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</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><a href="https://www.alternet.org/inferno-climate-change-fiery-apocalypse/">https://www.alternet.org/inferno-climate-change-fiery-apocalypse/</a></font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><p style="color: rgb(49, 49, 49); font-family: Georgia, sans-serif; font-size: 20px; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><strong>Jane Braxton Little: A Global Four-Alarm Blaze</strong></p><p style="color: rgb(49, 49, 49); font-family: Georgia, sans-serif; font-size: 20px; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">Just over a year ago, my old friend Jane Braxton Little experienced climate change up close and personal. Greenville, California, the Gold Rush-era town she’d lived in since the 1970s (when I used to visit her there) was burned down in the raging Dixie Fire. She <a href="https://tomdispatch.com/the-dixie-fire-disaster-and-me/" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="blank" class="rm-stats-tracked" style="color: rgb(11, 13, 101); text-decoration-line: none; opacity: 1; transition: color 0.25s ease 0s, background 0.25s ease 0s, opacity 0.25s ease 0s;">wrote about it</a> vividly at <b>TomDispatch</b>. For a time, she became, as she put it, a “climate refugee,” just as so many of <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/nation/2022/10/03/hurricane-ian-housing/" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="blank" class="rm-stats-tracked" style="color: rgb(11, 13, 101); text-decoration-line: none; opacity: 1; transition: color 0.25s ease 0s, background 0.25s ease 0s, opacity 0.25s ease 0s;">the survivors</a> of Hurricane Ian did in Florida this fall.</p><p style="color: rgb(49, 49, 49); font-family: Georgia, sans-serif; font-size: 20px; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">Honestly, it isn’t really up for debate anymore (unless you’re in the Trumpublican Party), is it? This overheating planet of ours is growing ever more perilous right before our eyes, whether you’re talking about increasingly severe <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2022/feb/15/us-west-megadrought-worst-1200-years-study" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="blank" class="rm-stats-tracked" style="color: rgb(11, 13, 101); text-decoration-line: none; opacity: 1; transition: color 0.25s ease 0s, background 0.25s ease 0s, opacity 0.25s ease 0s;">megadroughts</a>, <a href="https://www.bbc.com/news/world-europe-62712301" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="blank" class="rm-stats-tracked" style="color: rgb(11, 13, 101); text-decoration-line: none; opacity: 1; transition: color 0.25s ease 0s, background 0.25s ease 0s, opacity 0.25s ease 0s;">floods</a>, <a href="https://www.space.com/2021-record-wildfire-season-from-space" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="blank" class="rm-stats-tracked" style="color: rgb(11, 13, 101); text-decoration-line: none; opacity: 1; transition: color 0.25s ease 0s, background 0.25s ease 0s, opacity 0.25s ease 0s;">fires</a>, <a href="https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/2022/10/13/climate-change-fueling-hurricanes-global-warming-effects-studied/8184337001/" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="blank" class="rm-stats-tracked" style="color: rgb(11, 13, 101); text-decoration-line: none; opacity: 1; transition: color 0.25s ease 0s, background 0.25s ease 0s, opacity 0.25s ease 0s;">storms</a>, or <a href="https://e360.yale.edu/features/himalayas-glaciers-climate-change" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="blank" class="rm-stats-tracked" style="color: rgb(11, 13, 101); text-decoration-line: none; opacity: 1; transition: color 0.25s ease 0s, background 0.25s ease 0s, opacity 0.25s ease 0s;">melting glaciers</a> and <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/climate-environment/2022/09/06/greenland-ice-melt-heat-wave-summer/" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="blank" class="rm-stats-tracked" style="color: rgb(11, 13, 101); text-decoration-line: none; opacity: 1; transition: color 0.25s ease 0s, background 0.25s ease 0s, opacity 0.25s ease 0s;">ice sheets</a>. And it’s only going to get worse as, despite everything we now know, humanity <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2022/oct/26/atmospheric-levels-greenhouse-gases-record-high" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="blank" class="rm-stats-tracked" style="color: rgb(11, 13, 101); text-decoration-line: none; opacity: 1; transition: color 0.25s ease 0s, background 0.25s ease 0s, opacity 0.25s ease 0s;">continues to put</a> record amounts of greenhouse gases into the atmosphere. As it happens, the latest war on this planet, the <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2022/12/06/world/europe/ukraine-drone-strikes-russian-bases.html" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="blank" class="rm-stats-tracked" style="color: rgb(11, 13, 101); text-decoration-line: none; opacity: 1; transition: color 0.25s ease 0s, background 0.25s ease 0s, opacity 0.25s ease 0s;">still expanding</a> one in Ukraine, is only making matters worse, while pouring <a href="https://theweek.com/energy/1017913/oil-companies-reach-record-profits-amid-russias-war-on-ukraine" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="blank" class="rm-stats-tracked" style="color: rgb(11, 13, 101); text-decoration-line: none; opacity: 1; transition: color 0.25s ease 0s, background 0.25s ease 0s, opacity 0.25s ease 0s;">record profits</a> into the coffers of the giant fossil-fuel companies whose CEOs are living as if there were no tomorrow.</p><p style="color: rgb(49, 49, 49); font-family: Georgia, sans-serif; font-size: 20px; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">Of course, there will indeed be a tomorrow and another after that, even if they prove ever more perilous. When it comes to fire, as Little explains today, in its own fashion, this planet is already ablaze. As a United Nations report put it, we’re <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2022/02/23/climate/climate-change-un-wildfire-report.html" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="blank" class="rm-stats-tracked" style="color: rgb(11, 13, 101); text-decoration-line: none; opacity: 1; transition: color 0.25s ease 0s, background 0.25s ease 0s, opacity 0.25s ease 0s;">experiencing</a> “a global wildfire crisis… turning landscapes into tinderboxes.” Already reporting on climate change when the Dixie Fire hit her community, Little saw all this in a horrifying way. Now, take a step back with her and she’ll fill you in on the inferno this planet threatens to become. <em>Tom</em></p><p style="color: rgb(49, 49, 49); font-family: Georgia, sans-serif; font-size: 20px; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><strong>Inferno: </strong><strong>Climate Disaster Is Turning the Planet into a Tinderbox</strong></p><p style="color: rgb(49, 49, 49); font-family: Georgia, sans-serif; font-size: 20px; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">Mike Savala’s boots scuffed the edge of a singed patch of forest littered with skinny fingers of burnt ponderosa pine needles. Nearby, an oak seedling sizzled as a yellow-shirted firefighter hit it with a stream of water. Spurts of smoke rose from blackened ground the size of a hockey rink. A 100-foot Ponderosa pine towered overhead.</p><p style="color: rgb(49, 49, 49); font-family: Georgia, sans-serif; font-size: 20px; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">“Third response today,” said Savala, shaking his head.</p><p style="color: rgb(49, 49, 49); font-family: Georgia, sans-serif; font-size: 20px; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">This hillside in my own backyard in California’s northern Sierra Nevada mountains hadn’t seen lightning for months and yet it had still burst into flames. All summer long, it had baked in heat that extended into an unseasonably hot autumn. Now, in late October, it was charred by a fire of mysterious origin. A spark from a wandering hiker? An errant ember from a burn pile? Spontaneous combustion?</p><p style="color: rgb(49, 49, 49); font-family: Georgia, sans-serif; font-size: 20px; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">Savala, a <a href="https://www.grth.org/history" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="blank" class="rm-stats-tracked" style="color: rgb(11, 13, 101); text-decoration-line: none; opacity: 1; transition: color 0.25s ease 0s, background 0.25s ease 0s, opacity 0.25s ease 0s;">fire-crew boss</a> for the Greenville Rancheria of Maidu Indians, scanned the sky. Cloudless<b>. There had only been three inches of precipitation since July 1st — 15% of <a href="https://www.ggweather.com/seasonal_rain.htm" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="blank" class="rm-stats-tracked" style="color: rgb(11, 13, 101); text-decoration-line: none; opacity: 1; transition: color 0.25s ease 0s, background 0.25s ease 0s, opacity 0.25s ease 0s;">norma</a><a href="https://www.ggweather.com/seasonal_rain.htm." rel="noopener noreferrer" target="blank" class="rm-stats-tracked" style="color: rgb(11, 13, 101); text-decoration-line: none; opacity: 1; transition: color 0.25s ease 0s, background 0.25s ease 0s, opacity 0.25s ease 0s;">l</a>. And no wonder, since California is in the throes of its fourth dry year. More than 95% of the state is now <a href="https://droughtmonitor.unl.edu/CurrentMap/StateDroughtMonitor.aspx?CA" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="blank" class="rm-stats-tracked" style="color: rgb(11, 13, 101); text-decoration-line: none; opacity: 1; transition: color 0.25s ease 0s, background 0.25s ease 0s, opacity 0.25s ease 0s;">classified</a> as under severe or extreme drought.</b></p><p style="color: rgb(49, 49, 49); font-family: Georgia, sans-serif; font-size: 20px;"><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">Although small and easily contained, this tiny fire in rural northeastern California was another wake-up call, up close and personal, about an ominous trend. A warming planet and changing land use are fueling a dramatic surge in forest fires worldwide. </span><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 153, 0);">Terrifying <a href="https://www.unep.org/resources/report/spreading-wildfire-rising-threat-extraordinary-landscape-fires" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="blank" class="rm-stats-tracked" style="color: rgb(11, 13, 101); text-decoration-line: none; opacity: 1; transition: color 0.25s ease 0s, background 0.25s ease 0s, opacity 0.25s ease 0s;">projections</a> forecast a 57% increase in extreme fires globally by century’s end. The indisputable cause: climate change.</span></p><p style="color: rgb(49, 49, 49); font-family: Georgia, sans-serif; font-size: 20px;"><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);">“The heating of the planet is turning landscapes into tinderboxes,” a team of 50 researchers from six continents reported in </span><a href="https://www.unep.org/resources/report/spreading-wildfire-rising-threat-extraordinary-landscape-fires" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="blank" class="rm-stats-tracked" style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102); color: rgb(11, 13, 101); text-decoration-line: none; opacity: 1; transition: color 0.25s ease 0s, background 0.25s ease 0s, opacity 0.25s ease 0s;">“Spreading Like Wildfire</a><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);">: The Rising Threat of Extraordinary Landscape Fires,” published this year by the United Nations Environment Program. </span><b style="background-color: rgb(255, 153, 0);">That document describes what can only be viewed as a future flaming version of planetary collapse that could push humanity perilously close to a precipice of no return.</b></p><p style="color: rgb(49, 49, 49); font-family: Georgia, sans-serif; font-size: 20px; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">Like dozens of previous reports from the U.N. and other international organizations, it describes a situation that, while dire, isn’t yet hopeless. Despite those ever stronger, hotter, drier winds that will fan the flames, governments could slow climate change by improving their forest management techniques, planning and preparing far better, and communicating more effectively. To reduce the likelihood of future mega-fires means working with forests where fire is an element as essential to ecosystems as sunshine or rain. It also means working with forest communities, where local knowledge accumulated over generations is too often shunned. And of course, it means honestly confronting our reluctance to ween ourselves from the fossil fuels that power our factories, cars, and those absurdly unnecessary leaf blowers that are backing us toward the cliff.</p><p style="color: rgb(49, 49, 49); font-family: Georgia, sans-serif; font-size: 20px; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><strong>A Fiery Feedback Loop</strong></p><p style="color: rgb(49, 49, 49); font-family: Georgia, sans-serif; font-size: 20px; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">If my small backyard fire was a personal wake-up call, the 2021 Dixie fire was a four-alarm blaze. On its rampage from the Feather River Canyon through Lassen Volcanic National Park and beyond, it <a rel="noopener noreferrer" target="blank" style="color: rgb(11, 13, 101); opacity: 1; transition: color 0.25s ease 0s, background 0.25s ease 0s, opacity 0.25s ease 0s;" /><a href="https://tomdispatch.com/a-tour-guide-to-hell-on-earth-small-town-style/" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="blank" class="rm-stats-tracked" style="color: rgb(11, 13, 101); text-decoration-line: none; opacity: 1; transition: color 0.25s ease 0s, background 0.25s ease 0s, opacity 0.25s ease 0s;">destroyed</a> my adopted town of Greenville, 160 miles northeast of San Francisco. In fact, it torched close to a million acres. Nearly half of them burned so intensely that the once-majestic, now blackened pine and fir forests there may never again support the biologically diverse ecosystems that drew me here so long ago.</p><p style="color: rgb(49, 49, 49); font-family: Georgia, sans-serif; font-size: 20px; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">The single-largest fire in California’s history, Dixie was part of a record-breaking fire year globally. Around the world, fires burned nearly 23 million acres, an area almost the size of Portugal. Dixie contributed to the worldwide loss to fire of more than a third of the tree cover that disappeared in those 12 months, according to a <a href="https://www.wri.org/insights/global-trends-forest-fires?utm_campaign=wridigest&utm_source=wridigest-2022-08-23&utm_medium=email&utm_content=readmore" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="blank" class="rm-stats-tracked" style="color: rgb(11, 13, 101); text-decoration-line: none; opacity: 1; transition: color 0.25s ease 0s, background 0.25s ease 0s, opacity 0.25s ease 0s;">report</a> from the World Resources Institute. And this is only a preview of what’s to come. <b>Scientists believe that there may be a 30% increase in extreme fires globally by 2050.</b></p><p style="color: rgb(49, 49, 49); font-family: Georgia, sans-serif; font-size: 20px;"><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);">Such an acceleration of forest fires will, it seems, spare few parts of the world. Fires, burning longer and hotter, are already flaring in unexpected places, shattering assumptions about what’s safe, let alone normal. Even the Arctic, that remote expanse of sea ice, treeless permafrost, and minus 40-degree Celsius temperatures, home to polar bears, lemmings, and snowy owls, is now beginning to burn. After July 2019, the hottest month on <a href="https://www.noaa.gov/news/july-2019-was-hottest-month-on-record-for-planet" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="blank" class="rm-stats-tracked" style="color: rgb(11, 13, 101); text-decoration-line: none; opacity: 1; transition: color 0.25s ease 0s, background 0.25s ease 0s, opacity 0.25s ease 0s;">record</a> so far, fires erupted across the <b>Arctic Circle in Alaska, Greenland, and Siberia. As temperatures soared to as much as six degrees Celsius above normal, flames spurted across an expanse of tundra larger than England.