[HN Gopher] Deep Frozen Arctic Microbes Are Waking Up
___________________________________________________________________
Deep Frozen Arctic Microbes Are Waking Up
Author : jonbaer
Score : 174 points
Date : 2020-11-21 17:07 UTC (5 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (www.scientificamerican.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.scientificamerican.com)
| echelon wrote:
| > Permafrost thaw in Siberia led to a 2018 anthrax outbreak and
| the death of 200,000 reindeer and a child.
|
| This is terrifying and not hypothetical.
| lixtra wrote:
| To be precise, the 200,000 reindeer were culled [1].
|
| [1]
| https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s10393-020-01474-z...
| nojs wrote:
| Full paper: https://sci-
| hub.se/downloads/2020-02-04/2c/10.1007@s10393-02...
|
| This presents some alternate hypotheses for the outbreak and
| claims Anthrax is fairly unique in its ability to survive
| repeated freeze-thaw cycles.
| animal_spirits wrote:
| Thanks for pointing that out. For the unfamiliar (like me a
| few seconds ago) culling means "to reduce or control the size
| of (something, such as a herd) by removal (as by hunting or
| slaughter) of especially weak or sick individuals " [1]
|
| [1] https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/cull
| CraigJPerry wrote:
| >> This is terrifying
|
| Why?
|
| It's definitely concerning but is it in the same league as say
| the fact America appears to have lost desire to retain its
| leadership in the world? Are we ready for another country to
| decide to take a shot at that role? That sounds like a
| terrifying prospect to me because i just can't see that
| happening without bloodshed.
|
| In years gone past, whatever the crisis, America would step up
| and lead. Over the past few years it's chosen, as is its right
| to do so, to step back from world leadership (trade, peace
| keeping, covid response, immigration, climate change, etc etc)
|
| What about a super volcano eruption tomorrow, we know one is
| coming but we don't know when yet we do very little to prepare
| for it, e.g. post massive disaster food crop growing research
| etc.
|
| What about the fact that electrical grids are creaking at the
| seams today in many countries and that we know it only takes
| around 2 weeks of no electrical grid to reach catastrophic
| changes to way of life (hospitals offline, perishable food
| supplies mostly gone, commerce halted etc etc)
|
| The really terrifying things don't get much in the way of
| discourse. How can this possibly be in the same league as the
| terrifying stuff we're a bit scared to talk about because there
| aren't really any great answers and there's no way to predict
| when so we have an easy way to ignore it all.
| markdown wrote:
| > In years gone past, whatever the crisis, America would step
| up and lead.
|
| Many would argue that America was the one who created many of
| those crises in the first place.
|
| American capitalism has led the world to the brink of
| destruction by climate change, so a loss in status is
| absolutely warranted.
|
| > The really terrifying things don't get much in the way of
| discourse. How can this possibly be in the same league as the
| terrifying stuff we're a bit scared to talk about because
| there aren't really any great answers and there's no way to
| predict when so we have an easy way to ignore it all.
|
| A super volcano eruption is beyond our control, so there's no
| point getting worked up about that. Nothing else pales in
| comparison to the destruction that's coming as a direct
| result of USA turning a blind eye to climate change.
| bigbubba wrote:
| Anthrax is found in the soil around the world and generally
| effects grazing animals like livestock, deer, etc. It is not
| contagious and isn't something you should lose sleep worrying
| about. It captures the public's attention because it has been
| weaponized.
|
| https://www.cdc.gov/anthrax/basics/index.html
| chordalkeyboard wrote:
| > Although it is rare in the United States, people can get
| sick with anthrax if they come in contact with infected
| animals or contaminated animal products.
|
| > Anthrax is not contagious, which means you can't catch it
| like the cold or flu.
|
| I'm not sure what the technical definition of "contagious" is
| here but I'm also not sure its helpful when you can catch the
| disease from an infected animal.
| f_o_m wrote:
| The sci-fi novel "Mind Painter" explores this in depth - good,
| scary stuff!
| shishy wrote:
| Hi,
|
| Where can I find this book? Is it this one (coming out next
| month)? https://reedsy.com/discovery/book/mind-painter-tom-b-
| night/u...
|
| Thanks.
| f_o_m wrote:
| It recently came out and is on Amazon here:
| https://www.amazon.com/Mind-Painter-Tom-B-
| Night/dp/B08NDVJ3C...
