Permafrost is thawing in the Arctic so fast scientists lost their equipment
cbc.ca
cbc.ca
A similar worry is methane hydrates. [2]
It seems that the only remaining hopes are rapid progress on carbon sequestration on a vast scale, or risky geoengineering.
[1] https://www.pri.org/stories/2015-06-24/thawing-permafrost-co... [2] https://worldoceanreview.com/en/wor-1/energy/methane-hydrate...
The clathrate gun hypothesis is the popular name given to the idea that increases in sea temperatures or drops in sea levels can trigger a strong positive feedback effect on climate: first, warming causes a sudden release of methane from methane clathrate compounds buried in seabeds and seabed permafrost; second, because methane itself is a powerful greenhouse gas, temperatures rise further, and the cycle repeats. This runaway process, once started, could be as irreversible as the firing of a gun.
"The researchers believe that soil and marine bacteria that feed on frozen fossil methane as it melts may explain its limited release, by preventing the methane from ever reaching the atmosphere."
https://scripps.ucsd.edu/news/natural-methane-time-bomb-unli...
The abstract at Nature https://www.nature.com/articles/nature23316
A longer explainer at Nature https://www.nature.com/articles/548403a
"The authors show that the 14C methane signature is relatively constant through this abrupt methane rise. They use a mass-balance calculation to show that this could not have happened if the rise was caused by emissions from geological sources, including hydrates"
"Natural geological methane emissions are expected to have been higher during the past than in modern times12, and so the authors' estimate of emissions 12,000 years ago can be taken as an upper limit for today's climate system."
The closest is the caveat that modern warming may go warmer, and thus further historical analysis and modeling is needed.
The differences between deglacial and modern warming preclude us from unequivocally ruling out the possibility of large-scale natural methane releases to the atmosphere from old carbon reservoirs in the future. Our results do, however, suggest that such releases are unlikely. This is consistent with recent atmospheric observations, which suggest that renewed growth of atmospheric CH4 since 2006 is not driven by emissions from the Arctic29, where the most vulnerable old carbon reservoirs are located today. Instead, our results support the hypothesis that any future increases in natural CH4 emissions to the atmosphere will be driven by contemporaneous sources such as wetlands.
https://sci-hub.se/10.1038/nature23316
Another piece of context is that the "don't have to worry" quote was from "Scripps Oceanography geoscientist Jeff Severinghaus, who has been involved with this research project since 2000 and leads the study of ice core records at Scripps." He's in no way a global warming skeptic, but rather an advocate of decarbonization by 2050 to reduce anthropogenic warming, yet he says the sudden arctic methane release is something we don't have to worry about.
There is always more context. Basically anything can be "potentially deceptive", but that does not mean that it is either deceptive or inaccurate. This appears to be a case where the university press release did a pretty good job of remaining true to the paper.
It sounds like you are uncomfortable with the conclusion, rather than the summary of that conclusion.
Come on, stop being disingenuous.
> but that does not mean that it is either deceptive or inaccurate.
The quote you posted bereft of greater context (Which you've now tried to provide. Well done!) could deceive a number of people. It's both potentially deceptive and, in those instances where it deceives someone, deceptive. The linguistic implications alone are... tremendously boring, to be honest.
> It sounds like you are uncomfortable with the conclusion, rather than the summary of that conclusion.
How utterly bizarre that you think so.
The face-value perception of the quotes I posted ("'methane time bomb’...is one thing we don't have to worry about" with the link for context) is the actual, correct meaning of the quote and conclusion from the climate scientists.
With the face value matching the deeper conclusion, where is the deception?
It would be less-bad for the climate overall if we didn't get the extra temporary energy bump from methane, and it were "only" carbon dioxide directly. But no, there's no way to do that efficiently. The methane stores are spread over many thousands of square miles. It's just to diffuse to operate on directly.
Then, over millions of years, the carbon gets absorbed again. Rock weathering removes CO2, and layer after layer of plant material gets sequestered in the ground.
The warming events cause mass extinctions. Hardly anything lives at mid-latitudes, and crocodiles swim at the poles.
There's a lot of geological evidence for all this, and it's the reason people are so worried. If negative feedbacks were quick then we'd see a stable climate in the geological record. We see the opposite. It doesn't take much of an initial shove to tip things into catastrophe, and millions of years to get back to a climate like our own.
The Last Time the Globe Warmed: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ldLBoErAhz4
When the Earth Was Purple: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IIA-k_bBcL0
That Time it Rained for Two Million Years: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_1LdMWlNYS4
From the Cambrian Explosion to the Great Dying: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RDQa0okkpf0
The few things that we learn from paleontology is the Earth is Dynamic and that any one creature's life is fragile.
We like to build big complicated high-cost centers right on the coast. Rising sea water = bad for us.
We like to build expensive permanent buildings. Crazy weather = bad for us.
