Permafrost Is Thawing So Fast, It's Gouging Holes In the Arctic (wired.com) 171
According to a new study published in the journal Nature Geoscience, rapidly-thawing permafrost in the Arctic is causing sinkholes in a process called thermokarst. "That's the land that gets ravaged whenever permafrost thaws rapidly," reports Wired. "As the ice that holds the soil together disappears, hillsides collapse and massive sinkholes open up." From the report: Today in the journal Nature Geoscience, researchers argue that without taking abrupt thaws into account, we're underestimating the impact of permafrost thaw by 50 percent. "The amount of carbon coming off that very narrow amount of abrupt thaw in the landscape, that small area, is still large enough to double the climate consequences and the permafrost carbon feedback," says study lead author Merritt Turetsky, of the University of Guelph and University of Colorado Boulder. Less than 20 percent of northern permafrost land is susceptible to this kind of rapid thaw. Some permafrost is simply frozen rock, or even sand. But the kind we're worried about here contains a whole lot of water. "Where permafrost tends to be lake sediment or organic soils, the type of earth material that can hold a lot of water, these are like sponges on the landscape," says Turetsky. "When you have thaw, we see really dynamic and rapid changes."
That's because frozen water takes up more space than liquid water. When permafrost thaws, it loses a good amount of its volume. Think of it like thawing ice cubes made of water and muck: If you defrost the tray, the greenery will sink to the bottom and settle. "That's exactly what happens in these ecosystems when the permafrost has a lot of ice in it and it thaws,â says Turetsky. "Whatever was at the surface just slumps right down to the bottom. So you get these pits on the land, sometimes meters deep. They're like sinkholes developing in the land." "Essentially, we're taking terra firma and making it terra soupy," Turetsky adds. [...] When these lands thaw, they play host to a number of processes. As ice turns to liquid water, trees flood and die off. Thus more light reaches the soil, further accelerating thawing. This is in contrast to gradual thaw, when the plant community largely stays the same as the ice thaws. Defrosted soil at the surface gets thicker and thicker, but it doesn't catastrophically collapse.
That's because frozen water takes up more space than liquid water. When permafrost thaws, it loses a good amount of its volume. Think of it like thawing ice cubes made of water and muck: If you defrost the tray, the greenery will sink to the bottom and settle. "That's exactly what happens in these ecosystems when the permafrost has a lot of ice in it and it thaws,â says Turetsky. "Whatever was at the surface just slumps right down to the bottom. So you get these pits on the land, sometimes meters deep. They're like sinkholes developing in the land." "Essentially, we're taking terra firma and making it terra soupy," Turetsky adds. [...] When these lands thaw, they play host to a number of processes. As ice turns to liquid water, trees flood and die off. Thus more light reaches the soil, further accelerating thawing. This is in contrast to gradual thaw, when the plant community largely stays the same as the ice thaws. Defrosted soil at the surface gets thicker and thicker, but it doesn't catastrophically collapse.
Interesting times (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2, Funny)
Re: (Score:3)
Humanity was basically always living in interesting times. This time, the problem is global though and that is new. Even catastrophes like WW 1 and 2 were somewhat localized events.
Re: Interesting times (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
Most of Africa didn't even notice those events.
This time, they sure as hell will notice it.
Re: (Score:2)
WW1 was a huge event in Africa every where.
WW2 was a huge event in north Africa.
They are called "World War" for a reason.
Re: (Score:2)
WWII in South America was pretty much limited to Ecuador attacking Peru, getting its ass whipped, and losing most of its Amazonian real estate. Other than a few coaling stations changing hands in the Caribbean there wasn't much if any effect in South America during WWI.
Re: (Score:2)
Most of Africa didn't even notice those events.
This time, they sure as hell will notice it.
There's permafrost in Africa? That's news to me!
Re: (Score:2)
I doubt that many bombs fell in America in WWI nor WWII.
Well, about 350 Japanese "Fugo" [warfarehis...etwork.com] bombs.
Not widely remembered (partly because during the war there was a news blackout) but, yes, the Japanese attacked the United States mainland during the second World War.
https://www.history.com/news/5-attacks-on-u-s-soil-during-world-war-ii
Re:Interesting times (Score:5, Insightful)
Humans lived through the plague. Humans lived through biblical floods. What is your point? Do you think you will survive but are afraid to say you don't give a shit if everybody else dies? Or you think you will die but enough humans will survive to... I am not sure what is your point?
