We have been aware that burning fossil fuels would alter, destabilise and warm the atmosphere since at least 1847 and the narrative has been controlled since shortly thereafter.
Had we described the phenomenon as creating what it is, a “Planetary Gas Chamber” for most, if not all complex life on the planet, perhaps we might have acted to save the biosphere rather than perpetuate the extraction industry which is in the accelerating process of incinerating the entire ecosystem.
What an incredible irony that a Republican Congressman from the USA was the first person (that I am aware of, feel free to correct me below if I’m wrong) to give a lecture on human induced climate change.
We have been through a raft of ‘slogans’ that have all downplayed the reality that the unfettered incineration of fossil fuels would negatively alter the atmospheric energy and ‘Green House Gas’ balance. “Green House”, such an innocuous term for an existential threat, tailored to not scare the serfs.
A near-forgotten speech made by a US congressman warned of global warming and the mismanagement of natural resources in 1847
The 1847 lecture that predicted human-induced climate change.
“But I would argue his defining moment came on 30 September 1847, when, as a congressman for the Whig party (a forerunner of the Republican party), he gave a lecture to the Agricultural Society of Rutland County, Vermont. (The speech was published a year later.) It proved to be the intellectual spark that led him to go on and publish in 1864 his best-known work, Man and Nature: Physical Geography as Modified by Human Action.”
To give some reference to the insanity of the current debate around “Green House Gas” emissions everyone is arguing and or lying about what degree we can destabilise the atmosphere. Think about that lunacy for a second. The Cognitive dissonance is a mind fuck for me. Cognitive Dissonance and Outright Lies at the Edge of Extinction
The reality is, there was no safe level of destabilisation of our atmosphere. It’s pitifully obvious in hindsight.
The next nonsensical aspect of the predicament is the debate around how much of a “Carbon Budget” we have left. The short, sharp Scientific Reality is there is no carbon budget, clearly, we are in early-stage nonlinear runaway and the atmosphere has been destabilised well beyond the point of no return. Every additional gram of carbon released speeds up the already unfolding collapse now dominated and driven by a multitude of feedback loops documented here. Climate Change Summary
1989, quoting “Noel Brown, director of the New York office of the U.N. Environment Program, or UNEP.”
“He said governments have a 10-year window of opportunity to solve the greenhouse effect before it goes beyond human control.”
You’ll note that the rogues at the UN are still saying the same thing 33 years later!
The 1989 Associated Press article warning of the phenomenon, titled “U.N. Predicts Disaster if Global Warming Not Checked,”
There has been much debate about the time lag between when emissions are dumped into the atmosphere and when we feel the full effects.
Warming from Methane is, to all intents and purposes, effective immediately after it is vomited into the atmosphere, hence some of the shocking heat we are currently witnessing in the Northern Hemisphere.
Abstract
“The stability of widespread methane hydrates in shallow subsurface sediments of the marine continental margins is sensitive to temperature increases experienced by upper intermediate waters. Destabilization of methane hydrates and ensuing release of methane would produce climatic feedbacks amplifying and accelerating global warming. Hence, improved assessment of ongoing intermediate water warming is crucially important, especially that resulting from a weakening of Atlantic meridional overturning circulation (AMOC).”
There is no reason whatsoever that this will not be repeated as we broil the Arctic.
Evidence for massive methane hydrate destabilization during the penultimate interglacial warming.
Carbon on the other hand can take up to centuries to manifest depending on the scale of the pulse. As the Northern Hemisphere’s forest’s burn huge quantities of carbon are released in very short time frames.
The chaos we are seeing now doesn’t include the last 20 yrs of CO2 emissions, quite possibly much longer, as detailed in the embedded link below.
“Our results suggest that as CO2 accumulates in the atmosphere, the full warming effect of an emission may not be felt for several decades, if not centuries.”
The Time Lag between a carbon dioxide emission and maximum warming increases with the size of the emission.
The above peer reviewed paper debunks the Liar Michael E Mann who recently said for a dumbed down US audience that “If we stop emissions now warming will stop”.
