Science is clearly showing that the human race is on course to cause its own extinction, along with that of virtually every other species in our entire planetary biosphere. Can science also show us the tools and methods to get out of the box we find ourselves in?
Although few people could name it, the biggest threat to the planet today isn't a wandering comet or nuclear war. It's a substance known as clathrate.
Clathrates exist just below the surface of the Earth in vast quantities. In fact there is so much that no one can accurately determine the total volume. All they are is frozen methane.
Methane is not rare, by any means. The enormous atmospheres of Jupiter and Saturn are laden with the stuff. It's also a major component of natural gas, which we use for cooking, heating, electrical generation, and even to power vehicles. The problem isn't that we use too much of it... the problem is that we use too little.
As we continue to increase the CO2 levels of our atmosphere, now amounting to a 35% increase, we are also raising the levels of methane (up 50%). Methane, although much less common, is about 25 times more potent as a greenhouse gas. As we begin to thaw the permafrost, we are releasing more and more methane. That will soon be the trigger for a runaway climate that will toast the Earth, and the vast majority of its species.
I quote from The Coming Extinction of Humanity :
When methane is released into the atmosphere, it reacts with molecules of oxygen and hydrogen called OH radicals. The OH radicals combine with the methane and break it up into carbon dioxide and water vapor, two other less potent greenhouse gases. Scientist have long assumed that this process would be complete in about ten years.
Gavin Schmidt is a researcher at NASA's Goddard Institute for Space Studies in New York, NY and Columbia University's Center for Climate Systems Research. He has led a study on the impact of methane on Earth's climate of 55 million years ago.
Schmidt's team concluded that larger volumes of methane would simply consume the available supply of OH radicals, and remain as atmospheric methane for decades, or even centuries.
So, as we wring our hands about CO2, it is in reality only the 'fuse' which will warm the atmosphere enough for the 'bomb' of frozen methane to begin to thaw. Once that gets going, it will be like a match to a haystack.
So how can we avoid the coming calamity? The only presently conceivable method is to capture the methane before it leaks into the atmosphere, or at least as much of it as possible. Simultaneously, we must develop the means to remove atmospheric methane as well, because we can't possibly harvest more than a fraction of the billions of tons which lie under the permafrost of the tundra and the Arctic and deep-sea depositories.
Replacing all use of coal with methane,, immediately, would do more than any other single action we can imagine. Burning the methane produces more CO2, certainly, but it reduces its potency as a greenhouse gas by a fact of 20 to 30 times. The Coming Extinction of Humanity offers much more on both the threats to the Earth, and of the limited options remaining to save our fragile planet.