| zygotic wrote:
| Fighting, what some call, Mother Nature is essentially futile.
| Surely this is a lesson takeaway from Global Warming et al.
| based2 wrote:
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pithovirus
|
| https://www.arte.tv/fr/videos/079940-000-A/permafrost-la-bom...
| [deleted]
| cute_boi wrote:
| Hmm I think I read a similar article like 6 months ago and it's
| quite sad to read :(. And the more irritating issue is I know
| many people who deny climate change / global warming by saying
| earth has always faced climate change.
| feralimal wrote:
| "Rockabye baby, on the tree top..."
|
| Don't worry about me, just getting those microbes back to bed...
| nosmokewhereiam wrote:
| "Mycoremediation is the bioremediation technique which employ
| fungi in the removal of toxic compounds; it could be carried out
| in the presence of both filamentous fungi (moulds) and macrofungi
| (mushrooms). Both classes possess enzymes for the degradation of
| a large variety of pollutants"
|
| Maybe Paul Stammets, Michael Pollan, and the entire next
| generation of mycology experts can find a way to sporolate these
| areas in an effective way. Even if it just encapsulates and
| doesn't eliminate, it's still something.
| kleer001 wrote:
| Might be time for some Nausicaa of the Valley of the Wind style
| remediation
| Method-X wrote:
| Would be a fitting end to 2020; super COVID released from ancient
| arctic ice.
| strictfp wrote:
| https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fortitude_(TV_series)
| randycupertino wrote:
| Perhaps we'll do better for the "next" pandemic now that we
| have the infrastructure in place and learned some lessons from
| COVID? Maybe I'm grasping for silver linings and being too
| optimistic towards humanity...
| ggambetta wrote:
| One of the lessons that I've learned from this pandemic is
| that despite overwhelming evidence and over a million deaths,
| there's a non-trivial amount of people who still believe it's
| not real, or who refuse to wear a mask, or who protest
| against the few, mild, reasonable measures we can take to get
| through this alive. So if anything, my faith in humankind has
| gone down :(
| knowaveragejoe wrote:
| Conspiracy culture is a huge problem in modern society that
| I fear we won't be able to solve
| franklampard wrote:
| only in the U.S.
| quickthrowman wrote:
| Incorrect: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Protests_over_
| responses_to_t...
| bearburger wrote:
| Unfortunately I see these peoples around in Russia. My
| estimation of anti-maskers is about 10-15% of population
| here. Mostly 35-55 males who thinks that wearing a mask
| is the sign of weakness and/or keeps saying that COVID is
| "just a flu" and those who died would have been dead
| anyway in 2-3 month if not from COVID then from something
| like common cold. Even recent death of 28 y/o school
| teacher and 23 y/o political activist didn't change their
| mind.
| voqv wrote:
| Pictures of the September Moscow marathon make me think
| even the government are some kind of anti-maskers
| trhway wrote:
| a good mask will help when you're occasionally visiting
| an infectious patient in a hospital. There is nothing,
| short of full bio-defense suit, that can help in the
| densely packed Moscow (or any other large Russian city)
| subway or bus, and the people in the country have no
| resources for any prolonged lockdowns. Add to that that
| the top people in Russia, like in any other country,
| receive highly personalized healthcare, and that means
| that they have practically no risk of death from Covid as
| it is a very treatable given enough resources (antibody
| injection, etc. under very personalized treatment
| resulting in just few days of "bad flu" - i.e. while
| infection-wise Covid doesn't distinguish much, outcome-
| wise it is very socially unequal decease).
| strogonoff wrote:
| > There is nothing, short of full bio-defense suit, that
| can help in the densely packed Moscow (or any other large
| Russian city) subway or bus
|
| A mask is very effective and is worn for others, not
| yourself. At any point in time you might be carrying
| asymptomatic or not-yet-symptomatic COVID. Your mask
| prevents your saliva from flying in the air around you,
| protecting people near you and their parents/susceptible
| relatives this might get passed on to.
|
| And if it's against your interest when emergency
| healthcare can't help your sick child because they have
| not enough resources due to COVID patients, then over
| long term wearing a mask is actually for yourself, too.
| trhway wrote:
| >A mask is worn for the others, not yourself.
