We're Doomed!
Posted on 06/15/2006 1:05:52 PM PDT by Abathar
WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Ancient roots and bones locked in long-frozen soil in Siberia are starting to thaw, and have the potential to unleash billions of tons of carbon and accelerate global warming, scientists said on Thursday.
This vast carbon reservoir, contained in permafrost soil in northeastern Siberia, contains about 75 times more carbon than the amount released into the atmosphere each year by the burning of fossil fuels, the researchers said in a statement.
Siberia isn't the only place on Earth with massive lodes of permafrost -- parts of Alaska, Canada and northern Europe have them too. The Siberian area is possibly the world's largest, covering nearly 400,000 square miles, with an average depth of 82 feet, and probably holds about 500 billion metric tons of carbon.
By any measure, this is a lot, and it is in fact twice what scientists previously believed was there, ecologist Ted Schuur of the University of Florida said in a telephone interview.
"There's a huge pool of carbon, even more than people thought before, perhaps double the amount of carbon that we thought," said Schuur, one of the article's co-authors. "If you have twice as much carbon there, essentially in the future twice as much could be released into the atmosphere."
Cars, power plants and other fossil fuel burners release at least 6 billion metric tons of carbon dioxide into the atmosphere annually, contributing to global warming, the scientists said.
As the Siberian permafrost thaws, it will release the carbon contained in old grass roots and buried animal bones into the atmosphere, in what could be an unstoppable contributor to global climate change, according to the researchers.
Earlier climate models may have failed to account for this possible component of global warming, he said.
Schuur said this source of atmospheric carbon could create a vicious global warming cycle.
"You have anthropogenic (human-generated) carbon that's making things a little bit warmer, and that causes the permafrost to warm up and carbon is then released from the permafrost," he said. "It goes into the atmosphere and makes things warmer yet again, so then more permafrost thaws."
If all Siberian permafrost thawed and released its carbon in the form of heat-trapping carbon dioxide, it could nearly double the 730 billion metric tons of carbon now in the atmosphere, the scientists said.
Global warming causes global warming!
We're Doomed!
See, it's already too late. We may as well drive our Hummers with the A/C blasting, because we can't stop it now... (don't libs ever stop to consider that this is exactly the effect of "calamity fatigue"??)
Y2K
Alar
Killer Bees
Swine Flu Pandemic
Ebola outbreak
The Next Ice Age
Red Dye #2
DDT and Silent Spring
Did I forget anything?
Then we better drill for it before it gets away!!
BBQ
And I suppose that when the permafrost is "gone", trees and plants will start sprouting up in those regions and become both a carbon sink and oxygen factory?
More alarmist nonsense, IMO. I personally would prefer a warm earth to one in an ice age.
Well, we better make sure we can burn all that carbon for fuel rather than letting it go to rot.
LOL!!!
Cyclamates.
Cell phones.
Oh fer crying out loud. These people are getting ridiculous.
Hillary for President.
This socialist religion is becoming high camp.
This socialist religion is becoming high camp.
"Y2K
Alar
Killer Bees
Swine Flu Pandemic
Ebola outbreak
The Next Ice Age
Red Dye #2
DDT and Silent Spring"
Did I forget anything?"
Cyclomates
Hurry!
We need to cover Siberia with those cheap Chinese plastic tarps to keep it from escaping!
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