Lucy-Alamo Projects - Hydroxyl Generation and Atmospheric Methane Destruction

As you know the weather is starting to change rapidly for the worse now and I have been working on Arctic methane induced global warming for about 14 years. There are massive deposits of methane gas trapped in the undersea permafrosts in Russian waters and onland in Siberia as well and if the global warming boils of just 10% of what is there, there is enough to cause a Permian style extinction event that humanity will not survive. Some brilliant work on the Arctic methane threat has been done by a Russian scientist Natalia Shakhova and others who indicate that we are in a very perilous position, if we don't find a way of reducing the atmospheric methane and depressurizing the undersea methane to stop the massive methane eruptions there. I and some other workers have designed a radio-laser Atmospheric methane destruction system based on the early Russian radio-wave induced conversion of methane to nano-diamonds. This radio-laser system can be installed on nuclear powered boats such as the 40 Russian Arctic ice breakers and start immediate work on destroying the atmospheric methane clouds that are building up in the Arctic. An abstract about the system is attached and it has been accepted for presentation at a congress of the American Meteorological Society to be held on January 10 - 14, 2016 at New Orleans in Louisiana, U.S.A. This system should be mounted on the nuclear icebreakers and used onshore. Once the methane is brought under control there should be a reduction in the massive fire hazards, heat waves and severe storms systems that are plaguing Russia and the rest of the world.

Yours sincerely,

Malcolm P.R. Light
Earth Scientist

The Abstract follows:-
No. 275345 Lucy - Alamo Projects - Hydroxyl Generation and Atmospheric Methane Destruction.
by
Malcolm P.R. Light (Dr)
Retired, Cortegana, Spain

Congress of the American Meteorological Society, Wednesday 13, January, 2016

Methane formed by organisms in the water becomes trapped in the fabric of water ice crystals when it freezes and is stable below about 300 metres depth in the Arctic Ocean and on the shallow East Siberian Arctic Shelf. There are such massive methane reserves below the Arctic Ocean floor, that they represent 100 times the amount, that is required to cause a Permian style major extinction event, should the subsea Arctic methane be released into the atmosphere because of methane's giant global warming potential (100 to 1000 times CO2) over a short time period (Light and Solana, 2012 - 2014, Carana 2012 - 2014). There are also giant reservoirs of mantle methane, originally sealed in by shallow methane hydrate plugs in fractures cutting the Arctic seafloor and onshore in N. Siberia (Light, 2014, Carana 2013, Light, Hensel and Carana, 2015). The whole northern hemisphere is now covered by a thickening atmospheric methane global warming veil from Arctic methane emissions at the level of the jet streams, which is spreading southwards at about 1 km a day and already totally envelopes the United States (Figure 1). There must therefore be a world-wide effort to capture and thus depressurise the methane in the subsea and surface Arctic permafrost and eradicate the quantities accumulating in the ocean and atmosphere.

Methane produced at the surface diffuses upward and is broken down by photo dissociation (sunlight) and chemical attack by nascent oxygen and hydroxyl (Heicklen, 1967). The Lucy Project is a radio/laser system for destroying the first hydrogen bond in atmospheric methane when it forms dangerously thick global warming clouds over the Arctic (Figure 2, Light & Carana, 2012). It generates similar gas products to those normally produced by the natural destruction of methane in the atmosphere over some 15 to 20 years. Radio frequencies are used in generating nano-diamonds from methane gas in commercial applications over the entire pressure range of the atmosphere up to 50 km altitude (Figure 2, Light and Carana, 2012). Recent experiments have shown that when a test tube of seawater was illuminated by a polarized 13.56 MHZ radio beam, that flammable gases (nascent hydrogen and hydroxyls) were released at the top of the tube (iopscience.iop.org, 2013). In the Arctic Ocean, polarized 13.56 MHZ radio waves will decompose atmospheric humidity, mist, fog, ocean spray and the surface of the waves themselves into nascent hydrogen and hydroxyl over the region where a massive methane torch (plume) is entering the atmosphere, so that the additional hydroxyl produced will react with the rising methane, breaking a large part of it down (Figure 2)(iopscience.iop.org, 2013).