|
| so, imagine one "other" without a mask and everybody
| around in masks (actually "face coverings" which allow
| air in/out from sides) commuting everyday in a densely
| packed bus. Do you think that "other" has much improved
| chances when aggregated over several months? (again, i'm
| not arguing against proper mask's efficiency during
| occasional exposure)
| admax88q wrote:
| Yes, I don't see why they wouldn't. If everyone is
| wearing masks then the likelihood of transmission is
| lower. Also the viral load of any transmission may also
| be lower, which could improve the outcome.
| lenkite wrote:
| One of the big problems is that early in the Pandemic,
| the WHO, Fauci and most media said that Masks were
| useless. This was repeated several times. The turn-around
| occurred later and nobody apologised for their earlier,
| incorrect stances.
| shakna wrote:
| > One of the big problems is that early in the Pandemic,
| the WHO, Fauci and most media said that Masks were
| useless.
|
| No, the problem was that people took the statement that
| we didn't yet have the evidence on efficacy to mean that
| masks were useless.
|
| Not having evidence... Means that things can go either
| way. And the WHO didn't even stop by saying no evidence,
| they said no evidence, and then went ahead and said it
| might help anyway.
|
| > Although there is no evidence that this is effective in
| reducing transmission, there is mechanistic plausibility
| for the potential effectiveness of this measure. - WHO
| jsjohnst wrote:
| > The turn-around occurred later and nobody apologised
| for their earlier, incorrect stances.
|
| Fauci has widely explained why he felt it was justified
| at the time, admitted he was wrong, and apologized. Like
| when I just started to do a search to provide sources, it
| autocompleted the query even. Probably similar for the
| other sources you named, so I encourage you to do some
| research if interested.
| ethbr0 wrote:
| SARS-CoV-2 is pretty perfectly calibrated to hide in
| people's inability to comprehend statistics and
| probability.
|
| High transmission rate + (relatively) low complication /
| death rate = ideal conspiracy fodder
| jbay808 wrote:
| Certainly happening in Canada too, even though COVID has
| basically been treated by the government and opposition
| parties as a non-partisan issue, federally and in every
| province, as far as I'm aware.
| gastroturf wrote:
| The brain is part of the immune system.
| bnt wrote:
| We can no longer use the phrase "avoid like the plague"
| because, well, COVID-19 deniers.
| samiru wrote:
| Well, a crisis situation (be it real or manufactured) is a
| perfect vehicle for driving all kinds of agendas. It is
| natural there is some opposition.
| titzer wrote:
| The most pressing problem we have is not Coronavirus, it's
| Moronavirus.
| irrational wrote:
| The fact that people can be literally dying from COVID in a
| hospital yet still deny its existence has almost totally
| destroyed any faith I have in humanity.
| Barrin92 wrote:
| good friend of mine is a nurse. She has seen people in
| the ER with Covid deny that it exists too. There's people
| currently on oxygen who go "nah that doesn't exist I
| don't have it, the media made that up". So yeah
| ethbr0 wrote:
| Thankfully, life has a way of selecting against people
| who fail to act to preserve their own.
|
| (Said as someone whose fiance is an ICU nurse)
| rriepe wrote:
| Social Darwinism, alive and well on HN...
| ISL wrote:
| This is actual Darwinism.
| jlokier wrote:
| Unfortunately that doesn't work so well for a disease
| whose main source of risk to each person is the behaviour
| of other people.
| phs318u wrote:
| On a different time scale it does. It's selecting against
| groups/societies that reward, value or permit the kinds
| of behaviours and belief systems that allow such doggedly
| wilful ignorance to flourish.
| imperialdrive wrote:
| Millions upon millions die around the world each year due
| to poor choices. Don't let a fraction of that amount
| getting a bad flu change your outlook. Humanity is doing
| just fine. Could be better, could be worse, but take a
| slow walk around the block and I think you'll agree.
| sorokod wrote:
| Place your faith in natural selection.
| Misdicorl wrote:
| In addition to being ugly, this sentiment is pretty
| misguided. The selection pressure is _far_ too mild to
| have any evolutionary impact.
|
| To whit: covid selects primarily against individuals
| beyond their reproductive age, selects far too small of
| the population (unless we see these deaths continue for
| decades), and is only _mildly_ selecting for anti mask
| populations.
| rriepe wrote:
| Anyone who treats science as a religion ends up with a
| pretty terrifying morality.
| 411111111111111 wrote:
| You can remove science from that statement and it'll
| still be true. Whoever derives their morality from
| religion will at times behave pretty abhorrently.
