Permafrost Thawing: The Impact of Global Warming just doubled
Submitted by Knightrider on June 15, 2006 - 9:39pm.
Climate Crisis
This could predict a worst case scenario for climate change from global warming. Global climate change events will likely accelerate.
The conclusions from a new study on permafrost thawing and carbon gases are very alarming. As you recall, permafrost stores massive amounts of carbon; and thawing is already contributing to greenhouse gas release into the atmosphere. But the scientists of this study have determined that the amount of carbon frozen in permafrost is twice than originally projected.
Consequently, the risks and impacts that were originally proposed by climatologists from global warming may have just doubled, as well. All climate models on global warming were based on anthropogenic or human-caused fossil fuel emissions that total 6 Billion tons of CO2/yr. But the potential release of carbon sources from the permafrosts already melting from Siberia, Alaska, Canada and Northern Europe would nearly double the atmospheric CO2 that is present today.
Reuters Photo: Permafrost is seen in Alaska
in an undated photo from the Fish and Wildlife Service.
Thawing permafrost could unleash tons of carbon By Deborah Zabarenko Thu Jun 15, 2:43 PM ET
WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Ancient roots and bones locked in long-frozen soil in Siberia are starting to thaw, and have the potential to unleash billions of tons of carbon and accelerate global warming, scientists said on Thursday.
This vast carbon reservoir, contained in permafrost soil in northeastern Siberia, contains about 75 times more carbon than the amount released into the atmosphere each year by the burning of fossil fuels, the researchers said in a statement.
Siberia isn't the only place on Earth with massive lodes of permafrost -- parts of Alaska, Canada and northern Europe have them too. The Siberian area is possibly the world's largest, covering nearly 400,000 square miles, with an average depth of 82 feet, and probably holds about 500 billion metric tons of carbon.
By any measure, this is a lot, and it is in fact twice what scientists previously believed was there, ecologist Ted Shuur of the University of Florida said in a telephone interview. ....
Planting trees during fall is actually better for its growth leading to spring.
"Debate, Dialogue, Discussion, Disagreement - that's not wrong -that's not unpatriotic, that's one of the highest forms of patriotism and love of country, and we need to say it!" - Gen. Wesley Clark (Ret.)
And I read this tonight... very sad...
Unfortunately, thousands of species are expected to become extinct from the wild in the next few decades. But serious changes from all this are coming at Americans too, unless the GOPs are removed from power this November.
Yeah, as were learning about the actually relatively small "nudges" in the past that led to large climate change - such as the basically cyclical "wobble" of the Earth on its axis, therefore changing the overall energy taken in from the sun to a small, but significant degree - it had become clear that the nudge may be enough to "get the snowball rolling," so to speak, but it's the cumulative conditions feeding other conditions that make for the eventual very significant and qualitative change.
That's what scientists have begun to consider man-made release of so much long ago stored carbon (which then reacts with oxygen forming CO2) to be in the process of becoming - that our actions with fossil fuels, especially if we keep on with "business as usual," may have taken on that "nudge" capacity, which gets the ball rolling... (if, according to such articles, our actions haven't already become so)
So, when people think that the Earth is just too large of a system to be affected by us little specks, only recently a part of it, it seems that we are in for quite a realization: we have actually begun a process - by our mass use of long-ago stored carbon - that may be on its way of becoming equal to the "wobble" of the Earth.
Talkin' about extraordinary power in the hands of babes!
We're going to have to grow up pretty darned quickly if we're going to begin facing the consequences of our actions and meeting our responsibilities to our own future generations and to this world as a whole...
I think I'll plant a tree. A small thing, but at least it will help.