</b></span></p><p style="color: rgb(49, 49, 49); font-family: Georgia, sans-serif; font-size: 20px;"><b style=""><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);">Arctic fires are particularly worrisome because of the vast amounts of</span><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 102, 0);"> carbon </span><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);">locked beneath that frozen soil.</span></b><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);"> </span><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 153, 0);">Much of it, after all, is peatlands, largely formed at the end of the last ice age, 12,000 years ago. Although it covers just 3% of the Earth’s surface, peat sequesters 42% of the carbon stored in all other types of vegetation, including the world’s forests</span><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);">. Global warming is now drying out that peat, making it ever more susceptible to fire. As it burns, of course, it releases that carbon.</span></p><p style="color: rgb(49, 49, 49); font-family: Georgia, sans-serif; font-size: 20px;"><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);">Nor is such a bio-feedback loop limited to the Arctic. As the world becomes hotter and drier, the carbon we emit from our reliance on fossil fuels is drying out forests everywhere, making them ever more prone to burn, while extending burning seasons globally. Firefighters in California used to don fire-resistant Nomex shirts in May or June, knowing they could shed them by mid-October. Now, there’s barely a pause before things heat up again and those shirts go right back on.</span></p><p style="color: rgb(49, 49, 49); font-family: Georgia, sans-serif; font-size: 20px;"><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);">As wildfires are transformed into year-round challenges, the carbon they release only further contributes to emissions from other sources, making it that much more difficult to halt rising temperatures. Think of it as a mutually exacerbating feedback loop: wildfires are worsened by climate change, which, in turn, is intensified by the ever-fiercer wildfires.</span></p><p style="color: rgb(49, 49, 49); font-family: Georgia, sans-serif; font-size: 20px; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><strong>Management for Better — or Worse...</strong></p></div></div><div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">=</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">an 7 22</font></div><div><p><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);">In mere weeks, the Environmental Protection Agency is <a href="https://www.eenews.net/articles/one-climate-rule-wont-provoke-the-supreme-court/" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="blank" class="rm-stats-tracked" style="text-decoration-line: none; opacity: 1; transition: color 0.25s ease 0s, background 0.25s ease 0s, opacity 0.25s ease 0s;">set to unveil</a> a supplemental draft rule aimed at cracking down on the oil and gas industry’s rampant methane emissions<b>. This rule, which sidesteps the Supreme Court’s West Virginia v. EPA ruling, provides a necessary advancement to <a href="https://www.epa.gov/sites/default/files/2016-09/documents/nsps-overview-fs.pdf" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="blank" class="rm-stats-tracked" style="text-decoration-line: none; opacity: 1; transition: color 0.25s ease 0s, background 0.25s ease 0s, opacity 0.25s ease 0s;">2016 rules that were rolled out</a> similarly regulating methane emissions as part of the Obama administration’s ambitious climate goals.</b> New rules could not come at a better time, given recent findings of rampant methane emissions in the oil-rich Permian Basin, where some fossil fuel companies are <a href="https://apnews.com/article/science-texas-trending-news-climate-and-environment-0eb6880f7c4532a845155a3bd44c2e4b" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="blank" class="rm-stats-tracked" style="text-decoration-line: none; opacity: 1; transition: color 0.25s ease 0s, background 0.25s ease 0s, opacity 0.25s ease 0s;">relentlessly polluting</a> the region with nonstop methane emissions.</font></p><p style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Taking data from NASA’s Jet Propulsion Lab project known as <a href="https://carbonmapper.org/" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="blank" class="rm-stats-tracked" style="text-decoration-line: none; opacity: 1; transition: color 0.25s ease 0s, background 0.25s ease 0s, opacity 0.25s ease 0s;">Carbon Mapper</a>, the <em>Associated Press</em> found dozens of so-called “super emitters” located in the area, of which just 10 companies owned 164 sites responsible for major methane emissions. The Center for Biological Diversity’s Climate Law Institute Director, Kassie Siegel, provided an eye-opening analogy to the methane issue: “If carbon dioxide is the fossil-fuel broiler of our heating planet, methane is a blowtorch,” Siegel told the <em>Associated Press</em>. It’s long been understood that methane is <a href="https://www.epa.gov/gmi/importance-methane" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="blank" class="rm-stats-tracked" style="text-decoration-line: none; opacity: 1; transition: color 0.25s ease 0s, background 0.25s ease 0s, opacity 0.25s ease 0s;">more than 25 times</a> more potent than carbon dioxide.</font></p><p style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Yet polluters freely emit methane with little to no consequence because, at this juncture, it is ultimately a company’s responsibility to account for its own bad actions. This has been a massive issue <a href="https://www.dailykos.com/stories/2022/6/15/2104303/-Venture-Global-can-barely-be-bothered-to-obtain-500-permits-to-pollute-legally-report-finds" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="blank" title="" class="rm-stats-tracked" style="text-decoration-line: none; opacity: 1; transition: color 0.25s ease 0s, background 0.25s ease 0s, opacity 0.25s ease 0s;">throughout the Gulf South</a> and beyond. In Colorado, <a href="https://coloradosun.com/2022/07/22/front-range-oilfield-methane-air-pollution/" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="blank" class="rm-stats-tracked" style="text-decoration-line: none; opacity: 1; transition: color 0.25s ease 0s, background 0.25s ease 0s, opacity 0.25s ease 0s;">local air quality monitoring</a> found that company reports of reduced methane emissions were an outright lie. Officials in towns and counties near Boulder were alarmed that claims of methane emissions being reduced by half weren’t even close to what on-the-ground air quality monitors had found. Colorado is <a href="https://www.reuters.com/business/cop/rocky-mountain-high-us-looks-colorado-methane-emissions-policy-2021-10-24/" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="blank" class="rm-stats-tracked" style="text-decoration-line: none; opacity: 1; transition: color 0.25s ease 0s, background 0.25s ease 0s, opacity 0.25s ease 0s;">considered a leader in methane emission regulation</a>, yet there is still much work to be done to ensure that fossil fuel companies aren’t continuing to do their worst.</font></p><p><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">The Associated Press cites years of inaction and the difficulty of tracking methane emissions that are intermittent as major culprits, along with the oil and gas industry’s own practices of simply flaring and venting its methane because companies are overwhelmed by their own output.</span><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);"> Regional oversight has all but signaled its support of such actions. An environmental consultant told the outlet that the Texas Commission on Environmental Quality rarely, if ever, inspects oil and gas sites. And the <a href="https://www.rrc.texas.gov/oil-and-gas/" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="blank" class="rm-stats-tracked" style="text-decoration-line: none; opacity: 1; transition: color 0.25s ease 0s, background 0.25s ease 0s, opacity 0.25s ease 0s;">primary agency</a> overseeing onshore oil and gas projects in the state—the Texas Railroad Commission—<a href="https://commissionshift.org/texas-railroad-commissioners-close-ties-to-oil-and-gas-industries-that-they-oversee-raise-questions-about-ethical-standards/" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="blank" class="rm-stats-tracked" style="text-decoration-line: none; opacity: 1; transition: color 0.25s ease 0s, background 0.25s ease 0s, opacity 0.25s ease 0s;">itself benefits from a lack of oversight</a>, allowing oil-loving commissioners to continue sitting on their hands in favor of constant fossil fuel development and production. If states like Colorado can’t even seem to get things right, it feels like Texas doesn’t even stand a chance to do right by its citizens.</span></font></p></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">=</font></div></div><div><p><font face="Times New Roman" size="4"></font></p><p><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><a href="https://insideclimatenews.org/news/02042021/meat-dairy-lobby-climate-action/">https://insideclimatenews.org/news/02042021/meat-dairy-lobby-climate-action/</a></font></p><p style="box-sizing: inherit; margin-bottom: 0.75rem; grid-column: 4 / span 6; word-break: break-word; z-index: 1; margin-top: 0px; font-family: Tiempos, serif; font-size: 20px; background-color: rgb(247, 247, 247);"><b>Top U.S. meat and dairy companies, along with livestock and agricultural lobbying groups, have spent millions campaigning against climate action and sowing doubt about the links between animal agriculture and climate change, according to new research from New York University.</b></p><p style="box-sizing: inherit; margin-bottom: 0.75rem; grid-column: 4 / span 6; word-break: break-word; z-index: 1; margin-top: 0px; font-family: Tiempos, serif; font-size: 20px; background-color: rgb(247, 247, 247);">The study, published this week in the journal Climatic Change, also said the world’s biggest meat and dairy companies aren’t doing enough to curb their greenhouse gas emissions, with only a handful making pledges to reach net-zero emissions by 2050.</p><p style="box-sizing: inherit; margin-bottom: 0.75rem; grid-column: 4 / span 6; word-break: break-word; z-index: 1; margin-top: 0px; font-family: Tiempos, serif; font-size: 20px; background-color: rgb(247, 247, 247);"><b>“These companies are some of the world’s biggest contributors to climate change,”</b> said Oliver Lazarus, one of the study’s three authors, now a doctoral student at Harvard University. “They’ve spent a considerable amount of time and money downplaying the link between animal agriculture and climate change."</p><p style="box-sizing: inherit; margin-bottom: 0.75rem; grid-column: 4 / span 6; word-break: break-word; z-index: 1; margin-top: 0px; font-family: Tiempos, serif; font-size: 20px; background-color: rgb(247, 247, 247);">
</p><p style="box-sizing: inherit; margin-bottom: 0.75rem; grid-column: 4 / span 6; word-break: break-word; z-index: 1; margin-top: 0px; font-family: Tiempos, serif; font-size: 20px; background-color: rgb(247, 247, 247);">the research, which builds on data first published in 2017 and 2018 by the advocacy group GRAIN and the Institute for Agriculture and Trade Policy (IATP), is the first peer-reviewed study to document the individual carbon footprints of meat and dairy companies.</p><p style="box-sizing: inherit; margin-bottom: 0.75rem; grid-column: 4 / span 6; word-break: break-word; z-index: 1; margin-top: 0px; font-family: Tiempos, serif; font-size: 20px; background-color: rgb(247, 247, 247);">The authors found that, as of last summer, only four of the 35 companies—Dairy Farmers of America, Nestlé, Danish Crown and Danone—had pledged to reach net-zero emissions by 2050.</p><p style="box-sizing: inherit; margin-bottom: 0.75rem; grid-column: 4 / span 6; word-break: break-word; z-index: 1; margin-top: 0px; font-family: Tiempos, serif; font-size: 20px;"><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);">JBS, Cargill, Hormel, Fonterra and Smithfield had not. China-based Smithfield has since pledged to be carbon-negative by 2030 and Brazil-based JBS, the world’s largest meat processor, announced last week that it would reach net-zero by 2040. A spokeswoman for Hormel said the company was “on a path to zero” and plans to set a target for greenhouse gas reductions by 2023.</span></p><p style="box-sizing: inherit; margin-bottom: 0.75rem; grid-column: 4 / span 6; word-break: break-word; z-index: 1; margin-top: 0px; font-family: Tiempos, serif; font-size: 20px;"><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);">These commitments, the authors say, are short on specifics or focus on carbon dioxide reductions,</span><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 204, 102);"> while the bulk of emissions from animal agriculture comes from methane</span><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);">, an especially potent greenhouse gas. In some cases, the companies’ commitments don’t address emissions from their whole supply chain</span><span style="background-color: rgb(247, 247, 247);">.</span></p><p style="box-sizing: inherit; margin-bottom: 0.75rem; grid-column: 4 / span 6; word-break: break-word; z-index: 1; margin-top: 0px; font-family: Tiempos, serif; font-size: 20px; background-color: rgb(247, 247, 247);">JBS, for example, has said in public statements that it does not assess land-use change—a major source of agricultural greenhouse gases—from third-party suppliers. These are emissions, the company said in 2019, “over which the Company has no responsibility or indirect responsibility.”</p><p style="box-sizing: inherit; margin-bottom: 0.75rem; grid-column: 4 / span 6; word-break: break-word; z-index: 1; margin-top: 0px; font-family: Tiempos, serif; font-size: 20px; background-color: rgb(247, 247, 247);">Overall, animal agriculture is responsible for more than 14 percent of global greenhouse gas emissions. According to calculations by GRAIN and IATP, the five largest livestock-based producers—JBS, Tyson, Cargill, Dairy Farmers of America (DFA) and Fonterra—emitted more greenhouse gases than ExxonMobil. The NYU researchers said they’re not aware of more recent and accessible company-level data, although a <a href="https://www.iatp.org/milking-planet" style="box-sizing: inherit; background-color: transparent; color: rgb(5, 135, 64); text-decoration-line: none;">2020 report</a> from IATP found that emissions from individual dairy companies climbed in the years since the GRAIN assessment.</p><p style="box-sizing: inherit; margin-bottom: 0.75rem; grid-column: 4 / span 6; word-break: break-word; z-index: 1; margin-top: 0px; font-family: Tiempos, serif; font-size: 20px; background-color: rgb(247, 247, 247);">Recent reports, including from the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, have found that cutting emissions from agriculture is critical for controlling runaway climate change. But the new research found that only seven of the 16 countries where the largest livestock producers are based mention animal agriculture in their plans to meet the targets of the Paris climate agreement.</p><p style="box-sizing: inherit; margin-bottom: 0.75rem; grid-column: 4 / span 6; word-break: break-word; z-index: 1; margin-top: 0px; font-family: Tiempos, serif; font-size: 20px;"><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);">While the Paris agreement focuses on individual country’s emissions—and their potential to reduce them—the authors of the new report looked at how these companies’ future emissions compared to the emissions reductions pledges of their home countries<b>. They determined that emissions produced by Switzerland-based Nestlé, the world’s largest food company, and New Zealand-based dairy giant, Fonterra, were so high that they would eclipse their respective home country’s emissions pledges, in effect consuming the entirety of those countries’ emissions budgets. Denmark-based Arla, the largest producer of dairy products in Scandinavia, will account for 60 percent of Denmark’s total emissions.