|
| Thankfully nowadays even people claiming they do so often
| actually don't. I.e homosexuality is amoral according to
| the texts, but society moved on for the most part.
| [deleted]
| randmeerkat wrote:
| What helps me to keep faith in humanity is imagining
| being alive during Galileo's time. How suffocating it
| must have been for him to find everyone everywhere
| rejecting science..? Sure we have a large number of
| people now that don't believe in masks, vaccines, etc..,
| but keep in mind that the majority of the popular vote in
| the US voted for someone that does believe in science.
| Progress is being made, just sometimes it requires a step
| back to see it.
| kortilla wrote:
| > majority of the popular vote in the US voted for
| someone that does believe in science
|
| Why would Trump support accelerated vaccines if he didn't
| believe in COVID and science?
| randmeerkat wrote:
| Why would Trump's administration and Trump himself be so
| anti-masks if they believed in science?
| adamsea wrote:
| Do you yourself truthfully believe that Trump wanted to
| make policy decisions based on the best science
| available?
| Swenrekcah wrote:
| They know COVID is real and they almost certainly believe
| in science. They just don't care if it doesn't line their
| pockets.
| ralph84 wrote:
| Yeah well back when YouTube started censoring videos
| suggesting a connection between vitamin D deficiency and
| covid it became pretty clear times are not particularly
| changed from Galieo's.
| cyberlurker wrote:
| Could you provide a source please? Were the videos making
| claims that taking Vitamin D would protect against COVID
| or some other misinformation, or were they legitimately
| talking about mortality rates of those with v.D
| deficiencies?
|
| I think there is a clear difference in private platforms
| stopping the spread of misinformation (you aren't free to
| use their platform to spread information harmful to
| society) and what happened to Galileo.
|
| But I am making an assumption because I don't actually
| know what videos you are referring to.
| randmeerkat wrote:
| The fact that YouTube exists at all shows how much things
| have changed since Galileo.
| dtech wrote:
| Censoring? De-monetizing maybe but they do that with
| every video mentioning Covid no matter the contents.
| vagrantJin wrote:
| > majority of the popular vote in the US voted for
| someone that does believe in science
|
| You're an optimistic one. They would have voted for a
| three legged donkey with a nose ring and gold tooth. As
| long as it wasn't DJT.
| randmeerkat wrote:
| The thing that surprises me about modern politics is how
| much hate there is. I wonder if it was always this bad,
| or if the internet just shines a light on what was always
| there.
| x87678r wrote:
| Elon Musk is one person who is one person who thinks the
| restrictions are too strict. So maybe it is sensible for
| younger people to keep working and living near to normal.
| jaynetics wrote:
| https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ad_hominem
| saiya-jin wrote:
| Musk is a brilliant guy in many things, but psychotic
| weirdo in many others. Glad we have him, but no way he
| should be a model role to young folks who often can't
| cherry-pick the good aspects of character from flawed and
| dangerous ones, and rather think in absolutes.
| Kye wrote:
| Elon Musk is on track to become the Martian John McAfee.
| cyberlurker wrote:
| I totally agree on Musk, but I think you could say
| similar things about many "role models". We're just going
| to need to teach young folks that people are complex. In
| situations like these I think about how Dave Chappelle
| speaks of Bill Cosby.
| xellisx wrote:
| This was apparently learned in 1918 also.
| netsharc wrote:
| Fefe (a prominent German Internet commentator) posted a
| user's email yesterday which shows 3 perspectives I really
| haven't given much thought to.
|
| The Google translation is pretty good, one big mistake
| though, it mistranslated "Asi-Kindern" as "Asian children"
| instead of "asocial kids": https://translate.google.com/tra
| nslate?sl=auto&tl=en&u=http%... . And Case 1 is someone who
| builds booths for conventions.
|
| A lot of people are going through the "denial" phase of
| grief and loss, although I wonder if this is valid for the
| people who showed up with guns at state capitols...
| ativzzz wrote:
| These perspectives make a lot of sense. The livelihoods
| of people who depend on non-pandemic circumstances are
| either destroyed or are on death's door. It's a lot
| easier for us working jobs that are easy to transition to
| remote and are mildly inconvenienced by the pandemic.
|
| Hopelessness, stress and uncertainty all take huge mental
| tolls on us, and rejecting covid can help these people
| cope with this malaise.
| rdiddly wrote:
| That sounds more like the anger phase. Or maybe
| bargaining, ha!