We like to farm monocultures in predictable climates. Unstable seasons = bad for us.
'Life' is going to be just fine. It's just gonna be super inconvenient for us humans.
I'm not trivialising the current mass extinction event. It's not great. But pinch points like these have a way of producing some of the best performing creatures we've ever seen.
There are ideas out there to clean the coils (carbon sequestration). But in terms of fixing the broken engine, we’re just kind of hoping it restarts itself once we put things back into a state of normal operating conditions. But it might not [depending on how long we wake to take action; we’re hopefully still in a stage where the coils just need cleaning]. Or at least not at a time scale that matters for humans and a huge chunk of the world’s biome.
Not dissimilar to peat bogs in temperate regions, though the detail is different.
A thaw would release the thousands of years of stored carbon, and could promote growth that sequesters less carbon.
After all the methane is released from the clathrates.
Presumably you are not going to have it turn into a carbon sink until it is a good site for things to grow and that is not while there is still permafrost.
https://www.nws.noaa.gov/om/hazstats.shtml
A 25 day US heat wave killed 1,000 in 1980.
https://news.google.com/newspapers?nid=1350&dat=19800719&id=...
Heat is dangerous especially to those in sensitive groups and to say otherwise is dishonest.
https://www.cdc.gov/nchs/data/nhsr/nhsr076.pdf
And most global warming mitigates cold extremes rather than increasing hot extremes (polar amplification, increased night-time temperatures, etc.).
And I think this slowness of reaction is also what will make any sort of solution extremely difficult to implement - people will complain that they are feeling the impact of any solution right now(like, if plastics were banned tomorrow), while the climate won't improve for a long time - even if we stopped our emissions entirely the climate would keep getting worse for decades until any meaningful improvement would be observed.
It appears to be small sample set of temperature records taken in growing urban environments.
https://www.ft.com/content/73650984-135a-11e9-a168-d45595ad0...
"...renewables (including biofuels, waste and hydro) are responsible for almost the same share of energy today (14 per cent) as supplied in 1971 "
We can shave of percentages by stopping eating meat and so on but fossil fuels are still the major culprit in carbon emissions.
From economical point of view it's catastrophe today (just stopping using fossil fuels cold turkey will destroy the economic structure of our civilization) versus catastrophe tomorrow.
https://mobile.twitter.com/rahmstorf/status/1070717050430070...
We, as individual consumers, need to reduce the carbon emissions ourselves as much as possible no matter what the politicians say. Deniers are going to be a problem until shit hits the fan for real, and waiting until everyone is convinced will simply be a waste of time.
So, in other words, focus less on what others do, more on what you do, and make sure to prepare as much as you can for whatever the future holds. Not saying everyone should become a prepper (although it's a fun hobby!), but the fact that people blindly believe that the future is a straight line is scarier, regardless of where they believe that line is pointing.
If we really want to make a change we have to focus on big picture solutions. Instead of being against, we need to focus on what we want to move towards.
The only way to reduce our dependency on carbon fuels within a realistic timeframe is an aggressive rollout of renevable energy like wind and solar, _and_ nuclear. If we were really serious about this, we would do massive investments in nuclear, building lots of new plants and also stepping up the research in technologies like molten salt and thorium based reactors.
If we should take to the street and demonstrate, it should be _for_ actual solutions like that, rather than _against_ minor things that don't make much of a difference anyways.
The changes we need to do will require a large cultural change in order for people to accept them. We need to accept collective AND individual responsibility for something that affects the entire biosphere. Increasing taxes on fuel won't change the way people think, any more than getting rid of plastic straws will. After all, most large changes can be summarized as a long sequence of smaller events (not sure if that last part sounds right -- English isn't my first language).
It's a governmental problem, not an individual one, only way it's going to change is if you start campaigning and voting differently.
With enough people spitting, that isn't a problem at all. Shame so many people are just standing back saying it can't be done instead of helping.
Many a mickle makes a muckle, this applies to pretty much everything.
If everybody keeps acting like their individual contributions are completely meaningless, then nobody will change anything about their own ways and thus large scale change will remain a pipe-dream.
The longer you keep parroting this corporate propaganda, the more fucked we are. This needs strong government intervention, now.
Preferably paid for with massive, backdated windfall taxes on every company and shareholder that ever materially benefited from environmentally destructive companies.
Obviously not going to happen, but let's not pretend me or you are responsible for the industrial levels of pollution, and the last few decades of climate change denier lobbying, when those companies full well knew the damage they were doing.
Let's instead pretend our chosen lifestyle of abundance and wastefulness doesn't factor into any of this at all?
Who do you think these companies are selling their products to? Thus financing their operations in the first place? Externalizing the blame for this solely on the industry, like consumers have zero responsibility or impact, might be convenient but imho it only serves to shift the blame from one party to the other and vice versa, so that ultimately nobody feels responsible and thus nobody starts acting.
