickel more than Trump’s.
Well said, Zach
Thank you Zachary.
I am mystified by some of the people I know who supported Hillary Clinton. They believe – still believe so strongly in what I’ll call her being a person of “good will” and civic mindedness.
On a short visit to NYC we had a chance to see Wally Shawn’s brilliant off broadway play “Evening at the Talkhouse” which offered a rare descent into the reality that our MSM refuses to cover.
Clinton’ supporters would balk at my perception that she views herself as Julius Caesar – “we came, we saw, he died”.
An a-moral apparatchik for a corrupt super power.
I am super puzzled at who/what is Hillary Rodham Clinton.
Everyone who knows her personally seems complementary but she engages in some horrific irresponsible stuff….
Whew……
Is this what we expect from those we elect to high office???????
When science shows the natural CH4 alarm does not work anymore:
https://wattsupwiththat.com/2016/05/27/surprise-finding-arctic-ocean-methane-does-not-reach-the-atmosphere/
https://wattsupwiththat.com/2017/02/10/good-news-gas-hydrate-breakdown-unlikely-to-cause-massive-greenhouse-gas-release/
https://wattsupwiththat.com/2016/06/22/new-agu-study-negates-the-climate-methane-emergency-in-alaska/
https://wattsupwiththat.com/2016/09/30/inconvenient-studies-find-methane-and-carbon-dioxide-release-is-highest-in-the-arctic-during-the-regions-cold-season/
Invent a new one and blame the energy industry…
Thanks for the info but then again who pays you?
A genuine expert! Who pays Watts? Back in 2012 the Heartland Instituted got hacked, and the following information got published:
Ninety thousand bucks/year is some nice padding on the old income! Especially since the actual work is near zero. Just publish some misleading BS and allow the 2-digit IQ readers to draw their own conclusions. Take that first link by the Denier. It talks about some research by an actual scientist of oozing methane leaks in the sea usually not reaching the surface for a variety of reasons. What the 2-digit IQ readers conclude is that the methane leaks never reach the surface. Example to the contrary:
“Leaking pingos ‘can explode under the sea in the Arctic, as well as on land'”
Also keep in mind the Deniers are masters at diversion. The essay here is about relatively minor land-surface methane leaks associated with indifferent Big Gas Operators. No mention whatever of the massive methane deposits on the ocean floors. But that’s what’s pointed at by the Denier.
Pay? Could be a staffer at an oil company or at one of the professional denier sites, but that’s not really necessary. Everywhere I’ve ever been there was a handful of people who would “snitch” for free, running to the Authorities or Bosses with every bit of juicy gossip they heard. Could be the case here, just a person wanting attention and willing to work for nothing.
If we get into positive feedback country to the point those northern methane deposits get loose, I don’t see how extinction can be avoided. Population movements would be the first things to happen. China would make a mad rush for Siberia, and the US government would discover some evildoers in Canada who needed to be pacified by an occupying army. In the days of the Mongol hordes the result was simple genocide, but in these days of Atomic and Chemical and Biological weapons the invaded people would fight back. Few individuals would survive in that chaos, and the few survivors would have lost — everything.
Since I’ve been on the Internet I’ve quoted the last part of William Vogt’s Road to Survival several times, and this is another instance.
Considering that Vogt wrote this in 1948 before the H-bomb and before the really high-tech engineered bio-war diseases, I figure that a 1,000 year stint as barbarians is approaching our “best case” scenario in the here-and-now.
Attacking Watts’ website just because it posted links to 4 peer reviewed scientific papers on natural methane is really a sign of activism rather than scientific discussion. Who pays YOU?
Methane losses from the industry are now used to create another alarm because more papers are coming out showing the natural methane alarm was unfounded.
Finally, “denier” has a profoundly disgusting connotation. No one denies climate is changing, no one and certainly me… if you only knew. And think that during the HCO 5,000 BP that was warmer than today we all survived didn’t we?
Have a nice day.
Give us a break Lolita!!
Thanks for the research. But this statement in his policy guidelines says it all: Trolls, flame-bait, personal attacks, thread-jacking, sockpuppetry, name-calling such as “denialist,” “denier,” and other detritus that add nothing to further the discussion may get deleted.
