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Author Topic: 🚩 Global Climate Chaos ☠️  (Read 116571 times)

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AGelbert

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Re: 🚩 Global Climate Chaos ☠️
« Reply #1875 on: August 24, 2019, 10:00:00 pm »

TruthDig

AUG 22, 2019 | TD ORIGINALS

Noam Chomsky: Democrats Are Failing the Test of Our Time

By Ilana Novick —  The linguist and activist calls Donald 🦀 Trump’s climate 🦕🦖 policy “a ☠️ death knell for the species,” and says there’s no effective opposition. 😨 😟

Read more:
https://www.truthdig.com/articles/noam-chomsky-democrats-are-failing-the-test-of-our-time/
He that loveth father or mother more than me is not worthy of me: and he that loveth son or daughter more than me is not worthy of me. Matt 10:37

AGelbert

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Re: 🚩 Global Climate Chaos ☠️
« Reply #1876 on: August 26, 2019, 09:25:46 pm »
BLACK BEAR NEWS 8.24.19 Scientists keep taking the batteries out of the fire alarm  >:(
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Black Bear News
Published on Aug 24, 2019



Meet the 'Vortex of Despair': Four Predictions for Earth's Future

Twitter @BlackBearNews1

Support via Paypal:  https://www.paypal.com/cgi-bin/webscr...

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Category People & Blogs
He that loveth father or mother more than me is not worthy of me: and he that loveth son or daughter more than me is not worthy of me. Matt 10:37

AGelbert

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Re: 🚩 Global Climate Chaos ☠️
« Reply #1877 on: August 27, 2019, 05:44:23 pm »
Agelbert NOTE: Plant stomata are tiny pores on the underside of leaves that capture Carbon Dioxide (CO2). The bigger the pores, the more CO2 they can capture. When the pores shrink due to environmental conditions, plants reduce their CO2 intake, which slows plant growth, regardless of how much CO2 is available in the atmosphere. This is what is happening over most areas of the globe NOW.

Paul Beckwith, Climate System Scientist

Aug 23, 2019

Browning of the Earth: Land Plant Growth Decline Since 1998: Part 1 of 2


Earth stopped getting greener 20 years ago 😲. A new research study used satellite images to determine that plant growth on land increased in the 1980s and 1990s, but reached a turning point in 1998, and has since been decreasing.

The decrease is mostly attributed to decreasing moisture in the air, as measured by a Vapour Pressure Deficit (VPD) parameter; which is the difference between the actual amount of moisture in the air versus the maximum amount of moisture possible in the air (saturation) at the given temperature.

Browning of the Earth: Land Plant Growth Decline Since 1998: Part 2 of 2


It is well known that global vegetation decline is worsening from:


land-use forest clearing,
wildfires,
desertification,
drought,
soil degradation …


But some regions like the Arctic are greening. We also know that the maximum amount of moisture air can hold at saturation goes up by 7% per degree C temperature rise.

If this increase is under 7%, a Vapour Pressure Deficit occurs, plant stomata shrink, and vegetation growth slows reducing global primary productivity.


https://paulbeckwith.net/
He that loveth father or mother more than me is not worthy of me: and he that loveth son or daughter more than me is not worthy of me. Matt 10:37

AGelbert

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Re: 🚩 Global Climate Chaos ☠️
« Reply #1878 on: August 27, 2019, 08:43:43 pm »

The Gates of Hell Have Opened in the Amazon Rainforest as the Collapse Gains Speed
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Collapse Chronicles
Published on Aug 21, 2019

In today's Chronicle of the Collapse, we survey the mainstream and alternative media for more evidence of how this planet is entering the final stages of Collapse in the Amazon Rainforest.
If you would like to support Collapse Chronicles, there are several ways to do just that. You can hit the Paypal Donate icon on the homepage, or send a Paypal donation through collapsechronicles@gmail.com

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If you would like to send a check or money order to support this channel, you can email me at collapsechronicles@gmail.com.
Thank you!

