Arctic permafrost is thawing fast
Back in the late 80&#x27;s early 90&#x27;s I remember reading some articles written by climatologists who believed that things were far more dire than the mainstream climate industry accepted.<p>Quoted from the article &quot; researchers now suspect that for every one degree Celsius rise in Earth’s average temperature, permafrost may release the equivalent of four to six years’ worth of coal, oil, and natural gas emissions—double to triple what scientists thought a few years ago. Within a few decades, if we don’t curb fossil fuel use, permafrost could be as big a source of greenhouse gases as China, the world’s largest emitter, is today.&quot;<p>This article from NatGeo is the first modern writing I&#x27;ve seen that has put forth such dire warnings about the permafrost thawing.   The warning is not as dire at the papers I read, but nonetheless it something we haven&#x27;t seen before.   I wish I still had those original papers, but they were in fact paper and not electronic, and I don&#x27;t remember who wrote them or where they were published and I doubt they are cataloged anywhere.    I do remember the people who wrote the papers were all older scientists, so I don&#x27;t think any of them are still around.<p>Most of their models were based on the fact that oceans, glaciers and eventually the permafrost would get locked into a positive feedback loop using greenhouse gases as the fuel.<p>They postulated that humans tipped the balance and we keep skewing the balance until the earth and climate hit a tipping point at which time the earth and climate would get locked into a few positive feedback loops, warming oceans, melting glaciers, and thawing permafrost.<p>Most of the papers felt the thawing of the permafrost was the point of no return.   It was the point where human activity was no longer the driving force in climate change.  Even though the thawing of the permafrost would start out small it was the indication that we passed a warming event from which reducing human output would no longer alter the warming trend.   The increase in temperature and forces required to start large scale permafrost warming could not be stopped simply by slightly reducing human output.<p>The authors mostly felt that 20-40 years of future climate change was already locked in, and once we passed the permafrost thawing event, even large scale changes in human output would not alter the next 20-40 years and during that time the permafrost itself would start to rapidly accelerate it&#x27;s thawing, eventually coming to release yearly, as much greenhouse gases as all of humans emit, in effect accelerating the warming.<p>The underlying basis for their theories was that the release of greenhouse gases caused the planet to warm, which in turn caused oceans to warm, glaciers to melt, and eventually permafrost to thaw, which caused more greenhouse gas emissions, which caused more warming, etc.   They felt that once the permafrost started to thaw that the final piece of the puzzle was in place and that the three systems, all fueled by greenhouse gas emissions would self sustain the feedback loop.<p>The papers believed that while in the beginning the permafrost greenhouse gas output would be small, but it was enough to sustain the feedback loops without human input, the feedback loops would slow but they would sustain.  Since it wasn&#x27;t possible for humans to cut emission by 10 or 20% overnight the best humanity could hope for would be a 1-2% reduction yearly, and even if humans reduced by 1-2% yearly the permafrost would actually make up the difference, thus not changing the trajectory of the warming trend.  In the models they used it took almost 5% year over year reduction so that the permafrost thawing couldn&#x27;t sustain the positive feedback loops.<p>Positive feedback loops typically don&#x27;t stop until they exhaust their resources, which in his case is greenhouse gases.   What we&#x27;ve learned recently is that the permafrost is releasing significantly more Co2m, significantly more methane which is now thought to be 76 times more impactful than co2 and significantly more nitrous oxide which is now thought to be 300 times more impactful than co2.<p>When I read those papers they all made way more sense than than the other more generally accepted models.  As a systems guy I could never accept the thinking that if we reduced our output that it would stop the warming, I thought it would slow the warming trend, but never made any sense to think that the warming would stop.<p>At the time the papers were written most climate scientists believed that the permafrost wouldn&#x27;t thaw for hundreds of years, which is why people stopped getting funded to study the thawing, it&#x27;s only been recently that scientists started to monitor the permafrost thawing and discovered the amounts of co2, methane and nitrous oxide are much, much higher than anticipated.<p>The models put forth in the papers I referenced needed 5% human output reduction starting in the early 90&#x27;s in order to avoid the permafrost from self sustaining the warming trend.  Not only did we not reduce our output, but it&#x27;s soared since the early 90&#x27;s.  Most of the models had the permafrost starting to thaw on a large scale in the mid to late 20&#x27;s, with things getting really bad by the mid 50&#x27;s.<p>If those rejected models are right, and it&#x27;s starting to look like they are, then we are actually about 10 years ahead of schedule if we base it on permafrost thawing trends.