Alaska’s thawing soils are now pouring carbon dioxide into the air

Re:Alaska’s thawing soils are now pouring carbon dioxide int... by jerf on Wednesday August 23, 2017 @03:49PM (#15084486)

"I wouldn't be surprised if such feedback loops have been excluded from the models of climate change because they paint a picture so dire that no amount of mitigation (if there were any serious attempts at mitigation going on) could save our way of life."

If such feedback loops could be that dire and unavoidable, then they would already have happened direly and unavoidably. It has been this warm before, in the not-that-distant past by geological standards. If there's anything unusual about our current situation, it's the rate, not our current location. That does not mean that bad things or things we won't like can't happen, but we can't be sitting on a metaphorical bomb, or it would already have long since gone off.

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Re:Alaska’s thawing soils are now pouring carbon dioxide int... by knieveltech on Wednesday August 23, 2017 @04:08PM (#15084600)

Evidence suggests they already have happened several times in earth's history. You might consider doing a little research into the relationship between climate shifts and mass extinction events.

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Re:Alaska’s thawing soils are now pouring carbon dioxide int... by lutorm on Wednesday August 23, 2017 @03:54PM (#15084514)

but we can't be sitting on "a bomb", or it would already have long since gone off.

That's a strange argument given that previous variations in climate indeed were very severe...

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Re:Alaska’s thawing soils are now pouring carbon dioxide int... by simonh on Wednesday August 23, 2017 @05:35PM (#15085406)

All things being equal yes, but they're not equal.

The Holocene Climate Optimum is the nearest thing in the last few hundred thousand years and it wasn't anywhere near this warm globally. What it did do though is melt the Laurentide ice sheet, dramatically raising global sea levels. But the ice sheet protected the North American continental tundra. Nowadays there's no ice sheet there any more to absorb the heat and stop the tundra melting and releasing its CO2 and methane.

Look up the Paleocene–Eocene Thermal Maximum though. That's the nearest equivalent episode to what's happening now.

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Re:Alaska’s thawing soils are now pouring carbon dioxide int... by basurihn on Wednesday August 23, 2017 @09:07PM (#15086800)

Or the MWP, which ended about 700 years ago. Which also coincides with an Indian Warming Period.

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Re:Alaska’s thawing soils are now pouring carbon dioxide int... by danielvf on Wednesday August 23, 2017 @06:09PM (#15085646)

Link for the lazy:

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paleocene–Eocene_Thermal_Max...

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Re:Alaska’s thawing soils are now pouring carbon dioxide int... by erikpukinskis on Thursday August 24, 2017 @03:55AM (#15088377)

This train is a nonstop to the Cretaceous. Better start preparing.

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Re:Alaska’s thawing soils are now pouring carbon dioxide int... by stcredzero on Wednesday August 23, 2017 @03:52PM (#15084504)

Could it be as bad as the Permian extinction?

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