Posted on 10/25/2021 7:13:03 PM PDT by LibWhacker
When considering the implications of thawing permafrost, our initial worries are likely to turn to the major issue of methane being released into the atmosphere and exacerbating global warming or issues for local communities as the ground and infrastructure become unstable. While this is bad enough, new research reveals that the potential effects of permafrost thaw could also pose serious health threats.
As part of the ESA–NASA Arctic Methane and Permafrost Challenge, new research has revealed that rapidly thawing permafrost in the Arctic has the potential to release antibiotic-resistant bacteria, undiscovered viruses and even radioactive waste from Cold War nuclear reactors and submarines.
Permafrost, or permanently frozen land, covers around 23 million square kilometers in the northern hemisphere. Most of the permafrost in the Arctic is up to a million years old—typically the deeper it is, the older it is.
In addition to microbes, it has housed a diverse range of chemicaEuropean Space Agencyl compounds over millennia whether through natural processes, accidents or deliberate storage. However, with climate change causing the Arctic to warm much faster than the rest of the world, it is estimated that up to two-thirds of the near-surface permafrost could be lost by 2100.
Thawing permafrost releases greenhouse gases—carbon dioxide and methane—to the atmosphere, as well as causing abrupt changes to the landscape.
However, research, published recently in Nature Climate Change, found the implications of waning permafrost could be much more widespread—with potential for the release of bacteria, unknown viruses, nuclear waste and radiation, and other chemicals of concern.
The paper describes how deep permafrost, at a depth of more than three meters, is one of the few environments on Earth that has not been exposed to modern antibiotics. More than 100 diverse microorganisms in Siberia's deep permafrost have been found to be antibiotic resistant. As the permafrost thaws, there is potential for these bacteria to mix with meltwater and create new antibiotic-resistant strains.
Another risk concerns by-products of fossil fuels, which have been introduced into permafrost environments since the beginning of the industrial revolution. The Arctic also contains natural metal deposits, including arsenic, mercury and nickel, which have been mined for decades and have caused huge contamination from waste material across tens of millions of hectares.
Now-banned pollutants and chemicals, such as the insecticide dichloro-diphenyl-trichloroethane, DDT, that were transported to the Arctic atmospherically and over time became trapped in permafrost, are at risk of re-permeating the atmosphere.
In addition, increased water flow means that pollutants can disperse widely, damaging animal and bird species as well as entering the human food chain.
There is also greater scope for transportation of pollutants, bacteria and viruses. More than 1000 settlements, whether resource extraction, military and scientific projects, have been created on permafrost during the last 70 years. That, coupled with the local populace, increases the likelihood of accidental contact or release. Despite the findings of the research, it says the risks from emergent microorganisms and chemicals within permafrost are poorly understood and largely unquantified. It states that further in-depth research in the area is vital to gain better insight into the risks and to develop mitigation strategies.
The review's lead author, Kimberley Miner, from NASA Jet Propulsion Laboratory, said, "We have a very small understanding of what kind of extremophiles—microbes that live in lots of different conditions for a long time—have the potential to re-emerge. These are microbes that have coevolved with things like giant sloths or mammoths, and we have no idea what they could do when released into our ecosystems.
"It's important to understand the secondary and tertiary impacts of these large-scale Earth changes such as permafrost thaw. While some of the hazards associated with the thaw of up to a million years of material have been captured, we are a long way from being able to model and predict exactly when and where they will happen. This research is critical."
ESA's Diego Fernandez added, "Research being conducted as part of the ESA–NASA Arctic Methane and Permafrost Challenge within our Science for Society program is vital to understanding the science of the changing Arctic. Thawing permafrost clearly poses huge challenges, but more research is needed. NASA and ESA are joining forces to foster scientific collaboration across the Atlantic to ensure we develop solid science and knowledge so that decision-makers are armed with the correct information to help address these issues."
Could release flying pizzas too...
Give me global warming.