</b></span></p><p style="box-sizing: inherit; margin-bottom: 0.75rem; grid-column: 4 / span 6; word-break: break-word; z-index: 1; margin-top: 0px; font-family: Tiempos, serif; font-size: 20px; background-color: rgb(247, 247, 247);"><b>“Those meat and dairy emissions would actually completely wipe out the emissions (those countries) say they’re going to be emitting according to their Paris agreement pledges,” </b> said Jennifer Jacquet, an associate professor in NYU’s Department of Environmental Studies and one of the authors. </p><p style="box-sizing: inherit; margin-bottom: 0.75rem; grid-column: 4 / span 6; word-break: break-word; z-index: 1; margin-top: 0px; font-family: Tiempos, serif; font-size: 20px;"><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 204, 102);">In taking this approach, the authors say, they’re assigning responsibility for greenhouse gas emissions to countries on a corporate basis.</span></p><p style="box-sizing: inherit; margin-bottom: 0.75rem; grid-column: 4 / span 6; word-break: break-word; z-index: 1; margin-top: 0px; font-family: Tiempos, serif; font-size: 20px; background-color: rgb(247, 247, 247);">“The Paris agreement suggests that Brazil is responsible for what happens in Brazil. What we said was: What if Brazil was responsible for JBS or China for Smithfield?” Jacquet said.</p><p style="box-sizing: inherit; margin-bottom: 0.75rem; grid-column: 4 / span 6; word-break: break-word; z-index: 1; margin-top: 0px; font-family: Tiempos, serif; font-size: 20px; background-color: rgb(247, 247, 247);"><b>The authors said they were following the pattern of seminal studies on the fossil fuel industry, which<a href="https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007%2Fs10584-013-0986-y" style="box-sizing: inherit; background-color: transparent; color: rgb(5, 135, 64); text-decoration-line: none;"> calculated</a> historic emissions from individual companies and then <a href="https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s10584-015-1472-5" style="box-sizing: inherit; background-color: transparent; color: rgb(5, 135, 64); text-decoration-line: none;">assigned</a> responsibility to those companies</b>. </p><p style="box-sizing: inherit; margin-bottom: 0.75rem; grid-column: 4 / span 6; word-break: break-word; z-index: 1; margin-top: 0px; font-family: Tiempos, serif; font-size: 20px; background-color: rgb(247, 247, 247);">“Essentially what we’re trying to do is build out the climate responsibility of meat and dairy producers,” Jacquet said.</p><p style="box-sizing: inherit; margin-bottom: 0.75rem; grid-column: 4 / span 6; word-break: break-word; z-index: 1; margin-top: 0px; font-family: Tiempos, serif; font-size: 20px; background-color: rgb(247, 247, 247);">A spokeswoman for Fonterra said its carbon footprint was “46% lower than other major milk producers” and that the company was “actively working on tools and technologies to reduce emissions and help New Zealand reach its climate change commitments.”</p><h2 style="box-sizing: inherit; clear: both; margin: 48px 0px 24px; font-family: Tiempos, serif; font-weight: 400; font-size: 1.75rem; line-height: 1.28; grid-column: 4 / span 6; word-break: break-word; z-index: 1; background-color: rgb(247, 247, 247);"><span style="box-sizing: inherit; font-weight: 700;">Filling a Research Gap</span></h2><p style="box-sizing: inherit; margin-bottom: 0.75rem; grid-column: 4 / span 6; word-break: break-word; z-index: 1; margin-top: 0px; font-family: Tiempos, serif; font-size: 20px; background-color: rgb(247, 247, 247);">The next goal of the study, Jacquet said, was to examine how these companies and their lobbying groups have fought climate regulation in Congress and before the Environmental Protection Agency, and to analyze how they’ve shaped a narrative around animal agriculture’s role in climate change.</p><p style="box-sizing: inherit; margin-bottom: 0.75rem; grid-column: 4 / span 6; word-break: break-word; z-index: 1; margin-top: 0px; font-family: Tiempos, serif; font-size: 20px; background-color: rgb(247, 247, 247);">The authors calculated that U.S. agribusiness, which includes meat and dairy companies and also other agricultural companies, spent $750 million on national political candidates from 2000 to 2020. The U.S. energy sector, by comparison, spent $1 billion. </p><p style="box-sizing: inherit; margin-bottom: 0.75rem; grid-column: 4 / span 6; word-break: break-word; z-index: 1; margin-top: 0px; font-family: Tiempos, serif; font-size: 20px; background-color: rgb(247, 247, 247);">The same agribusinesses spent $2.5 billion on lobbying from 2000 and 2019, compared to $6.2 billion by energy and natural resource companies. </p><p style="box-sizing: inherit; margin-bottom: 0.75rem; grid-column: 4 / span 6; word-break: break-word; z-index: 1; margin-top: 0px; font-family: Tiempos, serif; font-size: 20px; background-color: rgb(247, 247, 247);">The authors said these companies also spent their lobbying money on issues beyond climate change, including the Farm Bill and farm subsidies. But, they wrote, “it is often difficult to disentangle the two as policy decisions on crop incentives, land-use, and animal production methods have large implications for the extent and intensity of the animal agriculture sector’s emissions.”</p><p style="box-sizing: inherit; margin-bottom: 0.75rem; grid-column: 4 / span 6; word-break: break-word; z-index: 1; margin-top: 0px; font-family: Tiempos, serif; font-size: 20px; background-color: rgb(247, 247, 247);">The report also looked at the contributions of individual companies. Exxon spent roughly $17 million on political campaigns and more than $240 million on lobbying during the 20 years studied. In the same time frame, Tyson gave $3.2 million to political campaigns. But relative to each company’s revenue, Tyson spent double what Exxon spent on political campaigns and 33 percent more on lobbying.</p><p style="box-sizing: inherit; margin-bottom: 0.75rem; grid-column: 4 / span 6; word-break: break-word; z-index: 1; margin-top: 0px; font-family: Tiempos, serif; font-size: 20px; background-color: rgb(247, 247, 247);">Industry lobby groups—the National Cattlemen’s Beef Association, the National Pork Producers Council, the North American Meat Institute, the National Chicken Council, the International Dairy Foods Association and the American Farm Bureau Federation, along with its state members—spent nearly $200 million, much of it lobbying against climate and environmental regulations, from 2000 to 2019, the authors found.</p><p style="box-sizing: inherit; margin-bottom: 0.75rem; grid-column: 4 / span 6; word-break: break-word; z-index: 1; margin-top: 0px; font-family: Tiempos, serif; font-size: 20px; background-color: rgb(247, 247, 247);">A spokesperson for the National Pork Producers Council said the organization voted against a cap-and-trade bill specifically because it “would have converted massive amounts of cropland to forest” at a time when pork producers were already struggling to gain access to feed.</p><p style="box-sizing: inherit; margin-bottom: 0.75rem; grid-column: 4 / span 6; word-break: break-word; z-index: 1; margin-top: 0px; font-family: Tiempos, serif; font-size: 20px; background-color: rgb(247, 247, 247);">The National Cattlemen’s Beef Association and the North American Meat Institute (NAMI), the new study said, published or funded research downplaying the emissions from livestock production, often pointing to the low percentage relative to overall U.S. emissions. </p><p style="box-sizing: inherit; margin-bottom: 0.75rem; grid-column: 4 / span 6; word-break: break-word; z-index: 1; margin-top: 0px; font-family: Tiempos, serif; font-size: 20px; background-color: rgb(247, 247, 247);">Sarah Little, a spokeswoman for NAMI, said the report referenced outdated documents. “NAMI members are at the forefront of research and innovation to strengthen meat’s contributions and ambitious commitments to healthy diets and protecting our environment. The U.S. meat sector has dramatically reduced its impact on the environment in recent decades, including by reducing greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions…. This study was already outdated the day it was researched.”</p><p style="box-sizing: inherit; margin-bottom: 0.75rem; grid-column: 4 / span 6; word-break: break-word; z-index: 1; margin-top: 0px; font-family: Tiempos, serif; font-size: 20px; background-color: rgb(247, 247, 247);">The nine U.S.-based companies covered in the report emitted 6 percent of overall U.S. emissions, the study found, but emitted about 350 million metric tons of carbon dioxide. That’s on the same scale as Brazil, which has the highest carbon footprint from animal agriculture and where the top four livestock companies emitted about 380 million metric tons of the greenhouse gas annually. But that amounts to about 28 percent of that country’s emissions.</p><p style="box-sizing: inherit; margin-bottom: 0.75rem; grid-column: 4 / span 6; word-break: break-word; z-index: 1; margin-top: 0px; font-family: Tiempos, serif; font-size: 20px; background-color: rgb(247, 247, 247);">“The US industry really leans on Brazil’s terrible carbon footprint to compare to its own,” Jacquet said, but domestic agriculture is “high in terms of absolute emissions.”</p><p style="box-sizing: inherit; margin-bottom: 0.75rem; grid-column: 4 / span 6; word-break: break-word; z-index: 1; margin-top: 0px; font-family: Tiempos, serif; font-size: 20px; background-color: rgb(247, 247, 247);">The report also notes that the U.S. companies’ emissions totals presented in the study don’t include those connected to production outside of the U.S. </p><p style="box-sizing: inherit; margin-bottom: 0.75rem; grid-column: 4 / span 6; word-break: break-word; z-index: 1; margin-top: 0px; font-family: Tiempos, serif; font-size: 20px; background-color: rgb(247, 247, 247);">The authors pointed out in an interview that there’s been ample academic research into the fossil fuel industry’s attempts to influence public discourse, but that a similar body of research into the agriculture industry’s efforts has not yet emerged. That could largely be attributed, they said, to the fact that very little agricultural research is done outside of industry-influenced universities or by independent researchers.</p><p style="box-sizing: inherit; margin-bottom: 0.75rem; grid-column: 4 / span 6; word-break: break-word; z-index: 1; margin-top: 0px; font-family: Tiempos, serif; font-size: 20px; background-color: rgb(247, 247, 247);">“It’s not surprising that they’re this active in shaping climate discourse,” Lazarus said, referring to the livestock companies. “What we’re trying to do is show the extent to which that has largely been ignored.”</p></div><div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">=</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" style="background-color: rgb(255, 153, 0);">omfg carbon AND methane bomb?!</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><a href="https://www.alternet.org/2020/10/understanding-the-norths-climate-change-trifecta/">https://www.alternet.org/2020/10/understanding-the-norths-climate-change-trifecta/</a></font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><p style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><b>Arctic Circle became unbelievably hot on June 20. In the Russian community of Verkhoyansk, temperatures topped 38C, <a href="https://public.wmo.int/en/media/news/june-sees-more-global-heat-especially-arctic-siberia" style="text-decoration-line: none; opacity: 1; transition: color 0.25s ease 0s, background 0.25s ease 0s, opacity 0.25s ease 0s;">marking what may be the highest air temperature ever recorded within the Arctic</a>.</b></font></p><p style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">The temperatures at Verkhoyansk are part of a larger trend across western Russia this summer, with small communities throughout the region reporting temperatures that are <a href="https://twitter.com/mikarantane/status/1280900094913585152?s=20" style="text-decoration-line: none; opacity: 1; transition: color 0.25s ease 0s, background 0.25s ease 0s, opacity 0.25s ease 0s;">smashing local records</a> that have stood for decades. During the latter half of June, <b>surface temperatures throughout western Siberia were as much as <a href="https://climate.copernicus.eu/arctic-siberias-unusual-warm-spell-continues" style="text-decoration-line: none; opacity: 1; transition: color 0.25s ease 0s, background 0.25s ease 0s, opacity 0.25s ease 0s;">10C above historical</a> norms, marking one of the hottest Junes on record despite relatively cool temperatures at the start of the month.</b></font></p><div data-react-class="Tweet" data-react-props="{" tweetid="tweetId" style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><p><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);">For scientists the world-over these record-breaking temperatures are alarm bells, demonstrating the kind of extreme weather events we can <a href="https://theconversation.com/100-degrees-in-siberia-5-ways-the-extreme-arctic-heat-wave-follows-a-disturbing-pattern-141442" style="text-decoration-line: none; opacity: 1; transition: color 0.25s ease 0s, background 0.25s ease 0s, opacity 0.25s ease 0s;">expect to see more often</a> if climate change continues unchecked. However, it is the long-term fallout from modern heat waves that has many northern scientists deeply concerned, as they will affect our planet for decades to come.</font></p><h2 style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">The fires that follow</font></h2><p><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" style="background-color: rgb(255, 204, 102);"><b>During heat waves surface temperatures soar, often triggering a chain of fire-promoting weather conditions including extreme thunderstorms</b>. These thunderstorms have hundreds of <a href="https://doi.org/10.1038/nclimate3329" style="text-decoration-line: none; opacity: 1; transition: color 0.25s ease 0s, background 0.25s ease 0s, opacity 0.25s ease 0s;">lightning strikes that can ignite the dry soils</a> and vegetation that serve as fuel for fire.</font></p><p style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><b>In northern regions like the boreal biome, these fire-promoting conditions can cause large-scale wildfires that burn <a href="https://doi.org/10.1111/gcb.14287" style="text-decoration-line: none; opacity: 1; transition: color 0.25s ease 0s, background 0.25s ease 0s, opacity 0.25s ease 0s;">millions of hectares of forest</a> in a single summer.</b></font></p><p style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Historically, humanity has considered wildfire a true disaster and spent considerable resources to suppress them. We now understand that despite the initial loss of established trees and soils, wildfires are a natural and integral part of the boreal biome.</font></p><p><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" style="background-color: rgb(255, 204, 102);">Modern wildfires, however, are occurring with increasing frequency and intensity, covering a larger area due weather events like severe heat waves. In extreme fire years, these <a href="https://doi.org/10.1071/WF17095" style="text-decoration-line: none; opacity: 1; transition: color 0.25s ease 0s, background 0.25s ease 0s, opacity 0.25s ease 0s;">modern wildfires can burn deep into the organic soils</a> that characterize boreal forests. <b>These carbon-rich soils have been built up over thousands of years and hold approximately <a href="https://doi.org/10.4155/cmt.13.77" style="text-decoration-line: none; opacity: 1; transition: color 0.25s ease 0s, background 0.25s ease 0s, opacity 0.25s ease 0s;">30 per cent of the world's terrestrial carbon stocks</a>.</b></font></p><p><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" style="background-color: rgb(255, 153, 0);">When fires burn deep into soils or return too quickly to a forest, they lose their <a href="https://doi.org/10.1038/s41586-019-1474-y" style="text-decoration-line: none; opacity: 1; transition: color 0.25s ease 0s, background 0.25s ease 0s, opacity 0.25s ease 0s;">“ancient carbon" stocks</a>. Instead of being held in the ground these ancient carbon reserves are combusted and released back into the atmosphere, increasing the carbon levels. The higher carbon dioxide levels generated by wildfires intensify climate change impacts like heat waves, which can lead to further wildfires, forming a powerful “positive feedback" loop with climate change.</font></p><p><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" style="background-color: rgb(255, 204, 102);">While these trends alone are alarming, northern researchers warn that the fallout from heat waves won't stop when the fires burn out. In northern regions where the soils historically stay frozen year-round, a <a href="https://doi.org/10.1038/s41467-018-05457-1" style="text-decoration-line: none; opacity: 1; transition: color 0.25s ease 0s, background 0.25s ease 0s, opacity 0.25s ease 0s;">whole new set of changes</a> are beginning to take form.</font></p><h2 style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">When permafrost perishes</font></h2><p><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);">Permafrost forms on the landscape when soil materials remain below freezing for two or more consecutive years. In some areas permafrost forms in direct response to a cold climate.</font></p><p><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);">As one moves further south, however, <a href="https://doi.org/10.1139/X10-060" style="text-decoration-line: none; opacity: 1; transition: color 0.25s ease 0s, background 0.25s ease 0s, opacity 0.25s ease 0s;">permafrost becomes increasingly dependent on the presence of thick organic soils</a>, surface vegetation and a shady overstorey to survive the warm summer months. In those cases, the ecosystem acts like a giant protective blanket, limiting the sun's heat that is able to reach the frozen permafrost materials below.</font></p><p style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">
