Schätzing to Werminghausen 2007–19

Prague, May 2007: I’m enjoying this ancient, Central European city and its parks, food and people with my dad and his buddy, but most of all I am reading The Swarm by Frank Schätzing ten or maybe 15 hours a day. Because it’s such a fascinating novel.

Frank tells a fabulous story, as you can imagine, in which we’re taken down under water and introduced to the frozen methane hydrates, a first for me personally, as well as their little buddy, a worm that eats methane hydrates. We’re also introduced to the larger problematique of thawing sediments and global warming from the hyper potent greenhouse gas, methane, and obviously the mad human rush to make a buck even from mining these super unstable frozen hydrocarbons.

Fast forward to 2014, when the Climate Panel releases its 5th major report, and their now infamous conservatism leads me to read about the Arctic Methane Emergency Group (AMEG) on the Internet, and study this fascinating landscape of climate activists and perspectives, in a summer that seemed to smash every record for heat in Western Norway. There seemed to be a major problem connected to Frank Schätzing’s hydrates, but scientists and their handlers in political office appeared to prefer to keep people in the dark: The less we know about Arctic methane, the better.

Cross–linked from AMEG and related blogs, I also discover Wolfgang Werminghausen, a German father of twins and soft–spoken family man and climate blogger. Wolfgang has noticed that everything climate always happens “Faster Than Expected”, and he’s therefore settled on this as the name of his WordPress blog and audio podcast.

Talking in 2017 and again here in 2019, Wolfgang and I go into how scientists and their political handlers systematically underestimate the size of climate danger, and how fast it is approaching. We delve into the Tipping Points and the Self–Reinforcing Feedback Loops, but also the darker sides of the human mind, and how to handle fear.