I’m still trying to figure out the downside of warmer temperatures, longer growing seasons, lower heating costs, and flooded out leftist hell hole cities.
But if everyone wears masks, we will be protected.
“The propaganda is strong in that one.”
The sun will do what it will.
Don’t forget the Ted Danson Doomsday Calendar giving us 10 years to live back in 1990. I remember Rush making a whole load of fun about it.
The sun won’t do much when the arctic doesn’t see it for about half the year and when it does, it’s angle of incidence is so low that it never gets to a decent amount of insolation.
The heat from the sun is just too spread out and diffused through too much atmosphere that far north to have a lot of impact on the permafrost.
How far towards the equator was the permafrost in the last ice age? It seems like the melting brought forth centuries of prosperity and enlightenment.
Doesn’t anyone think there is positive things happening in the world? I guess only negative.
Eskimos have been digging around in
this stuff for generations. As have
paleontologists and archeologists.
Have any died of new-found viruses
or bacteria born illnesses? If they
had, the climate change crowd would
have trumpeted the news supporting
their cause. What a bunch of hooey.
I doubt that it could be any more of a danger then the national Institute of health doing gain of function research.
At the Last Glacial Maximum, continuous permafrost covered a much greater area than it does today, covering all of ice-free Europe south to about Szeged (southeastern Hungary) and the Sea of Azov (then dry land)[45] and East Asia south to present-day Changchun and Abashiri.[46] In North America, only an extremely narrow belt of permafrost existed south of ithe ice sheet at about the latitude of New Jersey through southern Iowa and northern Missouri, but permafrost was more extensive in the drier western regions where it extended to the southern border of Idaho and Oregon.
Gold miners have been cutting through permafrost with steam hoses for over 100 years.
One how did all that frozen nuclear waste and abandoned nuclear submarine reactors get up under the Artic permafrost in the first place?
Just wait until they come across the massive deposits of frozen used chewing and bubble gum. We’re really gonna be stuck then. Not to mention all those abandoned aluminium trays from used TV dinners. Most insidious of all is the 127 billion tons of discarded filled S&H Green Stamp book, abandoned 1950s gas station give away items, the Air Force’s frozen nerve gas bombs, and the mountain of Edward R. Murrow’s cigarette butts.
“I’m still trying to figure out the downside of warmer temperatures ...”
Me too. And permafrost thaw would produce more plant life which would eat CO2.
I can think of one. The leftists inhabiting those hell holes will migrate. Maybe to a locality near you.
Freegards!
The whole aim of practical politics is to keep the populace alarmed (and hence clamorous to be led to safety) by an endless series of hobgoblins, most of them imaginary.
H.L. Mencken
They already are.
>:(
What I find curious is that the terms, "warmer," and, "cooler," are relative terms that imply an established baseline. Things can only be, "warmer," if compared to something, "cooler," and vice versa. The verbiage is easily manipulated. If one provides a baseline, "warmer and cooler," are objective terms; however, used without an established standard they are (highly) subjective terms and easily employed as part of an informal fallacy.
I have shut down every discussion, argument, debate about, "climate change," I've ever engaged in by asking what the, "ideal," average global temperature should be. If a person was given total, omnipotent control of the earth's thermostat, where should it be set? 65 deg.? 68? 72? If we are going to mobilize all of mankind, governments of every nation and global finance and industry to lower earth's temperature, shouldn't there be a target temperature we are trying to achieve? What is that temperature?
People are swept up in the emotion-driven prattle and agitprop that we are getting, "too warm," without ever stopping to think about what that actually could mean.
“I swear, they sit up nights dreaming up new ways to cry wolf.”
You’re probably right, but this one isn’t new. It gets recycled every few years and has been for I would guess about 40 or 50. I think the radioactive thing might be new, though, so I’ll give them credit for that.
The fact that no one will admit is that the current drought affecting the California desert is the normal condition.
The recent past (60 years?) is anomaly
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