Slashdot Mirror
Alaska's Permafrost Is Thawing (cnbc.com)
Henry Fountain reports via The New York Times (Warning: source may be paywalled; alternative source): The Arctic is warming about twice as fast as other parts of the planet, and even here in sub-Arctic Alaska the rate of warming is high. Sea ice and wildlife habitat are disappearing; higher sea levels threaten coastal native villages. But to the scientists from Woods Hole Research Center who have come here to study the effects of climate change, the most urgent is the fate of permafrost, the always-frozen ground that underlies much of the state. Starting just a few feet below the surface and extending tens or even hundreds of feet down, it contains vast amounts of carbon in organic matter -- plants that took carbon dioxide from the atmosphere centuries ago, died and froze before they could decompose. Worldwide, permafrost is thought to contain about twice as much carbon as is currently in the atmosphere. Once this ancient organic material thaws, microbes convert some of it to carbon dioxide and methane, which can flow into the atmosphere and cause even more warming. Scientists have estimated that the process of permafrost thawing could contribute as much as 1.7 degrees Fahrenheit to global warming over the next several centuries, independent of what society does to reduce emissions from burning fossil fuels and other activities. In Alaska, nowhere is permafrost more vulnerable than here, 350 miles south of the Arctic Circle, in a vast, largely treeless landscape formed from sediment brought down by two of the state's biggest rivers, the Yukon and the Kuskokwim. Temperatures three feet down into the frozen ground are less than half a degree below freezing. This area could lose much of its permafrost by midcentury.
Time to plant trees. Lots of trees.
If it weren't for deadlines, nothing would be late.
We're entering the final stages of the Quaternary glaciation period. This is just the latest period of glaciation among many such ice ages. Between past ice ages there have been periods of time when glaciation has been less than even it is now, which has allowed fauna and flora to readily survive and flourish in environments that today are considered inhospitable frozen wastelands. This is why we can find plant and animal matter well under what are today layers of permafrost.
Some will wrongly claim that it's due to land that was formerly in warmer climates moving northward due to plate tectonics, but they misunderstand the geologic timelines we're talking about here. When discussing periods of glaciation, we're talking about the last 500 million to 1000 million years. While Australia, India and South America have seen significant movement, the Arctic regions have actually remained quite stationary for billions of years.
The most important thing to get out of this is that we're looking at cycles that take millions of years to complete. These cycles existed long before humans existed, and by extension, long before the Industrial Revolution that started a mere 300 years ago. Despite what politicians say, especially politicians who are eager to impose carbon taxes, humans have nothing to do with the temperature changes we're witnessing. They're merely part of long-running cycles of increasing and decreasing glaciation. We just happen to be nearing, in geological terms, the end of a period of glaciation, which is exactly when we'd expect temperatures to be rising in areas where glaciation has decreased. This is a process that has been going on for a long time, well before human involvement could have ever played any role.
Every generation is phenomenally stupid about something that should be blindingly obvious.
The fact that we've dominated the environment to the degree we have should be obvious - we've gone from 2% of the land mammal biomass to 98% when you include our livestock.
We have evidence of multiple mass extinctions caused by exactly these same events:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/...
I agree with the thought that some of the established concepts can have some bullshit in it - but that's exactly why we need repeatable research done and confirmed, and USED TO IMPROVE THINGS before we basically repeat history and ruin the planet for millions of years again.
The Trump move to eliminate climate research, and to silence researchers is more than the normal level of stupid.
Good try, but Trump hasn't even nominated anyone for the posts I listed.
Look: you still don't get it. Trump hasn't nominated them and for the nominated ones the republicans control both houses, but it's still the democrat's fault.
SJW n. One who posts facts.
I love how we've gotten to the point that a "gotcha" is that the president nominated someone for a post, and that the nominee isn't incompetent.
Trump managed to not fuck something up. Take that, libtards!