Wednesday, 19 June 2019

.. and your name will be mud.

From The Guardian:

Permafrost at outposts in the Canadian Arctic is thawing 70 years earlier than predicted, an expedition has discovered, in the latest sign that the global climate crisis is accelerating even faster than scientists had feared.

A team from the University of Alaska Fairbanks said they were astounded by how quickly a succession of unusually hot summers had destabilised the upper layers of giant subterranean ice blocks that had been frozen solid for millennia...

Scientists are concerned about the stability of permafrost because of the risk that rapid thawing could release vast quantities of heat-trapping gases, unleashing a feedback loop that would in turn fuel even faster temperature rises.


These people have a very one-dimensional view of this and show no interest in what it was like millennia ago.

Ask yourself, "What is permafrost?". To summarise the explanation on Wiki, some areas used to support plant life in earlier, warmer times (which created the soil in which the plants grew, which created more soil etc) but these areas gradually froze over, the vegetation died and rotted away, hence the methane trapped in it.

There's no hard dividing line between 'soil which is still warm enough to support plant life' and 'soil which isn't'. If the latter category warms up a bit, after a couple of years, it will be normal soil with normal vegetation again. We've got to assume that normal soil with normal vegetation isn't some catastrophe-inducing, methane-belching horror, or else there'd be far more methane in the atmosphere than there is (about 2 parts per million).

So sorry, I see nothing to panic about. The methane emitting phase is just the awkward teenage phase while soil moves from being frozen to supporting plant life again.

6 comments:

Graeme said...

And meanwhile, at the other end of the planet, a lot more ice is discovered. Verily, it is worse than we thought

https://www.thegwpf.com/patagonia-ice-sheets-thicker-than-previously-thought/

Mark Wadsworth said...

G, ah yes, but the more ice there is, the more than can melt...

"Surface elevation observations from satellite radar altimetry and optical imagery have shown that most of the ice slabs in the region have been thinning rapidly over the past four decades.

The contribution to global sea level rise from their melting has increased at an accelerating pace during that time."

Graeme said...

I always love those comments. What about the context? From what to what?

Mark Wadsworth said...

G, exactly.

Dr Evil said...

There are bacteria that thrive on methane and metabolise it. They were first isolated from soil surrounding the old time gas powered street lights. Beautiful bacteria when sectioned under the electron microscope. Full of delicate membranes where the methane metabolising enzymes sit. As for the methane producers, they grown very, very slowly and are killed just by the thought of an oxygen molecule.

Mark Wadsworth said...

Dr E, ah, the eternal battle between methanogens and methanotrophs...