Category News & Politics

 
He that loveth father or mother more than me is not worthy of me: and he that loveth son or daughter more than me is not worthy of me. Matt 10:37

Surly1

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Re: 🚩 Global Climate Chaos ☠️
« Reply #1879 on: August 28, 2019, 08:20:15 am »
MASSIVE GLACIER COLLAPSE Caught on Camera! (Ilulissat, Greenland)

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yQqbg0yItqY&feature=youtu.be&fbclid=IwAR1p8v1P-ToUKmH_872C4XlAfxbzXo5kbAHNdUoWeAOg_eYlBn7801AsUoU

Icebergs breaking from the Ilulissat Glacier are often up to 3,000 feet in height (1 km) and thus too tall to float down the fjord and lie stuck on the bottom of its shallower areas, sometimes for years, until they are broken up by the force of the glacier and icebergs further up the fjord.
Ilulissat Icefjord drains 6.5% of the Greenland ice sheet and produces around 10% of all Greenland icebergs. Some 35 billion tonnes of icebergs calve off and pass out of the fjord every year. (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jakobsh...)


Surly1

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Re: 🚩 Global Climate Chaos ☠️
« Reply #1880 on: August 28, 2019, 08:39:19 am »
Trump’s Trade War Linked To Amazon Rainforest Destruction
As U.S. soybeans sit in silos, Brazilian farmers push to break new ground to satisfy the Chinese market.


As unsold U.S. soybeans are stored in silos across the farm belt, Brazilian farmers and corporations scramble to satisfy the voracious Chinese market. The push to break new ground amid President Donald Trump’s trade war with China is putting increasing pressure on the Amazon rainforest and is likely linked to the region’s devastating fires, according to experts.

“There is concern that market pressures related to the disruptions in global trade contributed to the fires in the Amazon,” a spokesman for the industry group the U.S. Soybean Export Council said in an email to HuffPost. 

Brazil is America’s biggest soybean competitor and has stepped up its production now that China has slashed its purchases of U.S. crops in retaliation for Trump’s tariffs on Chinese imports. Soy shipments from Brazil jumped 27% from 2017 to 2018. Chinese imports from Brazil in the 12 months through April amounted to 71 million tons — nearly as much as China imported from the entire world in 2014, according to Bloomberg. 

Amid increasing demands for farm products from China, Brazil’s far-right president, Jair Bolsonaro, has pledged to open up the 2 million-square-mile Amazon forest — including inside protected indigenous areas — to more farming and mining. He has jokingly referred to himself as “Captain Chainsaw.” Many suspect that raging fires in the region, which were largely unchecked for weeks, are part of a strategy to speed up that policy. The Amazon Environmental Research Institute has concluded that the recent increase in the number of fires in the Amazon is directly related to deliberate deforestation, the BBC reported.

“Citizens around the world should be concerned by the global environmental and individual health impact of the devastating fires in Brazil, potentially started to clear land for crops and cattle,” Jim Sutter, CEO of the Soybean Export Council, said in a statement to HuffPost. “Meanwhile, U.S. crops remain unsold.”

Not only do American farmers have soybeans to sell, but also the crops are generally grown under far more stringent environmental standards than in Brazil, Sutter noted.

“It’s such a waste,” Gary Wertish, president of the Minnesota Farmers Union, told HuffPost. “We have plenty of soybeans to sell, while you worry that more and more land is being put into production in Brazil to satisfy the market. And the rainforest is so crucially important to the world.” 

The consequences are devastating not only for Brazil but also for the world. The Amazon basin — the globe’s biggest rainforest and home to 3 million species of plants and animals — is crucial to regulating global warming. Its forests absorb millions of tons of carbon emissions each year.

The Group of Seven agreed at its summit in France last week to provide $22 million and other support to Brazil to help with firefighting, which it appears Bolsonaro will likely reject.

Trump skipped the G-7 meeting on climate change on Monday. The president claimed he had other meetings with the leaders of Germany and India. But both German Chancellor Angela Merkel and Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi were in the climate change meeting. 

Trump later claimed that he knows “more than most people about the environment.” He noted: “I’m an environmentalist. A lot of people don’t understand that.”


AGelbert

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Re: 🚩 Global Climate Chaos ☠️
« Reply #1881 on: August 28, 2019, 06:40:22 pm »
On the G7 day that CLIMATE CHANGE was discussed, Trump 🦀 was absent. 🤬
Make Nexus Hot News part of your morning: click here to subscribe.

Aug 27, 2019, 8:18 AM

He that loveth father or mother more than me is not worthy of me: and he that loveth son or daughter more than me is not worthy of me. Matt 10:37

Surly1

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Re: 🚩 Global Climate Chaos ☠️
« Reply #1882 on: August 29, 2019, 06:41:13 am »
A Northwest Passage Journey Finds Little Ice and Big Changes
After decades of travel in the Far North, E360’s Arctic correspondent joins a voyage through the Northwest Passage and witnesses a world being transformed, with ice disappearing, balmy temperatures becoming common, and alien invaders – from plastic waste to new diseases – on the rise.



