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Permafrost Thaw in Siberia Creates a Ticking 'Methane Bomb' of Greenhouse Gases, Scientists Warn:
In recent years, climate scientists have warned thawing permafrost in Siberia may be a “methane time bomb” detonating slowly. Now, a peer-reviewed study using satellite imagery and a review by an international organization are warning that warming temperatures in the far northern reaches of Russia are releasing massive measures of methane—a potent greenhouse gas with considerably more warming power than carbon dioxide.
“It’s not good news if it’s right,” Robert Max Holmes, a senior scientist at the Woodwell Climate Research Center, who was not involved in either report, tells Steve Mufson of the Washington Post. “Nobody wants to see more potentially nasty feedbacks and this is potentially one.”
Published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences journal, the study of satellite photos of a previously unexplored site in Siberia detected large amounts of methane being released from exposed limestone. A heat wave in 2020 was responsible for the emissions along two large strips of rock formations in the Yenisey-Khatanga Basin, located several hundred miles north of the Arctic Circle.
[...] “The story is simple,” the report concludes. “Climate change is happening faster than anticipated. One consequence—the loss of ice in the polar regions—is also a driver for more rapid global heating and disastrously rapid global sea level rise.”
Journal References:
1.) Nikolaus Froitzheim, Jaroslaw Majka, Dmitry Zastrozhnov. Methane release from carbonate rock formations in the Siberian permafrost area during and after the 2020 heat wave [open], Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (DOI: 10.1073/pnas.2107632118)
2.) The methane time bomb [open], Energy Procedia (DOI: 10.1016/j.egypro.2018.07.004)
(Score: 1) by khallow on Tuesday August 17 2021, @03:09AM (26 children)
That was never substantiated. And while I don't have perfect knowledge of climatology, I do know that there's no sources, much less sources 1000x more reliable than me, who have evidence to back the above claims up. From another poster:
There's probably somewhere around a billion homes on Earth. Thousands aren't even a drop in the bucket. And as I noted, thousands of homes would be destroyed by extreme weather no matter what happened climate-wise.
Now we have this giant red herring move into coral bleaching and then into coral die-offs. To me, this signaled your fundamental irrationality. We're talking about thousands of homes lost to extreme weather, but JoeMerchant is comfortable with the coral bleaching bike shed [wikipedia.org], so we're going to talk about coral bleaching instead. I notice you never presented evidence that coral bleaching and coral die-offs were a serious matter. Sorry, I didn't take your nonsense seriously then or now. But it's like that Pav guy who keeps talking about the same strange talking [soylentnews.org] points [soylentnews.org] (such as the power of UBI and single payer to fix covid) no matter the original subject.
Here's my take on the matter. IMHO, we have three possible end state scenarios to what we're doing right now: a world where almost everyone is developed world and human fertility is low - this is a high consumption state, sorry; an authoritarian world where top-down control barely keeps poor people fertility in line - let's call it plan B; or some sort of die-off in the developing world. Plan A sounds great to me and very sustainable. Plan B sounds fragile in multiple ways (you're always one big oops away from the third scenario and the authoritarian stuff is likely to grow worse and worse as time goes on).
The natural world needs help, but it also needs to carry part of the load. Developed world civilization is the best game in town. That's worth a lot of coral reefs and forests, sorry. We can with modest effort mitigate this problem merely by increasing the set aside for undeveloped land, and aiding the transport and adaptation of ecosystems as conditions change. But sorry, the natural world owes us this chance to succeed or fail.
(Score: 2) by JoeMerchant on Tuesday August 17 2021, @10:32AM (1 child)
Evading the only question and positing based on your limited knowledge. Your lack of willingness to expand your perspective validates my opinion.
🌻🌻 [google.com]
(Score: 2, Touché) by khallow on Tuesday August 17 2021, @10:27PM
Ok, let's look at this "only" question. First, there are many questions:
In other words, a vast spew of rhetorical and often dishonest loaded questions (such as that last one). So no, there was no "only" question to evade. Since, however, you've indicated that I've somehow "evaded" the "Do you have children?" question, let's consider the relevance of that particular question to the thread. Will more children mean more or less dead coral? There's no relation unless we're considering some weird and very aggressive assumption that they'll generate enough greenhouse gases and ocean acidification to be measurable. Thus, we have to assume it's just another rhetorical question like all your other ones and was never meant to be answered.
