Armageddon

Without fail the land will be emptied
And without fail it will be plundered
For Jehovah himself has spoken this word
And the very land has been polluted under its inhabitants
For they have bypassed the laws, changed the regulation, broken the indefinitely lasting covenant
That is why the curse itself has eaten up the land
And those inhabiting it are held guilty
Isaiah 24:3-6

The key to determining what the Armageddon prophecies are referring to is that they are about the end of our world as we know it. If there is no realistic danger of something bringing our world, or the human race, to an end, then it’s not Armageddon. The Armageddon prophecies also make it clear that we are the cause of the problem, so it’s it is not a natural event such as a meteor strike or a supervolcano eruption.

This means environmental degradation, and especially climate change, is the prime suspect. A nuclear war is also a possibility, but these are not mutually exclusive events. If impacts of global warming get bad enough it could well lead to a nuclear war.

Personally, I think this is the scenario that Armageddon is warning us of—runaway climate change causing an ecological collapse and triggering a nuclear war, the end of civilisation, and the eventual extinction of the human race. I don’t think we have reached the tipping point for runaway warming yet, but we are hurtling towards it at an alarming rate.

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Climate change is a natural phenomenon, and has happened many times in the past, but this doesn’t mean we shouldn’t worry about it. The fact that climate change has happened before means we can see what the likely effects will be. The worst case scenario with climate change is an oceanic anoxic event, where large expanses of the ocean are depleted of oxygen. If we trigger one of these then our extinction is a real possibility.

An oceanic anoxic event (OAE) is caused by a rapid period of global warming. The warming increases rainfall and the chemical weathering of rocks, which leads to an increase in nutrient flow into the ocean. This in turn leads to an increase in biological activity that depletes the water of oxygen. We are seeing a similar thing happen today due to the run-off of fertilizers and other chemical pollutants into our seas and oceans. Although these marine dead zones occur on a much smaller scale than an OAE, they can impact thousands of square kilometres of water.¹

OAEs were a common occurrence during the Mesozoic Era (from 252 to 66 million years ago) when they were triggered by extensive volcanic eruptions. This was a time with greenhouse climatic conditions, when the oceans were warmer and there were no permanent ice caps at the poles. Conditions are very different today, and studies of a global warming event that occurred 304 million years ago during the Karoo ice age suggest that anoxic events can be far worse when we have permanent ice caps.²

When we have permanent ice caps the main drivers of ocean currents are wind, which drives surface currents, and the sinking of cold water in the polar regions, which drives ocean currents below the surface layer and acts as a conveyor belt to deliver oxygen to the ocean depths. During the Mesozoic Era oxygen levels below the surface were low, so an OAE directly involved only the surface water. When we have polar ice caps, and thus oxygenated deep water, an OAE can be far more destructive.

The last time we had permanent ice caps was the Karoo ice age, which came to an end 255 million years ago. This was around the same time as the Permian-Triassic extinction event. This was the worst extinction event in the history of our planet, and hence it is referred to as the Great Dying.

During the Great Dying around 95% of marine species and 70% of land-based mammals, birds and reptiles became extinct. It caused the worst known mass extinction of insects, and the loss of all forests on the planet. The extinction event took tens of thousands of years to play out, it was five million years before recovery even started, and ten million years before biodiversity returned to pre-extinction levels. Multiple episodes of anoxia in the deep ocean is thought to have played a key role in the event, and especially in the delayed recovery.³

The trigger for the Permian-Triassic extinction was widespread volcanic eruptions in the Siberian Traps that ejected massive quantities of CO₂ into the atmosphere. Lava covered around two million square kilometres of land, including extensive coal beds, which ignited, releasing more CO₂ into the atmosphere. This is a similar scenario to what is happening today, and although we do not have the volcanic eruptions adding to greenhouse gas levels we are burning more than enough fossil fuels to make up the shortfall.

It seems unlikely that we will see an oceanic anoxic event at 2^oC of warming, or even at 4^oC, but the temperature increase that will trigger an OAE is not relevant. What we need to know is the temperature increase that will see global warming run away from us. Once we reach the point where positive feedback loops are enough to keep the temperature going up we will see an increase in the tens of degrees, and I have no doubt that this would be enough to trigger an OAE. The feedback loops of most concern are the carbon stored in the Arctic permafrost and the methane trapped on the ocean floor.