The icebreaker Oden sails through first-year ice in Lancaster Sound in the Canadian Arctic last month. COURTESY OF TOMER KETTER

BY ED STRUZIKAUGUST 27, 2019

Elwin Bay is carved into a steep, flat-topped mountain range along the northeast coast of Somerset Island in Canada’s High Arctic. For as long as anyone can remember, hundreds of beluga whales show up every year on an annual migration from Greenland through Canada’s Northwest Passage. Their fidelity to this site is remarkable given that 19th-century whalers killed more than 10,000 of them there – 840 during one notably gruesome, 17-day stretch – between 1874 and 1898.

Helicoptering over the bay earlier this month with members of a U.S. National Science Foundation-sponsored research expedition, we saw too many belugas to count accurately in waters riddled with rapidly disintegrating sea ice. Five hundred? Eight hundred? None of us could estimate with certainty. All we knew was that there were likely equal numbers of whales congregating in similar bays and estuaries, such as Cunningham Inlet, which we sailed past a few days earlier.

Polar bears were there as well — a female and cub in this case, homing in on a dead beluga that had presumably swum too far up the shallow estuary before the tide turned and trapped it.

I had joined the Northwest Passage Project on its 18-day, 2,000-nautical-mile icebreaker journey from Greenland through the high Canadian Arctic. Scientists and students aboard the ship were conducting oceanographic experiments to better understand the profound changes occurring in the Arctic Ocean as summer sea ice disappears and as alien invaders — from microscopic plankton and exotic fish species to large quantities of marine plastic — pour into this once-frozen region.

A film crew from the Oden explores Cunningham Inlet, which historically would have been blocked by sea ice in July.

A film crew from the Oden explores Cunningham Inlet, which historically would have been blocked by sea ice in July. COURTESY OF TOMER KETTER

For me, having spent 40 years traveling extensively in the Arctic, the voyage was another unsettling reminder that the region has gone well beyond a climate change tipping point and is now “transforming into a new state,” as a Queen’s University geographer put it. This upheaval was evident from the record warmth and melting we saw in Greenland, to the widespread lack of sea ice along much of our route, to the stories of ecological disruption recounted by the Inuit who joined us aboard the Swedish icebreaker, Oden. I repeatedly found myself thinking about numerous prior explorations of the Northwest Passage in which expedition after expedition was blocked by sea ice — an obstacle that is fast disappearing.

As the hundreds of beluga in Elwin Bay showed, the Arctic is still a region teeming with marine mammals and abundant birdlife. It was thrilling to see other whale species such as tusked narwhal diving and giant bowheads blowing water 20 feet into the air. Watching long-tailed jaegers ceaselessly bullying kittiwakes to force them to disgorge a meal of fish was spellbinding.

That I didn’t see nearly as many polar bears as I had observed on similar expeditions in the past was not surprising given the paucity of ice. It may be only a matter of time before the fat, healthy bears we saw on this trip suffer the same fate as those in the southern Beaufort Sea, where numbers declined as much as 40 percent from 2001 to 2010. In a recent study, scientists at the U.S. Geological Survey (USGS) found that as sea ice declines, the bears are traveling farther and finding it harder to find seals.

The influx of contaminants such as mercury and plastics, which this expedition found in multi-year sea ice, is further testing the resilience of these and other animals at a time when unprecedented warming is not only melting sea ice but also thawing permafrost and providing southern animals — even grizzly bears — with opportunities to expand their range northward. Scientists are concerned that the arrival of new species may usher in alien diseases such as marine phocine distemper, which many Arctic marine mammals have no immunity to.

CLICK MAP TO ENLARGE. The route traveled by the Northwest Passage Project in July and August, from Greenland through the Canadian Arctic.

CLICK MAP TO ENLARGE. The route traveled by the Northwest Passage Project in July and August, from Greenland through the Canadian Arctic.YALE ENVIRONMENT 360

“Surveys such as this one are few and far between in the Arctic,” said Donglai Gong, an oceanographer from the Virginia Institute of Marine Science. “The Arctic is currently experiencing the fastest warming on Earth and dramatic changes in water chemistry. Ocean acidification puts the entire Arctic food web at risk. The rate of change challenges even the most adaptable of organisms.”