Since he specifically uses the word denier–which is part of the phrase “climate change denier”–we instantly know where he stands on the subject.
Who pays her, certainly not the Coastal Risk Consulting.
No one.
WARNING!!! The site listed above “https://wattsupwiththat.com”i s NOT a reputable site.
Around 260 million years ago a similar warming took place and of course a dramatic increase of atmospheric methane, which not only turned the oceans purple(water absorbs methane, kills all marine life while allowing deadly bacteria to thrive) and the sky green, but also erupted so violently in places that gigantic flames are thought to have shot out of the ocean, miles high up into the sky, fueled by mega-tons of exposed methane hydrates. At present, we are nowhere near that horroring scenerio, but, it can get there rather easily due to temp amplification and a runaway greenhouse event. And about that bacteria, it apparently belched out hydrogen sulphide in quantities that are truely unimaginable. Just sayin.
It’s ironic. Back around 1975 methane was not yet considered an environmental catastrophe in the wings, its release into the atmosphere going pretty much unnoticed relative to carbon dioxide, carbon monoxide, the various oxides of nitrogen and sulfur, and chlorofluorocarbons, most of which were not greenhouse gases but posed other health and safety problems. In fact, natural gas (which is mostly methane) was considered to be the solution to burning coal and fuel oil, but it was in short supply and expensive. Relatively dangerous means of storing and transporting liquified natural gas were suggested and often used.
Since the development of fracking we are now practically asphyxiated by so much of the stuff which turns out to be a greater danger to the climate than CO2 and present in huge reservoirs in a metastable state on the ocean floor and in the Arctic, just waiting to be released in torrents with a slight rise in the average temperature. Such an event would make cow belching and leaky gas pipelines minor inconveniences by comparison, to say nothing of coal burning power plants and all the cars on all the freeways in North America. When THAT threshold is surpassed you will start to see some really fast heating of the atmosphere. Lessons learned: be careful what you wish for, AND, oppose Trump in the Congress based upon his proposed policies not some hoaky narrative of his being a Russian agent and puppet of Putin.
BTW, Putin also wants unregulated tapping and use of natural gas as a prime energy source but it’s not because he’s in cahoots with Trump, it’s because it’s one of his country’s main exports and sources of income. Invent green energy technologies that beat the cost/benefit ratio of using coal, oil and natural gas as the drivers of industry, commerce, heating and electrical power production and they will supplant those fuel sources in the economies of both the United States and Russia. Then both Trump and Putin will change their tunes without having to gaslight either of these uber capitalists.
Info not seen in MSM
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Trump, Sex Trafficking & How It Ties To Russia
Liz Crokin
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Posted: Mar 05, 2017 12:01 AM
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The shadow government led by former President Barack Obama is working overtime to delegitimize President Donald Trump and his administration. They’ve accused and even set up Trump’s people to tie his administration to “evil” Russia and now Trump’s alleging that Obama tapped his phones. There’s never been such a concerted effort in modern history, if ever, to overthrow a democratically elected U.S. president by not only the Democrats but by some Republicans aka RINOS as well. The bigger question is why are they so desperately trying to stage this coup and sabotage his presidency?…
[read more at link below]
https://townhall.com/columnists/lizcrokin/2017/03/05/trump-sex-trafficking–how-it-ties-to-russia-n2294220
“Never before in history”? See John Kennedy, November 22nd, 1963.
kudos to ms. crokin and of course cynthia mckinney a warrrior crying out into the wilderness. be vigilant and faithful and pray you are kept out of the fury that is to come. evil and the anti-god elements have reached great heights and they should be exposed at every opportunity. this takes great courage but remember god will gather his own. the great spirit is in control and there will be a reckoning for those who have harmed the children. have no doubt!!
Evicting Trump and his anti-environment accomplices will have little to no effect by itself if they are replaced by Mike Pence and his gang. If any effort is to have a desirable effect there will need to be a complete assault on the Republican party and Judas-Democrats such as Joe Manchin who grovels at the feet of King Coal.
We’ll get plenty of “Global Warming’ if the missile maniacs in positions of power start a nuclear war. ” The War Arsonists” are already warming up; maybe for the big one.
http://graysinfo.blogspot.ca/2016/02/the-war-arsonists.html