</p><p><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" style="background-color: rgb(255, 153, 102);">Carbon-rich peat burns readily, making it good fuel for lightning-caused fires.</font></p><p style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">(U.S. National Parks Service, Western Arctic National Parklands)]</font></p><p><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);">When permafrost ecosystems burn, the wildfire consumes these protective layers, often triggering permafrost thaw. <a href="https://doi.org/10.1038/s41561-019-0526-0" style="text-decoration-line: none; opacity: 1; transition: color 0.25s ease 0s, background 0.25s ease 0s, opacity 0.25s ease 0s;">This can occur gradually, with the thawed layer expanding slowly over decades, or abruptly</a>, with the thawed layer expanding dramatically over years. The land may cave in or sink, plant communities may change completely and <a href="https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/north/landslide-creates-new-lake-in-yukon-s-kluane-national-park-1.2890258" style="text-decoration-line: none; opacity: 1; transition: color 0.25s ease 0s, background 0.25s ease 0s, opacity 0.25s ease 0s;">local water flows may be rerouted.</a></font></p><p><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);">In both cases, the loss of permafrost makes the massive Arctic carbon reserves more vulnerable to loss. With gradual thaw microbes are able to break down and release the previously frozen carbon back to the atmosphere as carbon dioxide. In contrast, abrupt thaw commonly occurs in ice-rich permafrost resulting in warmer but also wetter soils. Under these conditions decomposition still occurs but carbon is commonly returned to the atmosphere as methane, a greenhouse gas approximately <a href="https://www.ipcc.ch/site/assets/uploads/2018/02/WG1AR5_Chapter08_FINAL.pdf" style="text-decoration-line: none; opacity: 1; transition: color 0.25s ease 0s, background 0.25s ease 0s, opacity 0.25s ease 0s;">30 times more powerful</a> at trapping heat than carbon dioxide.</font></p><p><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 153, 0);">All this lost carbon may make the <a href="https://doi.org/10.1038/nature14338" style="text-decoration-line: none; opacity: 1; transition: color 0.25s ease 0s, background 0.25s ease 0s, opacity 0.25s ease 0s;">positive feedback with climate change</a> even stronger.</span><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"> While scientists are working to understand if the vegetation that grows after permafrost thaw is able to offset all the carbon released during decomposition, most current models indicate that permafrost thaw will </span><a href="https://doi.org/10.1073/pnas.1719903115" style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); text-decoration-line: none; opacity: 1; transition: color 0.25s ease 0s, background 0.25s ease 0s, opacity 0.25s ease 0s;">ultimately be a source of atmospheric carbon</a><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">.</span></font></p><p style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><strong><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Read more: <a href="https://theconversation.com/more-frequent-fires-could-dramatically-alter-boreal-forests-and-emit-more-carbon-122355" style="text-decoration-line: none; opacity: 1; transition: color 0.25s ease 0s, background 0.25s ease 0s, opacity 0.25s ease 0s;">More frequent fires could dramatically alter boreal forests and emit more carbon</a>]</font></strong></p><p style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Researchers are coming to understand just how tightly linked these disturbances caused by climate change really are. What appears as an individual event — heat wave, forest fire or permafrost thaw — h<b>as cascading ramifications through time and space in the Arctic, potentially serving as the <a href="https://www.thoughtco.com/seed-crystal-instructions-607654" style="text-decoration-line: none; opacity: 1; transition: color 0.25s ease 0s, background 0.25s ease 0s, opacity 0.25s ease 0s;">seed crystal</a> for the next disturbance in the coming months, years or even decades that follow.</b></font></p><p style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Heat waves, wildfires and permafrost thaw represent an environmental trifecta that are inherently linked and drive change in the occurrence and intensity of one another.</font></p><p style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><a href="https://theconversation.com/profiles/catherine-dieleman-1129152" style="text-decoration-line: none; opacity: 1; transition: color 0.25s ease 0s, background 0.25s ease 0s, opacity 0.25s ease 0s;">Catherine Dieleman</a>, Research associate, Department of Integrative Biology, <a href="https://theconversation.com/institutions/university-of-guelph-1071" style="text-decoration-line: none; opacity: 1; transition: color 0.25s ease 0s, background 0.25s ease 0s, opacity 0.25s ease 0s;">University of Guelph</a></font></p><p style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">This article is republished from <a href="https://theconversation.com/" style="text-decoration-line: none; opacity: 1; transition: color 0.25s ease 0s, background 0.25s ease 0s, opacity 0.25s ease 0s;">The Conversation</a> </font></p></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">=</font></div></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">=</font></div><div><a href="https://www.alternet.org/2020/07/new-methane-leak-found-in-antarctica-raises-alarm-as-planet-edges-closer-to-climate-tipping-points/"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" color="#000000">https://www.alternet.org/2020/07/new-methane-leak-found-in-antarctica-raises-alarm-as-planet-edges-closer-to-climate-tipping-points/</font></a></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><p style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; margin: 0px 0px 17px; padding: 0px; line-height: 1.8;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" style=""><b style="background-color: rgb(255, 153, 0);">Scientists have for the first time identified an active leak of methane gas from the sea floor in Antarctica, increasing the possibility that the planet is close to one of the “tipping points” that would put the impacts of global heating out of humans’ control.</b></font></p><p style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; margin: 0px 0px 17px; padding: 0px; line-height: 1.8; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><span style="box-sizing: border-box; outline-color: initial; outline-width: initial; transition-duration: 0.3s; transition-property: color; cursor: pointer;">According to</span> <em style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; margin: 0px; padding: 0px;">The Guardian</em>,GUK researchers led by Andrew Thurber at Oregon State University <span style="box-sizing: border-box; outline-color: initial; outline-width: initial; transition-duration: 0.3s; transition-property: color; cursor: pointer;">found</span><a href="https://royalsocietypublishing.org/doi/10.1098/rspb.2020.1134" target="blank" style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; text-decoration-line: none; transition: color 0.3s ease 0s; cursor: pointer;"> </a>guk the methane leak in a region known as Cinder Cones in McMurdo Sound, within the Ross Sea. The site is 30 feet below the surface of the ocean.</font></p><p style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; margin: 0px 0px 17px; padding: 0px; line-height: 1.8; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><b>In addition to finding methane dissolved in the water there, the scientists found that microbes which usually consume the gas before it reaches the atmosphere had only formed in small numbers five years after they first began to study the site.</b></font></p><p style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; margin: 0px 0px 17px; padding: 0px; line-height: 1.8;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" style="background-color: rgb(255, 204, 102);">Thurber called the findings “incredibly concerning.”</font></p><div class="alt_ad_block true_ad_free story-page-in-content-graph-4" style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><div class="alt_ad_msg" style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; margin: 10px 0px; padding: 10px; background: rgb(234, 234, 234);"><div class="header" style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; margin: 5px 0px; padding: 0px; text-align: center;">AD REMOVED FOR SUBSCRIBED USER</div></div></div><p style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; margin: 0px 0px 17px; padding: 0px; line-height: 1.8; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><b>“It is not good news. It took more than five years for the microbes to begin to show up and even then there was still methane rapidly escaping from the sea floor,” he told <em style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; margin: 0px; padding: 0px;">The Guardian.</em> “The methane cycle is absolutely something that we as a society need to be concerned about.”</b></font></p><p style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; margin: 0px 0px 17px; padding: 0px; line-height: 1.8; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Scientists have warned for years that the climate crisis could lead to the “tipping point” of methane leaks in the sea floor and the thawing of permafrost regions.</font></p><p style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; margin: 0px 0px 17px; padding: 0px; line-height: 1.8; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><b>“At some point in a warming world, greenhouse gas emissions from nature will go way beyond anything we can control,</b>” tweeted Australian immunologist Peter Doherty.[twt guk]</font></p><p style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; margin: 0px 0px 17px; padding: 0px; line-height: 1.8;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);">the Ross Sea has not yet warmed significantly from the climate crisis, so the research did not directly link the methane leak to global heating.</font></p><p style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; margin: 0px 0px 17px; padding: 0px; line-height: 1.8; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><b>But climate models have not yet accounted for significant delays in the development of microbes, which help to keep methane from leaking into the atmosphere.</b></font></p><p style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; margin: 0px 0px 17px; padding: 0px; line-height: 1.8; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">“The big question is: how large is the lag [in microbe development] compared with the speed at which new leaks of methane might potentially form in the wake of retreating ice?” Prof. Jemma Wadham of the University of Bristol in the UK, who reviewed the study, told <em style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; margin: 0px; padding: 0px;">The Guardian.</em></font></p><p style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; margin: 0px 0px 17px; padding: 0px; line-height: 1.8;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);">Thurber called the discovery of the methane leak and the delayed microbe growth “a significant discovery that can help fill a large hole in our understanding of the methane cycle.”</font></p><p style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; margin: 0px 0px 17px; padding: 0px; line-height: 1.8; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><b>“Methane is the second-most effective gas at warming our atmosphere and the Antarctic has vast reservoirs that are likely to open up as ice sheets retreat due to climate change,</b>” he said in a<a href="https://www.eurekalert.org/pub_releases/2020-07/osu-dof072220.php" target="blank" style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; text-decoration-line: none; transition: color 0.3s ease 0s; cursor: pointer;"> statement.</a></font></p><p style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; margin: 0px 0px 17px; padding: 0px; line-height: 1.8;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" style="background-color: rgb(255, 204, 102);"><a href="https://www.carbonbrief.org/explainer-nine-tipping-points-that-could-be-triggered-by-climate-change" target="blank" style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; text-decoration-line: none; transition: color 0.3s ease 0s; cursor: pointer;">Other tipping points</a> identified by climate scientists include the disintegration of the ice sheet in West Antarctica, “dieback” in the Amazon which would transform the rainforest into a dry ecosystem, and the dying off of the coral reefs.</font></p><p style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; margin: 0px 0px 17px; padding: 0px; line-height: 1.8; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><b>Scientists raised alarm earlier this year about<a href="https://www.commondreams.org/news/2020/01/31/really-really-bad-scientists-raise-alarm-over-warm-ocean-water-beneath-doomsday" target="blank" style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; text-decoration-line: none; transition: color 0.3s ease 0s; cursor: pointer;"> unusually warm water</a> beneath a massive glacier in West Antarctica, and researchers<a href="https://www.commondreams.org/news/2020/02/20/knife-edge-experts-warn-great-barrier-reef-could-soon-see-third-mass-coral-bleaching" target="blank" style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; text-decoration-line: none; transition: color 0.3s ease 0s; cursor: pointer;"> warned</a> in February that the third major bleaching event in five years at the Great Barrier Reef would put the reef “on a knife edge.”</b></font></p></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><p><b><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">=</font></b></p><p><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">ew 720 methane</font></p><h1 class="widgetheadline h1" style="margin: 10px 0px 0px; padding: 0px; cursor: pointer; overflow-wrap: break-word; line-height: 22px; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" style="word-break: break-word; overflow-wrap: break-word; line-height: 1.2; font-weight: normal;"><a class="widgetheadline-text custom-post-headline" href="https://www.ecowatch.com/food-waste-environment-2646305670.html" aria-label="How COVID-19 Creates Food Waste Mountains That Threaten the Environment" style="text-decoration-line: none; word-break: break-word; overflow-wrap: break-word; line-height: 1.2;">How COVID-19 Creates Food Waste Mountains That Threaten the Environment</a></font></h1><h1 class="widgetheadline h1" style="margin: 10px 0px 0px; padding: 0px; cursor: pointer; overflow-wrap: break-word; line-height: 22px; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></h1><div><div class="body js-expandable clearfix js-listicle-body js-update-url css-listicle-body-2646305670 expanded" data-elid="2646305670" data-post-url="https://www.ecowatch.com/food-waste-environment-2646305670.html" data-authors="World Economic Forum" data-headline="How COVID-19 Creates Food Waste Mountains That Threaten the Environment" style="margin-top: 0px; line-height: 1.5; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><div class="body-description" style="clear: both;"><div class="widgetbrief"><p style="margin: 10px 0px;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"> Emma Charlton</font></p><p style="margin: 10px 0px;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Gluts of food left to rot as a consequence of coronavirus aren't just wasteful – they're also likely to damage the environment.