| hef19898 wrote:
| Since this thing started, I re-read various publications
| about the black death. And the social reactions are so
| strikingly similar.
| est31 wrote:
| Do you have a list? I'm interested.
|
| I was surprised that even in 2020 you have people making
| up straight lies about covid, while I believed that the
| wild theories that people had about the plague back in
| the day (e.g. the one that blamed the jews for it) were
| born from the fact that these people haven't went to
| school and were badly educated. But now they can write
| and relevant parts of the population claim similar
| things. And COVID is way less deadly than the bubonic
| plague is. This is a pandemic in easy mode. We would have
| been in for much worse had it been like the bubonic
| plague.
| adamsea wrote:
| Sadly these days the ability to read and write is
| insufficient in order to be an informed citizen because
| of how complex our media world is.
|
| One really needs to have some solid critical thinking
| skills in order to be able to judge the overall
| reliability and trustworthiness of a book, article,
| tweet, news episode, etc.
|
| And ideally have some fundamental historical knowledge,
| basic math, logic, fundamentals of science, etc.
|
| Id argue many Americans are, through no fault of their
| own, not well-educated.
|
| EDIT:
|
| I cribbed from Noam Chomskys description of what it means
| to be educated:
|
| https://www.openculture.com/2016/04/noam-chomsky-defines-
| wha...
|
| 'Humboldt, Chomsky says, "argued, I think, very
| plausibly, that the core principle and requirement of a
| fulfilled human being is the ability to inquire and
| create constructively, independently, without external
| controls." A true education, Chomsky suggests, opens a
| door to human intellectual freedom and creative
| autonomy.'
| DyslexicAtheist wrote:
| not OP but ...
|
| John Kelly: The Great Mortality
|
| An Intimate History of the Black Death
|
| Robert S Gottfried: The Black Death - Natural and Human
| Disaster in Medieval Europe
|
| Samuel K. Cohn, Jr.: Cultures of Plague: Medical Thought
| At the End of the Renaissance
|
| Philip Ziegler: The Black Death
|
| Giovanni Boccaccio: The Decameron
|
| there are some fictional works that I enjoyed such as Ken
| Follet World Without End (should be read after Pillars of
| the Earth IMO) and it's probably not enough on-topic for
| what you're asking.
| est31 wrote:
| Thanks!
| wuschel wrote:
| I second that - this is very interesting, I would love to
| see some sources, too.
| trhway wrote:
| >lessons from COVID
|
| what in our response to COVID was better and more effective
| than our response to Black Death and Spanish flu? I don't see
| any improvement despite 700 and 100 years of accumulated
| knowledge and technology development since then. There has so
| far been no indication that the only things we were able to
| muster - archaic lockdown and masks - can prevent it from
| reaching the 20-30% spread, basically the level of
| unmitigated spread.
|
| I mean, for example, 700 years ago people couldn't know that
| that ship coming into the port of Venice brings the
| infection. A year ago we knew that this plane from Wuhan most
| probably does.
| lalos wrote:
| Maybe not the USA but Asians countries which one could
| argue will carry the torch of progress did improve.
| trhway wrote:
| yes, like Taiwan who 1. did learn the lesson from SARS
| and did immediate quarantine upon just hearing (i.e. de-
| facto using modern communication technology) about some
| strange flu appearing in China. 2. Used modern technology
| to do contact tracing. 3. Quickly scaled up extensive
| testing - again modern science and technology. Most
| places did nothing like these 3 steps. Those steps
| weren't available centuries ago and could have prevented
| the covid from becoming pandemic.
|
| Another noticeable difference is that Taiwan actions were
| real actions where the government did actually performed
| them whereis typical "actions" we see around like
| lockdown and masks are just government orders without the
| governments actually doing anything.
| jakear wrote:
| Many orders of magnitude fewer deaths, for one?
| trhway wrote:
| Orders fewer? Lets look at the Spanish flu in US - the US
| wasn't ravaged by WWI/revolutions/rebelions, didn't have
| systemic hunger, etc. and had time to and implemented
| some of those measures like quarantines/lockdowns/masks,
| so very reasonable to compare to today. Spanish flu
| killed 700K in US . Covid already 250K in US - even if we
| imagine that we're at the peak today, it still means end
| number like 500K.
| cronix wrote:
| Why do you think that? They said the same thing after "swine
| flu" during Obama. Basically, we just got lucky.