A better system could use Nd: glass heating lasers containing hexagonal neodymium which is stable below 863oC (Krupke 1986 in Lide and Frederickse, 1995). Neodymium glass lasers have extreme output parameters with peak powers near 10 to the power 14 watts when collimated and peak power densities of 10 to the power 18 watts per square cm if focused (Krupke 1986 in Lide and Frederickse, 1995). Velard (2006) states that at the Lawrence Livermore Laboratory, for inertial confinement nuclear fusion, "192 beams of Nd: glass - plate amplifier chains are being used in parallel clusters to generate very high energy (10 kilojoules) at a very high power (>10 power 12 watts) and at the second and third harmonics of the fundamental, with flexible pulse shapes and with sophisticated spectral and spacial on - target laser light qualities". The Nd: glass laser system is more stable and efficient than the longer wavelength CO lasers and shorter wavelength KrF lasers (Velard, 2006).

The three 13.56 MHZ radio transmitters in the Lucy Project (Figure 2) could be replaced by 3 groups of parallel lasers each forming a giant circular flash lamp. Half the Nd: glass lasers in the flash lamp could be tuned to exactly 21 million times the 13.56 MHZ methane destruction/nano-diamond formation frequency (Mitura, 1976). The adjacent alternate lasers will be tuned to a slightly different frequency exactly out of phase with the primary frequency by 13.56 MHZ.The Nd: glass lasers have a wavelength of 1052 nm equivalent to a frequency of 2.85*10 power 8 MHZ. The methane molecule requires 435 kilo-joules per mole to dislodge the first hydrogen proton and an average of 409.3 kilo - joules per mole for the other three protons (Hutchinson, 2014). Hydroxyl requires 493 kilo - joules per mole to generate it from water (Hutchinson, 2014). A set of four focused Nd; glass lasers will have an energy of about 454.5 kilo-joules per mole, and will be strong enough to dislodge the first hydrogen proton from a methane molecule. Of course this can also be achieved by increasing the number of focused lasers to six or eight. Exactly the same neodymium laser system could be shone on the sea surface, at the base of the rising methane cloud, generating hydroxyls and nascent oxygen and thus breaking down the methane. The power source for these radio transmitters/lasers in the Arctic can come from floating or coastal nuclear or gas electric power stations and the transmitters could be located on shore or on boats, submarines, oil-rigs and aircraft. We have only 1 to 5 years to get an efficient methane destruction radio-laser system designed, tested and installed (Lucy and Alamo (HAARP) projects) before the accelerating methane eruptions take us into uncontrollable runaway global warming. Humanity will then be looking at catastrophic storm systems, a fast rate of sea level rise and coastal zone flooding with its disastrous effects on world populations and global stability.

Links

- Lucy-Alamo Projects - Hydroxyl Generation and Atmospheric Methane Destruction, by Malcolm P.R. Light (Dr) Light
https://ams.confex.com/ams/96Annual/webprogram/Paper275345.html

- North Siberian Arctic Permafrost Methane Eruption Vents, by Malcolm P.R. Light, Harold H. Hensel and Sam Carana 

http://arctic-news.blogspot.com/2015/04/north-siberian-arctic-permafrost-methane-eruption-vents.html

- WARNING - Planetary Omnicide between 2023 and 2031 

http://arctic-news.blogspot.com/2015/02/warning-planetary-omnicide-between-2023-and-2031.html
and 

https://www.facebook.com/photo.php?fbid=10155073267455161&set=a.10150592349770161.675455.655795160&type=3

- Poster created for Geophysical Congress on methane hydrates, earthquakes and global warming, Nice, France, 2002, by Malcolm Light and Carmen Solana
http://arctic-news.blogspot.com/p/seismic-activity.html

Poster Presentation at American Meteorological Society's 18th Conference on Atmospheric Chemistry, January 10 - 14,...
Posted by Sam Carana on Monday, October 19, 2015

Act now on methane

by Malcolm Light

This is an extract. The full paper including figures and tables is at:   https://sites.google.com/site/runawayglobalwarming

Methane concentrations in the Arctic are higher than elsewhere in the world, as shown on figure 1. below (NASA image).

