Hi Peter,

I like your Utube clip/movie on methane [1].  Here are some notes/questions.

Colin Balderin was the reporter?  There are more and more swamps and 
lakes on tundra.  Dark peaty water in this lake warms up.  Lakes grow in 
size, releasing methane as they do so.  60% of Russia is covered by 
permafrost, with potential release of 80 Gt of methane.  Lakes cover a 
growing area.  Opinions differ as to how much gas escapes each year, but 
it's a spiralling process.  Methane causes global warming.  In the worst 
case scenario, we simply do not have time to adapt to the new environment.

I like your biologist, Dr Sergei Kirpotin, of Tomsk State University.  
"We do not have any opportunity to stop it.  We only have time to delay 
it - to make the results less [?]".  I missed the very last word.

Moving onto another clip, on food security (Hello food) [2], you 
highlight the insanity of our current emissions path, and how the IPCC 
and other scientist downplay the severity of the danger we are in, e.g. 
by ignoring heatwaves.

It is interesting that the US government is not telling the truth about 
food security.

On top of this food security of land crops, we have ocean acidification, 
which is starting to affect the marine food chain and fishing.  20% of 
world population rely on fish for protein.  So getting the CO2 level 
down is important for the ocean acidification as well as for the warming 
it produces.

You say we are committed to 2 degrees, yet Hansen [3] is saying we must 
keep under 1 degree.  I think that the only way out of this dilemma is a 
massive effort to reduce CO2 concentration in the atmosphere - paid for 
out of fossil fuel income.  By having a tax on fossil fuel carbon taken 
out of the ground, we can pay to put the carbon back in the ground - and 
more.   It's the obvious logical way to sort out the economics - market 
forces will then work on behalf of the environment.  Nicholas Stern [4] 
has described the current situation as a market failure!  We need the 
oil/gas industry to be part of the solution rather than part of the problem.

Biochar offers a way to remove carbon while increasing crop yealds.  As 
you start your clip "we do not have good agricultural land to waste"; so 
upgrading lower quality soils must be a vital part of avoiding a food 
crisis, but with biochar and appropriate subsistence farming practice, 
CO2 can also be drawn down.

But going back to Arctic methane - if we don't sort that out, all 
efforts to limit global warming through CO2 level reduction will be 
kiboshed.  We must do our utmost to keep methane warming well below CO2 
warming otherwise we could get to a fatal 3 degrees within a few 
decades.  This is why I'm holding the Arctic methane workshop in London, 
15-16th October - to brainstorm on what can be done from a practical, 
engineering point of view.  If anybody has good ideas, please let me know!

And we must look after the Amazon rainforest.  It is a vital carbon 
sink, but could turn into a source with two or three years of drought 
like 2005 or 2010.  And it is vital for the hydrological cycle - 
controlling the western world's weather patterns.

Cheers,

John

[1] http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hRbi9CfEjbc

[2] http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JPQnsUOCaeE&feature=related

[3] Hansen's paper is due for publication shortly

[4] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stern_Review

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On 22/09/2011 19:39, PR CARTER wrote:
> http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hRbi9CfEjbc