Mammoth dung, prehistoric goo may speed warming | Hacker News Reader

Mammoth dung, prehistoric goo may speed warming

reuters.com

9 pointsingenium8 comments

What's always bothered me about the global warming debate is that everyone seems more concerned with who to blame, rather than how to solve the problem. One side is spewing absurd doomsday scenarios completely out of touch with reality, and the other side is just pretending the problem doesn't exist.

The doomsday side is essentially advocating atavism - shutting down economic activity, and relying on grossly inefficient sources of power (how many environmentalists advocate the only sane option i.e, nuclear?) This will obviously have profoundly negative economic consequences. Especially in developing nations. No serious economist disputes this. In effect this argument is like saying that because car accidents cause a lot of deaths, the solution is to stop driving.

The "ignore it" side is basically claiming that this isn't a problem and we should just keep doin' what were doin'. So if this problem does end up biting us in the ass, we would be completely unprepared to deal with it.

But there are numerous solutions here. Nuclear power is probably the simplest. Helping developing nations industrialize is another - it's pretty well established that industrialization = wealth = less pollution. Then there are more radical solutions like installing CO2 scrubbers. The point is that technology always has costs associated with it. Nothing is free. What we should be concerned with is how to deal with the costs, rather than eliminate the life saving technology.

Not everyone. Just the people in a position to do something about it.

(We need new people in those positions.)

Wait, isn't the industrialization of China/India greatly contributing to carbon emissions? Without any industry, what is there to do the pollution?

Russia, China and India are some of the worst polluters. So are many countries in Africa. The problem is that when you're absymally poor, you don't have the resources to worry about how clean your wealth production is. Which is why they clearcut their forests without replanting and don't process their waste. And you can forget about things like recycling.

Here's an interesting fact that you rarely hear. Air and water quality in the US has been going up for the last 80 years. Right through all the industrialization and double digit increases in life expectancy and productivity. The reasons are simple - improved waste management, more efficient production, better recycling programs etc.

Which kind of suggests that the future of every planet with life on it is runaway global warming, doesn't it? So what, we should stop trying to regulate our emissions because we're facing certain doom anyway?

Well, according to the article, it's surfacing now because the permafrost isn't so "perma" any more... something in which humans are directly implicated. So gee, it might well be too late for us now - but it wouldn't have been 50 years ago.

...Oops.

Perhaps everyone of any influence in world affairs at all since World War II needs to get together and figure out precisely how best to say to our generation, "Sorry about your planet".

edit: Turns out the 500 billion tonne figure is a one-off, worst case release. Not an annual figure. Remind me, what's 500/7 again? And why exactly does "thanks to human development, mass extinction might suddenly leap one lifespan closer" mean either "it's not our fault, really it isn't, nature is evil and killing us all" or "see, there's nothing to worry about, humanity is barely having any effect at all"?

Title doesn't match the article:

"Permafrost areas hold 500 billion tonnes of carbon, which can fast turn into greenhouse gases," Zimov said.

Only a fraction of that carbon will ever be converted to CO2.

In fairness, the title says "carbon", not "carbon dioxide". The article itself fingers methane, though, which is even worse.

Not that the title here isn't quite misleading enough, of course - it's just not misleading in that particular way. ;)

It's not misleading at all now, but it originally spoke of 500B tons released into the atmosphere yearly.

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