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Permafrost collapse is accelerating carbon release

nature.com

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Re: Permafrost collapse is accelerating carbon release

#91

Post by mceoin »

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

Re: Permafrost collapse is accelerating carbon release

#92

Post by Gravityloss »

Tade0 wrote: post #67
FeepingCreature wrote: post #5

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.

So 1-2 years' worth of humanity's emissions? Only goes to show how we're the culprit here.

Carbon, not CO2. So 6 to 10 years. And if it's methane...

Re: Permafrost collapse is accelerating carbon release

#93

Post by mempko »

subsubsub wrote: post #23
ForHackernews wrote: post #2

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…

Extinction Rebellion chose non-violent civil disobedience after looking at lots of research around the subject of social change.

They are being scientific about this and I think many people who are claiming it won't change minds haven't done the research as they did.

This is a very very smart and focussed rebellion. They aren't just guessing their tactics will work, they base them on what actually did work.

Listen to Roger Hallam talk about it here. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8c2f_JmzoWU

Re: Permafrost collapse is accelerating carbon release

#94

Post by baruchthescribe »

flukus wrote: post #38
baruchthescribe wrote: post #35

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The intro to The Road Warrior postulates that two great warrior tribes went to war and that the world's reliance on oil was fatally crippled as a result. Not a word about climate change anywhere. When you were growing up, did you watch NASA's James Hansen saying in 2008 that we would have NO Arctic sea ice in summer by 2018? Was he correct? No?

> When you were growing up, did you watch NASA's James Hansen saying in 2008 that we would have NO Arctic sea ice in summer by 2018? Was he correct? No? Got a full quote in context? You "skeptics" have a tendency to miss things like "as soon as" and "if this trend continues".

No, we tend to take what people say at face value. Even if they're fraudulent hacks like James Hansen: https://news.google.com/newspapers?nid=1988&dat=20080624&id=...

Re: Permafrost collapse is accelerating carbon release

#95

Post by dexen »

cageface wrote: post #14
baruchthescribe wrote: post #8

"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

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.

>I wish I could downvote this 100 times

There's a reason we don't give people more voting power in politics, economics, etc., based on the strength of their convictions.

If you want to have people follow proposals and programs you espouse, package the proposals & programs properly. "Pay more taxes to maintain status quo" doesn't cut it. "Earth will be uninhabitable in X years" has been cried one thousand times too many and will never be believable.

"Cheaper energy and nicer cars and cleaner environment and happier dolphins and less waste" is great. Even better, the case makes itself: most people have already witnessed great improvements in all those through our lifetimes, and can easily imagine more of the good stuff.

A pale blue dot, if you can keep it.

Re: Permafrost collapse is accelerating carbon release

#96

Post by bdamm »

rjf72 wrote: post #44
flukus wrote: 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…

We don't have time machines. Predictions can only be made with models, and the models aren't perfect.

Re: Permafrost collapse is accelerating carbon release

#97

Post by dv_dt »

Daishiman wrote: post #3

For those who haven't been watching this topic for the past few years: permafrost melt is the most probable factor for the possibility of a near-term extinction event.

Meanwhile politicians argue about plans for the minimum effort, longest timeline response to climate change, while not even putting into action that minimum when really we should be mobilizing for much sooner.

Re: Permafrost collapse is accelerating carbon release

#98

Post by baruchthescribe »

viraptor wrote: post #88
baruchthescribe wrote: post #36

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Ask NOAA for their temperature records going back a century and see if it's normal and cyclical instead of their cherry picked data from 1979 onwards.

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.

Re: Permafrost collapse is accelerating carbon release

#99

Post by morsch »

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…

What I'll take away from this: the estimates given in the early days of the debate -- the IPCC was formed in 1988 -- were surprisingly accurate.

Re: Permafrost collapse is accelerating carbon release

#100

Post by baruchthescribe »

cageface wrote: post #47
hn_throwaway_99 wrote: post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

I'm not a fan of the oil industry and you know zip about my political leanings. I'm just looking at the data and the historical record. They tell me the Arctic is doing just fine.
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