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Russia’s permafrost is melting and it could have a devastating global effect
- _Codemonkeyism 7y agos/could/will/g
- edejong 7y agoYes, that’s exactly the skew popular media will give this (already way too sensational) reporting. And we shouldn’t do this, unless we want to lose the scientific moral grounds.
- _Codemonkeyism 7y agoMelting permafrost is releasing methane and CO2. Rising methane and CO2 levels will increase climate change. There is no "sensational" or "skew". This is like all this "may" "might" for 40 years that got us into the situation we are now. We should have said "will" 40 years ago.
- mempko 7y agoAnyone working in the computer and software (or any high-tech) industry should be worried about global warming. Even if society collapses, you will have certain needs like food, clothing, etc. However, high technology requires a highly organized civilization to exist and develop. Global warming is a risk to organized human life and it's possible we won't be doing anything related to computers in 20-30 years. It's not crazy to think people will collectively lose the ability to make microchips and computers. Progress and technological development cannot be taken for granted and requires the right conditions to function. Global warming is an existential risk to our industry!
- rimliu 7y agoWhere do you people get these ideas?
- mempko 7y agoThat's it? This is the level of debate here?
- tzakrajs 7y agoThis place is full of racist ancaps so don't be surprised when they shit on the concerns you have for your community.
- dang 7y agoTake HN threads further into flamewar will get you banned. Please review the site guidelines and don't do this here. https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
- lumberingjack 7y agoI am a farmer, was a net admin earlier in life but from what I have seen and heard myself and talking to my tribe from up north climate change is a natural event and there is nothing we can do to stop things like Earth's axis slightly changing making the sun way hotter. People that want to fight climate change should start in the cites with smog it is man made, it changes the climate in a localized area, it kills, and you can do something about it. Yet I never see these Climate change fighters completely giving up smog making devices.
- mempko 7y agoYou do tell them the sun isn't getting hotter right? Have you seen this? https://www.bloomberg.com/graphics/2015-whats-warming-the-world/ https://www.bloomberg.com/graphics/2015-whats-warming-the-wo...
- davidw 7y agoI'm partial to this graphic... puts things in perspective and puts paid to the notion that what's happening now resembles natural climate fluctuations. https://xkcd.com/1732/ https://xkcd.com/1732/
- chmod775 7y ago> puts paid I think you're being downvoted because of a typo.
- davidw 7y agoI think people don't understand English. The graphic makes it very clear that what is happening now is very different in velocity and scale from historic climate swings. In other words, the climate change we're currently observing is man-made.
- ChrisGranger 7y agoIt's not a typo, but a common English phrase. https://www.collinsdictionary.com/dictionary/english/put-paid-to https://www.collinsdictionary.com/dictionary/english/put-pai...
- TeMPOraL 7y agoIf global warming reaches the point it threatens our industry, our whole civilization will be halfway through collapse, and it won't end with computers not being needed for three decades. It'll end with a good majority of the world's population starving to death (or dying in acts of violence surrounding the event) and no one doing anything with computers for the next thousand years or so.
- buckminster 7y agoIf it gets that bad computers in a thousand years may be out of reach. We have consumed all of the easily accessible fossil fuels so it will be much harder or impossible to bootstrap a new civilisation. This is plausibly the last great civilisation.
- TeMPOraL 7y agoYes. Which is why I believe that keeping our civilization in the stable state should be the most important policy goal. A point explored here, earlier today: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20447671 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20447671. It also bears reminding that climate change is not a threat to the planet or to humans as a species. Both will be fine. But it's an existential threat to technological civilization. Or, in other words: if you want your children and grandchildren to have even a semblance of quality of life an average person has today, climate change must be stopped now.
- DennisP 7y agoThe planet will be fine if you consider events like the Permian mass extinction to be "fine." If you doubt we could push things that far, see this recent MIT study: http://news.mit.edu/2019/carbon-threshold-mass-extinction-0708 http://news.mit.edu/2019/carbon-threshold-mass-extinction-07... Humans may well make it through that, but I don't think it'd be a sure thing, especially if we get secondary effects like pandemics or nuclear war.
- TeMPOraL 7y ago
- jotm 7y agoWhy is this even downvoted? One solar flare hit and the Internet takes a massive dive. I can always work construction, electrical and plumbing lol
- TeMPOraL 7y agoBecause it's like saying that gunshot wounds are a problem because they can ruin your clothes.
- throwaway5752 7y agoIt is having a devastating effect. June was the hottest month recorded in human history: https://weather.com/en-IN/india/news/news/2019-07-16-earth-experiences-hottest-june-ever-record-2019 https://weather.com/en-IN/india/news/news/2019-07-16-earth-e... It crushed the record and July is tracking to break that record. There's not a socially acceptable way of conveying how bad it is. Running around and screaming "we're all going to die" is more accurate that saying things will be fine.
