There could be anything underneath all the permafrost, including new biodiversity which we haven't catalogued yet. NPR ran a story[0] where Russian animals such as reindeer infected with Anthrax had thawed out, and caused outbreaks where people had to get preventative treatments against it. As a future threat model, what if there's new viruses or bacterium contained under previously frozen earth for which modern medicine isn't prepared for?<p>[0]<a href="https://www.npr.org/sections/goatsandsoda/2016/08/03/488400947/anthrax-outbreak-in-russia-thought-to-be-result-of-thawing-permafrost" rel="nofollow">https://www.npr.org/sections/goatsandsoda/2016/08/03/4884009...</a>
I was expecting this to be mentioned somewhere: <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Clathrate_gun_hypothesis" rel="nofollow">https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Clathrate_gun_hypothesis</a>
It is not just a bomb that can blow the arctic. It can destroy all human civilization. And at this point, we may have lost any ability to do anything.<p>Edit:
Doom scale...<p>1 Inconvenient storms.<p>2 More frequent natural disasters.<p>3 Destroying coastal cities.<p>4 Causing hunger, wars and mass migrations.<p>5 Decimating human population.<p>6 Destroying human civilization.<p>7 Destroying all humans on earth.<p>8 Destroying all life on earth.<p>9 Destroying earth.
Maybe the neglected catastrophists of the 1940s are about to see their day. At any rate, the following article cites -many- sources as regards the 'Alaskan muck'.
<a href="https://steemit.com/velikovsky/@harlotscurse/in-alaska" rel="nofollow">https://steemit.com/velikovsky/@harlotscurse/in-alaska</a>
It seems the only way to combat the thawing permafrost problem is to deploy world-scale carbon capturing schemes of some sort. Here's to hoping that we can develop something like that in time.
We should be investigating ways to sequester that CO2 as quickly as possible, via photosynthesis or industrial uses: <a href="https://futurism.com/a-plant-1000-times-more-efficient-at-co2-removal-than-photosynthesis-is-now-active/" rel="nofollow">https://futurism.com/a-plant-1000-times-more-efficient-at-co...</a>
On the other hand, the first season of Fortitude[1,2] was quite fun.<p>[1]: <a href="http://www.imdb.com/title/tt3498622/" rel="nofollow">http://www.imdb.com/title/tt3498622/</a><p>[2]: <a href="https://www.amazon.com/dp/B00S1VFB36" rel="nofollow">https://www.amazon.com/dp/B00S1VFB36</a>
It seems like global climate has low-CO2/low-temperature and high-CO2/high-temperature clusters of attractors. And that anthropogenic CO2 emissions have pushed global climate toward high-CO2/high-temperature. But at least, it seems that there's enough of a barrier from the Venus extreme.
For good overviews on what the climate change research actually says, I recommend the potholer54 YouTube channel.<p><a href="https://www.youtube.com/user/potholer54/videos" rel="nofollow">https://www.youtube.com/user/potholer54/videos</a>
I thought this was about methane clathrates. Hasn't there been carbon leaking from permafrost into the atmosphere already? To what degree does the production in the arctic affect that?
Despite the cliche title...frozen up to 1,000 feet down. That caught my eye. Plenty can be hidden in a vault that deep. Perhaps the next ebola? Or worse?<p>Add this to the list: Climate Change and the Things We're Unprepared For.
Betteridge's law of headlines <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Betteridge%27s_law_of_headlines" rel="nofollow">https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Betteridge%27s_law_of_headline...</a>
This is not a “time bomb”, which implies something being inflicted on us by a malevolent agent. It’s a temperature bomb. And we can easily prevent the explosion by simply not making the planet too hot.
> In fact, there's more carbon in the permafrost, Douglas says, than all the carbon humans have spewed into the atmosphere since the Industrial Revolution — first with steam trains, then with coal plants, cars and planes.<p>> Scientists don't know yet how much carbon will get released from thawing permafrost or how fast it will happen.<p>In a nutshell why not accepting anthropogenic global warming is scientific and accepting it is anti-science, not the other way around.