That climate upheaval was evident when we arrived at Thule Air Base. July temperatures in Greenland soared up to 18 degrees Fahrenheit above normal. (As it turned out, this July proved to be the hottest month ever recorded on the planet.) Nearly 200 billion tons of ice on the Greenland icecap melted that month. A record 55 billion tons disappeared from July 30 to August 3 — two days before the expedition ended. Wildfires, which until just a few years ago were virtually unheard of in Greenland, were burning the tundra both there and across the Arctic at a record rate. Just before the Oden departed for Canada, hikers on Greenland’s Arctic Circle Trail were being told to avoid a portion of the 100-mile route linking Sisimiut and Kangerlussuaq after two Americans had to be evacuated when they become disoriented in thick smoke.

By the time the Oden set sail, more than 100 “intense and long-lived wildfires” had already burned above the Arctic Circle this summer, according to the European-based Copernicus Atmosphere Monitoring Service. In June alone, these fires emitted as much as 50 megatons of carbon dioxide, equal to what all of Sweden emits in a year. Soot from these fires was falling on and darkening the icecaps and glaciers we steamed past, absorbing more heat from the sun.

As the Oden sailed from the Thule base, located at 76 degrees north, into the Canadian Arctic Archipelago, the fact that sea ice loss was on track to break the record set in 2012 became increasingly obvious. There was no ice for the Oden to break through as it crossed Baffin Bay, nor was there any appreciable ice in Lancaster Sound, north of Baffin Island — all of which meant that polar bears and walruses in the area were being deprived of a crucial platform on which to hunt and rest.

A polar bear in the Barrow Strait. As summer sea ice disappears in the High Arctic, polar bears are losing crucial platforms on which to hunt and rest.

A polar bear in the Barrow Strait. As summer sea ice disappears in the High Arctic, polar bears are losing crucial platforms on which to hunt and rest.ED STRUZIK/YALE E360

On this oceanographic expedition, the scientists and students on the Oden weren’t as focused on seeing wildlife or seabirds, as they were in tracking the changes in sea ice, ocean temperature, and seawater chemistry that are driving ecosystem shifts in the region. Significant changes in one or more of these areas, said Gong, could trigger major transformations in the ecosystem. Scientists are already seeing this in Hudson Bay, where capelin have overtaken Arctic cod as the chief source of prey for seabirds such as thick-billed murres. In the central and eastern Arctic, where we were sailing, Inuit fishermen have even caught Pacific salmon, far from their home range.

Gibson Porter, a young Inuit man from Gjoa Haven, shared similar observations one morning when we were on the bridge of the Oden. Porter’s village was named in honor of the ship, the Gjoa, which was commanded by polar explorer Roald Amundsen, whose 1903-1906 expedition was the first to traverse the Northwest Passage. On that voyage, Amundsen spent nearly two years trapped in ice in a harbor near Gjoa Haven.

As Porter flipped through a book on birds, he began telling me about the changes he and other Inuit were witnessing in his village and on surrounding King William Island. At least four grizzly bears have taken up residence on the island, an unprecedented event in Inuit memory. Indeed, grizzly bears are extending their reach hundreds of miles from the mainland of the western Arctic, sometimes even mating with polar bears.

“We’re seeing all kinds of birds and animals that we have never seen before — gray jays, mallards, and Bank’s swallow, which is almost never found north of the Hudson Bay lowlands,” said Porter.

An abandoned Hudson's Bay trading post on Somerset Island that was shut down in 1948 because supply ships could not get through the thick sea ice.

An abandoned Hudson's Bay trading post on Somerset Island that was shut down in 1948 because supply ships could not get through the thick sea ice.COURTESY OF TOMER KETTER

Not long after our conversation, the Oden anchored at the southern end of Prince Regent Sound near Bellot Strait so that a few of us could be helicoptered to Fort Ross, site of an abandoned Hudson’s Bay Company trading post on the southern end of Somerset Island. The post was shut down in 1948 because supply ships could not find a way through thick ice. Standing on a rock-strewn rise, we could see two polar bears on a platform of sea ice searching for seals. The quintessential Arctic scene stood in sharp contrast to a new one that presents itself here each summer. Now, as many as eleven cruise ships sail through Bellot Strait so that tourists from around the world can disembark.

