Thawing permafrost: a ticking carbon time bomb

We're pretty much screwed because thawing begets more thawing. The danger is not just the release of methane and CO2, it's that ancient bacteria and viruses can be released. Anthrax released from corpses of animals that were locked in the melting permafrost is no joke.

No time to wallow.

It's too late to "keep" this present climate, really, it is. The energy is already in the system and the positive feedback loops that combine to create this planet's climate are feeding themselves. Look at water moisture, the most potent of greenhouse gases. The more Co2 released, the warmer the atmosphere and oceans; the warmer they are, the more water vapour can be held in the atmosphere, thus the more moisture can be held the warmer it gets.... and round and round it goes. Climate is all about redistributing energy, there's going to be a lot more of this "crazed weather" '(BUT normal for the conditions of the planet at this point) until there is a new equilibrium.

The article takes a pessimistic view of a situation that has many potential benefits.

These thawed out regions will open much land for development, helping ease the unemployment and housing crisis.

Capturing the methane released could be an inexpensive energy source.

A with things a little warmer, our winter heating bills will be easier to manage.

Well with some 30,000 adherents descending on Glasgow as I write this - most flying in from somewhere on flying aluminium carbon generators, it's only going to get worse. So they say.

Should we really be listening to the people flying around the world while telling us not to?

The is one of many extremely dangerous tipping points which don't get much media attention - inconvenient truthes - which illustrate how serious the climate crises promises to get and why major shifts in our lifestyles need to start from now.

If we wanted to stop global warming, we should have gone carbon-neutral a long time ago. Carbon dioxide has a half life of about a hundred years in the atmosphere, so most of the CO2 released since 1921 is still working to heat up the planet. The thawing permafrost means that it is now too late to stop global warming by any means known. We should still look for ways for humans to stop putting carbon into the air, but no matter what we do, the thawing permafrost will continue to defrost, releasing more green house gases than what humans have so far contributed. In other words, our carbon dioxide emissions have been enough to cause the perma frost to melt, and what happens now will release more green house gases than what we did.

Regarding global warming and the melting polar regions, we need to find ways to go carbon negative, that is to say, we need to figure out how to take carbon dioxide and methane out of the atmosphere. This will require tremendous government input, and that is not likely to happen until the effects of global warming become much worse. The other thing we need to do is to prepare for rising sea levels. Over a billion people will have to move by 2060, and another billion will have to move by 2100. By the way, most of those displaced people will be in Asia....... Japan, Korea, China, Taiwan, Vietnam, Thailand, the Philippines, .... In other parts of the world, hundreds of million of people will be displaced by rising temperatures and droughts, rather than rising sea levels.

Unfortunately, our problems do not stop with global warming. Rising CO2 levels are lowering the PH level in the ocean, killing the plankton, which are the basis for most of the other animals we depend on. Nothing is being done to fix this problem. The rising level of plastics in the ocean are also a threat to life as we know it. The world's bread basket, North America, discovered mid 20th century, that food production could be doubled and tripled by tapping into the ice age aquifers that have stored water for thousands of years. That source of water is rapidly running out, and there are no plans to fix that problem, either. The other part of increased crop yields has been the overuse of man made fertilizers, the runoff of which have poisoned large parts of the coastal regions, as well as inland lakes and rivers.

We're pretty much screwed because thawing begets more thawing. 

Plus all the coal fired generators still go into Asia on a huge scale

The whole exercise in Glasgow is a complete waste of time tbh.

They should save the air miles.

The two go hand in hand, but in my mind, biodiversity and conservation are more important than climate change for the simple fact the first cant be dealt with, we have the tools and capacity and the second clearly cant be averted.

Much easier to conserve nature, rewild nature and plant a gazillion trees than it is to phaze out enough fossil fuels in time, not to mention this permafrost issue.

Regarding saving nature, much of the evidence is that global warming and the loss of biodiversity is a major contributor to the loss in the total number of wild species. What scientists have labeled "The Insect Armageddon" has already caused a decline in the number of higher order animal species around the world. For instance, migrating bird populations have plummeted, due to a lack of insects for them to feed on.

The threats to the biosphere appear to be greater at this point in time than is our awareness of them.

Should we really be listening to the people flying around the world while telling us not to?

Trite observations such as these usually come from those sceptical about climate change.