Re: (Score:2)
Indeed. If, say, 90% of the human race dies, the rest may recover within a few 100 years so and may even get civilization going again. You still have a catastrophe of extreme size and it is quite possible whatever survives will labor under severe restrictions for a long, long time
Re: (Score:2)
Somehow you've been convinced that lots of people are going to die. Cutting off all the energy we get from fossil fuel is certain to kill many millions.
But replacing the energy we get from fossil fuel with energy from other sources won't.
Re: (Score:2)
It is the BEST time to be alive.
Life is much better than it was a century ago most everywhere and by any measure.
Re: (Score:3)
My life would also be better if I borrowed a few billion I had no ability to pay back. At least until the enforcers came with bats to break my legs. We've been borrowing against our children's future, just to make our lives materially better, temporarily.
Re: (Score:2)
Could we accelerate it? (Score:5, Funny)
I'm getting real tired of the topic. Since we are obviously unwilling to do anything against it, could we at least speed the process up?
I'm just done with the whole thing.
Re: (Score:2)
Next election go out and give your vote to someone that does care.
Re:Could we accelerate it? (Score:5, Funny)
Error 404, honest, capable politician not found.
Re: (Score:2)
Everyone is a politican, as politics is anything to push your interest within society. If you start to complain about people you call "politicans", you are already acting politically, which makes you a politican.
Re: (Score:2)
That isn't the definition of politics.
Re: (Score:2)
Anything that is intended to influence those decisions is part of politics, and you try to influence those decisions to push your interests.
Re: (Score:2)
First of all, that isn't true, trying to influence things is not politics and I don't try to influence politicians in order to push MY interests. I try to push societies' interest, even if it is antithetical to mine. Cause I am just that kind of awesome guy.
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
No. The definition of politics is the set of activities associated with the governance of a country, state or an area. It involves making decisions that apply to groups of members (as by Wikipedia [wikipedia.org]).
Anything that is intended to influence those decisions is part of politics, and you try to influence those decisions to push your interests.
You're just plain wrong, and Wikipedia is a terrible source. Politics, clearly, is a compound word that came from two root words:
Poly - A word meaning "many", and
Tics - A word for blood-sucking parasites.
Re: (Score:2)
I think the definition is poly, Greek, many and tics, English, little bloodsuckers.
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
Everyone is a politican
False.
as politics is anything to push your interest within society
Citation needed.
If you start to complain about people you call "politicans", you are already acting politically
False again. Complaining about people we call "politicians" makes us citizens. The idea that we can't complain about politics and politicians without ourselves becoming politicians is downright offensive.
Re: (Score:3)
Politicians are professional politickers. Not everyone who is politically active.
Re: (Score:2)
The character of politicians is just a reflection of the character of voters. If voters *want* to be lied to, they elect obvious liars.
Re: (Score:2)
Re: Could we accelerate it? (Score:2)
You got it (Score:3)
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
I suggest that we do everything we can to provoke World War Three. Nuclear winter will solve this real quick.
Re: (Score:2)
It probably would, though IIRC the studies assumptions were such that one could get the same result by nuking several large forests. The main thing was to get clouds of finely divided ash into the upper to mid layers of the stratosphere.
Of course, the downside was that there would be "seven lean years" afterwards, with massive crop failures and starvation. (And don't take that "seven years" literally. I don't remember how long, but it may have been decades. It made me think of a Norse edda (the Prose Edd
Re: (Score:3)
Is it high enough to not be flooded by the melting ice caps though?
Re: (Score:2)
No, that water will go directly to coastal cities like Miami, New York and Vienna.
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:3)
Why it is thawing so much faster than they predicted is because it was thawing in winter. Dependent upon the levels of nitrogen in affected soils, when there is sufficient as the thaw starts, enough little critters come to life generate heat and accelerate the thaw at those locations. The soil then freezes above it, gains a layer of snow and insulates the now active soil and the thaw continues and spreads. Come summer and all of a sudden the sink hole forms, as the frozen soil above collapses.
Permafrost la
Re: (Score:2, Interesting)
"1.5 metres of sea level rise"
LOL.
" the USA, is the country that will suffer by far the worse,"
More revenge fantasies. That is really what you nutjobs are all about. Meanwhile in the real world, US crops are at record yields. But yeah, I am sure that is all going to change.