Another Inuit member of our expedition, educator Mia Otokiak, said that on her native Cambridge Island, thawing permafrost is creating giant sinkholes that have swallowed up snowmobiles and all-terrain vehicles. Thousands of muskox on Victoria Island, where she lives, have fallen ill, some fatally, as a result a novel form of lungworm; researchers believe that warmer Arctic temperatures are enabling the worm’s larvae to flourish. The Dolphin and Union caribou herd, which spends the summer on Victoria Island and the winter on the mainland, has been reduced to 15,000, half of their number in the 1990s. Warming temperatures have resulted in animals breaking through melting sea ice as they move to and from the mainland.

“It used to be that we didn’t have to go far to hunt caribou and muskox,” she added. “But that’s not the case anymore. There are some people who still deny that is because of climate change, but that is getting harder to do.”

During our voyage through Barrow Strait, scientists drilled cores into the melting sea ice. Initially, scientist Alessandra D’Angelo, a post-doctoral student at the University of Rhode Island’s School of Oceanography, wasn’t sure what to make of the red beads and colored threads that dominated the ice core samples she saw under the microscope. But a second look by colleague Jacob Strock confirmed what they both suspected: The rainbow of colors represented microscopic plastic particles.

Scientist Jacob Strock examines microscopic particles of plastic trapped in sea ice.
Scientists found microscopic particles of plastic trapped in sea ice.

Project scientist Jacob Strock examines microscopic particles of plastic trapped in sea ice [right]. ED STRUZIK/YALE E360

“It’s both an exciting and depressing discovery,” said University of Rhode Island oceanographer Brice Loose. “You’d assume that the Arctic is pristine and unaffected by the pollution that is occurring in other parts of the world. But that is clearly not the case.”

Given the difficulty and expense of conducting research in the Arctic, scientists say they are struggling to monitor the region’s transformation. The need for more research was driven home when we reached Prince Leopold Island, the second-to-last last stop on our journey back to Greenland. Rising to a height of 870 feet in the middle of Barrow Strait, this barren island is dominated by a flat-topped mountain bluntly cropped on all sides by scree slopes that descend at angles of nearly 90 degrees. As lifeless and uninviting as it looks from a distance, Prince Leopold is the most important bird sanctuary in the Canadian Arctic. Hundreds of thousands of birds, representing 47 species, breed on the island.

Unfortunately, bird research on Prince Leopold Island largely ended in 2012 due to a lack of funding. After the research was shut down, Canadian Wildlife Service seabird expert Tony Gaston wrote a paper outlining the dramatic changes he and others had documented on Prince Leopold over a 37-year period. Rain, Gaston pointed out, never fell heavily on the island until the turn of this century, when it occurred 13 times in 12 years. Ivory gulls, once a common visitor, have not been seen since 2003. Peregrine falcons, which were never seen in the 1970s, have been observed frequently since 2000. Gaston’s list of changes is long, and he and others say ongoing monitoring is needed to keep track of these shifts. One result of the paucity of research and planning is that only 5 to 7 percent of the biological hotspots in the Canadian Arctic — places like Prince Leopold Island — are protected in some way, according to a recent paper.

Lancaster Sound, south of Devon Island, was largely ice-free during the voyage, unusual for this time of year.

Lancaster Sound, south of Devon Island, was largely ice-free during the voyage, unusual for this time of year.COURTESY OF TOMER KETTER

By the time our 18-day expedition ended, researchers had collected more than 1,500 chlorophyll samples, which identify what kind of phytoplankton and bacteria are present at various depths in the open ocean and beneath the ice. The nature of these species tends to differ with temperature, water pressure, and chemistry. It will be some time before this and other oceanographic data are fully analyzed. But no one doubts that these snapshots of what is happening in the Arctic Ocean will reaffirm that a new Arctic is unfolding. “The question that remains to be answered,” said Gong, “is how and in what ways.”

When we returned to Thule, we were again greeted by exceptionally balmy weather, with temperatures nearing 70 degrees F. As we waited for a C-17 to fly us back to New York, many of us sunned ourselves in shirtsleeves on the outdoor patio of the community center. There was not cloud in the sky, nor any sea ice in the ocean. The only reminder that we were in northern Greenland were the icebergs drifting by that had calved off the island’s rapidly melting glaciers.


