
Scientists In Alaska Find Mammoth Amounts Of Carbon In The Warming Permafrost - marchenko
https://www.npr.org/sections/goatsandsoda/2018/01/24/575220206/is-there-a-ticking-time-bomb-under-the-arctic
======
kregasaurusrex
There could be anything underneath all the permafrost, including new
biodiversity which we haven't catalogued yet. NPR ran a story[0] where Russian
animals such as reindeer infected with Anthrax had thawed out, and caused
outbreaks where people had to get preventative treatments against it. As a
future threat model, what if there's new viruses or bacterium contained under
previously frozen earth for which modern medicine isn't prepared for?

[0][https://www.npr.org/sections/goatsandsoda/2016/08/03/4884009...](https://www.npr.org/sections/goatsandsoda/2016/08/03/488400947/anthrax-
outbreak-in-russia-thought-to-be-result-of-thawing-permafrost)

~~~
leggomylibro
>There could be anything underneath all the permafrost, including new
biodiversity which we haven't catalogued yet.

Hey, that was the plot of H.P. Lovecraft's _At the Mountains of Madness_!

[http://www.hplovecraft.com/writings/texts/fiction/mm.aspx](http://www.hplovecraft.com/writings/texts/fiction/mm.aspx)

Spoilers:

"...But we were not on a station platform. We were on the track ahead as the
nightmare plastic column of foetid black iridescence oozed tightly onward
through its fifteen-foot sinus; gathering unholy speed and driving before it a
spiral, re-thickening cloud of the pallid abyss-vapour. It was a terrible,
indescribable thing vaster than any subway train—a shapeless congeries of
protoplasmic bubbles, faintly self-luminous, and with myriads of temporary
eyes forming and unforming as pustules of greenish light all over the tunnel-
filling front that bore down upon us, crushing the frantic penguins and
slithering over the glistening floor that it and its kind had swept so evilly
free of all litter. Still came that eldritch, mocking cry—“Tekeli-li! Tekeli-
li!” And at last we remembered that the daemoniac shoggoths—given life,
thought, and plastic organ patterns solely by the Old Ones, and having no
language save that which the dot-groups expressed—had likewise no voice save
the imitated accents of their bygone masters."

~~~
mlloyd
God that is hard to read. The guy might be thought a genius but I got
absolutely nothing from that passage save the penguins.

~~~
morganvachon
It's no more difficult than Tolkien. Prose from that era was practically
poetry.

Of course, I grew up reading a lot of books and short stories from that era,
so maybe it's easier for my old brain, like riding a bicycle.

~~~
alkonaut
That's what I should have responded when my fifth grade teacher always wrote
"NEW SENTENCE!" in the margin, if you stacked that many sentence commas.

I should have said "it's practically poetry" :)

~~~
taneq
Basically everything they teach you in school is ignored by successful authors
at times, but you've got to know the rules before you can know when to break
them.

------
pmilla1606
I was expecting this to be mentioned somewhere:
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Clathrate_gun_hypothesis](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Clathrate_gun_hypothesis)

~~~
rexaliquid
The Clathrate gun hypothesis and the thawing of the Arctic ecosystem are two
of the "Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse" that the US government investigates.
These are possible scenarios for abrupt climate change (aka tipping points).
The other two involve antarctic ice sheet instability and megadroughts in
North America.

[http://newscenter.lbl.gov/2008/09/17/impacts-on-the-
threshol...](http://newscenter.lbl.gov/2008/09/17/impacts-on-the-threshold-of-
abrupt-climate-changes/)

~~~
dmix
Sounds very similar... Or at least variations of the same idea.

~~~
sulam
It's definitely not the same problem. Clathrates are methane, for one thing,
and the permafrost issue will cause CO2 emissions. Clathrates are in the
water, permafrost is soil.

They are both associated with historically cold environments that are now
warming up, but each has its own mechanism and likely impacts (clathrates may
be worse, since methane is a much more powerful greenhouse gas, but the
permafrost melting is going to be with us for 1000's of years whereas methane
will be with us for "only" a decade. Also permafrost is likely to be a potent
methane producer as well while it thaws out.

~~~
ByThyGrace
What does "be with us" mean in the case of methane?