Arctic permafrost contains an estimated 1,700 gigatonnes of carbon, which could produce 6,200 gigatonnes of CO₂ or 2,200 gigatonnes of methane if it decomposes, depending on the presence of oxygen. If just 0.6% of this carbon decomposes each year it will add about the same amount of carbon to the atmosphere as we are now by burning fossil fuels. If it is released as methane, which some of it will be, it will warm the planet ten times more over the following century than it would if released as CO₂. And there is enough carbon for this to occur every year for 170 years.⁴

There is also an estimated 1,300 to 6,600 gigatonnes of methane in the sediments of the ocean floor. This methane is trapped in an ice-like structure that is very unstable, and if a little over one gigatonne of this methane is released per year it will warm the planet about as much as the fossil fuels we are currently burning.⁵

According to Professor Martin Kennedy of the University of California, it is possible that only a little bit of warming could unleash this trapped methane, which could potentially warm the Earth tens of degrees, and the mechanism could be geologically very rapid.⁶

This is a serious concern because the rate of warming is more critical in triggering an oceanic anoxic event than the amount of warming. The rate of global warming since 1980 has been 0.2oC per decade, and it is expected to be around 0.27oC per decade by 2050. During the Mesozoic Era, which saw frequent OAEs, the fastest rate of warming was 5-8^oC over a few thousand years, around 0.02^oC per decade. With the rate of warming being critical to triggering an OAE, our current situation is alarming.⁷

The release of carbon from permafrost and methane from the seabed are not yet self-sustaining, but according to Professor Kevin Anderson, former Deputy Director of the UK’s Tyndall Centre for Climate Change Research, if we reach 4^oC of warming then they will be. This is supported by a 2005 report by the Institute for Public Policy Research (IPPR), which found that 4-5^oC of warming could lead to the release of 2,000 gigatonnes of methane from the ocean. It also claimed 4^oC of warming could trigger the shutdown of the thermohaline ocean circulation, thus cutting off the oxygen supply to the deep ocean.⁸

4^oC might seem a long way off, but with the rate of warming being what it is, stopping it will take time and effort. Also, other positive feedback loops, such as the loss of snow and ice that reflects heat back out to space, and an increase in forest fires, are pushing us to ever faster to the point of no return.

Unfortunately, 4^oC might be overly optimistic. Scientists studying global warming have tried to avoid sounding alarmist since those who have made dire predictions have been targeted by the fossil fuel industry. The effect of this is that positive feedback loops have been underestimated, if not left out of climate models altogether. When we take positive feedback loops into account the trigger point for runaway warming could be as low as 2^oC.⁹

The possibility that a 2^oC increase in global temperature could be the tipping point for runaway warming is supported by the 2005 IPPR report, which found that 2^oC of warming could trigger the transformation of the planet’s forests and soils from a carbon sink to a carbon source. The warming effect of this could be enough to add another 2^oC, and then we’re at the temperature that will see thousands of gigatonnes of methane being released from the ocean floor.¹⁰

Endnote

Runaway global warming and an oceanic anoxic event is not something that might happen in the future; it is something that’s already in motion. Arctic permafrost is thawing, methane stores in the Arctic ocean are destabilising, and oxygen concentrations in both the open ocean and coastal waters have been declining since the middle of the last century.¹¹

References

1. www.nature.com/articles/s41561-024-01496-0
2. www.pnas.org/doi/10.1073/pnas.2115231119
3. www.academia.edu/95124735/Temperature_dependent_hypoxia_explains_biogeography_and_severity_of_end_Permian_marine_mass_extinction?email_work_card=abstract-read-more www.academia.edu/2541147/End_Permian_mass_extinction_in_the_oceans_An_ancient_analog_for_the_twenty_first_century Ward, P. D. ‘Impact from the Deep’ Scientific American, October 2006, p. 64-71. – P/T extinction event. www.academia.edu/37173680/G_E_O_L_O_G_Y?email_work_card=view-paper – Multiple episodes of extensive marine anoxia linked to global warming and continental weathering following the PTE.
4. Tarnocai, C., Canadell, J.G., Schuur, E.A.G., Kuhry, P., Mazhitova, G., and Zimov, S. (2009). ‘Soil organic carbon pools in the northern circumpolar permafrost region’ (PDF). Global Biogeochemical Cycles. 23 (2): GB2023.
5. www.sciencedirect.com/topics/earth-and-planetary-sciences/methane-hydrate
6. Knauth, L. P. Kennedy, M. J. ‘The late Precambrian greening of the Earth’ Nature, Issue 460, August 6, 2009, p. 728-732.
7. Speed 18
8. Anderson, K., Bows, A. ‘Beyond Dangerous Climate Change; Emission Scenarios for a New World’ Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society A: Mathematical, Physical and Engineering Sciences, 2011, 369:1,934, p. 20-44.
9. www.pnas.org/doi/10.1073/pnas.0911106106 – GW tipping points.
10. www.climate.gov/news-features/understanding-climate/climate-change-global-temperature – rate of warming since 1980 0.2^oC per decade. https://earthobservatory.nasa.gov/features/GlobalWarming/page3.php https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/14558900/
11. www.science.org/doi/10.1126/science.1182221
12. www.researchgate.net/publication/222408151_Methane_release_and_coastal_environment_in_the_East_Siberian_Arctic_shelf – Permafrost thawing and methane being release from ESAS.