</font></p></div><div class="content-container"><div class=" rebellt-item is--desktop col1" id="rebelltitem1" data-id="1" data-is-image="False" data-href="https://www.ecowatch.com/food-waste-environment-2646305670.html?rebelltitem=1#rebelltitem1" data-published-at="1593607152" data-basename="particle-1" data-post-id="2646305670"><p style="margin: 10px 0px;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Mountains of produce, including eggs, milk and onions, are going to waste as the COVID-19 pandemic shutters restaurants, restricts transport, limits what workers are able to do and disrupts supply chains. And as that food decays, it releases methane, a powerful greenhouse gas.</font></p><p style="margin: 10px 0px;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Fresh milk and eggs have been dumped, and some ripe crops reploughed back into fields, according to reports in the <a href="https://www.wsj.com/articles/closed-due-to-coronavirus-restaurants-clear-out-their-pantries-11586005203?mod=article_inline" target="blank" style="text-decoration-color: rgb(82, 149, 70); overflow-wrap: break-word;">Wall Street Journal</a> and the <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2020/04/11/business/coronavirus-destroying-food.html" target="blank" style="text-decoration-color: rgb(82, 149, 70); overflow-wrap: break-word;">New York Times</a>. While consumer demand for some supermarket items has risen as a result of lockdowns, it's unlikely to offset steep declines elsewhere, such in restaurants and school and workplace canteens.</font></p></div><div class=" rebellt-item is--desktop col1" id="rebelltitem2" data-id="2" data-is-image="False" data-href="https://www.ecowatch.com/food-waste-environment-2646305670.html?rebelltitem=2#rebelltitem2" data-published-at="1593607152" data-basename="methane-on-the-rise" data-post-id="2646305670"><h3 data-role="headline"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Methane on the Rise</font></h3><p style="margin: 10px 0px;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Not only is this a tragic waste of food at a time when many are going hungry, it is also an <a href="https://donatedontdump.net/2014/07/07/the-effects-of-food-waste-on-the-environment-by-junemy-pantig/" target="blank" style="text-decoration-color: rgb(82, 149, 70); overflow-wrap: break-word;">environmental hazard</a> and could contribute to global warming. Landfill gas – <a href="https://www.epa.gov/lmop/basic-information-about-landfill-gas" target="blank" style="text-decoration-color: rgb(82, 149, 70); overflow-wrap: break-word;">roughly half methane and half carbon dioxide (CO2)</a> – is a natural byproduct of the decomposition of organic material.</font></p></div><div class=" rebellt-item is--desktop col1" id="rebelltitem3" data-id="3" data-is-image="True" data-href="https://www.ecowatch.com/food-waste-environment-2646305670.html?rebelltitem=3#rebelltitem3" data-published-at="1593607152" data-basename="particle-3" data-post-id="2646305670"><small class="image-media media-photo-credit" style="text-align: right; display: block;" /><p style="margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 10px; margin-left: 0px; margin-top: 4px !important;"><small class="image-media media-photo-credit" style="text-align: right; display: block;"><small class="image-media media-photo-credit" style="text-align: right; display: block;"><small class="image-media media-photo-credit" style="text-align: right; display: block;"><small class="image-media media-photo-credit" style="text-align: right; display: block;"><small class="image-media media-photo-credit" style="text-align: right; display: block;"><small class="image-media media-photo-credit" style="text-align: right; display: block;"><small class="image-media media-photo-credit" style="text-align: right; display: block;"><small class="image-media media-photo-credit" style="text-align: right; display: block;"><small class="image-media media-photo-credit" style="text-align: right; display: block;"><small class="image-media media-photo-credit" style="text-align: right; display: block;"><small class="image-media media-photo-credit" style="text-align: right; display: block;"><small class="image-media media-photo-credit" style="text-align: right; display: block;"><small class="image-media media-photo-credit" style="text-align: right; display: block;"><small class="image-media media-photo-credit" style="text-align: right; display: block;"><small class="image-media media-photo-credit" style="text-align: right; display: block;"><small class="image-media media-photo-credit" style="text-align: right; display: block;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">[Food decay leads to production of greenhouse gases, methane and carbon dioxide. EPA</font></small></small></small></small></small></small></small></small></small></small></small></small></small></small></small></small></p><p style="margin: 10px 0px;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Methane is a potent greenhouse gas, 28 to <a href="https://www.ipcc.ch/site/assets/uploads/2018/02/SYR_AR5_FINAL_full.pdf" target="blank" style="text-decoration-color: rgb(82, 149, 70); overflow-wrap: break-word;">36 times more effective than CO2 at trapping heat</a> in the atmosphere over a 100-year period, according to the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change.</font></p><p style="margin: 10px 0px;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">"Many export-oriented producers produce volumes far too large for output to be absorbed in local markets, and thus <a href="https://unctad.org/en/pages/newsdetails.aspx?OriginalVersionID=2333" target="blank" style="text-decoration-color: rgb(82, 149, 70); overflow-wrap: break-word;">organic waste levels have mounted substantially</a>," says Robert Hamwey, Economic Affairs Officer at UN agency UNCTAD. "Because this waste is left to decay, levels of methane emissions, a greenhouse gas, from decaying produce are expected to rise sharply in the crisis and immediate post-crisis months."</font></p></div><div class=" rebellt-item is--desktop col1" id="rebelltitem4" data-id="4" data-is-image="True" data-href="https://www.ecowatch.com/food-waste-environment-2646305670.html?rebelltitem=4#rebelltitem4" data-published-at="1593607152" data-basename="particle-4" data-post-id="2646305670"><small class="image-media media-photo-credit" style="text-align: right; display: block;" /><p style="margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 10px; margin-left: 0px; margin-top: 4px !important;"><small class="image-media media-photo-credit" style="text-align: right; display: block;"><small class="image-media media-photo-credit" style="text-align: right; display: block;"><small class="image-media media-photo-credit" style="text-align: right; display: block;"><small class="image-media media-photo-credit" style="text-align: right; display: block;"><small class="image-media media-photo-credit" style="text-align: right; display: block;"><small class="image-media media-photo-credit" style="text-align: right; display: block;"><small class="image-media media-photo-credit" style="text-align: right; display: block;"><small class="image-media media-photo-credit" style="text-align: right; display: block;"><small class="image-media media-photo-credit" style="text-align: right; display: block;"><small class="image-media media-photo-credit" style="text-align: right; display: block;"><small class="image-media media-photo-credit" style="text-align: right; display: block;"><small class="image-media media-photo-credit" style="text-align: right; display: block;"><small class="image-media media-photo-credit" style="text-align: right; display: block;"><small class="image-media media-photo-credit" style="text-align: right; display: block;"><small class="image-media media-photo-credit" style="text-align: right; display: block;"><small class="image-media media-photo-credit" style="text-align: right; display: block;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">[Food supply chains are easily disrupted. UN FAO</font></small></small></small></small></small></small></small></small></small></small></small></small></small></small></small></small></p><p style="margin: 10px 0px;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Dumping food was already a problem before the crisis. In America alone, <a href="https://www.refed.com/?sort=economic-value-per-ton" target="blank" style="text-decoration-color: rgb(82, 149, 70); overflow-wrap: break-word;">$218 billion is spent growing, processing, transporting</a> and disposing of food that is never eaten, estimates ReFED, a collection of business, non-profit and government leaders committed to reducing food waste. That's equivalent to around 1.3% of GDP.</font></p><p style="margin: 10px 0px;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Since the pandemic took hold, <a href="https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-52267943" target="blank" style="text-decoration-color: rgb(82, 149, 70); overflow-wrap: break-word;">farmers are dumping 14 million liters</a> of milk each day because of disrupted supply routes, estimates Dairy Farmers of America. A chicken processor was forced to <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2020/04/11/business/coronavirus-destroying-food.html" target="blank" style="text-decoration-color: rgb(82, 149, 70); overflow-wrap: break-word;">destroy 750,000 unhatched eggs a week</a>, according to the New York Times, which also cited an onion farmer letting most of his harvest decompose because he couldn't distribute or store them.</font></p></div><div class=" rebellt-item is--desktop col1" id="rebelltitem5" data-id="5" data-is-image="False" data-href="https://www.ecowatch.com/food-waste-environment-2646305670.html?rebelltitem=5#rebelltitem5" data-published-at="1593607152" data-basename="food-prices-collapsing" data-post-id="2646305670"><h3 data-role="headline"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Food Prices Collapsing</font></h3><p style="margin: 10px 0px;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">The excess has also seen prices collapse. The <a href="http://www.fao.org/worldfoodsituation/foodpricesindex/en/" target="blank" style="text-decoration-color: rgb(82, 149, 70); overflow-wrap: break-word;">FAO Food Price Index</a> (FFPI) averaged 162.5 points in May 2020, down 3.1 points from April and reaching the lowest monthly average since December 2018. The gauge has dropped for four consecutive months, and the latest decline reflects falling values of all the food commodities – dairy, meat, cereal, vegetable – except sugar, which rose for the first time in three months.</font></p><p style="margin: 10px 0px;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">All this while the pandemic is exacerbating other global food trends.</font></p><p style="margin: 10px 0px;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">"This year, some 49 million extra people may fall into extreme poverty due to the COVID-19 crisis," said António Guterres, Secretary-General of the UN. "The number of people who are acutely food or nutrition insecure will rapidly expand. <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fGhLKAbNDiY&feature=youtu.be" target="blank" style="text-decoration-color: rgb(82, 149, 70); overflow-wrap: break-word;">Even in countries with abundant food, we see risks of disruptions in the food supply chain</a>."</font></p><p style="margin: 10px 0px;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">[twt] World Economic Forum has launched its <a href="https://www.weforum.org/great-reset/about" target="blank" style="text-decoration-color: rgb(82, 149, 70); overflow-wrap: break-word;">Great Reset initiative</a>, which urgently calls for global stakeholders to cooperate in managing the consequences of the COVID-19 crisis. It calls on policymakers to put the environment at the heart of plans to rebuild as we emerge from the pandemic....</font></p></div></div></div></div></div></div><div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">=</font></div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">4/27/20</font></div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><b>aha sys fail insanity:</b> no brainer to stop subsidizing ?! banks keep loaning $ to frack tho NEVER MADE A PROFIT?! NOW GOV'T BAILOUT HAMM ETP KELCY; EXXON AND CHEVRON LOOKING TO BANKRUPT SMALL INDEP [THAT DJT CLAIMS TO CARE ABOUT] BUY UP ASSETS CHEAP <b>METHANE </b>WHICH ARE FRYING THE PLANET; MEANWHILE COVIS DEMOS FAIL OF LIBTARD, WE HAVE WINDOW GND, WAY CHEAPER THEN CLEAN UP COVID MESS WHICH HIT US B/C WE TAKE OUT HABITAT AND EAT WILD ANIMALS</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
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</font></div><div><font face="Times New Roman" size="4">icn 420</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><span helvetica="helvetica" neue="neue" arial="arial" verdana="verdana" sans-serif="sans-serif">s<a rel="nofollow" target="blank" href="https://insideclimatenews.us2.list-manage.com/track/click?u=7c733794100bcc7e083a163f0&id=49ffa6ac20&e=06876ede6b" style="text-decoration-line: none; font-weight: bold; outline: none;">uper-Polluting Methane Emissions Twice Federal Estimates in Permian Basin, Study Finds</a></span>
BY: PHIL MCKENNA
<span helvetica="helvetica" neue="neue" sans-serif="sans-serif">The methane is a byproduct of fracking for oil, often burned off at well heads or emitted into the atmosphere instead of being captured for use as fuel.</span></font></div></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">covid bail bill</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">cf antonia juhaz <b>bakken bailout?</b> oil -40$ bakken, 200b$ debt; in 2008 oil 150$, many poor cty could not afford, helped trigger Gt Recession?</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"></font></div></div></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
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</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">=</font></div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><b>
Current estimates of carbon <a href="https://www.ecowatch.com/tag/emissions" rel="noopener noreferrer">emissions</a> from melting Arctic <a href="https://www.ecowatch.com/tag/permafrost" rel="noopener noreferrer">permafrost</a>
rely on a model of a gradual melt.<span style="background-color: rgb(255, 204, 102);"> New research has found abrupt
thawing of permafrost which means carbon emissions estimates should be
doubled. </span>The rate at which permafrost is thawing in the <a href="https://www.ecowatch.com/tag/Arctic">Arctic</a> is gouging holes in the landscape, according to a new study published in the journal <a href="https://www.nature.com/articles/s41561-019-0526-0" target="_blank">Nature Geoscience</a>.</b>
</font><p><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">The UN's Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change has not considered
the phenomenon of thermokarst — the degraded land ravaged by an abrupt
thaw. When the permafrost that supports the <a href="https://www.ecowatch.com/tag/soil" rel="noopener noreferrer">soil</a> disappears, then hillsides collapse and enormous sinkholes suddenly appear, as <a href="https://www.wired.com/story/abrupt-permafrost-thaw/?ref=hvper.com&utm_medium=website&utm_source=hvper.com" target="_blank">Wired reported</a>.