~~~
freehunter
Methane turns into CO2 and water vapor over time as it reacts with other stuff
in the air. It takes about 10 years for atmospheric methane to turn into
something other than methane.

~~~
sulam
Yep. The caveat is that we are currently adding methane at a faster rate than
it is lost through this process, which obviously means methane concentrations
are increasing right now, and early signs are that this may accelerate. Sigh.

------
corpMaverick
It is not just a bomb that can blow the arctic. It can destroy all human
civilization. And at this point, we may have lost any ability to do anything.

Edit: Doom scale...

1 Inconvenient storms.

2 More frequent natural disasters.

3 Destroying coastal cities.

4 Causing hunger, wars and mass migrations.

5 Decimating human population.

6 Destroying human civilization.

7 Destroying all humans on earth.

8 Destroying all life on earth.

9 Destroying earth.

~~~
mr_overalls
The sad thing is that scientists have understood the risks of global warming
for decades, and yet our civilization (maybe I'm just speaking for the US
here) seems impotent to effectively coordinate a response to this slow-motion
threat.

It could be our own Great Filter.

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Great_Filter](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Great_Filter)

~~~
jjoonathan
Are there credible models that suggest Earth will turn into Venus or
something? It would take a hell of a lot more to end humanity than it would
take to "merely" hurt/kill the most vulnerable segments of our population
(which is what I thought the stakes were).

~~~
goatlover
No, the Earth has been a lot warmer and colder in the past. We've had massive
volcanoes going off for thousands of years, we've had iceball earth, we've had
crocodiles and palm trees in the arctic.

The Earth's systems always balance out over the long run. We don't stay
trapped in ice ages or hot phases.

~~~
twostoned
There's a really good George Carlin bit in one of his stand-ups about how the
earth will be fine. Something along the lines of what you're saying;
earthquakes, volcanoes, solar flares, etc. She's been around for a looong time
folks. It's humanity that might be in for a bad day.

~~~
SAI_Peregrinus
There's also this classic page:
[https://qntm.org/destroy](https://qntm.org/destroy)

------
8bitsrule
Maybe the neglected catastrophists of the 1940s are about to see their day. At
any rate, the following article cites -many- sources as regards the 'Alaskan
muck'. [https://steemit.com/velikovsky/@harlotscurse/in-
alaska](https://steemit.com/velikovsky/@harlotscurse/in-alaska)

------
iamcasen
It seems the only way to combat the thawing permafrost problem is to deploy
world-scale carbon capturing schemes of some sort. Here's to hoping that we
can develop something like that in time.

~~~
013a
Suddenly: Snowpiercer.

~~~
jonny_eh
Was that peer-reviewed?

------
baxtr
Meanwhile, earthers get crazy mining crypto currencies...

~~~
KozmoNau7
It really is crazy.

[https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2017/12/bitcoins-
insane-...](https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2017/12/bitcoins-insane-
energy-consumption-explained/)

------
webXL
We should be investigating ways to sequester that CO2 as quickly as possible,
via photosynthesis or industrial uses:
[https://futurism.com/a-plant-1000-times-more-efficient-at-
co...](https://futurism.com/a-plant-1000-times-more-efficient-at-co2-removal-
than-photosynthesis-is-now-active/)

------
nanis
On the other hand, the first season of Fortitude[1,2] was quite fun.

[1]:
[http://www.imdb.com/title/tt3498622/](http://www.imdb.com/title/tt3498622/)

[2]:
[https://www.amazon.com/dp/B00S1VFB36](https://www.amazon.com/dp/B00S1VFB36)

------
mirimir
It seems like global climate has low-CO2/low-temperature and high-CO2/high-
temperature clusters of attractors. And that anthropogenic CO2 emissions have
pushed global climate toward high-CO2/high-temperature. But at least, it seems
that there's enough of a barrier from the Venus extreme.

------
stcredzero
For good overviews on what the climate change research actually says, I
recommend the potholer54 YouTube channel.

[https://www.youtube.com/user/potholer54/videos](https://www.youtube.com/user/potholer54/videos)

------
thrillgore
I thought this was about methane clathrates. Hasn't there been carbon leaking
from permafrost into the atmosphere already? To what degree does the
production in the arctic affect that?

------
pier25
> But once carbon begins to percolate up through the thawing soil, it could
> form a feedback loop

What? This has been happening for years.

