<story><title>Permafrost is thawing in the Arctic so fast scientists lost their equipment</title><url>https://www.cbc.ca/news/technology/permafrost-melting-1.5119767</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>mhandley</author><text>I&amp;#x27;m a little confused on this issue.  How did all that carbon end up in the permafrost soils in the first place?  Presumably because the climate was warmer, and vegetation grew and locked up carbon there.  So now the climate there is warming, won&amp;#x27;t vegetation growth take off again?  I&amp;#x27;m not denying there&amp;#x27;s the &lt;i&gt;potential&lt;/i&gt; for lots of CO2 and methane to be released, but also there&amp;#x27;s the potential for more CO2 to be locked up too.  At what point does the process switch over from releasing greenhouse gasses to vegetation removing them again?</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>DennisP</author><text>The planet goes through natural carbon cycles. For example, natural orbital variations cause a little initial heating, then feedback effects like permafrost melt kick in, taking the planet several degrees further.&lt;p&gt;Then, over millions of years, the carbon gets absorbed again. Rock weathering removes CO2, and layer after layer of plant material gets sequestered in the ground.&lt;p&gt;The warming events cause mass extinctions. Hardly anything lives at mid-latitudes, and crocodiles swim at the poles.&lt;p&gt;There&amp;#x27;s a &lt;i&gt;lot&lt;/i&gt; of geological evidence for all this, and it&amp;#x27;s the reason people are so worried. If negative feedbacks were quick then we&amp;#x27;d see a stable climate in the geological record. We see the opposite. It doesn&amp;#x27;t take much of an initial shove to tip things into catastrophe, and millions of years to get back to a climate like our own.</text></comment>
<story><title>Permafrost is thawing in the Arctic so fast scientists lost their equipment</title><url>https://www.cbc.ca/news/technology/permafrost-melting-1.5119767</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>mhandley</author><text>I&amp;#x27;m a little confused on this issue.  How did all that carbon end up in the permafrost soils in the first place?  Presumably because the climate was warmer, and vegetation grew and locked up carbon there.  So now the climate there is warming, won&amp;#x27;t vegetation growth take off again?  I&amp;#x27;m not denying there&amp;#x27;s the &lt;i&gt;potential&lt;/i&gt; for lots of CO2 and methane to be released, but also there&amp;#x27;s the potential for more CO2 to be locked up too.  At what point does the process switch over from releasing greenhouse gasses to vegetation removing them again?</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>taneq</author><text>The issue isn&amp;#x27;t really that the world is going to turn into an inhospitable dustball or watery doom. It&amp;#x27;s that climate change is going to obliterate the apple cart for humanity.&lt;p&gt;We like to build big complicated high-cost centers right on the coast. Rising sea water = bad for us.&lt;p&gt;We like to build expensive permanent buildings. Crazy weather = bad for us.&lt;p&gt;We like to farm monocultures in predictable climates. Unstable seasons = bad for us.&lt;p&gt;&amp;#x27;Life&amp;#x27; is going to be just fine. It&amp;#x27;s just gonna be super inconvenient for us humans.</text></comment>