A View We Don’t Often Hear

A View We Don’t Often Hear

March 27, 2017 

A View We Don’t Often Hear

Little wonder some of you prefer the Koch brothers propaganda. No global warming is a much happier story. I like it better myself. From a reader:

Hi Paul,

Right you are. The Arctic sea ice is steadily diminishing, the temperature of the Arctic seas is steadily rising. and if these trends continue, some near future month or year, there will be a sudden, massive eruption of gigatons of methane from the Arctic region into the atmosphere.

The primary, secondary and tertiary effects will be global and dramatic. Most humans will probably be dead as a result within a matter of a very few years or less. It will alter everything: climate (precipitation, winds, temperature), atmospheric chemistry, global ecology, global crop production (meaning lack thereof — hence no food), and much more.

This scenario could even kick in with a vengeance as soon as later this year, or in 2018 or 2019. We are drawing closer and closer to the big event. It will happen if we continue on the present global trajectory, and it won’t take decades to arrive.

This is quite apart from the concomitant Fukushima nuclear crisis (likely a global extinction level event in itself), the accelerating collapse of the global ecology, accelerating global deforestation, accelerating chemical contamination of global ecosystems, accelerating extinction of a whole wide range of flora and fauna, etc.

In other words, we are fucked, largely at our own hands. Some experts give the world ten years or less until the global decline and chaos on all fronts becomes so severe that even the most willfully stupid and the most willfully ignorant realize that all around them, the planet is swiftly dying. I am reasonably well informed and I would say that by 2035, at the outside, it all falls irretrievably apart, if humanity continues on our present, unimaginably stupid trajectory. That’s just 18 years from now. But I would not argue with those who say we have only ten years left, maybe less. The situation is extreme.

Donald Trump says nothing about any of this. Hillary Clinton says nothing about any of this. Angela Merkel says nothing about any of this. John McCain says nothing about any of this. The Bushes say nothing about any of this. And none of them offer any solutions, apart from the fact that their mental horizons don’t even extend 10% as far as mine. And yet they are so-called “leaders”.

They are all a bunch of political whores, goddamned sock puppets for the Big Banks, Wall Street, the Military Industrial Complex, the international multi-billionaire class and the CIA.

What’s needed is a massive, global reforestation project. A massive, global, sea cleaning operation. A massive, global de-nuclearization initiative. A massive, global, non-GMO, non-chemical agricultural movement. A massive, global roll-out of so-called “free energy” technology, which the compartmentalized Black World has and uses.

Absent these initiatives, we are cooked. It’s game over, as humanity and the planet die.

regards,

For what the scientific story is worth, it goes like this:

As a biosphere evolved that supports life on planet earth, toxic gases were locked away in various places, such as ice and permafrost.  

The atmosphere is in delicate balance.  Animal life absorbs oxygen and emits carbon dioxide.  Trees absorb carbon dioxide and emit oxygen.  This balance has been under assault for 150 years.  Deforestation has reduced the ability of the planet to process CO2, while a carbon-based existence of 7 billion people pour CO2 into the atmosphere.

The CO2 buildup is believed to be the cause of the warming that is melting the polar ice caps and the permafrost.  A sudden release of methane equivalent to 1,000 gigatons of CO2 could be the consequence.  This is about as much CO2 as industrial civilization has released in 150 years.

Warming also has effects on the oceans, on the acid level of the water, and the ability of oceans to absorb CO2 and retain oxygen.  The great barrier reef in Australia is dying.

There are many feedbacks, and once the process begins it feeds upon itself regardless of human measures. For example, the more polar ice is lost, the faster the warming.

Previous events that destroyed the balance in the biosphere resulted in life extinctions. The belief that a 7 billion population in a carbon-based culture cannot alter the balance in the biosphere seems to be wishful thinking not supported by science.

It suits me fine if the Koch brothers climate spokespersons are correct. Even if they are not correct, why escape from The Matrix when not even Neo can repair the damage to the biosphere?

Dr. Paul Craig Roberts was Assistant Secretary of the Treasury for Economic Policy and associate editor of the Wall Street Journal. He was columnist for Business Week, Scripps Howard News Service, and Creators Syndicate. He has had many university appointments. His internet columns have attracted a worldwide following. Roberts' latest books are The Failure of Laissez Faire Capitalism and Economic Dissolution of the West, How America Was Lost, and The Neoconservative Threat to World Order.