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Faster Global Warming From Permafrost Melt
jc42 writes, "A recent study published in Nature documents the accelerating release of methane from melting permafrost. Methane is a greenhouse gas 23 times more potent than carbon dioxide, so this may signal more rapid warming in the near future. If you don't subscribe to Nature, the Guardian has a good summary of the piece." It's not just Siberian permafrost. One of the major concerns is bogs — they account for a relatively small percent of total surface space, but have a large amount of carbon locked up. No one is sure if the greenhouse effect will cause them to lock up more, or to release more carbon.
Coming up next: american scientists denial of global warming. New device to dig head-sized hole in the ground now for sale at Wal-Mart.
One of the major concerns is bogs -- they account for a relatively small percent of total surface space, but have a large amount of carbon locked up.
They also have a fair number of bogmen in them. Thanks to the highly acidic and low oxygen environment of bogs, the softer parts of animals (skin, hair, organs) remain intact while the bones dissolve. What you end up with is essentially a nice "sack of meat." Totally offtopic, but pretty fascinating stuff, imho.
This guy's the limit!
I always knew blogs were full of methane. -- What? -- Oh, you said 'bogs'. Um, but it's still a lot of stinky vapor.
You know that, when the ozon is destroyed and the fish die, they will say "It was everybody's fault. We didn't do anything to stop it". They won't say it was George Bush's fault, or McDonalds fault.
And they will be right. The only way to stop it is to slow down the circulation of money.
The scientists release the facts - that the permafrost is changing. Then the people who pay the scientists say 'Why should we care, why should we pay for your expensive field trips?' and the scientist replies 'Because we need to know, we need to find out what's going on, so we might have a chance of surviving (and me keeping my job)'
So, to sum up, scienists have released some facts - there are significant changes in the permafrost which are yet another significant pointer to global climate change. Furthermore, the released the fact that we don't know what significance this change will take.
init 11 - for when you need that edge.
The title to the story is "Faster Global Warming from Permafrost Melt" yet TFA & even the extract say
"No one is sure if the greenhouse effect will cause them to lock up more, or to release more carbon"...
Sensationalist titles like this are why I still have my doubts about global warning. Every time any climate data is released, the global warning crowd comes out with another sensationalist global warning blurb.
Democracy is a sheep and two wolves deciding what to have for lunch. Freedom is a well armed sheep contesting the issue
Those "rising columns of hot air" barely reach the stratosphere even in major events like a major volcano eruption. Your fears of running out of atmosphere through global warming are unfounded. Look at Venus: Hot as hell (literally) yet it still has an atmosphere denser than Earth's.
Democracy is a sheep and two wolves deciding what to have for lunch. Freedom is a well armed sheep contesting the issue
Here we've got a positive feedback loop. The warmer it gets, the more CH4 is presumably released from permafrost.
There are also negative feedback loops. The warmer it gets, the more water evaporates, the more clouds there are, and clouds reflect sunlight. On the other hand, clouds can also hold heat in, and water vapor is a greenhouse gas.
If you want to make forecasts you have to put numbers on all those effects, and they have to be fairly precise numbers or you get hit by the uncertainties of (approximate large number minus other approximate large number). You've also got to account for discontinuities, things that only start happening at threshold temperatures (permafrost melting) or that stop happening after some amount of C)2 gets absorbed (oceanic absorption).
That's where all your tax money is going. It's paying to send highly trained people to uncomfortable places to get hard facts.
That also tells you that it's taken a huge amount of field data to get general agreement on what our CO2 output does to climate.
Make energy expensive.
http://www.whynot.net/ideas/2195
People in hot areas will start adding insulation, whitewashing their houses, adding trees and ivy people in cold areas will start adding insulation, heat pumps etc.
Deleted
Yes, plus the Earth doesn't really like being anthropomorphized all that much, so if you won't stop for environmental science, stop for the sake of Earth's feelings.
Furthermore, the released the fact that we don't know what significance this change will take.
Fact is a pretty strong word in science. Instead you'll generally see "consensus" or "strongly suggests" or "the theory supports". Facts tend to be only used when discussing measurable data, and even then they discuss margin of errors and possible problems in taking the readings.
