NO PLACE TO HIDE

It’s the headline we’ve been dreading, yet knew was coming. Warming Hits Tipping Point says the Guardian, because a vast part of Siberia, “ an area of permafrost spanning a million square kilometres - the size of France and Germany combined - has started to melt for the first time since it formed 11,000 years ago at the end of the last ice age."

'The area, which covers the entire sub-Arctic region of western Siberia, is the world's largest frozen peat bog and scientists fear that as it thaws, it will release billions of tonnes of methane, a greenhouse gas 20 times more potent than carbon dioxide, into the atmosphere.

It is a scenario climate scientists have feared since first identifying "tipping points" - delicate thresholds where a slight rise in the Earth's temperature can cause a dramatic change in the environment that itself triggers a far greater increase in global temperatures.'

Because of the feedback effect and the resulting release of methane gases, estimates of temperature rises over the next century will probably be revised upward as much as 25% just based on this single finding.

"When you start messing around with these natural systems, you can end up in situations where it's unstoppable. There are no brakes you can apply," said David Viner, a senior scientist at the Climatic Research Unit at the University of East Anglia.

"This is a big deal because you can't put the permafrost back once it's gone. The causal effect is human activity and it will ramp up temperatures even more than our emissions are doing."

Various climate scientists and ecologist have been warning that something like this was around the corner. But the oil-drunk Bushheads, soaked in flatulent denial, are so far behind on the climate crisis that the public is also several steps from understanding the nature and dimension of the problem, and especially what must be done.

The argument about how aggressively to curb greenhouse gases that has absorbed everyone now becomes an argument primarily about responsibility to the far future. If we have passed the tipping point in Siberia it means that nothing anyone does now, not even a 95% reduction in carbon dioxide, is going to stop the melting.

That is, any reduction now or in the near future MAY help even in the short term, so it's worth doing, but if people expect it to happen and it doesn't, they must be prepared to know that what they are doing now is really for the far future.

Meanwhile, the things that are going to have to be done first to deal with the inevitable in that short term aren’t even being discussed, because the Bushheads and their supporters deny anything truly serious is happening. Another danger we face is the public not understanding that cutting emissions, etc. probably won’t benefit them in their lifetimes (except in terms of healthier air and water, of course) and so they could refuse to continue to switch to clean renewable and sustainable energy, thus condemning the future to even greater horrors, such as the biotic earth as we know it.

That's why we have to begin attending to the future, and thinking about it as clearly as we can. In this case especially, it helps us to focus on what kinds of things we need to do in appropriate time frames: what should be we doing now for the near future, the next 10 or 25 or 50 years, and what must we do now and for a long time, if there is to be a future beyond that.