The effect runs through meters of permafrost and takes a matter of
months or a few years. That upends the traditional models of permafrost
thawing, which look at a few centimeters of permafrost melt over several
decades. <b>The rapid change to the permafrost shocks the landscape,
causing an enormous release of carbon. </b></font></p>
<div class=" rebellt-item is--desktop col1" id="rebelltitem1" data-id="1" data-is-image="False" data-href="https://www.ecowatch.com/arctic-permafrost-melting-2645029433.html?rebelltitem=1#rebelltitem1" data-basename="particle-1"><p><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 204, 102);"><b>"The
amount of carbon coming off that very narrow amount of abrupt thaw in
the landscape, that small area, is still large enough to double the
climate consequences and the permafrost carbon feedback,"</b></span> said study
lead author Merritt Turetsky, of the University of Guelph and University
of Colorado Boulder, as <a href="https://www.wired.com/story/abrupt-permafrost-thaw/?ref=hvper.com&utm_medium=website&utm_source=hvper.com" target="_blank">Wired reported</a>.</font>
<b><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">The researchers found that abrupt thawing will happen in less than 20
percent of the permafrost zone, "but could affect half of permafrost
carbon through collapsing ground, rapid erosion and landslides," the
authors <a href="https://www.nature.com/articles/s41561-019-0526-0" target="_blank">wrote in the study</a>. </font></b>
<font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 204, 102);"><b>Not only does an abrupt thaw release carbon, but it also releases a tremendous amount of <a href="https://www.ecowatch.com/tag/methane" rel="noopener noreferrer">methane</a>,
a potent greenhouse gas</b></span>. So, while only 5 percent of the permafrost may
experience abrupt thaw at one time, the emissions will be equal to a
much larger area going through a gradual thaw. This can rapidly change
the landscape drastically. </font>
<font size="4" face="Times New Roman">"Forests can become lakes in the course of a month, landslides occur
with no warning, and invisible methane seep holes can swallow
snowmobiles whole," <a href="https://www.colorado.edu/today/2020/02/03/arctic-permafrost-thaw-plays-greater-role-climate-change-previously-estimated" target="_blank">Turetsky said in a statement</a>
from the University of Colorado Boulder. "Systems that you could walk
on with regular hiking boots and that were dry enough to support tree
growth when frozen can thaw, and now all of a sudden these ecosystems
turn into a soupy mess," Turetsky added.</font></p></div>
<div class=" rebellt-item is--desktop col1" id="rebelltitem2" data-id="2" data-is-image="False" data-href="https://www.ecowatch.com/arctic-permafrost-melting-2645029433.html?rebelltitem=2#rebelltitem2" data-basename="particle-2"><p><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">The
most worrisome permafrost is the type that holds a lot of water because
frozen water takes up more space than water. When it thaws it loses a
lot of volume. "Where permafrost tends to be lake sediment or organic
soils, the type of earth material that can hold a lot of water, these
are like sponges on the landscape," Turetsky said, as <a href="https://www.wired.com/story/abrupt-permafrost-thaw/?ref=hvper.com&utm_medium=website&utm_source=hvper.com" target="_blank">Wired reported</a>. "When you have thaw, we see really dynamic and rapid changes."</font></span></p><p><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Turetsky
has witnessed the rapid change in the course of the study. She has seen
the melting submerge equipment she has placed to check temperature and
methane. </font>
<font size="4" face="Times New Roman">"When you come back in, it's a lake and there's three meters of water
at the surface. You have to probably say goodbye to your equipment,"
she <a href="https://www.wired.com/story/abrupt-permafrost-thaw/?ref=hvper.com&utm_medium=website&utm_source=hvper.com" target="_blank">told Wired</a>. "Essentially, we're taking terra firma and making it terra soupy."</font></p></div>
<div class=" rebellt-item is--desktop col1" id="rebelltitem3" data-id="3" data-is-image="False" data-href="https://www.ecowatch.com/arctic-permafrost-melting-2645029433.html?rebelltitem=3#rebelltitem3" data-basename="particle-3"><p><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">The
researchers realized that the thermokarst they observed was absent in
climate emissions models and tried to account for its output. </font>
<font size="4" face="Times New Roman">"The impacts from abrupt thaw are not represented in any existing
global model and our findings indicate that this could amplify the
permafrost climate-carbon feedback by up to a factor of two, thereby
exacerbating the problem of permissible emissions to stay below specific
climate change targets," said David Lawrence, of the National Center
for Atmospheric Research and a coauthor of the study in a <a href="https://www.colorado.edu/today/2020/02/03/arctic-permafrost-thaw-plays-greater-role-climate-change-previously-estimated" target="_blank">press release</a>. </font>
<font size="4" face="Times New Roman">The paper shows the sudden need to include permafrost thaw in all climate models. </font>
<font size="4" face="Times New Roman">"We can definitely stave off the worst consequences of climate change if we act in the next decade," <a href="https://www.colorado.edu/today/2020/02/03/arctic-permafrost-thaw-plays-greater-role-climate-change-previously-estimated" target="blank">Turetsky said in a press release</a>. "We have clear evidence that policy is going to help the north and thus it's going to help dictate our future climate."</font></p></div></div><div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">=</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">120 ew</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">An international team of scientists says a new way of extracting </span><a href="http://www.ecowatch.com/tag/methane" style="text-decoration-color: rgb(82, 149, 70); overflow-wrap: break-word; line-height: 1.5; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">methane</a><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"> gas trapped in permafrost has the potential to harvest more gas while burning fewer </span><a href="https://www.ecowatch.com/tag/fossil-fuels" style="text-decoration-color: rgb(82, 149, 70); overflow-wrap: break-word; line-height: 1.5; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">fossil fuels</a><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"> in the extraction process, as </span><a href="https://www.newsweek.com/scientists-methane-permafrost-environmental-safety-1480050" target="blank" style="text-decoration-color: rgb(82, 149, 70); overflow-wrap: break-word; line-height: 1.5; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">Newsweek</a><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"> reported.</span></font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"></font></div></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"></font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">10/19</font></div><div><a href="https://www.ecowatch.com/siberia-sea-boiling-methane-2640900862.html"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" color="#000000">https://www.ecowatch.com/siberia-sea-boiling-methane-2640900862.html</font></a></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">ew</font></div><div><p style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Russian scientists on an <a href="http://www.ecowatch.com/tag/arctic" rel="noopener noreferrer" style="text-decoration-color: rgb(82, 149, 70); line-height: 1.5;">Arctic</a> expedition have discovered, for the first time, <a href="http://www.ecowatch.com/tag/methane" rel="noopener noreferrer" style="text-decoration-color: rgb(82, 149, 70); line-height: 1.5;">methane</a> "boiling" on the surface of the water that is visible to the naked eye. Forget high-tech detection devices, the methane is so pronounced that it can be scooped from the water in buckets, as <a href="https://www.newsweek.com/methane-boiling-sea-discovered-siberia-1463766?fbclid=IwAR1H7Ao_eltP3G_va-xi5j0ihUkuc4p6NFwK9OKDJnQvd98Cn2IhmoJI8" target="blank" style="text-decoration-color: rgb(82, 149, 70); line-height: 1.5;">Newsweek</a> reported.</font></p><div class="rebellt-item col1" data-basename="particle-1" data-href="https://www.ecowatch.com/siberia-sea-boiling-methane-2640900862.html?rebelltitem=1#rebelltitem1" data-id="1" data-is-image="False" data-reload-ads="false" id="rebelltitem1" style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><p /><p><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">The research team from Tomsk Polytechnic University (TPU) found the methane leak east of Bennett Island in the East Siberian Sea. The methane bubbles, which create a boiling appearance, spanned an area over 50 feet, as the <a href="https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2019/10/08/russian-scientists-find-powerful-ever-methane-seep-arctic-ocean/" target="blank" style="text-decoration-color: rgb(82, 149, 70); line-height: 1.5;">Telegraph</a> reported. The concentration of atmospheric methane in that spot was 16 parts per million, more than nine times higher than the atmospheric average.</font></p><p><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">While the observed area is too small to cause any problems, it does spell trouble for ships if the problem gets worse. Methane leaked into the atmosphere may cause larger swaths of water to boil more violently, which can topple oil and gas rigs in the seas and lead to spills.</font></p><p><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">The gas, which is not as prominent as carbon dioxide, is 28 times as effective at trapping heat than CO2, making it a dangerous greenhouse gas, according to <a href="https://newatlas.com/environment/powerful-methane-fountains-siberian-sea/" target="blank" style="text-decoration-color: rgb(82, 149, 70); line-height: 1.5;">New Atlas</a>.</font></p><p /></div><div class="rebellt-item col1" data-basename="particle-2" data-href="https://www.ecowatch.com/siberia-sea-boiling-methane-2640900862.html?rebelltitem=2#rebelltitem2" data-id="2" data-is-image="False" data-reload-ads="false" id="rebelltitem2" style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><p /><p><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">While a lot of methane is released into the atmosphere from livestock and from fertilizer run-off, this methane manifested from underwater permafrost degradation, according to a <a href="https://news.tpu.ru/news/2019/10/07/35335/" target="blank" style="text-decoration-color: rgb(82, 149, 70); line-height: 1.5;">TPU statement</a>.</font></p><p><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><b>Permafrost locks up a tremendous amount of methane. If the permafrost gets weaker and allows the methane to seep out, there is potential for further warming, according to <a href="https://www.iflscience.com/environment/seas-boiling-with-methane-on-scale-never-before-seen-reported-in-siberia/" target="blank" style="text-decoration-color: rgb(82, 149, 70); line-height: 1.5;">IFL Science</a>.</b></font></p><p><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">"This is the most powerful seep I have ever been able to observe," said lead scientist Igor Semiletov, who has participated in 45 Arctic expeditions, in a TPU <a href="https://news.tpu.ru/news/2019/10/07/35335/" target="blank" style="text-decoration-color: rgb(82, 149, 70); line-height: 1.5;">statement</a> this week. "No one has ever recorded anything similar."</font></p><p><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Observations like those made by Semiletov and his team cause scientists to worry about a positive feedback loop. That is when global temperatures increase, which causes the permafrost to thaw and release greenhouse gasses. Then the greenhouse gases cause more warming, more thawing and more greenhouse gas emissions, according to <a href="https://www.newsweek.com/methane-boiling-sea-discovered-siberia-1463766?fbclid=IwAR1H7Ao_eltP3G_va-xi5j0ihUkuc4p6NFwK9OKDJnQvd98Cn2IhmoJI8" target="blank" style="text-decoration-color: rgb(82, 149, 70); line-height: 1.5;">Newsweek</a>.</font></p><p><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">This latest discovery follows a troubling summer for Arctic permafrost. At the beginning of the summer, scientists observed that the Canadian Arctic is melting 70 years ahead of schedule, as <a href="https://www.ecowatch.com/arctic-permafrost-melting-2638917839.html?rebelltitem=1#rebelltitem1" target="self" style="text-decoration-color: rgb(82, 149, 70); line-height: 1.5;">EcoWatch</a> reported.</font></p><p><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Semiletov warned that the sudden release of gases could cause serious harm to infrastructure, which would pollute the seas.</font></p><p><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">"If we don't take into account research results about the condition of underwater permafrost, geological catastrophes similar to the (Deepwater Horizon) accident in the Gulf of Mexico could occur during exploratory and commercial activities, which would cause irreparable damage," he said, as the <a href="https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2019/10/08/russian-scientists-find-powerful-ever-methane-seep-arctic-ocean/" target="blank" style="text-decoration-color: rgb(82, 149, 70); line-height: 1.5;">Telegraph</a> reported.</font></p><p><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><b>The <a href="https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2019/10/08/russian-scientists-find-powerful-ever-methane-seep-arctic-ocean/" target="blank" style="text-decoration-color: rgb(82, 149, 70); line-height: 1.5;">Telegraph</a> reported that a recent Russian study discovered that the rate of melting of underwater permafrost has doubled over the last 30 years.</b> The consequences have been massive releases of methane from the sea floor, including from formations of solid methane called hydrates that have the potential to explode if they are destabilized.</font></p><p><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Methane has also been credited for causing sinkholes and strange underground bubbles. In 2016, <a href="https://siberiantimes.com/ecology/casestudy/news/n0681-now-the-proof-permafrost-bubbles-are-leaking-methane-200-times-above-the-norm/" target="blank" style="text-decoration-color: rgb(82, 149, 70); line-height: 1.5;">The Siberian Times</a> covered these methane bubbles that have caused the ground to jiggle. This <a href="https://youtu.be/BYzeYP2v0Us" target="blank" style="text-decoration-color: rgb(82, 149, 70); line-height: 1.5;">video</a> shows the underground bubbles.</font></p><p><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Danish climatologist Jason Box succinctly summarized the concern for scientists five years ago. After Stockholm University scientists noticed methane bubbles rising from the sea floor, Box <a href="https://twitter.com/climate_ice/status/494146188514693120" target="blank" style="text-decoration-color: rgb(82, 149, 70); line-height: 1.5;">tweeted</a>, "If even a small fraction of Arctic sea floor carbon is released to the atmosphere, we're f*ed," as <a href="https://www.iflscience.com/environment/seas-boiling-with-methane-on-scale-never-before-seen-reported-in-siberia/" target="blank" style="text-decoration-color: rgb(82, 149, 70); line-height: 1.5;">IFL Science</a> reported.