And yes, I'm not going to waste my time answering a question you clearly didn't intend to be answered.
(Score: 2) by JoeMerchant on Tuesday August 17 2021, @03:48PM (23 children)
The natural world owes us nothing.
The natural world is a resource to be exploited, which we have done since the dawn of mankind. Nothing wrong with that.
Using it up, essentially discarding it and remaking the world to our designs? That will fail, repeatedly, and recovery is going to be long and painful - if it is possible at all.
My proposal, and others have arrived at this conclusion independently, is summed up as: Half Earth. Save 50% of the natural world, really save it - not like a tourist attraction park with harvesting of the lumber every 30 years, but functioning natural biodiverse ecosystems on 50% of the surface of the earth, protected from our activities on the other half so they can continue more or less as they did before civilization started encroaching. Develop the other 50% as we see fit - exploit it as fully as we want, without negatively impacting the natural 50%.
Pilot projects, particularly in the oceans, show that those naturally biodiverse protected areas flourish with productivity that spills out into the exploited areas, and that the exploited areas are more than 2x as productive as they were when no protected areas were nearby.
Food, CO2->O2 cycling, fresh water (there is far more, but those are the simple big ticket items) - what are those worth? Destroy the natural sources of them and you will find out, the hard way.
🌻🌻 [google.com]
(Score: 2, Interesting) by khallow on Tuesday August 17 2021, @10:31PM (22 children)
Good, then it's burn baby burn, right?
Who's doing that again? Protip: it's the developing world.
In other words, reverse habitat destruction to a huge degree. Habitat destruction is a real problem and I've never said otherwise. So now, we've gone from climate change to a real problem. Sounds like there's some hope for you.
(Score: 2) by JoeMerchant on Wednesday August 18 2021, @12:18AM (21 children)
For what it is worth, I feel that preservation of coral (which is currently dying off at rates that will leave us, globally, with less than 1% of 1980 levels within a decade or two) is exactly about habitat preservation.
Species don't live in isolation, not even humans.
🌻🌻 [google.com]
(Score: 2, Interesting) by khallow on Wednesday August 18 2021, @01:57AM (20 children)
I'm going to have to ask for a cite because this sort of thing would be dream propaganda for the climate alarmism side, and thus I would hear about it. Since they aren't pushing it everywhere, that indicates to me that there's likely something seriously wrong with that narrative that prohibits its use - say such as it not actually being true, for example.
(Score: 3, Informative) by JoeMerchant on Wednesday August 18 2021, @02:12AM (19 children)
The Florida keys reefs are already dead. When I say dead, you can snorkel on them, the structure is still there, but the coral is dead and overgrown with green algae. The habitat is more than 95% degraded, very little lives there as compared to 40 years ago. I have personally seen the same in the East Caribbean.
For a soft presentation you can watch Netflix's Chasing Coral. Watching it, it looks too bad to be true, but every reference I have seen backs up what they say in that documentary. Dig if you care to, the sources are there. I'd concentrate on data gathered in the last 5 years.
They are re-seeding the reefs in the Florida Keys, hoping to jumpstart regrowth, but it just wont matter as long as temperatures stay up where they are or higher - the regrowth will be killed back faster than it can establish.
🌻🌻 [google.com]
(Score: 2, Interesting) by khallow on Wednesday August 18 2021, @02:55AM (18 children)
Overground with green algae? Sounds like fertilizer or sewage pollution. That's not climate-based.
(Score: 2) by JoeMerchant on Wednesday August 18 2021, @09:48AM (17 children)
It's what happens to coral when the coral animals die. It is normally a symbiotic colony with algae living directly together on the coral structure, the algae is a necessary and always present component of live shallow corals. Animals die, algae (different species) take over because the reef is in an ideal growth habitat with just the right amount of sunlight.
These bleaching die offs are happening at the same accelerated rates in the most remote, pollution free waters on the planet.
