Melting permafrost called threat to climate

Are there points given out to warn us some other disaster that "may" cause us to die earlier?
Singapore — Reuters Last updated on Wednesday, Jul. 01, 2009 02:56AM EDT
The amount of carbon locked away in frozen soils in the far Northern Hemisphere is double previous estimates and rapid melting could accelerate global warming, a study released today says.
Large areas of northern Russia, Canada, Nordic countries and the U.S. state of Alaska have deep layers of frozen soil near the surface called permafrost. Global warming has already triggered rapid melting of the permafrost in some areas, releasing the powerful greenhouse gases carbon dioxide and methane.
As the world gets warmer, more of these gases are predicted to be released and could trigger a tipping point, rapidly driving up temperatures, scientists say.

Does not surprise me in the least.

now if only carbon actually affected climate we might be in trouble

Carbon does affect the climate.....the ocean which processes the bulk of carbon dioxide back into oxygen is reaching saturation points in some regions like the Kermadec Trench....phytoplanktons, microscopic creatures that perform this necessary task are in decline due to several factors. Give me some time here to cite a recent source.....

AdamX wrote:now if only carbon actually affected climate we might be in trouble

How wrong you are, my friend.



How wrong you are.

EdWin wrote:

AdamX wrote:now if only carbon actually affected climate we might be in trouble

How wrong you are, my friend.



How wrong you are.

THANK YOU FOR THAT.....I am trying to find the cited source....I wrote it down on an envelope that is somewhere in my luggage....there was this interview I think on Quirks and Quarks and it was very disturbing as this study has been ongoing for decades.....I can recall though flying from Cancun to Dallas not too long ago and seeing the red algae blooms that more or less signal dead waters....that was covered by CNN but somehow vanished that same day off of their website....god only knows that a story like that would have affected the bottom line of the Marlin charters - try and catch a Marlin in the Gulf of Mexico in some spots these days....pretty damned hard.....I oughtta know....I go fishing a lot.

Didn't they stop doing carbon copies in the late seventies?
:@@@:
Next winter, remember to bring all the snow you shovel off the driveway, to Churchill, for future considerations.
Oh, sorry, talking about frost got me talking about hockey.

Does anyone keep track of what the world is being warned of from year to year?
Climate change has been going on forever, so they are warning us of too rapid a climate change, and I am saying as a person who lives in Winnipeg, a sort of northern city in a country of northern living people, that rapid climate change for ALL of us northerners is a bigger plus than a minus, and that is a fact.
No one has answered the question of what would have to happen at what cost to lower the world's average temperature (there is o such calculation) by one degree.
What if it would cost 89 trillion dollars? Then I would say the 1st $3 billion dollars should be spent to provide food for all of the hungry kids in the world, then the next $21 billion dollars should be spent to fix the housing on all of the reservations, then the next $9 billion to provide better financing for all of the needy community centers, then the next $21 billion to provide better income for needy family's, then the next $535 million to fix Winnipeg's roads, then the next $37 billion to provide extended employment insurance for all the unemployed, then the next $300 million to build Canada's 1st Human Rights Museum in Winnipeg

rosencrentz wrote:
Climate change has been going on forever, so they are warning us of too rapid a climate change, and I am saying as a person who lives in Winnipeg, a sort of northern city in a country of northern living people, that rapid climate change for ALL of us northerners is a bigger plus than a minus, and that is a fact.

No, it's a much bigger minus than a plus. I've spent over eight years in environmental studies, and have read dozens of scientific reports on the matter, for and against. And I can tell you that we human with our carelessness and indifferent attitudes to the way we handle pollution and how we treat the planet, that yes, we are having a huge affect on speeding up the natural process of global warming by spewing tons of sh1t into the atmosphere over the past 200 years. Not to mention speeding up mass extinctions of flora and fauna through pollution, overhunting, habitat destruction, introduction of invasive species, etc. It's easier to deny the problem than to address it. The continued attitude of "no we aren't doing anything wrong its just part of the natural cycle" or "it's too late to do anything now" will just make things worse. I am not a big fan of winter, but this does not mean I want the climate to change and cause serious damage to ecosystems that depend of cold climates for survival just for my own selfish wants.

