Page 30 - ACTL Journal_Sum24

The reservoir pictured above is Canyon Ferry, located just downstream from the headwaters of the Missouri River. Imagine the concentration of nutrients that occurs further down the watershed. When you imagine that and think of the dead zone in the Gulf of Mexico, you can appreciate how that came to be. Bear in mind that that this dead zone is only one of some 395-plus additional dead zones that occur under marine conditions today.
The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) has some fifty reporting stations in place around the world that are kept far away from any prospect of point source, and which since 2007 have tracked the incredible surge in methane. This has happened before. In paleo history, the earth experienced similar surges in carbon dioxide that functioned as a trigger. The carbon dioxide trigger essentially was this same form of methane and led to the great Permian extinction event during which the temperature of earth’s at- mosphere increased by 10 degrees centigrade, and 94 percent of species went away. We appear to be on that same track. We can’t let it happen. This issue has to be dealt with; there’s just no alternative for humanity.
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