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Permafrost collapse is accelerating carbon release

nature.com

41–50 of 133 posts

Re: Permafrost collapse is accelerating carbon release

#41

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That graph literally shows the average for 1981-2000 and the last 4 years, which are consistently and significantly below the average.

You would have go back and look at the whole century to see that it's just part of the normal cycle.

You are making the claim so you need to show the evidence (especially since it contradicts accepted scientific consensus). Don't be lazy and force other people to do your work for you as you won't have a chance in hell of convincing anyone that way.

What you've linked so far shows that the sea ice level of the past 5 years is well below even 2 standard deviations under the average, which contradicts your claim. Not sure what you were trying to prove by posting that link.

Re: Permafrost collapse is accelerating carbon release

#42
post #33

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That doesn't feel particularly relevant to the possibility of destruction of our species. Regardless of whether or not this has happened before, it is unprecedented in human history.

It is super relevant if it happened before because, even if no human witnessed it, there could be proxy data that shows how this unfolds. It could explain past sudden changes in climate change (and accompanying mass extinctions) that are not yet well understood for example.

Most sudden changes were long enough ago that continents were in a different configuration at different latitudes, so it's not very prescriptive. It's almost definitely played some role but past climate change has almost always been the result of a number of factors coalescing, we have to estimate it's effects on our specific conditions.

Re: Permafrost collapse is accelerating carbon release

#43
post #21

To the meat: > We estimate that abrupt permafrost thawing in lowland lakes and wetlands, together with that in upland hills, could release between 60 billion and 100 billion tonnes of carbon by 2300.

Is this unique to human caused climate change or does it happen each time earth heats up?

One of the considered hypotheses for the Permian-Triasic mass extinction event was the release of methane trapped in ice format (methane clathrates) -

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Permian%E2%80%93Triassic_extin...

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Clathrate_gun_hypothesis#Possi...

Re: Permafrost collapse is accelerating carbon release

#44
post #32
post #24

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There's one big issue inhibiting any sort of productive change on this issue. "A senior U.N. environmental official says entire nations could be wiped off the face of the Earth by rising sea levels if the global warming trend is not reversed by the year 2030. Coastal flooding and crop failures would create an exodus of ″eco- refugees,′ ′ threatening political chaos, said Noel Brown, director of the New York office of…

> And I think we can start this today. We need to focus on accuracy above any and everything else. When you want to enact global change you first need to establish yourself as a reliable authority. Is anyone making more accurate predictions? Most people that disagree with NASA seem to saying anything from it's fake news to blaming other sources. How do you explain the observed warming? > The most conservative scienti…

No, nobody is making accurate predictions right now and that's the fundamental problem. We want to enact change on future predictions, but the models we're using to predict things have a history that's shown them to be unreliable. Each time a prediction fails to pass it ends up undermining the entire system of climate modeling more and more. We can't expect national bodies to engage in anything other convenient changes based on predictions with a poor track record. This is why you need accuracy above all.

As for the temperature increase, I don't picture things in such a polarized fashion. I think there's little doubt that humans are contributing to climate change. But what really confounds this issue is that climate, even absent humanity, is a very unstable system. These [1] are the data from the ice cores over the past 800k years, so literally before humanity existed. And you'll note a regular and often quite extreme shift in temperatures. For instance check out the end of the ice age before our most recent one - about 130k years ago. In an extremely brief period of time the temperatures skyrocketed something like 14 degrees celcius. We then gradually made our way out of that ice age hitting unprecedented lows dropping some 15 degrees celcius before once again starting an extremely rapid rise about 12,000 years ago which we are now in. And we've yet to hit the 'normal' highs of times past. So even if humans did not exist, we would almost certainly be seeing rapid warming.

As for his comments referencing temperature, I'm also not entirely sure. His comment was somewhat unusual since the last ice age obviously did not only last 8,000 years. It also didn't end 10,000 years ago (though that's not too far off). And it would also be quite unusual for a UN speaker to use Fahrenheit. In this case, I think we can dodge this issue since 0.68C = 1.2F and that's given not only a failure to reverse carbon emissions but an unprecedented spike in them, so the point holds true in either case. Extreme CO2 increase = bottom or below the bottom of "most conservative scientific estimates" in temperature increases? We can't expect nations to engage in urgent action based on data like this.

[1] - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Global_temperature_record#/med...

