> The average July high for Alert is 7 C. ...and... > Environment Canada says Canadian Forces Station Alert hit a record of 21 C on Sunday. If we're talking about the same exact region, those are drastically differing numbers, indeed. Stupid question: Would it be a run-away greenhouse[0] type of situation that would explain the starkly contrasting differences? [0] - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Runaway_greenhouse_ef…
Unprecedented North Pole Heat Wave in Progress
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Re: Unprecedented North Pole Heat Wave in Progress
#12Sounds like it's time to start planting trees up there. Greenland is going to be green again before we get this under control.
A better solution would include many overlapping approaches for a holistic strategy, including iron fertilization of the oceans and bio-energy with carbon capture and sequestration (BeCSS).
Furthermore, the best anti-desertification solutions must include extremely large, managed herds of browsing animals like goats to restore soil health. There was a TED talk on this. https://www.ted.com/talks/allan_savory_how_to_green_the_worl...
Re: Unprecedented North Pole Heat Wave in Progress
#13One of the many unknown and unforseeable ways in which the climate crisis might play out is that different countries have different imperatives. As temperatures rise, countries like Russia might well be net winners, as their frozen lands thaw out and become viable for agriculture. When/if carbon capture becomes a reality, we'll have something of a global thermostat. What sort of wars will ensue to decide who gets to…
Are there any soil biologists around on who can comment on the viability of this? Because as far as I understand, the land under permafrost in Russia is pretty much tundra and in Greenland, it's gravel. So it would take centuries to make it tillable compared to the timescale of decades we have before current breadbaskets lose the production capacity.
Re: Unprecedented North Pole Heat Wave in Progress
#14> The average July high for Alert is 7 C. ...and... > Environment Canada says Canadian Forces Station Alert hit a record of 21 C on Sunday. If we're talking about the same exact region, those are drastically differing numbers, indeed. Stupid question: Would it be a run-away greenhouse[0] type of situation that would explain the starkly contrasting differences? [0] - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Runaway_greenhouse_ef…
Runaway greenhouse effect on Earth is impossible for a billion years or more for a variety of reasons. You're looking for doomsday cult nonsense rather than minor/major climate changes that are more nuanced and more probable.
However, reality is somewhere between "doomsday cult nonsense" and the flippant, dismissive tone of your comment that characterizes the worsening climate crisis about which our species is not doing enough as "minor/major climate changes." That's definitely understating the costs and disruptions that human civilization is facing on its current course.
I wonder if OP was referring to any of the more immediately concerning positive feedback loops: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Climate_change_feedback#Positi...
Re: Unprecedented North Pole Heat Wave in Progress
#15> The average July high for Alert is 7 C. ...and... > Environment Canada says Canadian Forces Station Alert hit a record of 21 C on Sunday. If we're talking about the same exact region, those are drastically differing numbers, indeed. Stupid question: Would it be a run-away greenhouse[0] type of situation that would explain the starkly contrasting differences? [0] - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Runaway_greenhouse_ef…
There are lots of possible causes for the extra warming in the Arctic in particular, but the high-level view is that ice is more reflective than water, so the increased area of water surface absorbs more heat. There's going to be a lot more to it than that, from the way water and air flow within and around nearby regions, but it was expected that the Arctic would warm faster than the rest of the planet.
Re: Unprecedented North Pole Heat Wave in Progress
#16Earlier quoted context omitted.
Runaway greenhouse effect on Earth is impossible for a billion years or more for a variety of reasons. You're looking for doomsday cult nonsense rather than minor/major climate changes that are more nuanced and more probable.
You're right in that our atmosphere will not soon "prevent the planet from cooling and from having liquid water on its surface." In other words, yeah, we aren't going to literally boil the oceans. We shouldn't throw around the term "runaway greenhouse" in serious discussions of anthropogenic global warming. However, reality is somewhere between "doomsday cult nonsense" and the flippant, dismissive tone of your commen…
Yeah, that's why I prefaced it with it being a dumb question. :)
If the feed backs are accelerating global warming, it wouldn't be too distant a notion from the premise of runaway greenhouse gases.
I'll have to brush-up on my nomenclature to not ask such bone-headed questions in the future. :(