<span style="font-family: " times="Times" new="New" roman="Roman" font-size="font-size" large="large" background-color="background-color" initial="initial" white-space="white-space">[twet]</span></font></p></div></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">related</font></div><div><ul class="around-the-weblist" style="margin: 0px; padding: 0px; list-style: none; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><li class="around-the-webitem"><a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/energy-environment/wp/2018/03/19/the-arctics-carbon-bomb-might-be-even-more-potent-than-we-thought/" class="around-the-weblink" target="blank" rel="noopener noreferrer" style="text-decoration-color: rgb(82, 149, 70); line-height: 1.5; display: inline-block; margin-top: 10px; outline: 0px;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" color="#000000">The Arctic's carbon bomb might be even more potent than we thought ›</font></a></li><li class="around-the-webitem"><a href="https://climate.nasa.gov/news/2785/unexpected-future-boost-of-methane-possible-from-arctic-permafrost/" class="around-the-weblink" target="blank" rel="noopener noreferrer" style="text-decoration-color: rgb(82, 149, 70); line-height: 1.5; display: inline-block; margin-top: 10px;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" color="#000000">Unexpected future boost of methane possible from Arctic permafrost ... ›</font></a></li><li class="around-the-webitem"><a href="https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-018-07751-w" class="around-the-weblink" target="blank" rel="noopener noreferrer" style="text-decoration-color: rgb(82, 149, 70); line-height: 1.5; display: inline-block; margin-top: 10px;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" color="#000000">Satellite spies methane bubbling up from Arctic permafrost ›</font></a></li><li class="around-the-webitem"><a href="https://www.newsweek.com/arctic-permafrost-lakes-bubbling-methane-nasa-1119624" class="around-the-weblink" target="blank" rel="noopener noreferrer" style="text-decoration-color: rgb(82, 149, 70); line-height: 1.5; display: inline-block; margin-top: 10px;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" color="#000000">NASA Has Discovered Arctic Lakes Bubbling With Methane—and ... ›</font></a></li><li class="around-the-webitem"><a href="https://www.beforetheflood.com/explore/the-crisis/methane-the-ticking-time-bomb/" class="around-the-web__link" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer" style="text-decoration-color: rgb(82, 149, 70); line-height: 1.5; display: inline-block; margin-top: 10px;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" color="#000000">Methane: The Ticking Time Bomb - Before the Flood ›</font></a></li></ul></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"></font></div><div><p style="box-sizing: border-box; margin: 0px 0px 15px; padding: 0px; border: 0px; font-variant-numeric: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; line-height: inherit; vertical-align: baseline; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">an expedition to the East Siberian Sea has reported two examples of what scientists have long feared – methane fountains bubbling to the surface as frozen material on the ocean floor melts after an <a href="https://www.iflscience.com/environment/last-month-was-officially-the-hottest-september-since-records-began/" style="box-sizing: border-box; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; border: 0px; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; line-height: inherit; vertical-align: baseline; transition: all 0.2s ease-in-out 0s;">unusually warm summer</a>. So far the affected areas are too small to have much global impact, but may be the harbinger of worse things to come.</font></p><p style="box-sizing: border-box; margin: 0px 0px 15px; padding: 0px; border: 0px; font-variant-numeric: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; line-height: inherit; vertical-align: baseline; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Methane is an even more potent global warming gas than carbon dioxide – its impact is 80 times greater than CO<span style="box-sizing: border-box; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; border: 0px; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; line-height: 0; vertical-align: baseline; position: relative; bottom: -0.25em;">2</span> over 20 years years and <a href="https://unfccc.int/news/new-methane-signs-underline-urgency-to-reverse-emissions" style="box-sizing: border-box; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; border: 0px; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; line-height: inherit; vertical-align: baseline; transition: all 0.2s ease-in-out 0s;">34 times greater over a century</a>. Vast quantities of it are locked up in the Arctic, both beneath the oceans and in Siberian permafrost. As human activity warms the world, some <a href="https://www.iflscience.com/environment/thawing-permafrost-could-release-an-extra-15-billion-tons-of-carbon-every-year/" style="box-sizing: border-box; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; border: 0px; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; line-height: inherit; vertical-align: baseline; transition: all 0.2s ease-in-out 0s;">will be released</a>, causing further warming. The big question, perhaps the planet’s biggest, is how much?</font></p><p style="box-sizing: border-box; margin: 0px 0px 15px; padding: 0px; border: 0px; font-variant-numeric: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; line-height: inherit; vertical-align: baseline;"><font style="background-color: rgb(255, 204, 102);" size="4" face="Times New Roman">Famously, on finding some methane bubbling to the surface of the sea in 2014, Professor Jason Box <a href="https://www.iflscience.com/environment/climatologist-arctic-carbon-release-could-mean-%E2%80%9Cwere-fucked%E2%80%9D/" style="box-sizing: border-box; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; border: 0px; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; line-height: inherit; vertical-align: baseline; transition: all 0.2s ease-in-out 0s;">summarised the situation</a> as: “If even a small fraction of Arctic sea floor carbon is released to the atmosphere, we're fucked.”</font></p><p style="box-sizing: border-box; margin: 0px 0px 15px; padding: 0px; border: 0px; font-variant-numeric: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; line-height: inherit; vertical-align: baseline; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Igor Semiletov, of Russia’s Tomsk Polytechnic University, is currently leading a team of more than 70 scientists to East Siberia to assess the danger. While collecting seawater and sediment samples off Bennett Island, a <a href="https://news.tpu.ru/news/2019/10/07/35335/" style="box-sizing: border-box; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; border: 0px; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; line-height: inherit; vertical-align: baseline; transition: all 0.2s ease-in-out 0s;">statement</a> (in Russian) from the University reports he and his team<b> detected methane levels six to seven times higher than normal.</b></font></p><p style="box-sizing: border-box; margin: 0px 0px 15px; padding: 0px; border: 0px; font-variant-numeric: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; line-height: inherit; vertical-align: baseline; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">According to the statement, the team noticed a lighter colored area of water around 4-5 square meters (40-50 square feet) nearby that on approach they saw was “boiling with methane bubbles”. Above the fountain atmospheric methane was nine times the global average. Instead of using special plastic cones designed for sampling methane-rich waters the bubbles were so frequent the team was able to simply scoop it up in buckets and pump some of it into cylinders as compressed gas. A second, similar fountain was observed the following day.</font></p><p style="box-sizing: border-box; margin: 0px 0px 15px; padding: 0px; border: 0px; font-variant-numeric: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; line-height: inherit; vertical-align: baseline; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">“This is the most powerful gas fountain I've ever seen. No one has ever recorded anything like this before,” Semiletov said, reports <a href="https://www.themoscowtimes.com/2019/10/07/scientists-discover-record-methane-emission-in-the-russian-arctic-a67621" style="box-sizing: border-box; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; border: 0px; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; line-height: inherit; vertical-align: baseline; transition: all 0.2s ease-in-out 0s;">The Moscow Times</a>.</font></p><figure class="image" style="box-sizing: border-box; margin: 0px 0px 15px; padding: 0px; border: 0px; font-variant-numeric: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; line-height: inherit; vertical-align: baseline; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">[animated vid?]</font></figure><p style="box-sizing: border-box; margin: 0px 0px 15px; padding: 0px; border: 0px; font-variant-numeric: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; line-height: inherit; vertical-align: baseline;"><font style="background-color: rgb(255, 204, 102);" size="4" face="Times New Roman">Of all the potential tipping points where a modest warming could trigger something far worse, the “<a href="https://www.iflscience.com/environment/massive-methane-reservoirs-being-unleashed-global-warming/" style="box-sizing: border-box; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; border: 0px; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; line-height: inherit; vertical-align: baseline; transition: all 0.2s ease-in-out 0s;">Clathrate Gun</a>”, where Arctic methane boils dramatically, is possibly the worst, and certainly the most famous. It is thought to have been the cause of the relatively sudden warming known as the <a href="https://www.iflscience.com/environment/theres-some-bad-news-from-the-earths-last-great-heatwave/" style="box-sizing: border-box; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; border: 0px; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; line-height: inherit; vertical-align: baseline; transition: all 0.2s ease-in-out 0s;">Paleocene-Eocene Thermal Maximum</a> million years ago. It may not quite be the boiling seas predicted (depending on translation) by the Book of Revelations or the Qur'an, but it could still be an apocalypse.</font></p><p style="box-sizing: border-box; margin: 0px 0px 15px; padding: 0px; border: 0px; font-variant-numeric: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; line-height: inherit; vertical-align: baseline;"><font style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);" size="4" face="Times New Roman">However, it is unclear how great the danger really is. Methane frozen in deep waters is usually consumed by microbes before it can reach the surface to do any harm. Currently, the Arctic Ocean accounts for less than <a href="https://debunkedclimatemyths.blogspot.com/2019/02/arctic-methane.html" style="box-sizing: border-box; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; border: 0px; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; line-height: inherit; vertical-align: baseline; transition: all 0.2s ease-in-out 0s;">one ten-thousandth</a> of methane emissions, so even a hundred-fold increase would be barely noticeable. Land-based <a href="https://www.iflscience.com/environment/unexpectedly-widespread-permafrost-melting-could-eventually-set-greenhouse-gas-timebomb/" style="box-sizing: border-box; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; border: 0px; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; line-height: inherit; vertical-align: baseline; transition: all 0.2s ease-in-out 0s;">Arctic permafrost</a> is currently a <a href="https://www.iflscience.com/environment/scientists-think-they-may-have-solved-siberian-crater-mystery/" style="box-sizing: border-box; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; border: 0px; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; line-height: inherit; vertical-align: baseline; transition: all 0.2s ease-in-out 0s;">much bigger</a> source. </font></p><p style="box-sizing: border-box; margin: 0px 0px 15px; padding: 0px; border: 0px; font-variant-numeric: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; line-height: inherit; vertical-align: baseline;"><font style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);" size="4" face="Times New Roman">Moreover, it is possible methane fountains have always been a <a href="https://www.iflscience.com/environment/theres-a-bubbling-lake-in-alaska-and-its-a-sign-of-something-very-concerning/" style="box-sizing: border-box; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; border: 0px; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; line-height: inherit; vertical-align: baseline; transition: all 0.2s ease-in-out 0s;">feature of the Arctic Ocean</a>, caused by local phenomena. Having studied the area so poorly until recently we lack a good baseline to know what is normal.</font></p><p style="box-sizing: border-box; margin: 0px 0px 15px; padding: 0px; border: 0px; font-variant-numeric: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; line-height: inherit; vertical-align: baseline; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"> </font></p><p style="box-sizing: border-box; margin: 0px 0px 15px; padding: 0px; border: 0px; font-variant-numeric: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; line-height: inherit; vertical-align: baseline;"><font style="" size="4" face="Times New Roman"><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">[H/T </span><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);"><a href="https://www.newsweek.com/methane-boiling-sea-discovered-siberia-1463766" style="box-sizing: border-box; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; border: 0px; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; line-height: inherit; vertical-align: baseline; transition: all 0.2s ease-in-out 0s;">Newsweek</a>]</span></font></p></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"></font></div><div><a href="https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2018/01/180117164022.htm"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" color="#000000">https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2018/01/180117164022.htm</font></a></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><b>O<span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">cean sediments are a massive storehouse for the potent greenhouse gas methane.</span></b></font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><b><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">
</span></b></font></div><div id="text" style="box-sizing: border-box; border-radius: 0px !important;"><p style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); box-sizing: border-box; margin: 0px 0px 10px; border-radius: 0px !important;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Trapped in ocean sediments near continents lie ancient reservoirs of methane called methane hydrates. These ice-like water and methane structures encapsulate so much methane that many researchers view them as both a potential energy resource and an agent for environmental change. In response to warming ocean waters, hydrates can degrade, releasing the methane gas. Scientists have warned that release of even part of the giant reservoir could significantly exacerbate ongoing climate change.</font></p><p style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); box-sizing: border-box; margin: 0px 0px 10px; border-radius: 0px !important;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">However, methane only acts as a greenhouse gas if and when it reaches the atmosphere -- a scenario that would occur only if the liberated methane travelled from the point of release at the seafloor to the surface waters and the atmosphere.</font></p><p style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); box-sizing: border-box; margin: 0px 0px 10px; border-radius: 0px !important;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">With that in mind, environmental scientist Katy Sparrow '17 (PhD) set out to study the origin of methane in the Arctic Ocean.</font></p><p style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); box-sizing: border-box; margin: 0px 0px 10px; border-radius: 0px !important;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">"While a logical suspect for arctic methane emissions is degrading hydrates, there are several other potential methane sources. Our goal was to fingerprint the source of methane in the Arctic Ocean to determine if ancient methane was being liberated from the seafloor and if it survives to be emitted to the atmosphere," says Sparrow, who conducted the study, published in <em style="box-sizing: border-box; border-radius: 0px !important;">Science Advances</em>, as part of her doctoral research at the University of Rochester.</font></p><p style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); box-sizing: border-box; margin: 0px 0px 10px; border-radius: 0px !important;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Sparrow; her advisor, John Kessler, an associate professor of earth and environmental sciences; and a team of scientists from the Universities of Rochester, California Irvine, Minnesota Duluth, and Colorado Boulder, as well as the US Geological Survey and the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, conducted fieldwork just offshore of the North Slope of Alaska, near Prudhoe Bay. Sparrow calls the spot "ground zero" for oceanic methane emissions resulting from ocean warming. In some parts of the Arctic Ocean, the shallow regions near continents may be one of the settings where methane hydrates are breaking down now due to warming processes over the past 15,000 years. In addition to methane hydrates, carbon-rich permafrost that is tens of thousands of years old -- and found throughout the Arctic on land and in seafloor sediments -- can produce methane once this material thaws in response to warming. With the combination of the aggressive warming occurring in the Arctic and the shallow water depths, any released methane has a short journey from emission at the seafloor to release into the atmosphere.