Permafrost collapse is accelerating carbon release • Hacker News Board

Re: Permafrost collapse is accelerating carbon release

#101

Post by citrablue » Wed, May 01, 2019, 4:58 PM UTC

rjf72 wrote: post #59

martinpw wrote: post #45

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

This is a misunderstanding of ranges. Imagine you flip a coin 100 times and you only get 41 heads. Is this coin fair? 41 heads falls just within the 95% confidence interval for a fair coin over 100 flips, so you can answer yes in that regard. But things are not binary. It's all probabilistic. In other words, it's not like 40 heads = rigged coin, 41 = legit. Your assumed interval is going to be a normal distribution.…

Dumb question, but how can you assume the ranges offered are a normal distribution?

Re: Permafrost collapse is accelerating carbon release

#102

Post by gdubs » Wed, May 01, 2019, 5:45 PM UTC

koheripbal wrote: post #83

mirimir wrote: post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

From another perspective, we are "one of the largest extinction events".

Is it just me, or are HN comments becoming less and less informative, and more and more like Reddit zingers ?

From the Hacker News guidelines [1]:

“Please don't submit comments saying that HN is turning into Reddit. It's a semi-noob illusion, as old as the hills.”

1: https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html

Re: Permafrost collapse is accelerating carbon release

#103

Post by gdubs » Wed, May 01, 2019, 5:55 PM UTC

Melting permafrost is the thing that terrifies me. For a long time now scientists have been warning of the potential bomb lurking there. But, my understanding is it hasn’t factored heavily in the IPCC reports because feedback loops have historically been difficult to quantify. Anecdotally, the trend seems to be that when it comes to Climate Change, things rarely break in our favor and those “worst case scenarios” seem to be coming up frequently.

I’m a pragmatist, I remain optimistic (foolishly, perhaps), but I think it’s fair to say that society isn’t sufficiently grappling with the potential catastrophe on the horizon. In particular I don’t think enough attention is given to the possibility of climate dynamics at some point rapidly flipping to some new normal.

Re: Permafrost collapse is accelerating carbon release

#104

Post by martinpw » Wed, May 01, 2019, 7:07 PM UTC

rjf72 wrote: post #55

martinpw wrote: post #40

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> The most conservative scientific estimate that the Earth’s temperature will rise 1 to 7 degrees in the next 30 years, said Brown." This quote seems suspicious. The only place I see it is in this AP article, as a quote from this one person, and from a bunch of denialist websites that link to this article. I couldn't find any original source for the number (or any indication whether it is Fahrenheit or Centigrade, wh…

Noel Brown was the director of the UN Environmental Program in North America. He's going to be sourcing whatever internal figures they're working with. And yeah, given that he is the directory of the program in North America, I expect you're right that he was referencing fahrenheit and not celsius. I assumed celsius as he was described simply as a "senior UN Environment official." Given he directed the program in Nor…

Again, why are you focusing on this one person when there is an entire report backed up by hundreds of scientists that has the actual numbers, which are not 1-7F? This makes no sense at all. So one guy misspoke, or was misquoted, or exaggerated. His stuff on the ice age was also nonsense as you pointed out yourself. The important thing is that the actual IPCC prediction was accurate - that is the real "authoritative statement" and can be read at length on line - that is what you should be quoting.

Re: Permafrost collapse is accelerating carbon release

#105

Post by martinpw » Wed, May 01, 2019, 7:13 PM UTC

rjf72 wrote: post #59

martinpw wrote: post #45

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

This is a misunderstanding of ranges. Imagine you flip a coin 100 times and you only get 41 heads. Is this coin fair? 41 heads falls just within the 95% confidence interval for a fair coin over 100 flips, so you can answer yes in that regard. But things are not binary. It's all probabilistic. In other words, it's not like 40 heads = rigged coin, 41 = legit. Your assumed interval is going to be a normal distribution.…

Having spent several years doing a PhD that was primarily statistical analysis, I can assure you I understand ranges very well. I certainly did not assume it is a normal distribution. There are going to be multiple sources of uncertainty including statistical and systematic errors which have different distributions. Taking all that into account they came up with an overall bound, and the actual number is within that range. That means the data are consistent with the prediction.

And you need to stop quoting that 7F number. That number is not in the IPCC report, which is the thing we need to be comparing against - it is an unverifiable number quoted from one person who appears to have made multiple other errors, as you yourself pointed out (eg ice ages timeframes).

Re: Permafrost collapse is accelerating carbon release

#106

Post by baruchthescribe » Wed, May 01, 2019, 8:34 PM UTC

petersellers wrote: post #41

baruchthescribe wrote: post #31

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 s…

I remember when it was accepted scientific consensus that plate tectonics was a crock of shit. Didn't make it any less true. If the data shows that the Arctic is doing fine, then I don't care how many climate alarmists say it's melting if it isn't. Tony Heller destroys the fundamental deception of global warming here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8RwjYkYCXnU

Re: Permafrost collapse is accelerating carbon release

#107

Post by baruchthescribe » Wed, May 01, 2019, 8:48 PM UTC

richardhod wrote: post #76

baruchthescribe wrote: post #31

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

You are wrong, and trolling: https://www.carbonbrief.org/guest-post-piecing-together-arct...

Not trolling. I genuinely believe that the evidence shows that a) carbon dioxide has nothing to do with warming and b) the world's climate is just fine. Your linked piece starts with the misleading graph from NOAA which conveniently starts at the peak of 1979, omitting all of the data we have since the 1920s showing Arctic sea ice is cyclical.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nIEGo8E9s_8

Re: Permafrost collapse is accelerating carbon release

#108

Post by viraptor » Wed, May 01, 2019, 9:19 PM UTC

baruchthescribe wrote: post #98

viraptor wrote: post #88

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It would be problematic for an agency established in 1970 to get "their temperature records" from 1918. Unless you mean another specific agency that existed at the time, but I don't think that's likely. If you want research from NOAA and other sources, it's been linked already.

OK, ask them for their research going back to 1970 because strangely enough, they leave out everything before 1981 to give the impression that Arctic ice is on a downward trend.

You're assuming that they immediately started measuring it after forming NOAA. Do you have a good reason for this? I've found no reason to believe they have their own measurements from before what's currently presented.

Re: Permafrost collapse is accelerating carbon release

#109

Post by pas » Wed, May 01, 2019, 9:32 PM UTC

mceoin wrote: post #91

bayareanative wrote: post #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 gras…

Allan Savory talks about the use of intensive grazing as a method for combatting desertification in Africa [0]. Herd fertilize while eating grasses that would otherwise fall into senescence and create pockets of erosion. [0] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vpTHi7O66pI

Alas their experiment concluded without significant difference between the treatment and non-treatment zones. Basically the guy (and holistic grazing) is a quack(ery). :/

https://www.truthordrought.com/holistic-grazing-myths

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Holistic_management_(agricultu...

Re: Permafrost collapse is accelerating carbon release

#110

Post by pas » Wed, May 01, 2019, 9:38 PM UTC

bryanlarsen wrote: post #72

A practical plan for limiting carbon emissions: 1. Carbon tax 2. Import tariff at the border equivalent to the carbon tax on carbon used in production, plus an admin fee. But only on products from countries without their own carbon tax or equivalent. 1. This can be adopted unilaterally, but would probably work best if adopted by a group of nations at the beginning. 2. Does not require the near impossible task of requ…

The important thing is, that to make the tax a pure carbon-negative incentive, that the revenue from the tax should be simply paid back to the taxpayers (of course divided into equal parts).