If I jump off a building, a group of scientists would cheerfully predict when I'll hit the bottom and with how much force, though they'll admit that they can't account for confounding variables like wind speed and the possibility that Superman might wander by. There might be one chap who scoffs at the others and says it's worthless making a prediction as we can't tell if I has a parachute tucked away somewhere.
I see global climate change the same way. It's a complex issue and there's lots of details that still need to be sorted out. Still, if you ask a bunch of scientists their opinion on it, the consensus is that it's real, man-made, and will likely hit the bottom with a loud splat sooner rather than later.
The Guardian says "This means that a kilogram of methane warms the planet's atmosphere 23 times as much as the same amount of carbon dioxide."
A gas can not warm the planet.
So neither can a blanket warm you, then.
Any other sophistries you'd like to share?
You can't take the sky from me...
The title to the story is "Faster Global Warming from Permafrost Melt" yet TFA & even the extract say
/. submitter, who is in any case referring to uncertainty over bogs, not the melting permafrost.
"No one is sure if the greenhouse effect will cause them to lock up more, or to release more carbon"...
Um no. First of all, you obviously haven't read TFA because it doesn't say this. It was apparently written by the
Sensationalist titles like this are why I still have my doubts about global warning.
You decide whether or not to accept scientific studies based on Slashdot headlines? We're in more trouble than I thought.
It's not the rising columns of air, but increased kinetic energy and momentum in general. Earth's atmosphere is constantly losing particles that escape into space. This is compensated from particles that fall into our gravity well. It's more an effect of brownian motion and individual molecules achieving escape velocity than air currents, though.
There are several factors involved in determining the rate of exchange. Increased temperature implies increased average energy level in the atmosphere and increased volume (the atmosphere extends further away from the surface). Carbon dioxide is heavier than both H2O and O2, so increased levels of CO2 will tend to push those molecules away from the surface and into the upper atmosphere. Also a collision between a CO2 molecule and a water or oxygen molecule will impart greater velocity to the lighter molecule. Conversely, methane is lighter than O2 or H2O, so it will rise with/above them.
In general, though, I expect global warming to cause a measurable increase in the level of atmosphere lost to space (at least anything lighter than CO2). Given the amount of water in the environment, and the ability of plants to lock up CO2, I don't expect it to turn earth into a venusian hell-hole, let alone lose the entire atmosphere. We're talking millions of years, even if we humans manage to release all of the fossil CO2 from the pre-Cambrian era and kill off all vertebrate animal life in the process.
We are the 198 proof..
This isn't about predicting the weather. It is more similar to predicting that summer will be hot in Texas.
Avoid Missing Ball for High Score
Hey, fart jokes are common even among scientists when discussing atmospheric methane. It's been known for a couple decades that roughly 1/3 of the methane in our atmosphere comes from the digestive systems of ruminants (cattle, etc.), so fart jokes are inevitable. Actually, a recent report claimes that cattle produce most of their methane by belching, which sorta took a bit of the fun out of it. But cattle also fart a lot.
OTOH, a few years ago some researchers tracked down the source of another 1/3 of the methane: termites. Most people don't suspect how incredibly many termites there are on this planet. They are all digesting plant fibers via a process similar to that of cattle (and using some of the same bacteria). This produces the image of trillions and trillions of tiny little termite farts.
That discovery did pretty much account for most of the methane. Aside from those two major sources, there are thousands of small sources, none of them very good sources of humor.
Those who do study history are doomed to stand helplessly by while everyone else repeats it.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Image:Instrumental_Te mperature_Record.png
Have a look at this graph. There's a lot of noise. If you were to look at 3 years in a row, it's pretty much impossible to guess what the temperature will be in the next year. But if you look at the whole graph, then it's pretty clear that things are on the whole getting hotter. Notice especially how fast the heating trend is in the last 10 years (9 of which are the hottest years ever recorded)
It's actually easier to predict things in the long term (given enough data) than it is to say, predict the weather in a week's time. Random fluctuations tend to even themselves out given enough time. That being said, the graph above isn't really enough data to show conclusively what is going to happen.
Ced