rosencrentz wrote:Does anyone keep track of what the world is being warned of from year to year?
Climate change has been going on forever, so they are warning us of too rapid a climate change, and I am saying as a person who lives in Winnipeg, a sort of northern city in a country of northern living people, that rapid climate change for ALL of us northerners is a bigger plus than a minus, and that is a fact.
No one has answered the question of what would have to happen at what cost to lower the world's average temperature (there is o such calculation) by one degree.
What if it would cost 89 trillion dollars? Then I would say the 1st $3 billion dollars should be spent to provide food for all of the hungry kids in the world, then the next $21 billion dollars should be spent to fix the housing on all of the reservations, then the next $9 billion to provide better financing for all of the needy community centers, then the next $21 billion to provide better income for needy family's, then the next $535 million to fix Winnipeg's roads, then the next $37 billion to provide extended employment insurance for all the unemployed, then the next $300 million to build Canada's 1st Human Rights Museum in Winnipeg

You forgot the liquor commission and the cigar shop near your place.
Any money left over?

rosencrentz wrote:Does anyone keep track of what the world is being warned of from year to year?
Climate change has been going on forever, so they are warning us of too rapid a climate change, and I am saying as a person who lives in Winnipeg, a sort of northern city in a country of northern living people, that rapid climate change for ALL of us northerners is a bigger plus than a minus, and that is a fact.
No one has answered the question of what would have to happen at what cost to lower the world's average temperature (there is o such calculation) by one degree.
What if it would cost 89 trillion dollars? Then I would say the 1st $3 billion dollars should be spent to provide food for all of the hungry kids in the world, then the next $21 billion dollars should be spent to fix the housing on all of the reservations, then the next $9 billion to provide better financing for all of the needy community centers, then the next $21 billion to provide better income for needy family's, then the next $535 million to fix Winnipeg's roads, then the next $37 billion to provide extended employment insurance for all the unemployed, then the next $300 million to build Canada's 1st Human Rights Museum in Winnipeg

As I maintain - there is nothing wrong with good stewardship regarding this ball of mud we dwell upon...now let us have a fine cigar and a shot of Armagnac......

pollution of our waters, thats a real problem. cutting down all our forests, thats a real problem. running out of landfill space because people dont recycle or compost, thats a real problem. destroying pristine lakes so that mining companies have somewhere to dump their toxic waste, thats a real problem.

i saw a program talking about plastic and how its contaminating the oceans. There are spots in the ocean where a gallon of ocean water contains something like 3000 (or was it 30,000?) peices of plastic. obviously that affects all kinds of things from birds to whales who eat it thinking its plankton.

emitting carbon which has yet to be proven to affect climate one way or the other, not so much a problem. (i read one study which showed that carbon levels historically have changed AFTER big changes in temperature.. not before, which suggests that temperature affects carbon levels, not the other way around).

regardless of whether carbon and methane affects climate change or not... the world is going to die off from pollution and poor resource management LONG before any greenhouse gas effect does us any harm.

AdamX wrote:(i read one study which showed that carbon levels historically have changed AFTER big changes in temperature.. not before, which suggests that temperature affects carbon levels, not the other way around).

And there within lies your problem; you read ONE study that is on the con side. You need to read at least 10 scientific paper from each side of the argument to get the full picture and make a proper judgement. Reading one article isn't enough to say yes or no on the matter.

AdamX wrote:
regardless of whether carbon and methane affects climate change or not... the world is going to die off from pollution and poor resource management LONG before any greenhouse gas effect does us any harm.

That is a pretty poor attitude, wouldn't you say? So in other words, we should all just dump our garbage all over the place, kill as many living things as we can, chop down every last tree, and spew every kind of pollution into the air (yes, carbon is pollution) because hey, were going to die anyways so why bother making a difference right?

Very sad.

What's with this biting peep's heads off thingy EdWin? That is NOT what he said.

Chillax dude. Chillax...

grumpy old man wrote:What's with this biting peep's heads off thingy EdWin? That is NOT what he said.

Chillax dude. Chillax...