[2] - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/4.2_kiloyear_event

Re: Permafrost collapse is accelerating carbon release

#45
post #44
post #32

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> And I think we can start this today. We need to focus on accuracy above any and everything else. When you want to enact global change you first need to establish yourself as a reliable authority. Is anyone making more accurate predictions? Most people that disagree with NASA seem to saying anything from it's fake news to blaming other sources. How do you explain the observed warming? > The most conservative scienti…

No, nobody is making accurate predictions right now and that's the fundamental problem. We want to enact change on future predictions, but the models we're using to predict things have a history that's shown them to be unreliable. Each time a prediction fails to pass it ends up undermining the entire system of climate modeling more and more. We can't expect national bodies to engage in anything other convenient chang…

I don't understand why you are doubling down on your misunderstandings here. The actual increase that you yourself quoted falls entirely within the error bounds of the IPCC estimates. It doesn't matter that it is towards the bottom of those error bounds - the whole point of an error bound is that it is a range that captures the uncertainty. To argue about where in the range it falls is to fundamentally misunderstand the purpose of an error bound in the first place.

And the 'conservative estimate' is again a quote from the same person who made the dubious unverifiable 1-7F claim, so is also not relevant compared to the IPCC data. The IPCC range is their best estimate, so it is not a conservative range according to the IPCC report, which is what matters here.

It is sad that you are focusing on the words of one person who was not even directly involved in the study, while ignoring or misunderstanding the published work of hundreds of climate scientists who contributed to the actual numbers which have proved 30 years later to be accurate predictions.

Re: Permafrost collapse is accelerating carbon release

#46

This is an emergency; it's well past time we started acting like it: https://rebellion.earth/

It may well be an emergency, but inconveniencing [1][2] the very people you are attempting to persuade (the voting public) is not a strategy that is likely to work. In my opinion it will make them deaf to the underlying message (Although, I can provide no suggestions for strategies that might work!). [1] e.g. preventing them getting to work or flying to a holiday [2] Extinction Rebellion Protests: What happened? - ht…

Wouldn't you agree that the disruption caused was a 'good investment' for bringing up the climate crisis higher up the political agenda?

Wales has declared a climate emergency and so has the First Minister of Scotland. Labour are going to launch a bid this Weds to do the same.

“Blaming Extinction Rebellion for causing disruption is like blaming a fire alarm for waking you up in the middle of the night”

XR's strategy seemed to work pretty well so far I would say.

Re: Permafrost collapse is accelerating carbon release

#47

"This much is clear: the Arctic is warming fast,..." No it isn't. Arctic sea ice extent is normal and cyclical as can be seen from the Danish meteorological institute's data here: http://ocean.dmi.dk/arctic/icecover.uk.php

How does your statement follow from the graph you link? It clearly shows the years 2015-present are more than 2 standard deviations below the average from 1981-2000.

The oil industry’s FUD has done its job here. I don’t completely understand how they managed to turn this into a partisan left/right issue but hats off to them for understanding how to play the system so well.

Lately I wonder if there are other intelligent species on other worlds that managed to deal with this problem like adults or if technological change always outpaces social and political maturity.

Re: Permafrost collapse is accelerating carbon release

#48
post #24
post #7

Earlier quoted context omitted.

NASA testified to the US Senate in 1988 that "higher temperatures can now be attributed to a long-expected global warming trend linked to pollution". [1] So, with more than 30 years of taking the issue seriously, what do you suppose we should do, from a risk-management perspective? [1] https://www.nytimes.com/1988/06/24/us/global-warming-has-beg...

There's one big issue inhibiting any sort of productive change on this issue. "A senior U.N. environmental official says entire nations could be wiped off the face of the Earth by rising sea levels if the global warming trend is not reversed by the year 2030. Coastal flooding and crop failures would create an exodus of ″eco- refugees,′ ′ threatening political chaos, said Noel Brown, director of the New York office of…

> And global CO2 emissions have spiked far higher and faster than anybody could have imagined due in large part to China's ultra-rapid industrialization.

This is not true. If anything, CO2 emissions were actually slightly overestimated:

The IPCC’s First Assessment Report (FAR) in 1990 [...] featured business-as-usual (BAU) scenario assumed rapid growth of atmospheric CO2, reaching 418ppm CO2 in 2016, compared to 404ppm in observations.

https://www.carbonbrief.org/analysis-how-well-have-climate-m...

Re: Permafrost collapse is accelerating carbon release

#49

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I wish I could downvote this 100 times. I wonder how future generations will explain our decision to just stand in front of an oncoming freight train. I remember growing up as a kid watching the intro sequence to the road warrior and thinking it was entertaining but pretty unlikely that we’d screw up that badly. But now it seems pretty prophetic.

Here's a question: What if I don't care about "future generations"?

In that case, the chances of your genes, ideology, etc. surviving is pretty slim compared to those who do care.

It's not that not caring is "wrong", it just has a lower chance of beating natural selection.

Re: Permafrost collapse is accelerating carbon release

#50
The recommendation for arboreal permafrost is to remove all the trees because grassland tundra hard freezes easier than forests, and this is necessary to maintain soil stability in the summer months. And to do so, reintroducing large megafauna herds that destroy trees are necessary, potentially with a mammoth/elephant hybrid; or with logging.

Interestingly, large managed herds of grazing animals is a solution to grassland health for avoiding and reversing desertification.

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