Methane is entering the atmosphere at high latitudes and spreading across the globe from there.

What is causing methane to be released in large quantities in the Arctic?

The Gulf Stream, pictured on figure 3. below, is warming up more than usual due to global warming. Specifically, pollution clouds pouring eastwards from the coast of Canada and the United States are the main culprit in heating up the Gulf Stream.

Figure 3. The Gulf Stream

In July 2013, water off the coast of North America reached 'Record Warmest' temperatures and proceeded to travel along the Gulf Stream to the Arctic Ocean, where it is now warming up the seabed. Figure 4. below further shows that above-average temperatures were recorded in July 2013 along the entire path of the Gulf Stream into the Arctic Ocean. 

Figure 4. NOAA: part of the Atlantic Ocean off the coast of North America reached record warmest temperatures in July 2013

The mean speed of the Gulf Stream is 4 miles per hour (6.4 km/hour or 1.78 metres/second), but the water slows down as it travels north. In the much wider North Atlantic Current, which is its north eastern extension, the current flows 3.5 times slower (about 0.51 metres/second), while the West Spitzbergen Current (WSC on figure 5. below) flows at about 0.35 metres/second (5 times slower).

The West Spitzbergen Current dives under the Arctic ice pack west of Svalbard, continuing as the Yermak Branch (YB on above map) into the Nansen Basin, while the Norwegian Current runs along the southern continental shelf of the Arctic Ocean, its hottest core zone at 300 metres depth destabilizing the methane hydrates en route to where the Eurasian Basin meets the Laptev Sea, a region of extreme methane hydrate destabilization and methane emissions. Figure 6. below, from an earlier post by Malcolm Light, shows how warm water flows into the Arctic Ocean and warms up methane hydrates and free gas held in sediments under the Arctic Ocean.

Sediments underneath the Arctic Ocean hold vast amounts of methane. Just one part of the Arctic Ocean alone, the East Siberian Arctic Shelf (ESAS, see figure 7. below), holds up to 1700 Gt of methane. A sudden release of just 3% of this amount could add over 50 Gt of methane to the atmosphere, and experts consider such an amount to be ready for release at any time.

Figure 7.

As above figure 7. shows, the total methane burden in the atmosphere now is 5 Gt. The 3 Gt that has been added since the 1750s accounts for almost half of all global warming. The amount of carbon stored in hydrates globally was in 1992 estimated to be 10,000 Gt (USGS), while a more recent estimate gives a figure of 63,400 Gt (Klauda & Sandler, 2005). The ESAS alone holds up to 1700 Gt of methane in the form of methane hydrates and free gas contained in sediments, of which 50 Gt is ready for abrupt release at any time, and Whiteman et al. calculate that an extra 50 Gt of methane would cause $60 trillion in damage. By comparison, the size of the world economy in 2012 was about $70 trillion. 

Smaller releases of methane in the Arctic come with the same risk; their huge local warming impact threatens to further destabilize sediments under the Arctic Ocean and trigger further methane releases, as illustrated by figure 8. below.

Figure 8.

Figure 9. below, from an earlier post by Malcolm Light, shows that, besides the shallow methane hydrate regions in the ESAS, the Arctic Ocean slope and deep water regions contain giant volumes of methane hydrate deposits (methane frozen within the ice).

If only a few percent of this methane hydrate becomes destabilized, it will release enough methane into the atmosphere to cause a Permian Age-type massive extinction event. Recent methane emission maps show that, besides the emissions from the ESAS, huge amounts of methane are being released from other parts of the Arctic Ocean.