~~~
InclinedPlane
Yes, but there's a point where the _rate_ hits a critical level that dumps it
in a runaway feedback loop. Have we hit that rate already? We don't know
enough to say, but it's fairly likely that we'll hit it within the 21st
century.

------
partycoder
There is also the East Siberian Arctic Shelf, which is already thawing and
releasing methane at an increasing pace.

------
stmfreak
So if it all melts, we could see 1200ppm? That doesn't sound that scary.

------
perseusprime11
The setting makes for a good sci-fi movie where we will thaw out an Alien.

~~~
twostoned
I loved that one! He can take the form of other people but is hive-like or
something so if you heat his blood the host goes nuts? Something like that
anyway. Kurt Russel. The claymation was excellent: cult classic.

~~~
stevenwoo
That's mostly from John Carpenter's The Thing, the blood reacted to heat as
our protagonist's test for detecting infected hosts, not causing the host that
was tied up to react, that was just the thing transmogrifying. There's also a
Pournelle novel where a research team lands on a green, human inhabitable
planet and a native species looks something like a monitor lizard but can
engage a hyper mode that speeds up it's metabolism so it generates a lot of
heat, this is to enable it to run like a cheetah with the strength of a
gorilla or something like that IIRC.

~~~
carapace
"The Legacy of Heorot"

It was a first human colony story. The creature is called "Grendel". No more
spoilers...

If there was ever a sci-fi novel that should be made into a movie it's that
one, IMHO.

------
chiefalchemist
Despite the cliche title...frozen up to 1,000 feet down. That caught my eye.
Plenty can be hidden in a vault that deep. Perhaps the next ebola? Or worse?

Add this to the list: Climate Change and the Things We're Unprepared For.

------
asdffdsa321
Wasn't this in An Inconvenient Truth? Old news

------
jpadkins
Betteridge's law of headlines
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Betteridge%27s_law_of_headline...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Betteridge%27s_law_of_headlines)

~~~
mr_overalls
Except in this case, the scientific consensus is "yes".

The IPCC report for policy-makers:

[https://www.ipcc.ch/pdf/assessment-
report/ar5/syr/AR5_SYR_FI...](https://www.ipcc.ch/pdf/assessment-
report/ar5/syr/AR5_SYR_FINAL_SPM.pdf)

~~~
coolso
Is scientific consensus incapable of being wrong?

~~~
soperj
Newton`s theory of relativity.

------
mike741
"Scientists say New York will be Underwater by 2015"

------
erentz
This is not a “time bomb”, which implies something being inflicted on us by a
malevolent agent. It’s a temperature bomb. And we can easily prevent the
explosion by simply not making the planet too hot.

~~~
nkoren
In all probability, that ship sailed ten years ago. "So doing bad stuff" is no
longer a viable strategy by itself. Sure we should do that, but at this point,
without adaptation and mitigation strategies, we're fucked.

------
txsh
> In fact, there's more carbon in the permafrost, Douglas says, than all the
> carbon humans have spewed into the atmosphere since the Industrial
> Revolution — first with steam trains, then with coal plants, cars and
> planes.

> Scientists don't know yet how much carbon will get released from thawing
> permafrost or how fast it will happen.

In a nutshell why not accepting anthropogenic global warming is scientific and
accepting it is anti-science, not the other way around.

~~~
throwawayjava
It's also true that there's no _DEFINITIVE ABSOLUTE PROOF_ that pressing the
nuclear launch button will clause a MAD-style nuclear escalation.

But still, there's good reason to believe it _would_ , so it'd be
irresponsible to push the button given other reasonable alternatives.

"You can't ever know FOR SURE that this destroy life as we know it!" has to be
the least logical form and most confusing of climate change skepticism out
there. The fact that anyone would consider this argument, on its own, even
remotely compelling, is... oy.

~~~
txsh
That has nothing to do with what I quoted from the article. It would benefit
you to suppress your religious fervor for a few minutes and examine the facts
for yourself.

~~~
throwawayjava
_> That has nothing to do with what I quoted from the article._

This has _everything_ to do with your characterization of those quotes. "We
don't know for certain, but shit could get bad" is a perfectly reasonable
basis for precaution. The precautionary principle is not "anti-scientific".

 _> It would benefit you to suppress your religious fervor for a few minutes
and examine the facts for yourself._

What are you trying to accomplish with this sentence?

