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Climate change has turned permafrost into a carbon emitter

cbc.ca

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Re: Climate change has turned permafrost into a carbon emitter

#81

Post by hannob »

Hongwei wrote: post #2

And it's quite scary if you consider the amount of methane stored in Siberia and northern Canada. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Clathrate_gun_hypothesis

I've been trying to read up a bit on the methane clathrate "bomb" or "gun" theory lately, it seems to be popular among some fringe "we're all gonna die anyway" communities. Though my impression was that the vast majority of climate scientists don't consider it to be a very plausible threat [1]. It is based on some real scientific publications, but as far as I can tell in the realm of "very implausible theory".

There is definitely a concern about multiple feedback loops involving methane from clathrates, permafrost and also wetlands. There's also considerable uncertainty about the origin of methane emissions. But as far as I can tell the methane "bomb" theory shouldn't be our major concern.

[1] http://www.realclimate.org/index.php/archives/2013/11/arctic...

Re: Climate change has turned permafrost into a carbon emitter

#82

Post by NeedMoreTea »

samvher wrote: post #75
NeedMoreTea wrote: post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

And I read this morning that some expect the Amazon to stop being a rainforest pretty soon, which would hugely accelerate tree loss.

Do you have a source to share on this?

Was actually this one (warning autoplay video that adds nothing to the text): https://www.independent.co.uk/environment/amazon-rainforest-...

Re: Climate change has turned permafrost into a carbon emitter

#83

Post by asaegyn »

sunkenvicar wrote: post #76

Regardless of the truth of this story and the facts surrounding climate change Canadian media is not a credible source of information. The CBC gets $2 BILLION/yr from the Trudeau Liberal government. All other private news orgs have a hand in a $600 Million/yr pot. For example, the Toronto Star alone receives $5.2 Million/yr from the Canadian federal government. We can all agree this is a bad system apt to produce fav…

What a ridiculous comment. The CBC is reporting on this article published in Nature: https://www.nature.com/articles/s41558-019-0592-8

Re: Climate change has turned permafrost into a carbon emitter

#84

Post by dr_dshiv »

dunstad wrote: post #73
dr_dshiv wrote: post #65

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The climate changes with or without human behaviour. Only 8000 years ago, you could walk from England to Europe! So we need solutions for managing climate stability, not just cleaning up after humans.

Well, if we fail to develop solutions to clean up after ourselves, we won't need to worry about climate stability because we'll all be dead. So that's one way to handle things.

You can hold your breath, I want to explore ways of preventing runaway warming from melting permafrost.

Re: Climate change has turned permafrost into a carbon emitter

#85

Post by asaegyn »

solarwind wrote: post #29

Carbon is not a synonym for carbon dioxide.

As the other comment points out, some of the major GHG's CO2 and CH4 are comprised of carbon. It is often used as a catch-all.

For example, the news earlier this year about treeplanting, spoke about removing Carbon from the atmosphere. Typically, the GHG's will be rolled up into either CO2e (CO2-equivalent) or just C. In the latter case, you often just have to do some molar math to get the CO2e from C.

Re: Climate change has turned permafrost into a carbon emitter

#86

Post by Ididntdothis »

vonmoltke wrote: post #53
Ididntdothis wrote: post #24

Earlier quoted context omitted.

As far as I know in Florida they lobbied for the government to provide flood insurance because no private company would underwrite one.

Flood insurance is a national program underwritten by FEMA. We have it on our house in inland New Jersey, because we're on a river. You may be thinking of the windstorm insurance program. The state of Florida underwrites that, and started it as insurance of last resort after insurers started bailing following Andrew.

Possible. The point was that people kept building mansions in clearly unsuitable areas and when the private market wouldn’t insure them they made the government do so.

Re: Climate change has turned permafrost into a carbon emitter

#87

Post by mlyle »

easymodex wrote: post #71
mlyle wrote: post #67

Earlier quoted context omitted.

(and then obviously negative feedback takes back over, as we don't run away to infinite or zero temperature).

I suppose, but before that happens the environment could get very, very unpleasant for humans (and animals in general).

Yah, the point is if we draw a set of hills with bumps and stable equilibria for a ball to roll down-- there is resistance to perturbation near an initial point, and then a sufficient "nudge" to get over a hill and roll somewhere else... but the ball always ends up in a stable region at the bottom of a hill.

How different a place that new equilibrium is ... is open to debate and not really known. What climate scientists have shown is that it can be, and likely is, pretty bad.

Re: Climate change has turned permafrost into a carbon emitter

#88

Post by sunkenvicar »

asaegyn wrote: post #83
sunkenvicar wrote: post #76

Regardless of the truth of this story and the facts surrounding climate change Canadian media is not a credible source of information. The CBC gets $2 BILLION/yr from the Trudeau Liberal government. All other private news orgs have a hand in a $600 Million/yr pot. For example, the Toronto Star alone receives $5.2 Million/yr from the Canadian federal government. We can all agree this is a bad system apt to produce fav…

What a ridiculous comment. The CBC is reporting on this article published in Nature: https://www.nature.com/articles/s41558-019-0592-8

Bad systems occasionally produce acceptable outcomes. They are still bad systems. This is common sense.
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