Really Frightened Scientists States – The World as We Know It Is About to End!

When I first read this, and sat down to write about it. I felt really sad, I mean how many warnings is supposed to go out to the public and others concerning the environments health. Before we all can get it into our BIG EMPTY HEADS Earth is dying? Here is another new study by 22 biologists and ecologists who has found that environmental changes on our planet are reaching a point of no return that leads to mass extinctions and harms all human welfare. The situation, said one scientist, “scares the hell out of me.” That would be James H. Brown, one of the authors of alarming paper published by Nature, talking to New York Times Green blogger Justin Gillis. Brown is not one of your everyday cranks predicting raptures and the end of days.

He is a macroecologist at the University of New Mexico. And as The Atlantic‘s James Fallows, “who pointed out this terrifying study to us”   He writes, this could be the most important news of 2012. How soon do these scientists expect the world as we know it to end? Gillis writes, “within a few human generations, if not sooner.” The most frightening thing is that this finding isn’t about what will come if we do not act, but that our effects on the planet’s environment global warming, population growth, and overall resource extraction means that we’ve already passed a ”tipping point.” This isn’t a plea for change. These are things scientists have been warning us about for decades.

And the Global warming puzzle becomes even MORE complex as methane is detected seeping directly from the Arctic ocean. Airborne surveys of the Arctic appear to have found a puzzling new source of greenhouse gas – methane seeping directly from the Arctic ocean.

Methane was detected near surface of Arctic ocean and it makes all warming predictions even more difficult. Gas is NOT accompanied by carbon monoxide so doesn’t come from man-made combustion. A report in Nature Geoscience suggests that as well as huge ‘surges’ of methane being released by melting permafrost, the gas might be being released from the ocean itself. Methane is a potent greenhouse gas – and this unpredictable effect makes the climate puzzle even more complex.

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‘Uncertainty in the future atmospheric burden of methane, a potent greenhouse gas, represents an important challenge to the development of realistic climate projections,’ say the scientists.

Methane bubbles trapped in ice: Normally, bubbles from the seabed turn into carbon dioxide before reaching the surface, but the East Siberian Arctic Shelf is so shallow the methane travels directly into the atmosphere

‘The Arctic is home to large reservoirs of methane, in the form of permafrost soils. Furthermore, methane is produced in the surface ocean and the surface waters of the Arctic Ocean are supersaturated with respect to methane.’ Until now, it had been unknown what happened to this oceanic methane. Now it seems that some at least is being released into the atmosphere – causing unknown and unpredictable effects on the environment.

And we`re not done yet!

Now new research shows that over population and over-consumption will finally have catastrophic implications for human wellbeing. On the eve of the Rio+20 conference, the world’s 105 science academies have warned international leaders that a failure to act now on population growth and over-consumption will have “potentially catastrophic implications for human wellbeing”. The coalition of scientists from nations as diverse as South Africa, Latvia, Japan, Nicaragua, Bolivia and the UK, have taken the rare step of issuing a joint statement ahead of the UN conference on sustainable development, which will begin in Rio de Janeiro on Wednesday (June 20). Scientists urged action not only on reducing consumption, but also on slowing population growth, with a particular focus on educating women and girls in developing countries.

“For too long the dual issues of population and consumption have been left off the table due to political and ethical sensitivities,” said Professor Charles Godfrey, Fellow of the Royal Society and Working Group Chair of the IAP, the global network of science academies. “These are issues that affect us all, developed and developing nations alike, and we must take responsibility for them together.” In a jointly signed statement, the IAP academies said that a future in which human wellbeing increases was still possible if policymakers act quickly.

“It is critical that national and international and policy makers, acting individually and collectively, take immediate action to address these difficult but vitally important issues,” the scientists said.

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