I harp on it because it is the single most depressing piece of climate change news I have ever heard. Hurricanes, droughts, wildfires and heat waves can be recovered from. Devastating sea level rise is still a prediction. Dead coral is everywhere now, and it is more impactful to ocean life than human overfishing (which is already bad enough.)
🌻🌻 [google.com]
(Score: 1) by khallow on Wednesday August 18 2021, @10:22AM (16 children)
In heavily polluted water, right?
I see the narrative. Now where's the evidence?
News != reality. Seriously, this is the problem with this stuff. The most depressing piece of climate news is great for getting eyeballs or for scaring us into some course of political action.
(Score: 3, Insightful) by JoeMerchant on Wednesday August 18 2021, @01:08PM (15 children)
I just typed it to you. Don't believe me, look it up for yourself. Linking research for you is: a) more work than I care to do, b) open to criticism for cherry picking and or weak sources.
The Chasing Coral people visited remote sections of the GBR multiple years in succession - areas with no local pollution issues, no tourism pressure, nada. Yes, they're suffering from the heating effects of global pollution and may be getting some microplastics, but just because you pull a what-if out doesn't make a research and documentation project for me. Prove me wrong, show evidence that all or even most coral bleaching events of the last 5-10 years are due to pollution. Even if they are, it's happening globally.
Neither is the opinion of one crackpot in east moose poop Idaho reality. Thanks for the thought about pollution, I've been smelling summer Red Tide blooms in the Gulf of Mexico due to phosphate loading for the last 50 years, well aware thank you.
🌻🌻 [google.com]
(Score: 0, Redundant) by khallow on Wednesday August 18 2021, @11:52PM (14 children)
Indeed. This is why I still call for evidence. The climate change scam has been playing these games for decades. There's always some urgent danger that requires us to act right now. When the old one expires, a new one is found: tipping points, extreme weather, the hockey stick, end of chocolate/coffee, zillions of people being displaced by imaginary near future flooding or drought, and so on.
Sure, coral die-off sounds scary now, but it won't sound any scarier when coral continues to adapt to climate change (and more serious human impacts on ecosystems!) for two more decades. Reduce the nitrogen from agriculture runoff and you'll probably solve most coral bleaching right there.
My take is that if we understood the true cost of adaptation to climate change, both human and natural systems, then the climate change boosters would have to find a new environmental threat to scare us with.
(Score: 3, Informative) by JoeMerchant on Thursday August 19 2021, @01:56AM (13 children)
My take is that you really don't understand what you are talking about in several ways.
Coral doesn't regrow as fast as trees, and it won't be regrowing as fast as it is dying until ocean temperatures come back down. Meanwhile, that habitat is just gone, as effectively as if a forest had been clear cut. Think about the implications of a global forest die off. Some species will adapt, many won't.
The bleaching events are nearly 100% predictably correlated with high water temperature events. Nitrogen runoff is a big problem is relatively small areas, it is not the source of the global bleaching issues.
But you know, party on, keep that global economy growing until we all win the Ponzi scheme together, kumby-fking-ya.
🌻🌻 [google.com]
(Score: 0, Flamebait) by khallow on Thursday August 19 2021, @02:27AM (12 children)
At 1.5 cm per year, it's within an order of magnitude.
Unless, of course, that narrative isn't true.
By whose reckoning? As I noted, bleaching from pollution is not so correlated.
Or we get that developed world society that solves most of the problems you claim to care about. I bet that comes first.
(Score: 3, Insightful) by JoeMerchant on Thursday August 19 2021, @10:17AM (1 child)
People who study this. Multiple researchers who measure both water temperature and coral growth on site around the world. Researchers who both publish peer reviewed articles in respected journals and documentary videos easily accessible to and understood by people "at your level.". Well, almost. You already have an opinion and are therefore closed to new information that doesn't reinforce it.
Anti scholar of history too, you are. When in all of recorded history has civilization flourished for thousands of years without faltering? What brought it down? Conflict with other humans and scarcity of resources, mostly. So, now that we are running out of (cheap readily accessible) resources on a global scale, with more population than ever, we are all suddenly going to get along and agree to cooperate? I'm not saying it is impossible, just unlikely, and there is no bankruptcy court that will absolve us of the debts we incur.