Re: (Score:2)
" the USA, is the country that will suffer by far the worse,"
Plausible. Turns out that much of the climate of the U.S. is really good for agriculture-- we have tremendous fields of productive land.
Randomly changing the climate will, overall, make some places better and some worse. But since the U.S. is already quite good, it's a reasonable bet that the net result would be worse.
Meanwhile in the real world, US crops are at record yields. But yeah, I am sure that is all going to change.
"Past performance is not indicative of future results."
Re: (Score:2, Troll)
>What they don't want to publicly admit yet, is we are likely to see 1.5 metres of sea level rise
You use words like "likely", and you use them in a context where it's the exact opposite of what they actually mean.
Re: (Score:2)
Permafrost land is effectively useless. It cannot be utilized in any meaningful fashion by humanity.
At the moment, there are cities build on perma frost.
I guess their dwellers disagree with your assessment.
Re: (Score:2)
Cities build on permafrost are completely dependent on outside world for their immediate survival, and their usage is usually related to providing immediate support to resource extraction. Land on which they sit cannot be meaningfully utilized.
But hey, this is "Germany controls wind, therefore wind power makes sense" angelosphere, coming at you with more extremely interesting and extremely stupid opinions on environmentalism and how it works against all logic, science and rational thought.
The dominos are toppling (Score:5, Insightful)
And there's notalot we can do now. All this "we have 20 years until something bad happens" is over optimistic, its already happened. History has show that when earths climate changes it changes VERY suddenly, there's no gradual ease in to keep a bunch of upright walking apes happy. And that change is happening now.
Re: (Score:3)
The avalanche has already started. It is too late for the pebbles to vote. -Kosh Babylon 5
That is one of my favorite quotes and it certainly fits for this.
Re: (Score:2)
A very applicable quote. Your comment deserves to be modded up simply for being a B5 reference.
It can always be made worse (Score:2)
by continuing to stoke the fire. There won't be a worst case for how bad the climate can become.
Such warnings were already being issued 20 years ago ... and 20 years before that as well. In another 20 years, there won't be any less warnings. They'll just be so much worse is all.
Re: (Score:2)
The avalanche has already started, it is too late for the pebbles to vote
Re:The dominos are toppling (Score:5, Insightful)
Re: (Score:3)
It's too late to stop drastic changes. But it's not too late to try to maintain the planet in a livable state.
Actions DO have consequences. Pretending that it's not too late to avoid serious ones is the same kind of thinking that got us into this mess, specifically the belief that you can do what you want without consequence.
Re: (Score:2)
Re: The dominos are toppling (Score:5, Insightful)
Re: The dominos are toppling (Score:5, Insightful)
Agreed. Changing taxes will save the planet.
Your sarcasm is ridiculous. Taxation absolutely affects decisions made by businesses and individuals, and it's the collective decisions that we have made and continue to make that have caused the problem. Tax policy is a very powerful tool. For one simple example (and not one that I'm actually proposing), what would happen if we were to add a $10 per gallon carbon tax on gasoline, diesel and jet fuel? How would that affect the amount of those fuels that are burned? And what would it do to the development and sale of electric vehicles? What would applying a carbon tax to liquid fossil fuels but not coal do to the amount of coal burned? What would happen if an equivalent tax were applied to coal.
Economic incentives are incredibly important, and taxation allows those incentives to be manipulated -- including in ways that actually offset/correct other market distortions.
Re: (Score:2)
I've been paying a carbon tax for a dozen years. It was brought in by a right wing government back when the right wing was in favour of market solutions and was revenue neutral, income taxes cuts equaled the carbon tax revenue. Since then my province has been one of the best economically performing provinces in Canada.
From https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... [wikipedia.org]
Re: (Score:2)
The rub is do those changing decisions have a real impact on climate change.
They have a well-demonstrated impact on carbon dioxide emissions, which has a well-proven impact on climate. So, yes.
The first problem with all of this is science doesn't know what it doesn't know
This is obvious.
people arrogantly suppose that science has the answer to everything.
This is patently false. The whole point of science is that it never supposes that we have a perfect understanding, of anything. Which is absolutely true. However, the best we can do is to act prudently on the best information and knowledge that we have.
The third problem is that most people believe everything they're told by media and the politicians shaping their perceptions to believe that A) climate change is real, B) that it's caused by evil greedy polluting corporations, and C) the solution is to tax everyone as much as possible / drive said corporations out of business leaving everyone unemployed and completely dependent on the government.
