TERMINAL PROBLEM, FINAL SOLUTION

SAVING THE EARTH THROUGH PREEMPTIVE WAR AND NUCLEAR POWER.
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Paul Krugman, having visited China, concludes that "China cannot continue producing greenhouse emissions at an escalating rate because the planet can’t handle the strain." OK, but China goes on, and so does the USA. The USA gets 71% of its electricity from fossil fuels. China, with supposedly one new coal plant a week, now emits more CO2 than the USA. What to do? Wait for the planet to explode? Is it Munich all over again?
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The Principle of Precaution requires to consider the very worst case possible, stop, and think carefully about whether it could happen. In the case of climate, the worst case is a runaway eruption of methane. There are enormous quantities of frozen methane, of the order of all other fossil fuels (coal, oil, gas), it seems. If the temperature rises, it will bubble out catastrophically. Its greenhouse power over ten years is well above twenty times that of CO2. So if the eruption starts full on, the worldwide temperatures would jump by at least ten times what they have risen so far.

This has happened before, at least once in the last 50 million years.

Most of the methane is up north, so the disaster may get in full swing one of these summers. It will be impossible to stop. It may happen this summer, or 50 years from now. On our present course, it will happen. It will make the financial crisis look like absolutely nothing whatsoever. An enormous rise in sea level could be around the corner, if the ice shelves disintegrate. Even if methane does not erupt, other long linear thresholds are close by, like when both forests and oceans will become huge carbon sources, instead of huge carbon sinks. The Antarctic ocean has turned into a CO2 emitter already (because it's shaken too much by high winds and storms, like a carbonated beverage!)

To prevent the methane catastrophe, the only solution is to bring the CO2 creation to zero, ASAP. How to do this? Conservation and advanced civil nuclear power. Advanced reactors are extremely efficient, extremely safe, and create little waste, and can be made to burn nuclear waste. But, whereas the Obama administration spends billions to put broadband Internet in rural areas, the research on advanced nuclear reactors is minuscule.

Civil nuclear power would be a factor of peace, because it would give a pretext to inspect, and check that military nuclear power is not being developed (a paradox).

We face the greatest crisis of the biosphere since the extinction of the dinosaurs. As drastic as this. Some will say that I exaggerate. I wish. Therefore it goes without saying that it is the ultimate casus belli. If countries to not limit their CO2 emissions, they will face war. Economic war should be viewed as a better alternative, a mitigating factor to be implemented immediately.

Indeed, the European Union has decided to take separate action in order to achieve reduction of the greenhouse gas emissions (of the order of 20% very soon). This separate action, the so-called “go-it-alone” scenario, consists of, inter alia, the imposition of “border adjustment measures” such as a “Carbon Import Tax” on products imported into Europe.

It would be excellent if the USA joined the EU. Better late than never.

Patrice Ayme
http://patriceayme.wordpress.com/