The Clathrate Gun
… is a dud
Let me be honest with you: I’m a natural pessimist. When people question having children because of the coming ecological apocalypse, I’m with them all the way. The apparently unstoppable nature of climate change is the most urgent concern we’re facing as humanity. Quoting James Lovelock:
We are on the edge of the greatest die-off humanity has ever seen. We will be lucky if 20% of us survive what is coming. We should be scared stiff.
The warming trend is already very worrying. Even more scary, is the possibility of runaway climate change. As humans we naturally think in terms of linear cause-effect relationships. If we put twice as much CO2 into the atmosphere, the warming effect will be twice as big. Right? Wrong. The Earth is a living system, full of nonlinear, self-reinforcing mechanisms. The more global warming, the more ice melts in the Arctic. The more white ice is replaced by dark water, the more warmth is absorbed instead of reflected, reinforcing global warming.
In the Permian-Triassic extinction event, the biggest die-off in the history of life, 96% of marine species and the majority of all life forms became extinct. Was this caused by runaway climate change? Can it happen again?