- godshatter 7y agoThis last June was the hottest month of June in recorded history, not the hottest month in recorded history. Click on "Global Monthly Mean Surface Temperature Change" to see how it fits in a graph of monthly land and ocean temperatures: https://data.giss.nasa.gov/gistemp/graphs_v4/ https://data.giss.nasa.gov/gistemp/graphs_v4/
- throwaway5752 7y agoYou are absolutely correct, and I wrote it wrong. Thank you. That said, it's horrible. Not even a strong El Nino year.
- assblaster 7y agoIt hasn't been this hot since 1880, per that article.
- karmelapple 7y agoThe article says it’s never been this hot since 1880, which I believe is when they started recording this data - it didn’t mention it was this hot then. Do you have additional info to claim it was this temp in 1880?
- assblaster 7y agoThey didn't have records before 1880 according to the article. So, it could have been warmer, but there is no record of it.
- SubiculumCode 7y agoI have at times worried about the trapped methane that could be released with the permafrost...on some accounts I've heard the amount that could be released is massive. I know that this methane can increase global warming, but I have another fear. Although perhaps farfetched, is it possible that climate change could release a dense, rolling methane cloud that can asphyxiate whole populations?
- throwaway5752 7y agoNo. That is not a concern on any kind of level. Quick look indicates asphyxiation at 16-21%. At 5-15% concentration it is explosive. Current levels are about 2000 parts per billion. It will not release that quickly on anything more than a localized level, and it would probably kill you via explosion, first. Since it would be gradually released we would all be long dead from the greenhouse effect.
- Robotbeat 7y agoMethane is lighter than air and thus would rise up to the sky until mixed.
- jeffdavis 7y agoThe molecular mass of oxygen gas is 32 and the molecular mass of methane is 16. The methane will tend to rise and mix, leaving plenty of oxygen near the surface. It's unlikely to asphyxiate humans unless it happens really, really fast. People and animals have been asphyxiated by massive CO2 releases because they can happen very quickly, and CO2 has a molecular mass of 44, making it stay near the ground for longer, displacing lighter oxygen and nitrogen gases.
- forkandwait 7y agoIsn't density not mass the issue? Methane still floats above air using density from the internets, though I wonder about mixing 0.656 kg/m³ methane 1.98 kg/m3 carbon dioxide 1.225 kg/m3 air.
- 7y ago
- assblaster 7y ago"This could increase global warming by as much as 0.27 °C by 2100 and as much as 0.42 °C by 2300"
- DenisM 7y agoThe downvotes are unjustified, this is a literal quote from the headline article. It doesn't tell us how bad this is however. And it is bad: https://xkcd.com/1732/ https://xkcd.com/1732/
- mac01021 7y agoI understand that from a variety of factors including greenhouse gas concentration, albedo, and solar intensity you can, in principal, compute the earth's atmosphere's equilibrium mean temperature. I understand this function to be such that any doubling of the atmosphere's CO2 concentration (while holding the other factors constant) will increase the equilibrium temperature by the same fixed number of degrees. One thing I know nothing about is how to expect the earth's actual temperature to change over time when there is a difference between actual and equilibrium temperatures. Suppose A(t) is the earth's actual temp at time t and E(t) is the earth's equilibrium temp at time t. Presumably, dA/dt = F(A,E), for some function F. Is anyone here physics-savvy enough to know what F looks like?
- itcrowd 7y agoWell.. it is complicated. Depending on what exactly you want to know, you could look into the concept of "Transient Climate Response" (e.g. start at [1]). [1] https://www.nature.com/articles/nature08047 https://www.nature.com/articles/nature08047
- grecy 7y agoDon't think it's isolated to Russia either. Alaska just reported their hottest June ever (It's in the 90's in a lot of places now), and the Yukon is seeing massive, massive climate changes in recent years. The annual Redezvous festival used to be held ON the Yukon River in downtown Whitehorse. Friends tell of driving onto the river, having huge bonfires, etc. etc. It hasn't even frozen over enough to walk on in a decade or more, and now it actually goes above freezing in January most years..... even 20 years ago it wouldn't go above -40 for all of Dec/Jan. Things are changing very, very fast in the North.
- floatrock 7y agoSo, winter is not coming?
- ngvrnd 7y agoNo. Cormac McCarthy's Road, or William Gibson's Jackpot, is coming.
- blaser-waffle 7y agoThe Road was implied to be a comet or maybe nukes. This will look more like Paolo Bacigalupi's "The Windup Girl".
- 52-6F-62 7y agoYep. It's happening here in Canada too. https://www.cbc.ca/news/technology/permafrost-melting-1.5119767 https://www.cbc.ca/news/technology/permafrost-melting-1.5119...