🌻🌻 [google.com]
(Score: 0, Troll) by khallow on Friday August 20 2021, @12:35PM
You aren't willing to say who those people are or where they make these claims. So I can't evaluate what these claims actually are or the quality of the evidence - if any - that backs those claims up.
I think this is just the bike shed effect again. We started talking about something useful, the quality of climate models, particularly negative feedback. Now we're talking about things that JoeMerchant is comfortable with instead, alleged die-off of coral that he can't even show comes from climate change.
Even if everything is as you claim (and well, sorry, I doubt that), humanity is not at a stable point where it can just stop and give present day coral a break. As I see it, the fundamental dynamic remains - poverty results in overpopulation and current climate change mitigation is all about inducing poverty.
Notice an example of that thinking, the "running out of resources". We aren't going to run out of resources any slower, if human population growth is higher and environmentalism is looking for ways to restrict our use of resources. Meanwhile you ignore a century of growing human cooperation. Sure, we're not going to suddenly get along. But give it some time, like say that century that just past, and it happens.
Maybe it's time to go with what works.
(Score: 2) by JoeMerchant on Thursday August 19 2021, @10:43AM (9 children)
Are you high? In 30 years the fastest growing trees are barely harvest sized, and those intensively managed fast growing tree farms are poor habitat, referred to as food deserts for wildlife. So 300+ years with essentially zero functional coral reef habitat, globally, is no big deal to you. Of course it's not, you will be dead either way, as will be everyone you care about.
🌻🌻 [google.com]
(Score: 0, Troll) by khallow on Friday August 20 2021, @12:26AM (8 children)
Are we trying to cut down and harvest coral in the same way we do trees? Else there's not much point to the comparison.
(Score: 3, Insightful) by JoeMerchant on Friday August 20 2021, @02:19AM (7 children)
The point is, it takes on the order of 50 years to reestablish complex / complete forest ecosystems, but coral is on the order of a thousand years to get established as a complete/complex reef ecosystem from scratch.
🌻🌻 [google.com]
(Score: 1, Disagree) by khallow on Friday August 20 2021, @11:51AM (6 children)
Which wouldn't be from scratch even if we did kill all the coral. I'll note that you haven't actually established the die-off rate you claim for coral just like most of your other claims in this thread.
(Score: 2) by JoeMerchant on Friday August 20 2021, @12:20PM (5 children)
LMGTFY: current state of coral reefs globally
https://reefresilience.org/reefs-are-at-risk/#:~:text=Status%20of%20Coral%20Reefs%20Worldwide,of%20local%20and%20global%20stressors.&text=Without%20actions%20taken%20to%20minimize,close%20to%20100%25%20by%202050.
Status of Coral Reefs Worldwide
Approximately 75% of coral reefs worldwide are currently threatened by a combination of local and global stressors.
Coral reefs are experiencing higher ocean temperatures and acidity than ever before in the last 400,000 years.
Over 60% of coral reefs worldwide are directly experiencing one or more local stresses.
Fishing threats (i.e., overfishing and destructive fishing) are considered the most significant non-climate related threat affecting coral reefs, and they affect more than 55% of all reefs worldwide.
By 2050, almost all reefs will be classified as threatened by the combination of global and local stressors.
Without actions taken to minimize local stressors, the percent of threatened coral reefs worldwide will rise to 90% by 2030 and close to 100% by 2050.
🌻🌻 [google.com]
(Score: 1) by khallow on Friday August 20 2021, @12:49PM (4 children)
and
Very extreme claims made. Now we find
Notice their emphasis on minimizing local stressors rather than global stressors? Maybe you should consider why your source is more concerned about stuff like overfishing than global warming and ocean acidification. Once we go to your sources, we find your statements are grossly exaggerated. We'll see a lot more than 1% of corals in 20 years and global climate change isn't the dominant effect either.
There's something wrong with the narrative. It's time to fix this. What's your next excuse for avoiding the developed world fix?
