[Red Badger]

This is thawing permafrost on the North Slope along the Sagavanirktok River near Deadhorse, Alaska. Credit: Courtesy of Kevin Schaefer of the National Snow and Ice Data Center, University of Colorado Boulder

[Red Badger]

Ping!..........

[beebuster2000]

doomed !!

doomed i tell you !!

we all are

[lurk]

Likely not. Looks like a pork project in the making.

[Roccus]

Wouldn’t it have to warm FIRST in order to melt the permafrost and THEN release the CO2?

[UCANSEE2]

OK, so thawing permafrost released CO2.

Now... what caused the permafrost to thaw?

[JRios1968]

Those damn mammoths and T-rex driving SUVs back then!

[Blueflag]

Two topics: (1) what caused the permafrost to warm and thaw? (2) just because your model fits THESE data, doesn’t mean your model is “true”.

In other words, it drives me nuts when these ‘scientists’ fail to THINK. If the PERMAfrost melted/thawed, then the earth must have ALREADY been warming. If the earth was ALREADY warming, then snow cover would be retreating as well, and the albedo (reflection of IR off snow cover) was decreasing as well.

It defies simple logic to “believe” the premise that CO2 rise precedes temp rise CAUSED by CO2 release. *IF* the PERMA frost is no longer permanent, and thus releasing CO2, then it MUST have been experiencing prior warming? RIIIIGGGHHHTTT?????

This very issue came up with ALGORE’s Inconvenient Truth — the WARMING in his two graph lines PRECEDED CO2 increase by 400 - 1000 YEARS. Geesh, not this crap again.

But, I bet they were well funded in this research ...

[nixonsnose]

The new view is supported by calculations estimating interactions of variables such as greenhouse gas levels, changes in the Earth’s tilt and orbit, ancient distributions of vegetation, and carbon stored in rocks and in frozen soil.

Why do I doubt this math?

[meadsjn]

Thawing permafrost 50 million years ago led to extreme global warming events

Extreme enough to eventually allow the emergence and existence of a human species?

[mountainlion]

Everyone knows this is false as the only source of global warming is man made CO2. /s

[DBrow]

“polar permafrost carbon deposits have begun to thaw due to burning fossil-fuels,”

So what was the cause of the permafrost thaw 50 MY ago? Fer shur it was not burning fossil fuels.

This is an unfounded assertion based on political correctness and imposition of Official Reality.

[theBuckwheat]

Today, on Anthony Watt’s blog, is an important discussion directly related to this topic:

Did Shakun et al. really prove that CO2 preceded late glacial warming? [Part 1]

http://wattsupwiththat.com/2012/04/08/did-shakun-et-al-really-prove-that-co2-precede-late-glacial-warming-part-1/

[norwaypinesavage]

"Scientist Rob DeConto of the University of Massachusetts Amherst and colleagues elsewhere propose a simple new mechanism to explain the source of carbon that fed a series of extreme warming events"

I have an even simpler model of global warming that these idiots seem to have missed: Warming causes Thawing

I validate this model every time I take a chicken out of the freezer. Some how these geniuses want us to believe the opposite i.e. that the initial warming that caused the melting in the first place is NOT responsible for the subsequent warming. I simply don't buy it.

[aruanan]

Thawing permafrost 50 million years ago led to extreme global warming events

This would have been before the advent of the industrial revolution, right? Also, I'm thinking it was probably an extreme global warming event that led to the thawing permafrost as well as to the temporary end of all of the previous glaciations.

[Hillarys Gate Cult]

I a related story I caught the very end of James Cameron’s new documentary about the Titanic on the National Geographic Channel. He spends the last minute whining about the next “iceberg” to hit us all, global warming. Avoid this show at all costs.

[pabianice]

Ah, yes; UMass/Amherst, my alma matter. Where snarly, IQ 80 “victims of a racist, homophobic, sexist, white society” can get a “Doctorate in Social Justice.” ANYTHING coming out of UMass that is not engineering, physical science, or forestry, has become a huge pile of crap.

[epithermal]

The picture of the North Slope is missing one very important feature: the trillions of mosquitoes that inhabit that place! In the summer the swarms are so thick they blot out the sun, therefore preventing the permafrost from melting. Perhaps in the Eocene there were no mosquitoes?

[Dixie Yooper]

climate scientist Rob DeConto of the University of Massachusetts Amherst and colleagues elsewhere propose a simple new mechanism to explain the source of carbon that fed a series of extreme warming events about 55 million years ago, the Paleocene-Eocene Thermal Maximum (PETM), and a sequence of similar, smaller warming events afterward.

Bush's fault.

[G Larry]

Silly me....

I thought Warming caused thawing....

How does somebody propose that “thawing” could possibly be a driving mechanism for warming?

Oh...I forgot, these are the same clowns who failed to recognize that Warming causes the increase in CO2 levels, so they’ve grown accustomed to inverting cause and effect.

[Norseman]

>>He and colleagues at Yale, the University of Colorado, Penn State, the University of Urbino, Italy, and the University of Sheffield, U.K., designed an accurate model―elusive up to now...< They're essentially admitting that past climate models are inaccurate, but hey, now they've got it right. Right.