- itcrowd 7y agoThe climate has changed rapidly in the Yukon (see below), but I am wondering if you could provide a (scientific) source for your claims? Especially: > even 20 years ago it wouldn't go above -40 for all of Dec/Jan. This seems to be contradicted by [1]. Climate has changed dramatically in the Yukon, see Fig. 5 in [2] (open access). The average temperature in the Yukon has increased by >2 deg C since 1900 AD and >1 deg C relative to the 20th century average. [1] https://www.currentresults.com/Weather/Canada/Yukon/temperature-january.php https://www.currentresults.com/Weather/Canada/Yukon/temperat... [2] https://www.nature.com/articles/s41467-019-09622-y https://www.nature.com/articles/s41467-019-09622-y
- agumonkey 7y ago1) I'm sure climate change models took this into account but is it worse than predicted ? 2) And if it releases land and resources.. how happy will Russia to increase their economy through uses of gas/oil ? (not helping permafrost)
- PeterisP 7y agoPermafrost melting doesn't really release land and resources; the main resources were actively mined there while it was permafrost and if it's frozen for part of the year and not frozen for a few months then it doesn't make mining significantly simpler. if anything, it destroys the existing infrastructure there which often (especially for transport and pipeline paths) relies on the permafrost as a permanent solid foundation.
- agumonkey 7y agoOk, so the main issue would be potential greenhouse gas release from melting ?
- PeterisP 7y agoYes, it's an additional feedback loop - more warming melts more permafrost, releasing more methane that causes more warming. Due to this stopping/slowing climate change is going to be more difficult.
- toinetoine 7y ago"We see places in Northern Europe, Russia as you say, Northern and Central Eurasia and Canada. These are the types of countries that could actually benefit from some amount of warming in terms of sort of increasing economic growth and economic productivity. " https://www.climateone.org/audio/climate-winners-and-losers https://www.climateone.org/audio/climate-winners-and-losers
- BrendanD 7y agoIIRC CMIP5 models(used for IPCC AR5 2014) did not account for permafrost melt or changes in soil chemistry. Shortly after AR5 was released I remember reading an article or two describing how these exclusions resulted in under-predicting climate change. There were three emissions scenarios under CMIP5, and we are surpassing the worst. Put that in your pipe...
- aoeusnth1 7y agoWe need coordinated, urgent political action on climate change. We already have the technology needed to solve this - we just need to deploy it. Now.
- fsloth 7y agoYou could start calling it global warming. Climate change was brought forward as a term to make it sound less frightening to the voting population.
- newnewpdro 7y agoI thought climate change was preferred as being more accurate than global warming, since not all regions will be warmer, some will actually become colder as things like the jet stream evolve.
- ska 7y agoGlobal warming is accurate, the problem is people confuse weather with climate. A global warming trend means more energy in the atmosphere, which in turn leads to higher weather variability, bigger storms etc. It doesn't mean everywhere on the planet will get a higher (pick your temperature statistic).
- notabee 7y agoAverage people don't understand local variability or averages. They hear "global warming" and think that means every place must be hot at once. There's the stellar example of a congress critter bringing a snowball in and claiming that disproved global warming. Now, climate chaos or something like that might be a better way to convey what's in store. Average people need to understand it better as simply energy added to a system making it increasingly unstable and unpredictable.
- skosch 7y agoCorrect – more effective terms are climate crisis, climate chaos, climate emergency.
- aNoob7000 7y agoDoes it really matter anymore? Not to sound too fatalistic, but are people going to change? Unless people's houses are catching fire and there are food shortages in industrialized countries, there is going to be little or no change.
- Bombthecat 7y agoYeah, I don't think so either, I already basically accepted the fate and thinking about buying a home (even though it doesn't make sense) and enjoy the last years on it... Until credits doesn't matter anymore..
- maximente 7y agoprobably not, but they might change their point of view enough to influence elections, or personal/community behavior, or whatever else. while it might be inevitable there could be a huge difference in outcomes, e.g. btwn 2c and 5c or whatever your worst case is. so, while i agree to some extent, the more people that mobilize and e.g. influence the next round of policies/politicians, perhaps suffering can be reduced, however slightly you think that is.
- renjimen 7y agoThere's also the methane hydrate just under the seabed of the continental margins of the world's oceans. A rise in water temperature may destabilise large quantities, releasing huge amounts of methane, accelerating climate change further. https://worldoceanreview.com/en/wor-1/ocean-chemistry/climate-change-and-methane-hydrates/ https://worldoceanreview.com/en/wor-1/ocean-chemistry/climat...
- newnewpdro 7y agoSounds like Russia is going to have a lot more arable land in the future.