AGelbert

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Re: 🚩 Global Climate Chaos ☠️
« Reply #1883 on: August 29, 2019, 01:50:58 pm »
We Need to Plant Many New Amazon Equivalents, Not Destroy Our Existing One
1,752 views


Paul Beckwith
Published on Aug 27, 2019

If the entire Amazon burned down, a release of 90 Pg of carbon to the atmosphere, equivalent to a 40 ppm rise in atmospheric CO2, was mentioned in the previous video description based on Yadvinder Malhi blog. By the same token, if people on Earth got their act together and planted a new Amazon (about 390 billion trees, estimated from Amazon Wikipedia) this would drawdown about 40 ppm (90 Pg) or 10% of atmospheric concentration. At present, atmospheric CO2 rises 2-3 ppm/year, so 40 ppm is only between13-20 years worth of global emissions.

Please donate at my blog http://paulbeckwith.net to support my efforts to analyze, and present to you significant developments in abrupt climate change.

Category Science & Technology

Vital Significance of Amazon Rainforest as Carbon Sink
1,666 views


Paul Beckwith
Published on Aug 27, 2019

How significant, on a global scale, is the Amazon Rainforest? Best I can tell, correct annual numbers are: Tropical rainforests account for 34% of land-based global photosynthesis; Amazon Rainforest is almost half that, namely 16%.

Total oxygen produced by land-based photosynthesis is 330 Pg, thus Amazon is 54 Pg. Ocean phytoplankton oxygen production is 240 Pg. Total global photosynthesis is 330 + 240 = 570 Pg of oxygen (58% land, 42% ocean).

Amazon produces 54/570=9.5% of total global oxygen; with carbon sink being 9.5% of global plant total sink.


Please donate at my blog http://paulbeckwith.net to support my efforts to analyze, and present to you significant developments in abrupt climate change.

Category Science & Technology

He that loveth father or mother more than me is not worthy of me: and he that loveth son or daughter more than me is not worthy of me. Matt 10:37

Surly1

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Re: 🚩 Global Climate Chaos ☠️
« Reply #1884 on: August 29, 2019, 03:55:59 pm »
Massive Siberian forest fire could melt permafrost, freeing massive methane stores
Not 'could', but WILL melt the permafrost. Why create doubt when none is needed?
It's not just the Amazon: If the Siberian fires lead to permafrost melt, Earth may suffer a massive methane spike.
\



NICOLE KARLIS
AUGUST 27, 2019 10:45PM (UTC)

It is not just the Amazon rainforest that is burning. More than 21,000 square miles of forest caught on fire in Siberia this month. That means that Russia is on track for its worst year on record for wildfires.

Since July, wildfires have been spreading in northern Krasnoyarsk Krai, the Sakha Republic, and in Zabaykalsky Krai, where the fires began. At the end of the month, the Siberian forest fire stretched across 6.4 million acres.

According to the Russian News Agency TASS, the Krasnoyarsk Forest Fire Center said that the causes of these forest fires were natural, originating in a combination of high temperatures, strong gusts of wind, and dry thunderstorms with lightning strikes. The average temperature for that region is typically between 58 and 65 degrees Fahrenheit in the summer; lately, temperatures have been recorded in the high 80s.

Russia has the largest forested area in the world, and the northern forests cover about 45 percent of the country. Scientists estimate that Russia's forests constitute 19 percent of all world forests in terms of area. Likewise, Scientific American reports that boreal forests like those in Siberia sequester 300 to 600 million tons of carbon dioxide every year. That is a huge chunk of the 1.5 billion tons of carbon sequestered overall by Earth's boreal forests.

A majority of the fires are in inaccessible areas. Russian president Vladimir Putin and officials have reportedly said they will only extinguish them if the cost of destruction is more than the price to put them out, which is not yet the case. This fire-righting strategy is based on a law from 2015.

Yet critics say that is not the right strategy, partly because the smoke from the wildfires has traveled and lingers in the nearby cities of Novosibirsk and Krasnoyars. These cities are hundreds of miles from the epicenter of the wildfires, yet are homes to millions of people, posing serious health threats.

“When the law was drafted in 2015, it never occurred to anyone that the wind would be able to bring smoke from the fires so far,” Andrey Sirin, director of the Institute of Forest Science at the Russian Academy of Sciences, was quoted as saying in the Los Angeles Times. “Often the damage to people’s health is much worse than the damage to the economy.”