(Score: 2) by JoeMerchant on Friday August 20 2021, @02:22PM (3 children)
Hip shooting divergence is expected: 2050 instead of a decade or two, so it's three - BFD.
Maybe that's because local stressors are more realistically addressed and local actors have more to personally gain by championing local stressor reduction. Telling a fishing village in Thailand to clean up their sewage disposal system or lose their source of seafood might actually elicit some positive change. Telling a bunch of flyover state morons to vote for something that seems like it might possibly cause some economic turmoil in the name of "saving the whales or whatever the fuck they're going on about" has been proven futile time and again.
Opinions of people with no vested interests, no "skin in the game" for the risks that manifest after their death, should be deeply discounted in making decisions about taking such risks.
🌻🌻 [google.com]
(Score: 1) by khallow on Saturday August 21 2021, @02:01AM (2 children)
I think the more significant problem is "threatened coral reefs" != near completely dead coral reefs.
While true, it wouldn't mean much if coral die-offs were almost solely due to global climate change. Kind of like arguing over what suit to wear at your funeral.
Like you?
(Score: 2) by JoeMerchant on Saturday August 21 2021, @01:23PM (1 child)
We're all gonna die, why worry about one cause if another one is going to get you anyway?
I care about the people who live after I am gone - not only my children. Your statements show a clear lack of risk aversion, a "go for it, we're gonna win, I'm sure of it" attitude that ends in failure far more often than success. Like someone who has never participated in a failed business venture, only rubbed elbows with the (rare) successful veterans.
Business and science aren't like war. In all but the most horrific of wars, most soldiers do come home. WWII saw 418,500 U.S. deaths against 10 million draftees and another 2.2 million volunteers. Most scientific investigations are a massive collection of failures looking for a single success, as are most (novel, lucrative) business ventures. Sure, you can start a franchised outlet and earn a semi-predictable rate of return, but if you're doing something new, untested - the risks and rewards climb dramatically.
Humanity doesn't need the Earth to produce an amazing ROI, we just need it to continue doing what it has done for us for 10,000 years. In the past 100, we have been pushing that, experimenting, and the experiments started showing serious global consequences by the 1970s. Replacement of CFCs to protect the ozone layer was an amazing example of successful international cooperation - one we have not seen reproduced since.
🌻🌻 [google.com]
(Score: 1) by khallow on Sunday August 22 2021, @12:37AM
You'll live longer, if your corpse wears the charcoal gray suit, amirite? It's not about ignoring approaches that can be better for the environment, it's about ignoring that there are such differences. The researchers in question aren't ignoring climate change because they can't do anything about it. Instead they've made a choice as to what approaches work better. And as usual with these climate change stories, it turns out that the non-climate change effects are more important than the climate change ones.
Risk aversion can be a very lethal disease especially when you're ignoring bigger risks in the process. Here, you're ignoring the fundamental problems because climate change is scarier. We will never address climate change, if we don't address human population growth. We'll always be one accident, policy fail, or disaster away from human die-offs and a complete abandonment of environmental protection and that instability will get worse as population increases. Further, you've indicated that you want to have half the world set aside from human activity. The more people there are, the harder this will be to do both because of the pressure on the living areas where people are allowed and the growing number of defectors who will populate the set asides despite your protection of those areas. Attempting to control humanity's climate impact by holding them back from prosperity will bite you.
I think the big slip in your observation above is that you got this complete backwards. Wars are notorious for terrible risk taking that kills people - they often start in the first place because someone mistook the risks. Business and scientific research are far safer and more reliable. Gambles in business and science usually just mean that someone spent some resources and didn't get lucky. They can always try again and again. Repeated gambles with good risk awareness are vastly different from the monumental gambles of warfare.
Also what's the point of telling me that my approach is risky while ignoring the risk of your approach. My take is the big problem here is that your approach has failure baked in - which is a different kind of risk than a risk that has potential negative consequences. Yours are guaranteed.
Indeed. Notice that we have yet to have reason for a similar level of cooperation on climate change. But we do for the bigger problems like human poverty. Global trade agreements will do far more than global climate agreements to make people less poor.