Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

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

washingtonpost.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

161–170 of 214 posts

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

#161

Post by fencepost »

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?

Methane does break down much faster than CO2, but over the time scales being discussed here it's MUCH more powerful. From memory so probably somewhat off it's >80x more potent a greenhouse gas over a decade, dropping to only 20x more potent when measured over a century.

The big problem is tipping points. There are a lot of things where an initial big hit can be something you don't recover from, no matter how light the impact might seem when measured over years.

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

#162

Post by forapurpose »

zitterbewegung wrote: post #15
taberiand wrote: post #3

I wouldn't be surprised if such feedback loops have been excluded from the models of climate change because they paint a picture so dire that no amount of mitigation (if there were any serious attempts at mitigation going on) could save our way of life. "Sooner and worse than expected" is a phrase I expect to hear with increasing frequency.

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…

> 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 scientific thing but a problem for society. Usually that only occurs when its pretty apparent that they have to do something to mitigate it.

Many countries have agreed climate change is a serious problem and have acted on it, and for a long time. The U.S. is a major exception. It's doable; the Republican Party in the U.S. is the problem.

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

#163

Post by brightsize »

Florin_Andrei wrote: post #149
mirimir wrote: post #128

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Indeed. I'd say more, but spoilers.

I'm a licensed HAM radio operator, but I'm too young to have gone through the Morse era. One of the things that book did for me was kindling my interest in learning to transmit and receive Morse. I mean, you never know when you might need it, right? :)

I'm a Ham too and I'm wondering if it might be a good time to assemble a crystal radio - no power needed.

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

#164

Post by carapace »

losteric wrote: post #100
Florin_Andrei wrote: post #62

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Have we ever done something that requires global agreement?

Oh yes.

Smallpox, eradication of: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Smallpox#Eradication

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

#165

Post by praneshp »

mturmon wrote: post #113
losteric wrote: post #100

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Have we ever done something that requires global agreement?

Approximately all nations, the Nuclear test ban treaty ( https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Comprehensive_Nuclear-Test-Ban... )

I kind of disagree with this one. The number is high, but a bunch of countries haven't signed it (As of 2016, eight Annex 2 states have not ratified the treaty: China, Egypt, Iran, Israel and the United States have signed but not ratified the Treaty; India, North Korea and Pakistan have not signed it.) [[0]

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Comprehensive_Nuclear-Test-Ban...

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

#166

Post by memracom »

Probably the asteroid Apophis, due to hit the Earth in 2029, will cause enough cooling to prevent most clathrate from melting. If that works we have a nearby supply of small asteroids that we can fire at the Earth to deepen the winter effect. It works best if you hit a shallow coastal shelf area with lots of limestone rock. Maybe we will sacrifice the Caribbean?

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

#167

Post by Fej »

crush-n-spread wrote: post #39

The atmospheric carbon situation is not good, and we (as a species) need to come up with actionable geo-engineering solutions. Here is one. Rainwater hits mountains and dissolves silicate minerals into cations that flow into rivers and then oceans. The oceans naturally uptake carbon from the atmosphere by reacting atmospheric carbon with cations in the water that come from those dissolved silicate minerals. This upta…

This is a very interesting proposal. Hopefully this will become part of the "throw everything at the wall and see what sticks because we were out of time yesterday" strategy.

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

#168

Post by rconti »

memracom wrote: post #166

Probably the asteroid Apophis, due to hit the Earth in 2029, will cause enough cooling to prevent most clathrate from melting. If that works we have a nearby supply of small asteroids that we can fire at the Earth to deepen the winter effect. It works best if you hit a shallow coastal shelf area with lots of limestone rock. Maybe we will sacrifice the Caribbean?

A cursory glance at Wikipedia disagrees. It was probably a comment made in jest but if most of the readership doesn't get the joke, it's probably not working as intended.

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

#169

Post by basurihn »

simonh wrote: post #105
jerf wrote: post #24

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"I wouldn't be surprised if such feedback loops have been excluded from the models of climate change because they paint a picture so dire that no amount of mitigation (if there were any serious attempts at mitigation going on) could save our way of life." If such feedback loops could be that dire and unavoidable, then they would already have happened direly and unavoidably. It has been this warm before, in the not-th…

All things being equal yes, but they're not equal. The Holocene Climate Optimum is the nearest thing in the last few hundred thousand years and it wasn't anywhere near this warm globally. What it did do though is melt the Laurentide ice sheet, dramatically raising global sea levels. But the ice sheet protected the North American continental tundra. Nowadays there's no ice sheet there any more to absorb the heat and s…

Or the MWP, which ended about 700 years ago. Which also coincides with an Indian Warming Period.

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

#170

Post by carapace »

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.

Bamboo can be used to make biochar and then buried, sequesters carbon and enriches the soil: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Biochar
Post reply on HN