“If we mitigate, or reduce, human emissions, [it] looks like you can avoid 70 to 80 percent of the permafrost climate feedback,” Ben Abbott of Brigham Young University.
Which buys us some time, no? But not to dither that time away by wringing our hands and pooh-poohing current action plans like the Green New Deal, instead, throw everything we have at it.
I read with great interest Meteor Blades brilliant diary from yesterday, What do Green New Deal naysayers propose for dealing with the climate crisis? Thoughts and Prayers? Sure enough, there were some naysayers in the comments (an interesting discussion commenced among progressives).
Climate scientists find that the most terrifying scenario of the crisis, the Methane Time Bomb, is unlikely. That comes with a disconcerting qualifier.
Though a near-term bomb-like methane release is unlikely, it is true, and concerning, that the Arctic is gradually releasing methane as permafrost melts. That’s still dangerous, and it’s time to take action, scientists in the video suggest.
This is why action plans like the New Green Deal are critical to implementing immediately, incrementalism means extinction. No matter what we do or don’t do, remember, a two-degree rise is better than three and a three-degree rise is better than four. Doing nothing? We go to four or five.
From Yale Climate Connections:
It's not news that climate science can be alarming. But in this video, climate scientists explain that one of the scariest ideas in the literature — the methane “time bomb” — turns out to be less worrisome than some have feared. “This is a call to action, not a declaration of defeat,” says scientist Ben Abbott of Brigham Young University.
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This month’s “This is Not Cool” video explores a frightening scenario that scientists began exploring in earnest about a decade ago. They worried that warming in the Earth’s polar regions soon could lead to a meltdown of frozen methane deposits, causing an enormous release of that potent greenhouse gas to the atmosphere. That methane, 25 times as potent a heat-trapping gas as carbon dioxide, would then cause a catastrophic, rapid rise in the planet’s temperature. That scenario is the so-called “methane time bomb.”
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“It’s not a situation where we trigger breakdown, and that that breakdown is going to suddenly — like the whole deposit’s going to release its methane all of a sudden,” says geophysicist Carolyn Ruppel of the U.S. Geological Survey. “That is not a scientifically sound worry.”
Though a near-term bomb-like methane release is unlikely, it is true, and concerning, that the Arctic is gradually releasing methane as permafrost melts. That’s still dangerous, and it’s time to take action, scientists in the video suggest.
It is now or never-Resist!
Video highlights the hard work of a remarkable Florida climate activist who threw herself into the study of permafrost and methane.
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