However, similar to the fire in the Amazon rainforest, there could be a huge price to pay for letting these fires rage on their own. Like the Amazonian fires, the Siberian fires have the potential to accelerate global warming.

“These fires should have been put out at the very beginning, but were ignored due to weak policies. Now it has grown into a climate catastrophe that can not be stopped by human means,” Greenpeace Russia wildland fire expert and volunteer firefighter Anton Beneslavskiy said in a statement. “Russia should increase efforts in forest protection and provide sufficient funding for firefighting and fire prevention. The problem of wildfires should be addressed at the international level in the global climate agreements to keep global warming below 1.5°C.”

Since the wildfires are up north, their ash and soot, which releases black carbon, pose a massive threat to the Arctic region’s ice sheets. They could accelerate melting, which will increase the amount of carbon released into the atmosphere. With less nearby forest to absorb it, this carbon will contribute to global warming at an unprecedented rate. Likewise, melting of the ice sheets might free previously-trapped permafrost methane, a greenhouse gas more potent than carbon dioxide and which is not absorbed in photosynthesis.

“We think we have a handle on the trajectory of warming, but if we have this unexpectedly large release of methane from permafrost, then we’re going to have to change our assumptions about how fast warming is going to occur, and that change would be faster,” Brian Brettschneider, a climatologist and post doctoral fellow at the International Arctic Research Center at the University of Alaska Fairbanks, told Time magazine.

As the Arctic faces extreme weather, that could increase temperatures across the world.

“Cold air has to come from somewhere, cold air doesn’t just magically appear, and that somewhere has to be accounted for in the entire energy balance of the Earth. Right now the whole Earth has just warmed up,” Brettschneider said.

Some scientists aren’t surprised by the erratic temperature in the Arctic. Philip Higuera, a fire ecologist at the University of Montana, told BBC: “I’m not surprised – these are all the things we have been predicting for decades.

Despite Russia’s lack of effort to put the fires out, some experts say what is really needed is a massive rainfall.

“You need a huge amount of precipitation to fall to put these out – but if you get just a moderate amount of rain, that often comes with lightning, which can just blow things up thanks to the methane in the peat, and just make it worse,” biologist Merritt Turetsky of the University of Guelph, in Ontario, Canada, told the BBC.

NICOLE KARLIS

Nicole Karlis is a news writer at Salon. She covers health, science, tech and gender politics. Tweet her @nicolekarlis.


AGelbert

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Re: 🚩 Global Climate Chaos ☠️
« Reply #1885 on: August 29, 2019, 04:54:28 pm »

Quote
“You need a huge amount of precipitation to fall to put these out – but if you get just a moderate amount of rain, that often comes with lightning, which can just blow things up thanks to the methane in the peat, and just make it worse,” biologist Merritt Turetsky of the University of Guelph, in Ontario, Canada, told the BBC.

And there is the Russian Rub, so to speak. Massive fires in the Taiga reduce tree cover. Less trees means less transpiration. Less transpiration, a process by which trees everywhere, like in the Amazon (before all the fires), inject humidity into the atmosphere that produces rain, means less rain. There is a drying momentum going on in Russia (and several other places with large forests on Earth, including the amazon). Up until around 1997, the Earth was still getting somewhat greener. AFTER the year 2000, an overwhelming amount of the Earth has been browning (see below).
 

And then there is the melting permafrost ...

Quote
"Any apocalyptic scenario possible if methane from melting permafrost is not stopped".

He that loveth father or mother more than me is not worthy of me: and he that loveth son or daughter more than me is not worthy of me. Matt 10:37

Surly1

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Re: 🚩 Global Climate Chaos ☠️
« Reply #1886 on: August 30, 2019, 06:50:44 am »
NASA Images Capture Worst Siberian Wildfires in 10,000 Years



CARLY CASSELLA 30 JUN 2017
Every year, Siberia is struck by wildfires that destroy great swathes of boreal forest.  But climate change has caused wildfire activity in Siberia to increase radically over the past few decades.

The boreal forests in Siberia are burning at extraordinary rates, unheard of in at least 10,000 years, and climate change projections predict even more wildfires to come.

The current wildfires, which started in late June, have already burned roughly 538 square kilometres (133,000 acres) of forest in southern Siberia.