|
| "It is purely a fortuity that this isn't one of the great
| mass casualty events in American history," Ron Klain, who was
| Biden's chief of staff at the time, said of H1N1 in 2019. "It
| had nothing to do with us doing anything right. It just had
| to do with luck. If anyone thinks that this can't happen
| again, they don't have to go back to 1918, they just have to
| go back to 2009, 2010 and imagine a virus with a different
| lethality, and you can just do the math on that."
|
| https://www.politico.com/news/2020/05/04/joe-biden-
| contain-h...
| est31 wrote:
| It's gonna come sooner rather than later. Humans encroach on
| the natural habitats of animals all over the world, which
| increases the number zoonoses dramatically. Most such
| spillovers don't cause any further human to human spread.
| Think of MERS. But there are spillovers that do spread
| between humans, like in the case of SARS-Cov-2. While the
| COVID pandemic is a major catastrophy, we were still quite
| lucky. MERS has a much higher case fatality ratio. Something
| that spreads as easily as SARS-Cov-2 while being as deadly as
| MERS is entirely possible.
|
| We should start preparing once most of the population is
| vaccinated and human societies have returned to normal.
| Develop and test antivirals targetting the conserved proteins
| in major virus families. Build a pipeline that can respond to
| new viruses quickly with a vaccine. Create capacities to
| quickly ramp up mass production of PPE. Map the viruses that
| appear in animals around us to know what we are up to.
|
| I hope that political leaders will listen to the people doing
| such proposals.
| sterlind wrote:
| I hope that the new mRNA technology the Pfizer and AZ
| vaccines are based on will help us develop and manufacture
| more quickly. The delivery mechanism will be well-
| understood, the pipeline will be there, the limiting factor
| would still be knowing what to target and screening for
| safety/efficacy but it should still help.
|
| I hope similar things can be done with rapid antigen/PCR
| testing equipment.
| mikedilger wrote:
| Life that has been continually evolving as the environment
| changes is much more likely to develop into a super threat than
| life that has been frozen for ages and is waking up into a world
| that it is not optimized for.
|
| Anthrax outbreaks have occurred all around the world. Just
| because it occurred in Siberia and there is evidence that it
| survives being frozen for long periods of time doesn't mean the
| risk of some super threat from permafrost is of any exceptional
| significance.
|
| It seems however that people like to be frightened and to have
| something to panic about, especially Americans, and your
| newspapers and magazines cater to this by cherry picking data
| that can be twisted to tell a scary story.
| nix23 wrote:
| Yeah they like the Smilla's Sense of Snow shiver :)
| scientificamerican and history channel....
| somurzakov wrote:
| wait until permafrost thawes and releases gigatonnes of methane
| into the air that woukd turn our planet into a large greenhouse.
|
| from https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Arctic_methane_emissions : The
| Permian-Triassic extinction event (the Great Dying) may have been
| caused by release of methane from clathrates. An estimated 52% of
| marine genus became extinct, representing 96% of all marine
| species.
| blisterpeanuts wrote:
| What kind of quantity of newly released methane are we talking
| about, compared to the methane produced by trees and other
| plants?[1]
|
| 1.
| https://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=515109...
| sp332 wrote:
| Yeah, it's a lot.
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Arctic_methane_emissions
| clydethefrog wrote:
| See also
|
| https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Clathrate_gun_hypothesis
| adrianN wrote:
| 1% of the carbon stored in the permafrost is roughly as much
| a all of humanity is currently emitting per year. It's a lot.
| Permafrost thawing is an important tipping point in the
| climate system.
| randycupertino wrote:
| Is there an estimated timeframe on approximately when this will
| happen?
| irrational wrote:
| Isn't it already happening? Is that what is creating the huge
| methane explosions and craters in Siberia?
| samiru wrote:
| Yes. Check the Yamal Peninsula in Google Maps and you
| realize this kind of cratering is a process that has been
| going on for thousands of years (since the ice age
| really!).
| knowaveragejoe wrote:
| The scary part is that it's accelerating in on a
| timescale that's relevant to our needs as a species.
| jonsno56 wrote:
| That other person is trolling
| omgwtfbyobbq wrote:
| I think the largest deposits would take thousands of years to
| be affected, but there are shallow deposits that could be
| released, especially those near glaciers, where the glacier
| melting allows the nearby seabed to rise.
|
| https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Clathrate_gun_hypothesis
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