From the view of Western science, the climate is clearly warming and there’s been data, Western scientific data, Western climate data to confirm this for 30 years or longer and actually interestingly the original understanding of what’s now climate science really actually dates back to the 1890s in Europe. So the understanding of climate change is not a new understanding at all and there really is no real Western scientific debate about climate change. There are people who presented as being open to discussion but it’s really not at this point. So what is happening is the climate is warming and there really is no real serious discussion about that and that has been happening because of the greenhouse gases we’ve been emitting especially since industrialization and that has again been demonstrated for 30 years or longer.
But most recently in the last 12 to 15 years or so, there’s been another dynamic that’s been being discussed, that the ability of the planet to sequester greenhouse gases, the ability of the planet to hold the emissions we’ve been releasing has gone down and that is true on a number of fronts. In addition to the increase of greenhouse gases, the ability of the planet to hold those game greenhouse gases has gone down. So for example, unfortunately we are experiencing massive deforestation globally, massive amounts of trees are being cut down and have been being cut down for a long time. So ecologically, what trees do is they hold greenhouse gases, they absorb carbon monoxide and carbon dioxide for example which are two important greenhouse gases. So what that means is that the ability of the planet, the ability of the bars to hold the gases has gone down.
But there’s also many other examples of that, a really extraordinary example is the acidification of the oceans. The oceans are obviously water and from a Chinese medical view, water by its nature has a cooling effect and from a Western view, water– large bodies of water also have the ability again to hold greenhouse gases, the whole carbon monoxide and carbon dioxide. Well, recently within the last decade or so, what Western science is starting to understand is that the oceans may no longer be able to hold those greenhouse gases that in fact the oceans appear to be releasing greenhouse gases that they the oceans as incredible as it may seem we may have filled the oceans to capacity of their ability to hold greenhouse gases and that they’re actually starting to release greenhouse gases. So again as I interpret that data, the ability of the planet to hold greenhouse gases has gone down and is now– the planet is now actually starting to release those gases. A couple other examples of that inability now the planet to hold greenhouse gases and keep things cool is in the oceans and permafrost.
There’s research now, let in less than the last 10 years, about the last seven or eight years that demonstrates conclusively that in the northern oceans, in the Arctic Ocean for example, there are enormous plumes of methane that are being released from the ocean and they’re being released from several miles below the surface of the ocean and the methane is bubbling up to the surface and that’s very significant because methane is a very potent greenhouse gas. It’s depending on who you talk to, it’s between 20 and a hundred times more potent than carbon dioxide and carbon monoxide. And the fact that the methane is bubbling up from the ocean floor indicates there’s a huge amount of methane that’s not only being released but is actually making it into the atmosphere. And there’s a climatologist who’s been studying the Arctic Ocean for several decades and he documents physically methane blooms that are up to a kilometer wide which is a half a mile wide being released from the ocean. So again the way I would look at that is the ability of the planet to hold greenhouse gases at bay is being lost similar things happening with permafrost, permafrost as parsley Arctic in particular that were once permanently frozen that’s melting and the methane that is trapped underneath the permafrost in the bogs for example in the marshes is again being released.
So there’s really two dynamics one, the planet is warming but the ability of the planet to hold the greenhouse gases has gone down. So that is part of what climatologists are describing as a feedback loop that not only is the planet warming but this other factor is occurring where the ability of the planet to hold greenhouse gases has gone down and that’s one of the hypotheses why the planet is really starting to warm much more dramatically than anticipated.