Here’s the issue, as described in Wikipedia:
The Arctic region is one of the many natural sources of the greenhouse gas methane. Global warming accelerates its release, due to both release of methane from existing stores, and from methanogenesis in rotting biomass. Large quantities of methane are stored in the Arctic in natural gas deposits, permafrost, and as submarine clathrates. Permafrost and clathrates degrade on warming, thus large releases of methane from these sources may arise as a result of global warming. Other sources of methane include submarine taliks, river transport, ice complex retreat, submarine permafrost and decaying gas hydrate deposits.
There’s an outfit called the Arctic Methane Emergency Group which dedicates themselves to, well, emergency alarm stuff. Things like this:
Planetary catastrophe is inevitable without geoengineering to cool the Arctic
Hold on there folks, some new research on actual Arctic soils over the last 20 years has provided some fresh insight. It seems there is no need to panic after all.
From Science News
News in Brief: Warming may not release Arctic carbon – Element could stay locked in soil, 20-year study suggests
In a 20-year experiment that warmed patches of chilly ground, tundra soil kept its stored carbon, researchers report.
…
In 1989, ecologists set up greenhouses on plots of tundra in northern Alaska. Air temperature inside the greenhouses was on average 2 degrees Celsius warmer than outside.
Over two decades, the team reports, mosses and lichens gave way to woody shrubs. Decomposition slowed in surface soil while it sped up deeper underground. Warmer soils may have allowed plant roots and plant litter to penetrate farther into the ground, increasing both the deep soil’s carbon stocks and its rates of decomposition, the researchers suggest. Overall, though, there was no difference in total soil carbon in the greenhouse plots compared with plots that had no greenhouses.
Oh, that’s gotta hurt. Here is the paper:
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Long-term warming restructures Arctic tundra without changing net soil carbon storage
http://www.nature.com/nature/journal/vaop/ncurrent/full/nature12129.html
Seeta A. Sistla, John C. Moore, Rodney T. Simpson, Laura Gough, Gaius R. Shaver & Joshua P. Schimel
Abstract
High latitudes contain nearly half of global soil carbon, prompting interest in understanding how the Arctic terrestrial carbon balance will respond to rising temperatures1, 2. Low temperatures suppress the activity of soil biota, retarding decomposition and nitrogen release, which limits plant and microbial growth3. Warming initially accelerates decomposition4, 5, 6, increasing nitrogen availability, productivity and woody-plant dominance3, 7. However, these responses may be transitory, because coupled abiotic–biotic feedback loops that alter soil-temperature dynamics and change the structure and activity of soil communities, can develop8, 9. Here we report the results of a two-decade summer warming experiment in an Alaskan tundra ecosystem. Warming increased plant biomass and woody dominance, indirectly increased winter soil temperature, homogenized the soil trophic structure across horizons and suppressed surface-soil-decomposer activity, but did not change total soil carbon or nitrogen stocks, thereby increasing net ecosystem carbon storage. Notably, the strongest effects were in the mineral horizon, where warming increased decomposer activity and carbon stock: a ‘biotic awakening’ at depth.
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What I get out of this is that plants overall did better with that extra warmth, and becuase they did better, the soil was managed better due to feedback loops. Yep, those unexpected surprises from “Nature will find a way” always get you when you least expect them.
They thought it worth publishing.
After spending two decades on their experiment, they could hardly have thought otherwise, although in this case they seem to be right.
However, rtj1211 still has a point. Results that confirm what some people (the groups he mentioned) would already have thought, but disprove what other people appear to have thought are worthwhile.
Nothing surprising here. The tundra was pretty much completely wooded during the last interglacial. Nothing happened with the methane concentration.
GENUG (@GENUG) says:
May 15, 2013 at 3:25 pm
“and the acidification of the world’s oceans is pretty much in an advanced state, meaning….. SHTF!!! uptake ability for CO2 going down, cycle is running….. not good.”