We now know that the subsea methane hydrate is destabilizing at a fast-increasing pace and the pattern of destabilization indicates that it is mainly caused by the increasingly hot "Gulf Stream" waters entering the Arctic west of Svalbard and through the Barents Sea. These "Gulf Stream" waters do a complete circuit in the Arctic, even under a complete floating ice cover, and will destabilize the methane hydrates they come in contact with before making an exit along the edges of Greenland. Methane is now also emerging from the waters of the Greenland coastline, where the southward-bound "Gulf Stream" waters exit the Arctic Ocean along the edges of Greenland.

Historically, methane has caused delayed temperature anomalies of some 20°C, according to ice core analysis data, i.e. much higher than anomalies caused by carbon dioxide. Methane has a very high warming potential compared to carbon dioxide. Over a decade, methane's global warming potential is more than 100 times as much as carbon dioxide, while methane's local warming potential can be more than 1000 times as much. As a result, giant zones of circulating warm air in the Arctic have temperature anomalies in excess of 20°C.

Figure 10. [ click on image to enlarge ]

These hot clouds, resulting from many feedbacks including this Arctic atmospheric methane build-up, show that methane's delayed temperature anomaly of 20°C has already caught up in the Arctic and is going to progressively spread around the world resulting in runaway global warming.

Figure 11. [ click on image to enlarge ]

Above figure 11. (by Sam Carana) and figure 12. below (by Malcolm Light) indicate that the critical mean atmospheric temperature anomaly of 8°C will be reached between 2035 and 2050. At this temperature we can expect total deglaciation and extinction, according IPCC AR4 (2007).

By 2012, the mean atmospheric temperature had increased by some 0.8°C by human induced global warming. This year however Australia has seen an anomalous 0.22°C temperature increase. The new Australian temperature gradient implies that in ten years the atmosphere will be 2.2°C hotter and in 30 to 40 years, 6.6 to 8.8°C hotter which is consistent with the Arctic methane emission temperature increase curves of Carana and Light.

The reason for this sudden temperature increase in Australia this year is due to the fast building pall of methane in the Northern Hemisphere caused by global warming and destabilization of the subsea Arctic methane hydrates and the Arctic surface methane hydrate permafrosts.

At the moment, the entire Arctic is covered by a widespread methane cloud, but it is very concentrated (> 1950 ppb) over the Eurasian Basin and Laptev Sea where the subsea methane hydrates are being destabilized at increasing rates by heated Atlantic (Gulf Stream) waters. The area of the Eurasian Basin is similar to that of the East Siberian Arctic Shelf (ESAS) where Shakova et al. (1999) have shown that some 50 billion tons of methane could be released at any moment during the next 50 years from destabilization of subsea ESAS methane hydrates.

Figure 13.  Methane over the Arctic Ocean on December 3, 2013        [ click on image to enlarge ]

At the moment, water saturated with methane is traveling underneath the ice carried by exit currents and emerging at locations where the sea ice is still less than one meter thick, such as in Baffin Bay and in Hudson Bay, as also shown on the animation below.

[ this animation is a 1.5MB file and may take some time to fully load ]

This massive volume of methane entering the atmosphere will produce catastrophic consequences for the global climate system. Furthermore global warming is now destabilizing methane hydrates in the Eurasian Basin even more than on the ESAS. The release of an additional 50 billion tons of methane or more from the Eurasian Basin over the next 50 years will further compound the catastrophe represented by the destabilization of methane hydrates on the ESAS. Essentially we have passed the methane hydrate tipping point and are now accelerating into extinction as the methane hydrate "Clathrate Gun" has begun firing increasingly large volleys of methane into the Arctic atmosphere.

The growth of the mean atmospheric temperature using the curves on figure 12 indicate that the mean atmospheric temperature anomaly will exceed 1.5°C in 15 years and 2°C in 20 years, at which time storm systems will be very extreme with droughts, flooding, sea level rise and the loss of Pacific islands. When the mean atmospheric temperature anomaly reaches 8°C some 39 years in the future, there will be total deglaciation and a major extinction event that will culminate in a Permian-type extinction of all life on Earth.

