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Alaska’s thawing soils are now pouring carbon dioxide into the air

washingtonpost.com

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Re: Alaska’s thawing soils are now pouring carbon dioxide into the air

#71

Post by bluGill »

specialist wrote: post #51
RcouF1uZ4gsC wrote: post #40

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I have heard this line several times before, and it is the environmental equivalent of "What if there is no God, and we are being good to each other for nothing." It completely ignores tradeoffs. General environmentalism has been very aggresively anti-nuclear. In a world of CO2 caused climate change, it has to rethink that opposition. Another example is with diesel engines. There is a tradeoff between NOX emmisions a…

There is no tradeoff. Reducing waste (CO2, methane, heat, whatever) increases profits. Not for the entrenched interests, obviously. Happily, everyone else who's been paying their externalized costs (taxpayers, consumers) benefits.

There is only so much you can reduce waste though. The internal combustion engine is limited by thermodynamics to about 50% efficiency, we are already reaching >40% in production engines. There just isn't much more waste we can get rid of. (electric cars bring up a different sets of limits, though probably higher)

Re: Alaska’s thawing soils are now pouring carbon dioxide into the air

#72

Post by googletazer »

Florin_Andrei wrote: post #62
zitterbewegung wrote: post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I came to that realization after taking an environmental education class where they " left out the feedback loops". I disagree with your sentiment that they had to leave things like this out of the model. If it was left out it was probably not well understood. Its pretty easy to see that any form of mitigation is irrelevant until it becomes a real problem because getting large groups to agree on things isn't a scient…

One of the major flaws of this species is that we don't do anything inconvenient, that requires global agreement, until it becomes literally an existential threat. And even then we may dither, and there will be special interests that will keep spreading out misinformation about it, etc. Seriously, the "sapiens" part in the name of our species is a bit of an exaggeration.

Considering that research shows that every human existed today is descended from a small group that survived the Ice Age in Madagascar, I wouldn't call it a flaw. More like a self-regulating system that adjusts to behaviors where every independent actor is out for themselves.

Re: Alaska’s thawing soils are now pouring carbon dioxide into the air

#73

Post by istorical »

2OEH8eoCRo wrote: post #57
logfromblammo wrote: post #48

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The trouser-soiling moment is when the methane clathrate ices start melting. They call that one the "Clathrate Gun" hypothesis, because you can't un-fire a gun. Once that trigger is pulled, no amount of anthropogenic CO2 emissions reductions will have any effect whatsoever. From then, it will take a positive, intentional, globally coordinated effort to reduce temperatures by other means, or we will be well and truly…

Doesn't methane break down in the atmosphere fairly rapidly? From what I'm reading, methane lasts about 12 years while CO2 can stay in the atmosphere for potentially thousands. Unless we choke to death on methane isn't this less of an issue than CO2 buildup?

"While CO2 persists in the atmosphere for centuries, or even millennia, methane warms the planet on steroids for a decade or two before decaying to CO2.

In those short decades, methane warms the planet by 86 times as much as CO2, according to the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change."

Source: https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/how-bad-of-a-gree...

Re: Alaska’s thawing soils are now pouring carbon dioxide into the air

#74

Post by mirimir »

lisper wrote: post #50
lutorm wrote: post #42

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There isn't really a "worst" case here. We can always make it worser...

The destruction of civilization will probably cap our ability to do further significant damage. If not, then our extinction surely will.

Yes, that's the fundamental negative feedback on anthropogenic carbon emissions.

Re: Alaska’s thawing soils are now pouring carbon dioxide into the air

#76

Post by EGreg »

pjc50 wrote: post #41
EGreg wrote: post #25

Can someone PLEASE tell me why there haven't been more efforts underway to have commnities around the world plant more trees and engage in planned reforestation? This is as close as you can get to a globally available mechanism for pulling carbon dioxide out of the air (and methane can burn leaving carbon dioxide). I mean this very seriously. Richard Branson is looking to fund ways to pull Carbon out if the atmospher…

> Can someone PLEASE tell me why there haven't been more efforts underway to have commnities around the world plant more trees and engage in planned reforestation? There's no money in it? Whereas there's plenty of money in deforestation. Tragic, but that is the world we live in.

