
Unprecedented North Pole Heat Wave in Progress - cf100clunk
https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/north/heat-wave-alert-nunavut-1.5212801
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abraae
One of the many unknown and unforseeable ways in which the climate crisis
might play out is that different countries have different imperatives.

As temperatures rise, countries like Russia might well be net winners, as
their frozen lands thaw out and become viable for agriculture.

When/if carbon capture becomes a reality, we'll have something of a global
thermostat. What sort of wars will ensue to decide who gets to tweak the
thermostat and whether it is turned up or down?

~~~
bragh
Are there any soil biologists around on who can comment on the viability of
this? Because as far as I understand, the land under permafrost in Russia is
pretty much tundra and in Greenland, it's gravel. So it would take centuries
to make it tillable compared to the timescale of decades we have before
current breadbaskets lose the production capacity.

~~~
pimmen
I would also like to hear from biologists or and agricultural scientists.
Beneath the frozen tundra, there's vast reserves of natural gas and other
fossil fuels, does this indicate that the soil has a lot of nutrients? If
animals dies to become fossils, does it indicate lots of animals died there to
fertilize the earth?

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deaddrop
> _The average July high for Alert is 7 C._

...and...

> _Environment Canada says Canadian Forces Station Alert hit a record of 21 C
> on Sunday._

If we're talking about the same exact region, those are drastically differing
numbers, indeed.

Stupid question: Would it be a run-away greenhouse[0] type of situation that
would explain the starkly contrasting differences?

[0] -
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Runaway_greenhouse_effect](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Runaway_greenhouse_effect)

~~~
dfeojm-zlib
Runaway greenhouse effect on Earth is impossible for a billion years or more
for a variety of reasons. You're looking for doomsday cult nonsense rather
than minor/major climate changes that are more nuanced and more probable.

~~~
EForEndeavour
You're right in that our atmosphere will not soon "prevent the planet from
cooling and from having liquid water on its surface." In other words, yeah, we
aren't going to literally boil the oceans. We shouldn't throw around the term
"runaway greenhouse" in serious discussions of anthropogenic global warming.

However, reality is somewhere between "doomsday cult nonsense" and the
flippant, dismissive tone of your comment that characterizes the worsening
climate crisis about which our species is not doing enough as "minor/major
climate changes." That's definitely understating the costs and disruptions
that human civilization is facing on its current course.

I wonder if OP was referring to any of the more immediately concerning
positive feedback loops:
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Climate_change_feedback#Positi...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Climate_change_feedback#Positive)

~~~
deaddrop
> _I wonder if OP was referring to any of the more immediately concerning
> positive feedback loops_

Yeah, that's why I prefaced it with it being a dumb question. :)

If the feed backs are accelerating global warming, it wouldn't be too distant
a notion from the premise of runaway greenhouse gases.

I'll have to brush-up on my nomenclature to not ask such bone-headed questions
in the future. :(

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01100011
Sounds like it's time to start planting trees up there. Greenland is going to
be green again before we get this under control.

~~~
dfeojm-zlib
The North Pole doesn't have any land, and a blue water summer in the Arctic
ocean is likely within 4-10 years. And, high Arctic lands also DO NOT NEED
MORE TREES BECAUSE THAT WOULD HASTEN TUNDRA COLLAPSE. A Russian scientist
proposed deforesting Siberia to convert it to grassland tundra using large
herds of hybrid mammoth-elephants in order to eliminate trees that keep
arboreal tundra from hard freezing in the winter which hastens its destruction
in the summer. [https://pleistocenepark.ru/](https://pleistocenepark.ru/)

A better solution would include many overlapping approaches for a holistic
strategy, including iron fertilization of the oceans and bio-energy with
carbon capture and sequestration (BeCSS).

Furthermore, the best anti-desertification solutions must include extremely
large, managed herds of browsing animals like goats to restore soil health.
There was a TED talk on this.
[https://www.ted.com/talks/allan_savory_how_to_green_the_worl...](https://www.ted.com/talks/allan_savory_how_to_green_the_world_s_deserts_and_reverse_climate_change)

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chkaloon
The last 2-3 weeks in South Central Alaska have been crazy hot for that
region. 90F common across the area, we hit 80+F at our higher altitude cabin
several days in a row. First time we ever hit 80 in the 15 years we've had it.

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dfeojm-zlib
I hope Paul Beckwith does a video on this topic. The climate emergency is even
more urgent.