If we do not stop the massive increases of Arctic methane emissions into the atmosphere the oceans will begin to boil off by 2080, when the mean temperature anomaly exceeds 115 to 120°C and the temperatures will be like those on Venus by 2100 (see figure 12).

The present end of the financial crisis and recovery of the U.S. economy will take us down the same fossil fuel driven road to catastrophe that the U.S. has followed before, when they refused to sign the original Kyoto Protocols. Unless the United States and Canada reduce their extreme carbon footprints (per unit population), they will end up being found guilty of ecocide and genocide, as the number of countries destroyed by the catastrophic weather systems continues to increase.

The United States and Canada seek to expand their economies by increasingly frenetic extraction of fossil fuels, using the most environmentally destructive methods possible (fracking and shale oil), while the population's total addiction to inefficient gas transport is leading our planet into suicide. We are like maniacal lemmings leaping to their deaths over a global warming cliff. What a final and futile legacy it will be for the leader of the free world to be remembered only in the log of some passing alien ship recording the loss of the Earth’s atmosphere and hydrosphere after 2080 due to human greed and absolute energy ineptitude.

The U.S. Government and Canada must ban all environmentally destructive methods of fossil fuel extraction such as fracking, extracting shale oil and coal and widespread construction of the now found to be faulty hydrocarbon pipeline systems. All Federal Government subsidies to fossil fuel corporations, for fossil fuel discovery and extraction must be immediately eliminated and the money spent solely on renewable energy development, which will provide many jobs to the unemployed. All long and short range (high consumption) fossil fuel-powered transport must be electrified or converted to hydrogen and where the range is too large, electric vehicles (including electric trains and ships) must be used instead of fossil fuel-powered trucks or aviation means of transport. All the major work for this conversion (including railway construction) can provide a new and growing set of jobs for the unemployed. Nuclear power stations must continue to be used and should be converted to the safe thorium energy system until the transition is complete.

The U.S. has to put itself on a war footing, but rather than fighting other military forces, it should recall its military forces from various places across the world and set them to work on the massive shift to renewable energy that the country needs to undertake if it wishes to survive the fast approaching catastrophe. The threat now comes from Mother Nature, who has infinite power at her disposal and intends to take no prisoners when she will strike back hard over a very short, absolutely brutal, 30-to-40-year period which has already begun. I cannot emphasise more, how serious humanity’s predicament is and what we should try to do to prevent our certain final destruction and extinction in 30 to 40 years if we continue down the present path we are following.

Figure 14. 

Above action plan (figure 14.) includes efforts to move to a sustainable economy (part 1.) and efforts to reflect and divert heat away from the Arctic (part 2.). Furthermore, it includes action on methane escaping from hydrates in the Arctic (part 3.), as described at the Arctic methane management page. Two types of methane management are further discussed below.

Arctic Methane Permanent Storage

In the ANGELS Proposal, subsea Arctic methane is extracted, stored and sold as LNG for distribution as fuel, to produce fertilizer, etc. Permanent storage underground, however, is more preferable.

Figure 15. 

As described by Sam Carana in an earlier post, Prof. Kenneth Yanda, at the University of California, Irvine, has shown that methane can be stored in propane - methane hydrates that are stable at temperatures of ca 15°C and low pressure (25 pounds per square inch - 1.66 atmospheres), very close to the ambient temperature and pressure conditions.

Figure 16. 

Figure 17. Methane capture in zeolite SBN. Blue represents
adsorption sites, which are optimal for methane (CH4)
uptake. Each site is connected to three other sites (yellow
arrow) at optimal interaction distance.  Credit: LLNL News

Hydrates can be produced that contain larger cages for other gases and smaller cages for methane.

Methane can be converted into propane and other gases with UV light and the final goal would be long-term storage of these gases in the form of hydrates in deep waters such as those north of Alaska, suggests Sam Carana, adding that carbon dioxide can also then be sequestered in the hydrates, after its removal from the atmosphere.

Unlike carbon dioxide, methane is completely non-polar and reacts very weakly with most materials.