But I thought capitalism is the thing that can solve any problem?

Re: Alaska’s thawing soils are now pouring carbon dioxide into the air

#77

Post by loader »

cropsieboss wrote: post #27

Arctic ice has 1400Gt of carbon locked up as methane. [1] This is equivalent to 1400/10 = 140 years of human 2016 activity. [2]. Methane also has a stronger effect than CO2. If ice starts to melt, we are doomed. [1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Arctic_methane_emissions#Contr... [2]: https://www.co2.earth/global-co2-emissions

Here's the next line from your [1] link that's pretty crazy as well.

"They conclude that "release of up to 50 Gt of predicted amount of hydrate storage [is] highly possible for abrupt release at any time". That would increase the methane content of the planet's atmosphere by a factor of twelve"

Re: Alaska’s thawing soils are now pouring carbon dioxide into the air

#78

Post by bluGill »

lutorm wrote: post #66
logfromblammo wrote: post #52

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Trees are for chumps. People should be planting grasses, and bamboo in particular. The larger bamboo species grow faster than any tree, and can be exploited by the human economy on a shorter timescale, thus making people more likely to plant bamboo forests on their own initiative. Grow bamboo. Cut it down. Use it for building and consumer products, such that its carbon content does not quickly return to the atmospher…

The key is phrase is " ... such that its carbon content does not quickly return to the atmosphere ". Growing grasses for biofuel wouldn't help.

Growing grass for biofuel can help: if you burn just the hydrogen and not the carbon you can then sequester that carbon. It is called making charcoal.

Pulling the above off in an energy positive way is left as an exercise to the reader. (read I am not sure you can, but I wish you would)

Re: Alaska’s thawing soils are now pouring carbon dioxide into the air

#79

Post by EGreg »

koube wrote: post #37
EGreg wrote: post #25

Can someone PLEASE tell me why there haven't been more efforts underway to have commnities around the world plant more trees and engage in planned reforestation? This is as close as you can get to a globally available mechanism for pulling carbon dioxide out of the air (and methane can burn leaving carbon dioxide). I mean this very seriously. Richard Branson is looking to fund ways to pull Carbon out if the atmospher…

Trees are not a carbon processing factory, they are a carbon battery. If they die the carbon will be released again during decomposition. Once they are planted they must be maintained into perpetuity, unless they are planted where they will naturally survive. Maintaining these forests will probably involve energy usage that releases more carbon. We need method of fixation that is both permanent and does not have the…

They don't have to be maintained into perpetuity. The trees covered a lot more of the planet when left alone. It is HUMANS that reduced the biomass of trees over the last few thousands of years. And especially last 100.

"Maintaining" the forests simply involves restraining humans from interfering. Or even better, chop the trees down and replant, using the wood for construction after fireproofing it!!

Re: Alaska’s thawing soils are now pouring carbon dioxide into the air

#80

Post by mikeash »

2OEH8eoCRo wrote: post #57
logfromblammo wrote: post #48

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The trouser-soiling moment is when the methane clathrate ices start melting. They call that one the "Clathrate Gun" hypothesis, because you can't un-fire a gun. Once that trigger is pulled, no amount of anthropogenic CO2 emissions reductions will have any effect whatsoever. From then, it will take a positive, intentional, globally coordinated effort to reduce temperatures by other means, or we will be well and truly…

Doesn't methane break down in the atmosphere fairly rapidly? From what I'm reading, methane lasts about 12 years while CO2 can stay in the atmosphere for potentially thousands. Unless we choke to death on methane isn't this less of an issue than CO2 buildup?

The fear is that the change will be so fast and so drastic that the short lifetime won't save us. It's thought that runaway methane release could result in 6+ degrees (celsius) of warming within just a few decades as massive amounts of methane are released. The influence of methane would end relatively quickly too, but the damage would be incredible.

Nobody is really sure if this would actually happen, though.

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