More commentary on the permafrost report reviewed in yesterday’s letter. This review from Vox offers a well-written summary of the key points plus more comments from Ted Schuur, the report’s author, a map of the extensive land coverage of permafrost locations, and bonus coverage of various diseases that could also be released by the thawing. The fact that the Arctic temperatures are warming up about three times faster than the global average—and even more in some spots—cannot be emphasized enough in explaining the strength of both the observations and predictions. The additional carbon emissions that Schuur refers to and predicts for this century can be thought of as comparable to the effect of adding a whole new airline industry, or cement-making industry, and watching it grow, but with no possible way to directly force stoppage. Any realistic application of negative emission technology, whenever it becomes available, will first have to be employed in soaking up emissions of this type before turning attention to reducing the gas that was put in the air by burning fossil fuels. Absent such technology, all existing plans to reduce fossil fuel emissions will need to be accelerated just to offset growth of these emissions that are beyond our control. Could the estimates stated by Schuur be wrong? Yes. They could be high and they could be low. Every permafrost site is different in some way, and there is no practical way to measure and accumulate all the data pursuant to knowing the true emissions from all of those sites.
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New studies suggest that Arctic sea ice may vanish sooner than expected (Phys.org). Current models are constructed in ways that do not explain very well certain events known to have happened in the past. The new models have simulations that could reasonably be enacted in reality and thereby correct the discrepancies. “They further suggest that their findings do not bode well for the current warming trend, because it suggests that Arctic sea ice will begin vanishing sooner than older climate models have predicted—and less ice means less energy reflection, contributing to faster global warming.” (They do not say how many years are possibly at stake in the timing difference. It could not be a big number.)
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Forests in the high Canadian Arctic, 56 million years ago, were much like the boreal forests of today that are far to the south (University of Saskatchewan). Multiple plant fossils tell the story in today’s tundra zones that have long and dark winters, where hardly anything now grows. “The presence of these forests gives us an idea about what could happen over long periods of time if our modern climate continues to warm, and also how forest ecosystems responded to greenhouse climates in the distant past…..If we are able to understand how ecosystems long ago responded to global warming, we may be able to better predict how our own modern ecosystems will respond to our own rapidly warming climate.” The average temperature difference from today was probably at least 5C warmer.
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The oil industry wants the US government to spend more heavily on carbon capture research, and subsidizing of related facilities (Axios). This perfectly rational idea would usefully help them extend their production life, at no internal cost. It is especially interesting as a sign that the industry is now being forced to accept the fact that carbon emissions are a problem. They could easily have asked for the same things many years ago, but then preferred to maintain a policy of complete denial. I think this move helps to boost arguments in favor of a carbon tax. It even suggests a reasonable number—$110 per ton of CO2 emitted!
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A much cheaper way to produce hydrogen from water may have been found (University of New South Wales). Other research groups have the same goal in mind, and there is always one making a similar report of progress. This is one of the better-looking of such reports. Cheap hydrogen would have good uses beyond fuel cells, such as the heating of buildings.
Carl