Wow, so many errors in one long sentence. Climate change is clearly real. It's not caused by "evil greedy polluting corp
Re: (Score:3)
Exactly. There isn't a single problem that a good old fashioned tax won't fix.
Well, taxes will definitely not eliminate chairborne warrior assholes.
Re: (Score:2)
To say otherwise is to claim that demand for the taxed product or service is perfectly price-inelastic. I dare you to make such a statement in front of a group of economists. They will laugh you out of the room while saying a few choice words about your mother! Because perfect price inelasticity of demand simply doesn't exist in the real world, not even for food or medicine.
So go on. Do it! And report back with their response. I double dare you!
Re: (Score:2)
It absolutely would. Tax is a strong handle to control society. You saw how much the purchase of gas guzzlers in the USA dropped when the petrol prices rose during the oil crisis, imagine throwing a $10/gallon tax on fuel. You'd have people falling over themselves to reduce their fuel consumption. Tax coal and let companies go bankrupt, electricity prices go up and alternative energy becomes so viable that even fossil fuel companies would be falling over themselves to take part in the industry (in some case
Re: (Score:2)
Exactly. No problem can't be solved by further taxing people.
Re: (Score:2)
No, but shifting the taxes can help. Drop income taxes by the same amount as the carbon tax brings in and people prosper while outputting less carbon.
Re: (Score:2)
by that logic should we also encourage things like coronavirus? It's shuttered enough economic activity in china to cause opec to cut production.
Come up with a way to cut down on oil consumption without destroying the standard of living in the developed world, and you'll get many more people behind the effort.
Bonus points: curb the consumption in the developing world without kicking the ladder out from underneath them.
Re: (Score:2)
Shift the taxes so using more fuel removes the money that the income tax cut gave.
Re: (Score:2)
The problem is that it's quite difficult to count all the costs of anything we do.
E.g., electric vehicles.
The electricity is generated somewhere? What's the source.
The batteries need to be built. What are the side effects?
The batteries have a finite lifetime, what do you do when they won't hold a charge?
Current Lithium sources are being used at a rate that promises rapid exhaustion. What do you replace them with?
Etc.
I've heard arguments that when the electricity is generated from coal plants, electric ve
Re: (Score:2)
this is completely spot on, why mod troll?
So that's what a karst is (Score:3)
I didn't know what it was though I kept seeing the word karst in novels about Mars. (found the below though really challenging to stay away from elsevier links!)
https://www.researchgate.net/f... [researchgate.net]
https://www.hou.usra.edu/meeti... [usra.edu]
So for tldrrs, the researcher kept losing her sensors because they would be lost in the sinkholes opening up. They are so big they look like meteor craters. Peat bogs get created and anaerobic organisms produce methane, and the carbon sequestered over millenia is released suddenly.. it all is like adding one more global carbon superpower to the climate disaster. Maybe time to act. Maybe there should be a high tax on digital coins that require a nuclear reactor to run their mining arrays.
Re: So that's what a karst is (Score:2)
Thermokarst is common where I live.
Our country was covered by glaciers on the last ice age. The glaciers retracted slowly, most of the terrain here is defined by the glacial lakes / rivers / melting. Many underground chunks of ice were left, they melted later and caused depressions which are now filled by small lakes.
Real karst is different, and is caused by some parts of limestone terrain being soluble in water.
Re:So that's what a karst is (Score:4, Informative)
Re: (Score:2)
Maybe time to act.
Indeed. Time to stock up on guns, ammo, fuel, and tinned food. It's very quickly becoming the only sane option left given the current political environment.
I mean Trump (USA) wants to restart the coal industry.
Morris (Australia) has approved Adani to dig the world's biggest coal mine and gave them tax concessions.
Xi (China) is still building coal fired power plants.
Duda (Poland) vetoed a EU resolution to reduce coal consumption.
Kovind (India) is hell bent on increasing coal consumption since the largest c
Fuck Dave Struthers (Score:3)
I think that explains... (Score:2)
...why the models are running hot as reported yesterday.
Re: (Score:2)
Yeah, methane is something like 20 times more efficient at trapping heat than CO2, but it's a lot more difficult to monitor because the concentration is so low and so much of it is produced in areas that are really hard to work in. Russian submarines are finding huge methane clathrate deposits melting, which they never noted before, as the Arctic Ocean warms. Plans to mine clathrate deposits on the North American continental shelf have been abandoned as they're already coming apart on their own. I don't
but all this money ... (Score:2)
But all this money we wold have to spent to make this clean air and sustainable environment.