Three zeolite types (SBN, ZON and FER) have been found to absorb methane at high to moderate rates (Figure 17, from Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory (LLNL) and UC Berkley, 2013).

These materials can help limit escape of fugutive gases from extraction, transport and distribution of methane.

Lucy and Alamo Projects

The Lucy project seeks to decompose methane in the atmosphere.

In a new modified version of the Lucy Project, hydroxyls can also be generated by a polarized 13.56 MHZ beam intersecting the sea surface over the region where a massive methane torch (plume) is entering the atmosphere, so that the additional hydroxyl will react with the rising methane breaking a large part of it down. The polarized 13.56 MHZ radio waves will decompose atmospheric humidity, mist, fog, ocean spray, and the surface of the waves themselves in the Arctic Ocean into nascent hydrogen and hydroxyl (figure 18).

The newly determined atmospheric temperature gradient indicates that the mean global atmospheric temperature will reach 1.5°C in 15 years and 2°C in 20 years (Figure 14). Consequently we only have 15 years to get an efficient methane destruction radio - laser system designed, tested and installed (Lucy and Alamo (HAARP) Projects, figure 18) before the accelerating methane eruptions take us into uncontrollable runaway global warming. This will give a leeway of 5 years before the critical 2°C temperature anomaly will have been exceeded and we will be looking at catastrophic storm systems, a fast rate of sea level rise and coastal zone flooding with its extremely deleterious effects on world populations and global stability.

Figure 18.

Radio and Laser Frequency and Harmonic Test Ranges for the Lucy and HAARP Experiments and their Application to Atmospheric Methane Destruction

by Malcolm P.R. Light

October 7th, 2012

Introduction

Methane is now being expelled into the Arctic atmosphere by the subsea methane hydrates at a fast increasing rate and that this expulsion began in earnest in August 2010 (Figure 1; Arctic atmospheric methane concentrations at ca 7 km altitude - Yurganov 2012; Carana 2011 a,b,c; 2012 a,b; Light 2002 a,b; 2011 a,b,c; 2012 a,b,c; Light and Carana 2011). The methane is rising into the stratosphere and mesosphere where some of it is being oxidised to produce larger quantities of noctilucent clouds between 76 and 85 km altitude. These noctilucent clouds were seen north of Norway but are now occurring at much lower latitudes over Colorado. An early figure from NASA indicates that noctilucent clouds were originally confined to the southern polar regions (Figure 2).

Prof. James Russel of Hampton University argues that the build up of methane in the atmosphere is the reason for the increase in noctilucent clouds. Prof Russel says that "When methane makes its way into the upper atmosphere it is oxidised by a complex series of reactions to form water vapour. This extra water vapour is then available to grow ice crystals for noctilucent clouds". Therefore if we succeed in breaking down the methane in the stratosphere and mesosphere using the HAARP - IRIS (Ionospheric Research Instrument) using the 13.56 MHz methane destruction frequency it could lead to an increase in noctilucent cloud formation in a circular zone directly above the HAARP transmitters which could be detected by optical cameras or radar. The HAARP tests should be conducted in the summer when the temperatures are at their lowest in Alaska (140o to 160o Kelvin) increasing the chances of noctilucent cloud formation from the radio frequency oxidised methane. The HAARP IRIS transmitters normal frequency range is from 2.8 MHz to 10 MHz (Wales 2012). If for example a 10 MHz carrier wave is modulated by a 3.56 MHz signal it will produce and Upper Side Frequency of 13.56 MHz the required methane destruction frequency and a Lower Side Frequency of 6.44 MHz (see Table 3)(Penguin Dictionary of Physics, 2000)

NASA modelling shows a wide equatorial band of stratospheric methane reaching 1.8 ppmv, much higher than occurs in the troposphere indicating that the methane is rising up into the stratosphere where it is now accumulating and it will soon form a continuous global warming veil causing extreme heating of the Earth's surface by trapping the suns heat below it (Figure 3)(Light 2011c).