Average pH dropped by 0.1 over the past decades. If the uptake ability were going down, which I would call conjecture, how would that be a problem? Even the ongoing rise of CO2 concentrations between 1998 and 2013 did nothing to warm the planet, so where is the problem when the concentration rises further; it obviously does not correlate in a meaningful way with temperatures – neither with real local temperatures nor with the theoretical, meaningless construct they call global average temperature. Of course ESPECIALLY not with real temperatures; the diurnal temperature fluctuation in my place seems entirely unimpressed by CO2 levels.
Try to think rationally. I know it’s hard after decades of green brainwashing but try. Start with a book about simple boolean logic.
This link Planetary catastrophe is inevitable without geoengineering to cool the Arctic
Geoengineering has been going on sense the 2nd world war when radar was put to good use http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Radar They knew the side effect was atmospheric heating and over time and good science observations they thought it a good idea to sign this http://www.scribd.com/doc/3436120/UN-1976-Weather-Weapon-Treaty
But they didn’t go as far to stop it being used on their own people. Making it rain and snow over catchments for hydro-electric has been happening for over 60 years. I was reading here just the other day about cosmic rays suppling the neuclei for clould formation, so why not use the same understanding to create the same reactions from the ground up like they found out here back in the 70’s http://www.ngdc.noaa.gov/stp/IONO/Dynasonde/SpEatHeating.htm Here’s what Noaa had to say back in 75 http://www.ngdc.noaa.gov/stp/IONO/Dynasonde/images/HeatPrecip.pdf Abit of history on the dinasonde http://www.ngdc.noaa.gov/stp/IONO/Dynasonde/history.htm
Lets jump forward 20 years to 94 when they created this http://hal.archives-ouvertes.fr/docs/00/31/64/49/PDF/angeo-16-1212-1998.pdf They proved they could do all sorts of things to the polar jet stream even a reversal So lets move into the now It looks to me this could be why the jet stream moved south to make Sandy do that left hand turn Sandy’s energy was enough to keep polar jetsream south over winter But why would they do this you ask well with all the money dramas going on all round the world and the one with the most has control, it’s a well known fact we use more energy (electricity) when its cold I often ponder over how may people out there grow their own vegie’s and how well they did this year with all the cold For those that want to know WHY here you go http://csat.au.af.mil/2025/volume3/vol3ch15.pdf
Dick/DB/Steve: You guys know damn well that carbon=methane when they are talking about permafrost thaw. That’s all they’ve warned us about for years. You are word parse trolling. Just stop…
I wounder how much methane is Russia releasing into the arctic http://rt.com/business/russia-arctic-reserves-kept-idle-142/ Natural gas contains between 70 and 90% methane dosen’t it ? No wounder the Arctic is in so much trouble with Russia trying to speed up the thaw When you start to look down this road sure gives new meaning to the cold war Because he who controlls the cold controlls the climate and weather .
Rick Bradford says:
May 15, 2013 at 7:40 pm
Most of the Alarmists don’t care how wrong or absurd they are; they just shout loudly in the hope of attracting attention, funds, and creating some action….
>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>
It is part of Alinsky’s Rules for Radicals
Think Looney Lew and – Royal Society calls Lewandowsky “outstanding” for an example of all three rules.
Skeptics are always behind the 8-ball. CAGW types think up something new write a ‘Peer-Reviewed Science Paper’ then hand the lap-dog ‘journalists’ a press release so it makes headlines. By the time skeptics have come up with a rebuttal a new catastrophic ‘Peer-Reviewed Science Paper’ is making headlines and the old paper is wrapping fish. It does not matter if the paper is complete bumkin, all that matters is that it grabs headlines.
Actual science started heading out the door when the Age of Enlightenment or Age of Reason gave way to Romanticism.
Politicians of course do not want the vioting public to be able to reason. As H. L. Mencken said,
“The whole aim of practical politics is to keep the populace alarmed (and hence clamorous to be led to safety) by menacing it with an endless series of hobgoblins, all of them imaginary.” So a dumb electorate swayed by emotion is just what politicians want.