Climate change has been increasing temperatures across the globe, but northernmost regions, like Siberia, are experiencing temperature inclines at twice the rate.  Since November, temperatures in southern Siberia have been up 4°C (7.2°F) from the average.  And as the weather turns drier and warmer, the forests in the region become more and more prone to wildfires.

These wildfires are a direct threat to the role of Siberian forests in absorbing carbon emissions.


Credit: NASA Earth Observatory

Each year, the Russian forests absorb a net 500 million tonnes of carbon from the atmosphere.

Last Friday, two NASA satellites captured the destructive and widespread impact of these wildfires on the region.

The images from the Aqua satellite reveal a series of wildfires and towers of smoke, riddled across southern Siberia.

The second satellite, Suomi NPP, measured the air quality in the region and found the aerosol index reached over 19, indicating very dense smoke at high altitudes.

According to NASA Earth Observatory, scientists are also currently investigating three possible pyrocumulus cloud formations in the area, which can alter local climates by lofting ash and particles high into the atmosphere.

But the most devastating impact of these wildfires cannot be seen from a satellite.

Siberian boreal forests play a crucial role in the carbon cycle, making up nearly 10 percent of the planet's land surface and housing more than 30 percent of the carbon on Earth.

That means that when these forests burn, they are releasing vast quantities of carbon into the atmosphere. The loss of carbon absorption in combination with the release of carbon, creates a vicious cycle that leads to more global warming and, as a result, more wildfires.

Not to mention, these wildfires can also hasten the melting of Arctic ice, which is already disappearing at alarming rates. This occurs when the fires produce hordes of soot that fall on snow and ice, darkening their surface and causing them to absorb more sunlight.

And it's not just Siberia, either.

Over the past decade, global warming has caused a series of destructive wildfires in Canada and Alaska, too. Last year, a wildfire in Fort McMurray, Alberta became the costliest natural disaster in Canadian history.

And, according to Climate Central research, wildfire season in Alaska is 40 percent longer and large fires twice as common as they were 75 years ago.

Finding a way to stop these wildfires from occurring or from burning out of control will be pivotal in our fight against climate change.

Scientists have their work cut out for them.

AGelbert

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Re: 🚩 Global Climate Chaos ☠️
« Reply #1887 on: August 30, 2019, 02:51:06 pm »
Yep. IOW, it will get worse, no matter what the techno-fix wishful thinkers come up with.


No ethics = no solution, PERIOD.





He that loveth father or mother more than me is not worthy of me: and he that loveth son or daughter more than me is not worthy of me. Matt 10:37

AGelbert

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Re: 🚩 Global Climate Chaos ☠️
« Reply #1888 on: August 31, 2019, 09:03:53 pm »
Climatologist J. Mach: "The Story of Retreat as a Climate Response is Just Beginning"
1,435 views


Collapse Chronicles
Published on Aug 29, 2019

In today's Chronicle of the Collapse, I read an article from Science Daily titled, "The Case For Retreat In the Battle Against Climate Change." Here is a link to the rest of the article:
https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases...
If you would like to support Collapse Chronicles, there are several ways to do just that. You can hit the Paypal Donate icon on the homepage, or send a Paypal donation through collapsechronicles@gmail.com

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If you would like to send a check or money order to support this channel, you can email me at collapsechronicles@gmail.com.
Thank you!

Category News & Politics
He that loveth father or mother more than me is not worthy of me: and he that loveth son or daughter more than me is not worthy of me. Matt 10:37

AGelbert

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Re: 🚩 Global Climate Chaos ☠️
« Reply #1889 on: August 31, 2019, 09:28:11 pm »
"We Are Living In the Most Dramatic Era of Road and Infrastructure Expansion in Human History"
1,158 views


Collapse Chronicles
Published on Aug 30, 2019

In today's Chronicle of the Collapse, I return to Mongabay.com for the weekly tsunami of awful news spelling out how our planet is heading directly into a brick wall.
If you would like to support Collapse Chronicles, there are several ways to do just that. You can hit the Paypal Donate icon on the homepage, or send a Paypal donation through collapsechronicles@gmail.com

If you would like to become a Patron of Collapse Chronicles, here is a link to my Patreon page:
https://www.patreon.com/user?u=16077447

If you would like to send a check or money order to support this channel, you can email me at collapsechronicles@gmail.com.
Thank you!
He that loveth father or mother more than me is not worthy of me: and he that loveth son or daughter more than me is not worthy of me. Matt 10:37

 

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