The problem is that the methane being released into the Arctic atmosphere from destabilization of the submarine methane hydrates has an extremely high global warming potential compared to carbon dioxide, close to 100 times for the first 15 years of its life (Wales 2012; Dessuse et al. 2008). Hence a methane concentration of 2 ppmv is approximately equivalent to adding 200 ppmv of carbon dioxide to the atmosphere, i.e. multiplying the present carbon dioxide content by 1.5. But 2 ppmv is only 2 ten thousands of a percent of methane and you need about 15 percent of methane in the air for it to burn (Wales 2012). Therefore you cannot burn these giant clouds of methane erupting into the Arctic atmosphere and they are rising so fast through the troposphere into the stratosphere that they become impossible to deal with without some action at a distance method such as radio waves or laser. We could of course try to get chemicals up there and into the Arctic but that would lead to even more pollution in the long run. Vibrating the ionosphere at the correct methane destruction radio frequency using HAARP may help to oxidise some of the methane throughout the entire stratosphere and troposphere but more localised radio/laser destruction of the rising methane clouds will also be required if we are going to make any dent at all in the volume of methane that is now being released into the atmosphere from the Arctic ocean.

We are dealing with oceanic methane being released in increasing quantities into the atmosphere from destabilised methane hydrates over which we have no control at all and once it is in the air and in the stratosphere we presently have no way to break it down. This Stratospheric methane reservoir is going to increase in density, thickness and extent until it encompasses the entire Earth and will eventually cause catastrophic global warming and the extinction of all life on earth (Light 2011c). Furthermore because the methane remains mostly in the stratosphere, it is not recorded when average atmospheric compositions are determined at Mauna Loa and other locations so we don't know how much is up there yet (Light 2011c). When the German-French Merlin Lidar methane detecting satellite is launched in 2014 we should have a better idea of the methane distribution from the surface to 50 km altitude.

When the Arctic ice cap melts towards the end of 2015 there will be a massive increase in the amount of heat being absorbed by the Arctic ocean from the sun. Tthe Gulf Stream which presently feeds the Arctic with Atlantic water along the west side of Svalbard and through the Barents Sea is normally cooled when it hits the floating ice pack and this will cease to happen bringing even vaster amounts of Atlantic heat via the Gulf Stream into the Arctic. Consequently the Arctic subsea methane hydrates will destabilize at an even faster rate because of the increasing Arctic ocean temperature pouring methane into the Arctic atmosphere and stratosphere (Light 2011c, Light 2012a, b).

The extreme weather events in the United States this year which included record heating and drought conditions, massive loss of food crops with farmers going bankrupt, more hurricane flooding in New Orleans and tornadoes in New York is just a small sample of what will come in the next four or five summers as the Arctic ice finally melts. The Arctic ice cap works like the Earths air conditioner because of the latent heat of melting and freezing of the floating ice and its effect on moderating atmospheric temperatures.

An extensive stratospheric methane warming veil is spreading over the United States and is undoubtedly the reason for the extreme weather events and very high temperatures. The livelihoods of all the American people are going to be totally compromised in the next few years unless we develop a system of destroying the atmospheric methane that is erupting in the Arctic from the destabilization of submarine methane hydrates and is accumulating as a global warming veil in the stratosphere and mesosphere

We are facing impossible odds with regard to the Arctic ocean methane release and in the same way that Colonel Travis drew a line at the Alamo to ask for volunteers to help him defend the mission against Santa Ana's massive Mexican army, I am drawing a virtual line through the snow on the top of the Arctic ice pack to ask for volunteers to defend the American people from the fast gathering Arctic methane global firestorm. We desperately need dedicated scientists and engineers to volunteer to develop an effective "action at a distance" method of destroying the Arctic oceanic methane clouds as they are erupting from the sea surface and entering the stratosphere and mesosphere. If the United States can land giant rovers on the mars with a sky crane, surely American engineers and scientists are up to this challenge. We need to get rid of as much of this atmospheric methane as we can to drop the polar temperatures to reasonable levels. This will of course have to go hand in hand with a massive cut back in carbon dioxide emissions from all developed and developing countries.