Introduction
Climate change appears to be one of the most challenging tasks humanity is about to face and this problem puts an enormous amount of pressure and stress on our planet, as well as on our society, and will put even a greater one in future. Such a scenario is one of the worst ever imaginable, putting an asteroid hit, a super volcano eruption, or a super earthquake aside; major climate change will result in destructive floods, and shifted climate zones, with food production being threatened. Climate change is a serious issue of our present life, and if not altered, it will lead to a complete human extinction, eventually.
When the question of climate change is discussed, the first thing we always put the blame on is burning fossil fuels, and it is undoubtful, but only partially true; natural gas, oil and coal are actually the major sources of human-caused carbon dioxide production, and are the direct causes of the greenhouse effect itself. But what is missed out, is that carbon dioxide is not as dangerous a greenhouse gas, as methane, which our planet contains in enormous amount, and which is capable of raising an average temperature by 10 degrees - a catastrophic outcome, that will lead to the end of Earth as we know it.
Even though methane has a shorter life in the atmosphere (8 years to 100 years of CO2), it is an incredibly powerful greenhouse gas; a single molecule of methane is actually 23 times as harmful to the atmosphere, as a single molecule of CO2. At the present moment there are 5 gigatonnes of methane in our atmosphere, but that is nothing compared to an estimated 2000 gigatonnes of this deadly gas locked up in frozen high latitude tundra, and ocean sediments. And we certainly know from history that frozen methane can be extracted from ice with sufficient warming, thus putting us in great danger.
Livestock as a source of methane
According to the recently collected data, 37% of human produced methane comes from livestock only, thus making it 103 million tons - the amount equivalent to 2,369 million tons of CO2. If these assumptions are accurate, the only possible option in this situation is to replace livestock products with better alternative ones; significant livestock reduction will result in more rapid effects on the amount of emissions in our atmosphere, than any other actions aimed to make the overall situation better.
“Methane bomb” in the Arctic
The second half of the 20th century indicates an increasing winter warming in different parts of Canada, Alaska, northern Europe and Asia, due to a slight warming of Earth’s surface. The greatest impact of global warming will be on snow and ice, especially strong warming effect will be across the Arctic. Recent research claims the average annual extent of the Arctic sea ice to be dropping at astounding rates of roughly 10% per decade, since satellite monitoring was introduced in 1978. This melting is especially strong in late summers, when large parts of the Arctic Ocean becomes ice-free for weeks, which allows more heat to be absorbed by water, thus creating a runaway feedback that will ensure a complete disappearance of ice in the Arctic. This process is the actual driving force of temperature increase in the Arctic, which is, in fact, rising at a far greater rate, than the global average of 0.7°C. Surrounding areas in Greenland, Canada, Alaska, Russia and Norway are affected simultaneously; melting glaciers, ice sheets, and ice caps produce vast amounts of warm fresh water that contributes to the rise of sea-level, warming sea floor and fossil ice. Such extreme heating rates are alarming due to approximately 1672 gigatonnes of methane being stored in the form of hydrates in the Arctic and sub-Arctic terrestrial permafrost and fossil ice underneath the ocean sediment.
Recent observations state that amount of methane currently coming out of the East Siberian Arctic Shelf can be compared to the amount that is produced by an entire world’s ocean. Constantly heating Arctic shelf is melting permafrost under the sea, releasing methane stored in the seabed, and therefore taking current average methane concentrations in the Arctic to 1.85 parts per million, which appears to be the highest number in the last 400,000 years, with concentrations even higher above the East Siberian Arctic Shelf. The biggest problem is that under normal conditions methane should oxidize into carbon dioxide before reaching the surface in deep waters, but East Siberian Arctic Shelf’s methane simply doesn’t have enough time to go through this process due to the water shallowness, which means direct exposure into the atmosphere - a process that will cause further methane release - a runaway methane feedback, which will eventually result in complete fossil ice meltdown, with further release of sealed methane to the point when catastrophic climate changes will occur.
Conclusion
Recent researches on the question of global warming indicate that our worst enemy is not CO2 emissions, as everyone thinks, but only a trigger to a real problem hidden inside our planet. From this moment on we all should think on how to prevent the unstoppable from actually happening, and it will be a complicated task to accomplish as any actions will always carry potential risks and costs; but if no immediate actions as a response to climate change are taken, we will end up with may tragic consequences, that are impossible to overcome, moreover, to sustain life on earth is such conditions.
References
EPA. Climate Change Indicators in the United States. Web United States Environmental Protection Agency, 2012. Web. 22 June. 2013. http://www.epa.gov/climatechange/pdfs/climateindicators-full-2012.pdf
Hansen, J. Arctic Methane Alert Call for an urgent escalation of scientific inquiry and development of countermeasures. Club of Rome speech, 2009. Web. 22 June. 2013. http://www.vmine.net/scienceinparliament/specials/12.pdf
Daily mail newspaper. Fountains' of methane 1,000m across erupt from Arctic ice - a greenhouse gas 30 times more potent than carbon dioxide. Web Mail Online 13 Dec. 1 2011. Web. 22 June. 2013.
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/sciencetech/article-2073686/Fountains-methane-1-000m-erupt-Arctic-ice--greenhouse-gas-30-times-potent-carbon-dioxide.html
