Tag Methane

General 24 March

This week’s top climate science links0

Dive right in:

  • Scientists hash out the uncertainties of climate sensitivity – Here’s some great science journalism, climate sensitivity made fun (almost!).
  • Methane bubbling out of Arctic Ocean – but is it new? Great piece by New Scientist on the Arctic permafrost and the uncertainties inherent in any ‘new’ scientific discovery.
  • Debunking Lomborg, the Climate-Change Skeptic – Turns out Bjorn Lomborg really is the T-2000 of climate denial world: younger, smarter, stronger, more sophisticated. But essentially still a destructive machine sent from the future…
  • Texan Scientists: On global warming, the science is solid – We need more scientists doing this sort of thing, regional and local newspapers are really important!

General 21 February

This week’s climate links0

Dive right in:

  • RealClimate | IPCC errors: facts and spin
  • Defusing the Methane Greenhouse Time Bomb: Scientific American
  • Richard Alley’s keynote at the 2009 AGU AGM – If you want a primer on the role of CO2 in the ancient climate, this is it.
  • At least one journalist at the Telegraph understands risk
  • More Grumbine Science: Cloud-temperature feedback – Great run through of cloud feedbacks, what we do know & what we don’t.
  • A Historian Looks ‘Back’ at the Climate Fight – Dot Earth Blog – “But this was the first time the media reported that an entire community of scientists had been accused of actual dishonesty. Such claims, if directed for example at a politician on a matter of minor importance, would normally require serious investigation.”

Science 11 October

Melting compost heaps and the permafrost precautionary principle1

Thawing permafrost could inject enough carbon into the atmosphere to cook the planet. But nobody’s quite sure how fast it’s going to happen.

Permafrost is a giant cold-storage compost heap, stuffed full of frozen carbon. Just like you chucked out last night’s potato peelings, the planet has chucked out billions of tonnes of dead plants, trees, mammoths and, yes, polar bears, all of which is now happily interred under the Arctic wastes.

The difference is that while your compost heap ticks over at a nice warm temperature, breaking down the potato peelings into compost, the frozen ground which makes up permafrost stops that organic stew of Arctic flora and fauna from decomposing, safely locking up the carbon stored in it.

I say ‘safely locking up’ because from the point of view of creating human civilisation, permafrost has been pretty handy. While the permafrost has been permanently frozen, we’ve been busy ekeing out human life, discovering fire, developing agriculture, growing our population. While we’ve been busy nurturing the capabilities that ultimately allow the lucky few to participate in Britain’s Got Talent, the planet’s been watching our backs by keeping this massive store of carbon locked up under the frozen parts of the planet’s surface.

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