What? You say it's actually cheaper? - but all this talk is just a hoax
Oh no - not myself, he reads scientific papers, and says it's all hoax
Actually warming? Earth always has been changing - it's natural, there's nothing we can do.
It's actually humans? Oh not at all, it's all conspiracy by scientists, they just want they grants.
You say other countries they just get salaries
So what is the next prediction? (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
Here is a prediction: more taxes.
Re: (Score:2)
Guess what, an ice age *is* coming, unless the current catastrophe totally warps the ecosystem. One of the things needed for an ice age is a warm ocean. But it's not coming "soon" in human terms. And it will need a precipitating event. A large meteor strike could do it, or a chain of volcano eruptions, or a nuclear war. Something that cuts insolation for several years to decades. Then the warm ocean evaporate lots of water that fall on land as snow, increasing albedo, so that even after insolation ret
Re: (Score:3)
Yes, real scientists were worried about that...
Unfortunately for your argument, those "real scientists" didn't include climatologists.
Also, their theory is batshit insane, if you'd bothered to read the article you linked. Their claim is that increased heat will melt all the glaciers, which would then cool the oceans, which would cause an ice age.
Their theory does not include what happened to that increased heat between step 1 and step 3. I suspect it involved underpants.
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
Real scientists? No, not really. Hydrogen sulfide emissions were increasing the planet's albedo so we experienced a cooler decade at the same time that the Milankovic Cycles were being accepted as real (and we were overdue for the next). Journalists conflated the two, took some quotes out of context, and made the cover of Newsweek one month when there weren't any interesting wars. That's not the same thing at all.
Oh, fuck off (Score:2)
Go troll somewhere else.
https://arstechnica.com/science/2016/06/that-70s-myth-did-climate-science-really-call-for-a-coming-ice-age/
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
Everything right, except the color. Or maybe the opposite?
OK, I'll concede that point. After doing some digging I found out that he's technically closer to being Burnt Orange colored.
Re: (Score:2)
If only we had Clinton II the climate change problem would have been fixed. At least more pacts would have been signed anyway.
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
"the OK from Hillary"
Hilarious. What "OK" are you expecting? The President doesn't control energy policy.
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
Oh yeah. The pacts are really useful! If only the US had signed one it would all be different now!
Re: (Score:2)
In all honesty we'd probably be debating the course of whatever war were were in and largely ignoring the climate change issue. I'm truly amazed the current dunderhead hasn't blundered his way into one so far, even with Bolton on staff.
Re: (Score:2)
Re:If it's been observed before (Score:5, Insightful)
Re: (Score:2)
Then it certainly couldn't be new. No need to be alarming or excessive with disaster.
It has to be alarming and excessive to be noticed. People are getting numb from the constant bombardment of sensationalism.
Re: (Score:3)
Methane is the problem. Unless, of course, you don't believe in physics.
Re: (Score:2)
Methane is the problem. Unless, of course, you don't believe in physics.
It's this methane problem that concerns me with the growing trend of backing up wind and solar power with natural gas.
Even though I've seen this same statistic over and over again about how methane is 84 times, or 28 times, or whatever number people like to use, as potent of a greenhouse gas as CO2. I even heard of the problem of natural gas leakage from drilling for it, transporting, it, storing it, and ultimately burning it to get energy and CO2. It's only with looking at the numbers again in the last w
Re: (Score:2)
So in other words, if we just ignore it hard enough it will go away?
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
Most of the evidence for anthropogenic climate change consists of events that *could* have happened anyway.
It's like a coin flip experiment. Suppose you flip a coin a hundred times. Runs of three or four consecutive heads or tails are not that remarkable, but if the coin comes up heads 80 times, there's something really wrong with it. That's a less than a one in a billion probability.
I'm married to a geophysicist, so I've been following the climate change issue since 1985. I've seen the public reaction ri
Re: (Score:2)
Permafrost extends further south than the tree line into the sub-arctic, you fucking moron.
Re:Lot of BS in the article... (Score:5, Informative)
I know you are probably being paid to be an idiot on the internet, although God knows there are plenty of volunteers too, but ...
... There is a fucking picture of trees in the arctic right there in the article you didn't even bother to look at.
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
I take it you've never seen a photo of Siberia or the Northwest Territories. Go ahead, look them up, we'll wait.