To tackle this will require efforts on both ends. Because the industry will simply react by "There's demand for it, so we do it", while consumers go "The industry is doing it, somebody needs to force them to change, but don't you dare to inconvenience ME!".
Literally, nothing stops us from doing both: Being responsible consumers and properly regulating the industry.
Given that there are significant disadvantages and the benefits are entirely collective, why would anybody agree to that?
We need to accept that climate change is a thing and deal with it, as a thing.
I think this is a false dichotomy, and so do many economists [1]. We can start phasing out out the non-essential use of fossils and come up with replacements for the remainign parts in the coming decades.
Painting it as this kind of desperate dichotomy is generally playing into the hands those who don't want us to address climate change.
Remember that the changes aren't only chilling on the economy - the energy overhaul is an enormous global public works project.
We are using energy and energy-intensive products in really wasteful ways because of their low cost in our everyday lives (consider oversized cars and low occupancy, available savings from turning heating & cooling to lower levels, going veggie in food, cutting air travel, not to mention all the wasted energy in commercial/industrial side due to low energy costs).
[1] See eg https://www.nytimes.com/2014/09/19/opinion/paul-krugman-coul...
I think the biggest hurdle is that the incumbent investments in hydrocarbons have quite a lot of future profits to tied up to continued usage of said resources. The negative externalities of hydrocarbon eceonomy should be tied more forcefully directly to their usage. But even that would not discourage investors from doing all they can to keep up the demand for oil.
Climate change is a "solved" problem, but the solution isn't something I would want to live through.
The good news is, unless you are part of the lucky 0.01%, you won't have to live through it!
Most of us posting here will die of old age before things really get ugly. It's our children or grandchildren who will suffer.
Change your mind about needing a personal automobile, and share it with as many people as possible. Use public transportation if you have it, and insist in your community investing in public transportation systems if you don't.
Actually, I think one of the key issues is you still have powerful, vocal pointing out there is no issue. For example: https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-us-canada-46351940
I was pointing out that it's not as simple as wanting to believe that everyone is on the same page, here. It's not easy to even get people to recognise the issue, let alone starting from a point where we're all pulling in the same direction.
I don't have a solution.
You see there are no easy solutions, our societies have built-in negative externalities of all kinds that culminated in this problem.
At least a tax can be structured in a way that poor people are less impacted.
There are signs of panic amongst the very young. A widespread rebellion is the only thing that could move fast enough to save us at this point, and I can't see where that could come from other than our youth. The chances aren't good, but if there are signs of hope, that would be where to look.
I don't know about this one. I really don't.
Have for example a look at how much the Iraq war cost over seven years and imagine how many batteries and solar panels could have been build with that money and how many homes could have gotten improved insulation. And that was really just a minor blip compared to the efforts that went into WW2.
Also, while defossilizing the industry base, it makes sense to enhance, increase and automate local factories to make it viable to produce things locally and not half a world away. Add a functional and effective system for recycling materials to use for new production, etc. and the long term trend is clear: China's role as the production hub of the world will diminish dramatically. From this perspective I do not understand why China does not seem to be racing like mad to restrict fossil fuels.
Degraded soil lacks microbial life. If usually ends up that way from conventional farming and poor land management. Repairing it would mean moving away from conventional monocrop farming towards rotational grazing [and other alternative practices]. A good reason to eat mostly local food from small organic farms, and if you eat beef to at least make sure it’s grass fed, pasture raised. This also cuts down on the carbon cost of transporting food halfway across the world in trucks and planes. (Those transportation costs are not factored into the EPAs estimates for how much agriculture contribute to climate change. Neither are the emissions generated in producing all the chemicals used in agriculture. They also don’t factor in how much carbon would be sequestered in all the acreage currently used for conventional farming, if it were to be replaced with practices like Silvopasture and agroforestry, or healthy pastures.)
The issue of climate change is a systemic one. A centralized food production system that relies on fossil fuels for both inputs and outputs (petrochemicals as well as transportation) has resulted in a society of sprawl. You don’t have to have a farm down the block anymore, and you can drive 30 miles to work. It’s all connected.
One idea is we can move back to a model of small local farms, keeping communities more tightly knitted and less sprawled. That would limit food choices more towards what’s in season, or has a long shelf life. Arguably, while limited by seasonality, the food would taste better since these days we engineer for transportability over taste. Another option would be to keep with a centralized model but rapidly decarbonize it; electric trains, agroforestry, etc.
I personally think the decentralized model has the potential to be very beautiful. But we should be pragmatic and take whatever the best elements are of either path and just start making changes.
I've lived through a few situations where I did something stupid, and surprising stuff happened. Too quickly to do anything about, but slowly enough to appreciate how bad it was going to be. My first faceplant on a snowboard, for example. So anyway, regarding global climate change, the last 30 years has been like that. And surprises just keep coming.