Sorry, but there is that "let just dump everything everywhere cause were all going to die anyways" attitude that I can spot 10,000 miles away. Since I work in this industry, my senses have become very accute in this matter. Yes, everyone has their opinion and can express it at their leisure, but so do I.

uh, not even close to what i said edwin.

i beleive that water pollution and de-forestation and all those real problems should be taken care of. What i meant by my comment of the world dieing off from pollution first is that we should be looking at those problems and working on them to actually make a difference.

i.e. cleaning up our oceans, not dumping toxic waste into lakes, re-planting our forests, are all things that we can do now that will help the world start recovering fairly quickly as opposed to reducing carbon to keep the temperature from going up by .001 degrees over the next 50 years.

the biggest problem i have with the anti-carbon bandwagon is that these people tend to forget all the other more pressing and immediate problems of pollution and resource mis-management that have been happening for decades now, and in general will speak up about carbon or attempt to go "carbon neutral" and figure that their part is done.

(also, i did not just read ONE study on climate change, that was just one example of the ones i have read, which i thought was pretty obvious.)

I agree it is the garbage we are doing that is our biggest threat , we need to clean up all of it starting where we can make the biggest difference. Man made pollution can be and is being changed , we are starting to solve it .
The biggest threat is the burning of fossil fuels and that we are dragging our heels on it . Or the Oil companies are .

Well, AdamX, I call em as I see em (or in this case read em). I treat all threats as being equal. I feel that you need to have this mentality if you really want to make a difference. And Pavolo just brought something up that I should have a while back. I work with soil and groundwater remediation, mostly of BTEX and PTH F1-F4 hydrocarbon compounds. These compounds have been proven to be toxic to our soil and groundwater, hence the need for cleaning them up. Fossil fuels are essentially made up of what? Carbon chains. The same carbon that we dump or leach out into the soil and water, and are just as toxic in a vapor form as they are in a solid or liquid form. People need to start treating the open sky in the same manner as we do the land or the ocean and their associated "tragedy of the commons". Dumping sh1t into the atmosphere is no different than dupming in the ocean or on land. We need to respect the fact that yes, we are leaving huge ecological footprints, and this needs to be reduced significantly. It's part in parcel of our responsability as the so-called "most intelligent beasts on this planet (although I tend to question this belief through our everyday actions); we are responsible for the due diligence in the upkeep of our only home that we have. But so far have been doing a piss poor job of it.

And the start of it is the Petrochemical industry , for most of those bad chemicals are man made . We need to find ways to live with out some of the plastics and chemicals we do . Then get rid of the Internal combustion engine . Here we go were last gee good the goverment did its job
http://www.cbc.ca/technology/story/2009/07/01/tech-climate-scorecard-wwf.html?ref=rss

This is what I noticed today:
Very hot and humid.
Dark clouds and thunder overhead.
Lightning and thunder.
Raindrops so big, they made wet circles the size of beer cans.
Warm raindrops.
Temp. before the th.shower, 26 C.
Temp. after the th.shower, 26 C.
Curiosity, there was a wall of rain just two houses away from where I was.
This evening, at 7PM, the sky was hazy and the sun was burning like h*ll, now that's simply not normal...
And it's warmer in Norway and the UK!
/end daily rant-blog-complaint.

and yet... the suns natural cycle is such that all of the global warming currently happening is about to be negated by the sun current low cycle.
and put as right back to "normal" whatever that is.

I agree with AdamX, pollution in all its forms is far more of a problem then the "global waming" one that is currently sucking up the majority of the research and tax dollars.

Can you imagine how much of an accomplishment it would be to eliminate the plastic island we have created in the ocean? It would cost far less then 10% of the money spent on Global warming to do so, yet, here we sit talking about global warming.

Dinosaur left oil.
Man left plastic.

You know what I just realized? there are way too many studies, which show too much waste, too many dangers, too little hope!
Climate change and the way the advanced civilization goes about its wasteful ways, is an abomination! The Alberta Tar Sands is an extreme, very ugly example, and I don't think that we know the extent of its polluting ways. So some birds died, the company was fined, but nothing changes!
I laugh when I think of the world warming up, because we in Winnipeg shouldn't worry about a little more warmth!
We have 95% of our power supplied by renewable hydro. We have all the fresh water resources that we need, so we are in excellent shape , to be in excellent shape in 500 years , when our vehicles will run on batteries that need recharging, when we have to cool our buildings, heat our buildings with electricity.
If we are short of opium, we can send some more troops into Afghanistan for a ready supply, or downgrade our addiction to locally grown medical marihuana!

Speaking of studies, they just figured that scientists just made a mistake in naming permafrost.