Peter Olson, Goonengerry
Global warming means the end of one civilisation and the beginning of a new and different one.
What people don’t realise, is that the amount of global warming produced by 200 years of emissions at the current rate could, in fact, be produced in just two or three years!
The temperature of the Arctic Sea has been zero for the last 100,000 years and that has kept the Arctic Sea floor frozen. It has kept trapped thousands of gigatons (Gt) of ancient methane, under the sea floor. But now the Arctic Sea is warm and so the Arctic Sea floor is thawing.
When that sea floor thaws, published studies suggest that a release of 50Gt of methane from the sea floor per annum will commence.
For the first 20 years after that, those 50Gt of ancient methane would have about 70 or 80 times greater warming effect than all the greenhouse gases released in 2018.
This 50Gt of methane per annum release would continue each and every year. So in just a two-year period the global warming effect could equate to 160 years of greenhouse gas production at 2018 levels.