Pascal Lamy let the true goal of the politicians out of the bag:
This then is ‘THE CAUSE’ that Michael Mann is talking about when he said
“I gave up on Judith Curry a while ago. I don’t know what she think’s she’s doing, but its not helping the cause.” in a climate gate e-mail. Don’t forget one of the other climategate e-mails was asking for the Climate Team™ to review Ged Davis’s Global Governance & Sustainable Development (B1). Davis was at the time a Shell Oil VP. “During the late 1990s, he served as Director of the World Business Council for Sustainable Development’s Global Scenarios and as Facilitator and Lead Author of the IPCC’s Emission Scenarios” – from InterAcademy Council, Annex A. Study Panel Biographies (Link now dead)
Pascal Lamy also states the problem facing those who want global governance:
So it looks like climate skeptics will have to be lumped into the group called ” irrational — or worse.” (enter Lewandowsky and Cook stage left)
Lamy states the progress that has been made:
He states the problem now facing globalists:
And finally he states the ‘Solution’ to the problems facing globalists, Mencken’s endless series of hobgoblins
(All other Lamy quotes from Pascal Lamy: Whither Globalization?)
All four of these events were carefully orchestrated of course.
For those not familiar with ‘The Flu Epidemic Crisis’ Live Avian Flu Virus Placed in Baxter Vaccine Materials Sent to 18 Countries “The company that released contaminated flu virus material from a plant in Austria confirmed Friday that the experimental product contained live H5N1 avian flu viruses.”
‘The Food Crisis’ : How Goldman Sachs Created the Food Crisis
The economic crisis I have traced to the five banking laws signed by Clinton, a pal of Lamy. The laws repealed the depression era laws put in place to prevent another depression. Matt Taibbi has done a really great job investigating the situation: Matt Taibbi: The Great American Bubble Machine, Goldman Sachs
It is worth looking at Taibbi’s other articles on banks and finance. link
While the “methane gun” scare has mainly to do with marine clathrates, this paper is about CO2 released from warming tundra soils. It does not address those methane fears one way or another.
Gail Combs says: May 16, 2013 at 5:36 am
“..For those not familiar with ‘The Flu Epidemic Crisis’ Live Avian Flu Virus Placed in Baxter Vaccine Materials Sent to 18 Countries “The company that released contaminated flu virus material from a plant in Austria confirmed Friday that the experimental product contained live H5N1 avian flu viruses.”… http://socioecohistory.wordpress.com/2009/03/07/live-avian-flu-virus-placed-in-baxter-vaccine-materials-sent-to-18-countries/
This is an interesting topic Gail, and to many here will seem very far fetched or fantastic. However, there is little doubt this occurred, and whether or not it could have been accidental in this case I won’t comment on.
But, there is little doubt that in the past viral and bacterial commercial and trial vaccines (for both animal and human patients) were quite possibly contaminated by other viruses, often these were unknown at the time. (ie, it is more difficult to QC test for contamination with the unknown).
I have found no-one likes to discuss the topic, but in some specific cases (animal) I pursued researchers have told me this was very likely the reason for the rapid worldwide spread of ‘new’ pathogens. (I believe often ‘new’ may mean suddenly of importance in a developed country with high tech farming practices … it could have been lurking forever in some corner of the less developed world, barely visible with long term natural immunity largely protecting backyard operations).
markx says:….
>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>
At least in the USA the commercial vaccine would be produced in a isolated building with lots of QC (cGMP). You even have a ‘Label Control Officer’ who has to count the number of labels and reconcile the labels given to production, the number of labels destroyed and the amount of product labeled. All this with double signatures tracking the labels in and out of a secured inventory. Given that type of control of something like labels, not to mention other raw materials it is hard to figure out how they managed to screw-up. Especially since you are talking double signatures on every blasted step. (Yeah BTDT as a QC Engineer.)