</font></p><p style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); box-sizing: border-box; margin: 0px 0px 10px; border-radius: 0px !important;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">The researchers used radiocarbon dating to fingerprint the origin of methane from their samples. By employing a technique they developed that involves collecting methane from roughly ten thousand gallons of seawater per sample, they made a surprising discovery: ancient-sourced methane is indeed being released into the ocean; but very little survives to be emitted to the atmosphere, even at surprisingly shallow depths.</font></p><p style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); box-sizing: border-box; margin: 0px 0px 10px; border-radius: 0px !important;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><b>"We do observe ancient methane being emitted from the seafloor to the overlying seawater, confirming past suspicions," Kessler says. "But, we found that this ancient methane signal largely disappears and is replaced by a different methane source the closer you get to the surface waters." The methane at the surface is instead from recently produced organic matter or from the atmosphere.</b></font></p><p style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); box-sizing: border-box; margin: 0px 0px 10px; border-radius: 0px !important;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Although the researchers did not examine in this study what prevents methane released from the seafloor from reaching the atmosphere, they suspect it is biodegraded by microorganisms in the ocean before it hits the surface waters. Mihai Leonte, a PhD candidate in Kessler's research group, observed this process -- in which microbes aggressively biodegrade methane as methane emissions increase -- in a paper published last year.</font></p><p style="box-sizing: border-box; margin: 0px 0px 10px; border-radius: 0px !important;"><font style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);" size="4" face="Times New Roman">"We found that very little ancient methane reaches surface waters even in the relatively shallow depths of 100 feet. Exponentially less methane would be able to reach the atmosphere in waters that are thousands of feet deep at the very edge of the shallow seas near continents, which is the area of the ocean where the bulk of methane hydrates are," Sparrow says. "Our data suggest that even if increasing amounts of methane are released from degrading hydrates as climate change proceeds, catastrophic emission to the atmosphere is not an inherent outcome."</font></p><p style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); box-sizing: border-box; margin: 0px 0px 10px; border-radius: 0px !important;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Sparrow and Kessler's results on the role of ancient methane sources are consistent with the findings of their Rochester colleague Vasilii Petrenko, an associate professor of earth and environmental sciences, who also radiocarbon dated methane. However, while Sparrow and Kessler dated methane found in modern-day seawater, Petrenko radiocarbon dated methane from the ancient atmosphere that was preserved in the ice of Arctic glaciers.</font></p><p style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); box-sizing: border-box; margin: 0px 0px 10px; border-radius: 0px !important;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">"Petrenko and his co-authors studied a rapid warming event from the past that serves as a modern-day analog," Sparrow says. "They found that the emissions of methane from ancient methane sources during this warming event were minimal relative to contemporary sources like wetlands."</font></p><p style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); box-sizing: border-box; margin: 0px 0px 10px; border-radius: 0px !important;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Kessler adds, "Our results agree with this conclusion, showing that ancient methane emissions to the atmosphere in an area that is experiencing some of the greatest warming today, is actually quite small, especially when compared to more direct emissions from human activities."</font></p><p style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); box-sizing: border-box; margin: 0px 0px 10px; border-radius: 0px !important;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">This study was primarily funded by the National Science Foundation with additional contributions from the Department of Energy, the National Aeronautics and Space Administration, and the University of Minnesota.</font></p></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"></font></div><div><a href="https://www.dailykos.com/stories/2019/12/14/1905639/-Methane-super-emitters-releasing-massive-plumes-after-Trump-rolled-back-environmental-regulations#read-more"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" color="#000000">https://www.dailykos.com/stories/2019/12/14/1905639/-Methane-super-emitters-releasing-massive-plumes-after-Trump-rolled-back-environmental-regulations#read-more</font></a></div><div><font style="background-color: rgb(255, 204, 102);" size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 204, 102);">Methane is many times more effective at trapping heat than carbon dioxide.</span> It’s not mentioned as often when considering the greenhouse effect behind the climate crisis because it’s released in comparatively low volumes and will gradually degrade over time. But methane’s potency means that even at low volumes it definitely makes a significant contribution to global warming. <b>That was a big part of the reason that, under President Obama, regulations were set in place to limit the amount of methane that oil and gas companies were allowed to emit, especially by venting wells in areas where capturing all the methane doesn’t happen to be convenient.</b></font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><b>But those regulations were some of the first to be rolled back under Donald Trump. </b>Trump proudly took all caps off the ability of fossil fuel producers to vent methane into the atmosphere. Producers and their supporters in Congress have tried to wave away any potential impact from venting — after all, methane is natural gas, and natural gas has value, so how much could companies really be spilling? The answer, as revealed in a report from The New York Times, is absolutely staggering.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><b>In just a few hours of flying over Texas sites with a small plane, the Times identified hundreds of sites whose level of methane production puts them in the category of “super emitters.</b>” The leaks came not just from wells, but from storage facilities, pipelines, and every stage of natural gas production. Since fracking generated a surprise boom in natural gas production two decades ago, the level of methane in the atmosphere has been increasing. Even though that change corresponded almost exactly with increased production, oil and gas companies have pretended to ignorance over the source of the methane. But it’s clear that methane is leaking in massive amounts. </font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 204, 102);">In fact, so much methane is being leaked at such rates that it could be argued that the move from coal to natural gas as the largest source of electricity in the United States has actually created more damage to the climate. </span>But it’s hard to be sure, because so little of this loss is actually measured. And if Trump gets his way, companies will not longer be required to even monitor for methane loss.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">While scientists can easily detect that overall methane levels are rising, tracking that methane back to sources can be very difficult. Even when satellite data or information from aircraft helps to identify a methane “plume” on the surface, the source of that gas can be any one of thousands of wells, hundreds of storage facilities, or anywhere in miles of pipeline. Tracking the methane to a specific source can be all but impossible, especially in areas of high production. </font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><b>Producers are supposed to seek permission and obtain permits before releasing significant quantities of methane. But, safe in the knowledge that tracking back a massive one-time release is almost impossible, many companies simply skip that step. </b>They know they can release a blast that’s equivalent to the environmental impact of running a city, and feign ignorance if anyone comes knocking. That’s why the critical factor is forcing companies to measure the methane themselves by requiring monitors on wells, takes, and other facilities. <span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);">Only by having those monitors on site, and having them regularly inspected, can there be any hope of identifying both accidental leaks and intentional venting.</span></font></div><div><font style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);" size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);" size="4" face="Times New Roman">Naturally, that’s exactly the requirement that Trump has already weakened, and is seeking to remove completely.<b> Lobbyists for oil and gas were some of the biggest contributors to Trump’s campaign, his inaugural slush fund, and his 2020 PAC</b>. It was no coincidence that his first Secretary of State came straight from the offices of Exxon. </font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">But gas companies aren’t all like Gordon Sondland. They don’t care of their contributions earn them keen ambassadorships. They just want to be left to make maximum money … by doing maximum damage.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"></font></div><div><a href="https://www.alternet.org/2019/10/boiling-with-methane-scientists-reveal-truly-terrifying-sign-of-climate-change-under-the-arctic-ocean"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" color="#000000">https://www.alternet.org/2019/10/boiling-with-methane-scientists-reveal-truly-terrifying-sign-of-climate-change-under-the-arctic-ocean</font></a></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
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</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">no lnx</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><b>‘Boiling with methane’: Scientists reveal ‘truly terrifying’ sign of climate change under the Arctic Ocean</b></font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><b>
</b></font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">A spectacular image of methane bubbles rising above a cold seep site. Methane bubbles flow in a small stream out of the sediment on an area of seafloor offshore Virginia north of Washington Canyon. Quill worms, anemones, patches of bacterial mat, pandalid shrimp, and a large red crab (Chaceon quinquedens) can be seen in and along the periphery of the seepage area.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Written by Jessica Corbett / <b>Common Dreams October 9, 2019</b></font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Scientists studying the consequences of methane emissions from underwater permafrost in the Arctic Ocean announced this week that they found a <span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);">50-square-foot area of the East Siberian Sea “boiling with methane bubbles.”</span></font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><b>“This is the most powerful seep I have ever been able to observe,” lead scientist Igor Semiletov said Monday, using a term for methane gas bubbling up from the seafloor to the surface. “No one has ever recorded anything similar.”</b></font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Semiletov, a Russian researcher who has participated in 45 Arctic expeditions, set out on the Academic Mstislav Keldysh last month, accompanied by scientists from the United Kingdom, the United States, Italy, the Netherlands, and Sweden.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Their discovery was announced in a statement from Russia’s Tomsk Polytechnic University, where Semiletov is a professor. The researchers’ findings from the expedition and Semiletov’s remarks were translated and reported on Tuesday by The Telegraph.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Russian scientists find ‘most powerful’ ever methane seep in Arctic Ocean https://t.co/v6HrbjPlXv</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">— Telegraph World News (@TelegraphWorld) October 8, 2019</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><b>Permafrost is a mix of soil, rocks, and sand bound together by ice that stays frozen for two or more years straight.</b> <span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);">As human activity causes global temperatures to rise, the world’s permafrost is thawing—releasing ancient bacteria and viruses as well as greenhouse gases such as carbon dioxide and methane that further heat the planet</span>.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Compared with carbon dioxide, methane has a shorter lifetime in the atmosphere but is better at trapping radiation, so methane’s impact is more than 25 times greater than that of carbon dioxide over a 100-year period, according to the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><b>Experts are increasingly concerned about the consequences of thawing permafrost that is located both beneath land and water in the planet’s coldest regions.</b> <span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);">Last week, the Washington Post reported on “stunning and dramatic” scenes from a region of Eastern Siberia where “sections of many older, wooden buildings already sag toward the ground—rendered uninhabitable by the unevenly thawing earth,” and “rivers are rising and running faster,” sweeping away entire neighborhoods.</span></font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">The Academic Mstislav Keldysh expedition’s research team, led by Semiletov, traveled to an area of the Arctic Ocean known for methane “fountains” to study the effects of permafrost thawing. Around the “powerful” fountain they found east of Bennett Island, the <b>concentration of methane in the atmosphere was more than nine times higher than the global average.</b></font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Describing the researchers’ discovery of the fountain based on the univeristy’s statement, The Telegraph reported:</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">When researchers drew near to the “emerald-colored” water of the methane fountain, they “could see how gas was rising to the surface from the black depths of the sea in thousands of bubbly strands,” according to expedition member Sergei Nikiforov.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">They took samples of bottom sediments, water, and gas, scooping up the extraordinarily large methane bubbles in buckets rather than small plastic capsules and filling several pressurized canisters.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><b>The next day, the expedition stumbled upon another giant seep of roughly the same size, even though discovering seeps among rough ocean waves is usually “harder than finding a needle in a haystack,”</b> Mr. Nikiforov said.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);" size="4" face="Times New Roman">The expedition’s findings, also reported on Tuesday by Newsweek, elicited alarmed reactions from readers and climate activists the world over:</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Our seas are starting to ‘boil’ — with methane. This is not normal. #ClimateCrisis #ArcticMatters #UniteBehindTheScience https://t.co/ATk7IzFuSi</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">— Callum Grieve (@callumgrieve) October 9, 2019</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><b>Oh, fuck</b>. https://t.co/OnwCW2rL2c</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">— Ray Monk (@Raymodraco) October 8, 2019</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">A New Zealand chapter of the <b>Extinction Rebellion movement—which launched a fresh wave of peaceful acts of civil disobedience around the world on Monday to demand bolder climate policies—tweeted in response to the expedition’s discovery, “This is why the disruption we caused is very minor in comparison to what’s coming.”</b></font></div></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
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