
Arctic permafrost is thawing fast - sohkamyung
https://www.nationalgeographic.com/environment/2019/08/arctic-permafrost-is-thawing-it-could-speed-up-climate-change-feature/
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fluxby
I highly recommend getting to know the work of Randall Carlson on the subject.

Joe Rogan had him on podcast [1] few times.

[1]
[https://youtube.com/watch?v=G0Cp7DrvNLQ](https://youtube.com/watch?v=G0Cp7DrvNLQ)

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nosleeptill
Back in the late 80's early 90's I remember reading some articles written by
climatologists who believed that things were far more dire than the mainstream
climate industry accepted.

Quoted from the article " researchers now suspect that for every one degree
Celsius rise in Earth’s average temperature, permafrost may release the
equivalent of four to six years’ worth of coal, oil, and natural gas
emissions—double to triple what scientists thought a few years ago. Within a
few decades, if we don’t curb fossil fuel use, permafrost could be as big a
source of greenhouse gases as China, the world’s largest emitter, is today."

This article from NatGeo is the first modern writing I've seen that has put
forth such dire warnings about the permafrost thawing. The warning is not as
dire at the papers I read, but nonetheless it something we haven't seen
before. I wish I still had those original papers, but they were in fact paper
and not electronic, and I don't remember who wrote them or where they were
published and I doubt they are cataloged anywhere. I do remember the people
who wrote the papers were all older scientists, so I don't think any of them
are still around.

Most of their models were based on the fact that oceans, glaciers and
eventually the permafrost would get locked into a positive feedback loop using
greenhouse gases as the fuel.

They postulated that humans tipped the balance and we keep skewing the balance
until the earth and climate hit a tipping point at which time the earth and
climate would get locked into a few positive feedback loops, warming oceans,
melting glaciers, and thawing permafrost.

Most of the papers felt the thawing of the permafrost was the point of no
return. It was the point where human activity was no longer the driving force
in climate change. Even though the thawing of the permafrost would start out
small it was the indication that we passed a warming event from which reducing
human output would no longer alter the warming trend. The increase in
temperature and forces required to start large scale permafrost warming could
not be stopped simply by slightly reducing human output.

The authors mostly felt that 20-40 years of future climate change was already
locked in, and once we passed the permafrost thawing event, even large scale
changes in human output would not alter the next 20-40 years and during that
time the permafrost itself would start to rapidly accelerate it's thawing,
eventually coming to release yearly, as much greenhouse gases as all of humans
emit, in effect accelerating the warming.

The underlying basis for their theories was that the release of greenhouse
gases caused the planet to warm, which in turn caused oceans to warm, glaciers
to melt, and eventually permafrost to thaw, which caused more greenhouse gas
emissions, which caused more warming, etc. They felt that once the permafrost
started to thaw that the final piece of the puzzle was in place and that the
three systems, all fueled by greenhouse gas emissions would self sustain the
feedback loop.

The papers believed that while in the beginning the permafrost greenhouse gas
output would be small, but it was enough to sustain the feedback loops without
human input, the feedback loops would slow but they would sustain. Since it
wasn't possible for humans to cut emission by 10 or 20% overnight the best
humanity could hope for would be a 1-2% reduction yearly, and even if humans
reduced by 1-2% yearly the permafrost would actually make up the difference,
thus not changing the trajectory of the warming trend. In the models they used
it took almost 5% year over year reduction so that the permafrost thawing
couldn't sustain the positive feedback loops.

Positive feedback loops typically don't stop until they exhaust their
resources, which in his case is greenhouse gases. What we've learned recently
is that the permafrost is releasing significantly more Co2m, significantly
more methane which is now thought to be 76 times more impactful than co2 and
significantly more nitrous oxide which is now thought to be 300 times more
impactful than co2.

When I read those papers they all made way more sense than than the other more
generally accepted models. As a systems guy I could never accept the thinking
that if we reduced our output that it would stop the warming, I thought it
would slow the warming trend, but never made any sense to think that the
warming would stop.

At the time the papers were written most climate scientists believed that the
permafrost wouldn't thaw for hundreds of years, which is why people stopped
getting funded to study the thawing, it's only been recently that scientists
started to monitor the permafrost thawing and discovered the amounts of co2,
methane and nitrous oxide are much, much higher than anticipated.

The models put forth in the papers I referenced needed 5% human output
reduction starting in the early 90's in order to avoid the permafrost from
self sustaining the warming trend. Not only did we not reduce our output, but
it's soared since the early 90's. Most of the models had the permafrost
starting to thaw on a large scale in the mid to late 20's, with things getting
really bad by the mid 50's.

If those rejected models are right, and it's starting to look like they are,
then we are actually about 10 years ahead of schedule if we base it on
permafrost thawing trends.

~~~
esotericn
To me, it's mind bendingly frustrating that we're even considering things in
terms of a 'reduction from current emissions'.

It's like someone deeply in debt cutting their spending by 5% or whatever.

What is actually required is that we start from zero emissions and work
upwards - e.g. if we need some agriculture, that's some unavoidable CO2 right
now until we have electric solar powered tractors or whatever, and so on.

The reduction method is so far from the correct approach that even if it
works, it doesn't work, as you've stated, because it's based on the idea that
we just go on as normal with small tweaks.

It's looking like we actually need to create a completely different economy,
rapidly, in order to survive. Oh boy.

~~~
MrEldritch
Yeah, but that's completely politically infeasible. There's no way to get
people to just _stop_ using existing resources to improve their quality of
life - or even to keep their quality of life at current levels - without any
immediate tangible consequences. And of course, by the time the disaster
arrives, it'll be too late to change.

Or, correction, there's one way to get them to do that: Point guns at them.

(Un?)fortunately, the vast majority of the developed world lives under
democratic government, and the same people who would rather not massively and
suddenly reduce their wealth and quality of life in response to future
predictions _also_ would rather not have martial law imposed to convince them
to do so.

So the "tiny ineffectual reductions from current emission levels" is the only
possible framework under which any kind of preemptive climate action can
actually _happen_. You're correct that there's no way this can solve the
problem; the correct response is to understand that we're just basically
fucked and the only ways out include things like "establish, by force,
oppressive totalitarian global state oriented around climate management" which
would damage the future world we live in just as much as climate change would,
but in a different way.

We're just fucked. And there's a certain liberty in that! You don't have to
worry about whether or not we'll fix the problem; we won't, so there's no
troublesome uncertainty. Just go see the sights around the world you'd like to
see before they're destroyed.

~~~
esotericn
What you're saying is probably fairly accurate though I don't like to accept
it.

We're in a world full of people grabbing and using as much as they can with no
care for what that means for themselves never mind other people. Unexamined
lives. People would have to change habits that are nothing worth fighting for
to begin with.

I don't care for seeing the sights, though I do care for the world to not
become some sort of theme park terraformed (... ha) nightmare for humans to
survive.

The answer for me is going to be to continue to do my best regardless because
to do otherwise would be barbaric. In a lawless world I wouldn't become a mass
murderer just because society allowed it.

~~~
MrEldritch
>that are nothing worth fighting for to begin with

Frankly, air conditioning _alone_ is worth fighting for. The wealth and
comfort generated by our carbon-spewing economy is the greatest achievement in
mankind's history - and developing nations reaching towards it would be
_right_ to fight for it.

Having to make the kind of far-reaching sacrifices needed to prevent climate
change at this late stage would (if we actually did it) be among the greatest
tragedies in human history, second only to the tragedy of what will happen if
we don't.