1)That’s a blatant lie and 2) How, pray tell, do we Stop Emissions Now when every single thing we do in industrial civilisation requires fossil fuels.
Anyone paying attention to the rapidity of the changes we are witnessing can see non-linearity unfolding in the chaos we are witnessing daily now.
The Rate of Change is the critical issue to remember as we chronicle the great unravelling.
“If you think long-term exponential growth is interesting and disruptive, there’s another kind of growth that is even more curious and potentially disruptive. That is faster-than-exponential (superexponential) growth. Unlike exponential growth, where the curve looks the same at every point, superexponential growth has one or more “knees” in the curve, places where growth suddenly switches from a slower to an even faster (or sometimes slower) exponential mode.”
Superexponential Growth (J-curves)
Hat tip to Kevin Lister, author of “The Vortex of Violence: and why we are losing the war on climate change” who taught me about Super Exponential change. Kevin Lister can be followed on Twitter at @kevsclimatecol
I’m not saying that we are witnessing Super Exponential Growth, yet, but anyone following the Precautionary Principle is forced to consider it. Peter Wadhams and others have pointed out that the Feedback Loops are multiplicative. That’s the pathway to Super Exponential changes.
Have your say in the comments section below. I’ll add additional data to the comments as they come to hand.
“I say to my soul, be patient and wait without hope, for to hope is to hope for the wrong thing” TS Elliot
Good luck everyone, we sure are going to need it.

The time traveling window of opportunity is retiring from the circus.
LikeLiked by 1 person
Excellent article. Now maybe more people will be able to “get it” with the new, very descriptive term
“Planetary Gas Chamber” that we are now living in.
Thank You Brother for all and everything you are doing…🙋♂️✌️
LikeLiked by 1 person
Just …. gratitude abundant for your honesty and for walking this path with me as my friend.
LikeLiked by 1 person
Thank you Kevin for another clear and concise article. Great title.
LikeLiked by 1 person
Hi Kevin, I don’t know if you will get this since I am blocked from commenting on your site which is why I left. I do notice the changes in our ecosystem, I lament the decline of wildlife.
I took down all my nest boxes since the only thing nesting in them now are HOUSE SPARROWS & STARLINGS, alien PESTS. I left one box standing in front as the chickadee sometimes uses it & it’s easy to remove alien pest nests, I never expect to see “my” swallows again. [image: DSCN5544, SM.jpg] This is them saying good by, it was the last time I saw them.
I miss them terribly & also miss the other birds that are now gone from here thanks to US our dam destructive GROWTH, the DAM CLEAR CUTS of “OUR” forests, our deadly pesticides & herbicides, our RULERS are still pushing for MORE DAM GROWTH, the Repugs here are busy BANNING ALL ABORTIONS even if the pregnant “person” is a 10 YEAR OLD GIRL WHO WAS RAPED! Her family was FORCED to drive hundreds of miles to a more civilized state to remove her dangerous EMBRYO! It wasn’t even a fetus yet. Another woman was forced to keep carrying a fetus with no skull, it cannot survive its FORCED BIRTH! How many MORE DEAD WOMEN will it take this time to make abortions safe & legal AGAIN?
These are terrible times we “live” in, so much suffering with more to come. Fossil RESOURCES can’t decline fast enough, it’s the only thing that can stop our greedy destruction of our home world. Take care Kevin, keep on the fight, never give up until it’s OVER!
Sheila in Harbor Oregon, USSA
LikeLiked by 1 person
As always, Kevin you drop us some real nuggets of inconvenient truth, and they are all much appreciated. Because changes in the past few years seem so rapid, I’ve lately been pondering how to navigate through life without any electric or phone service. Not for just two weeks as we experienced in an inland hurricane in 2009, but for a much longer time period, whose endpoint we won’t know.
Keep doing what you do, and BTW, love that picture of that knarled, ancient tree who may outlast everyone of us.
LikeLiked by 1 person
[…] Planetary Gas Chamber not “Climate Change” […]
LikeLiked by 1 person
LikeLike
The world is getting healthier and wealthier and safer all the time.
This is the greatest period of abundance in human history.
LikeLike