Austria may use a different system but cGMP, now called ISO, is pretty universal since it is designed to prevent exactly this type of SNAFU from happening. It is one of the reasons I am not happy about drugs being produced outside of the USA. The FDA does have that part of industry well controlled and rightly so.
The other half of the story is all the media hoopla happening at the same time about a flu epidemic that completely fizzled.
…………………..
On the Methane front. I am surprised no one has mentioned what the Russian who study permafrost/methane say:
Nikolai Osokin is a glaciologist at the Institute of Geography, the Russian Academy of Sciences.
Vladimir Melnikov is the director of the world’s only Institute of the Earth’s Cryosphere. The Russian Academy of Sciences’ Institute is located in the Siberian city of Tyumen and investigates the ways in which ground water becomes ice and permafrost.
Hockey Schtick says:
May 15, 2013 at 3:52 pm
quote
A new review paper from SPPI and CO2 Science finds the growth rate of atmospheric methane has significantly decreased over the past 30 years, the opposite of IPCC predictions.
unquote
What methane release there has been may (possible/could be/perhaps) due to the reduction of SO2 release. There was a prediction that when the acid rain stopped the tundra would release methane.
So perhaps the warming is doing less than nothing.
JF
Once upon a time it was customary to describe a first-class salesman with the phrase “He could sell refrigerators to Eskimos.”
If there are any such highly skilled salesmen remaining, this is their Moment of Opportunity.
GENUG (@GENUG) says:
May 15, 2013 at 3:25 pm
and the acidification of the world’s oceans is pretty much in an advanced state, meaning….. SHTF!!! uptake ability for CO2 going down, cycle is running….. not good
Foraminiferal boron isotope ratios as a proxy for surface ocean pH over the past 21 Myr shows evidence that ocean alkalinity is near record highs.
See http://www.nature.com/nature/journal/v363/n6425/pdf/363149a0.pdf
It is a common mistake to overstate the acidity of carbonic acid by 1,000 times: “Although the concentration of CO2(aq) far exceeds that of dissolved H2CO3 (in the order of 10³) we denote the concentration of all dissolved CO2 by [H2CO3]” – from section 9.2 of CHEMISTRY OF CARBONIC ACID IN WATER at http://www-naweb.iaea.org/napc/ih/documents/global_cycle/vol%20I/cht_i_09.pdf
Guess Rich and Nick didn’t have anything to say.
Friday’s Achorage Daily News (a historically AGW biased paper) had an article about this research: (http://www.adn.com/2013/05/17/2906074/climate-change-researchers-surprised.html)
Unless you go to the second article reference under “Read More” from Ars Technica and read
almost half way though it, you would not know that the “increased soil temperature” was not natural due to global warming, but artificially achieved by building actual greenhouses and studying the soil under them over a period of years. They do have a picture of the tundra with the greenhouses in the distance, but the impression to the casual lay-reader is definitely left that the scientists have been up to Alaska studying the effects of the global warming occurring there. This type of sloppy reporting has been rampant in our mainstream media, especially when it comes to the subject of global warming and has a lot to do with the general public buying into the idea that the planet is warming rapidly due to man’s use of fossil fuels.
What a moron ! AMEG is composed of the leading scientist in the world on the topic… ignore those guys at your children’s peril. It is of course comforting to think this is all bunk,… its called whistling past the graveyard. Unfortunately it really doesn’t matter anymore… entertain yourself with stupidity til the cows come home and fall dead of heat exhaustion at the barnyard door,… its way to late already and there is nothing that can be done about it. The scientific community has allowed itself to be cowed for years by these idiots, and we are on our way out as a result. Their projections which everyone screams about are always drastically on the long side, never ever once on the short side ….. now its ice free in 20015,….which is finally about right. and famine in five years I figure. When you start to watch your children starve and go thinking about a gun to get some food,… remember what you wrote here, then take a good look in the mirror.
Well geoengineering is still happening. What about that and how do we stop it? Who is in charge of this spraying of the skies? Why is it happening then?