Warming hits 'tipping point' [Siberia melting]

The Guardian (UK) ^ | August 11, 2005 | Ian Sample, science correspondent

[RightWhale]

Agriculture is impossible on permafrost.

The land won't lie flat. Once the permafrost starts to thaw it moves around and your flat field gets unmanageable.

[A message]

"Ah, they really won't have a Summer, but a Mud season?"

More like a plague of mosquitos season.

[SlowBoat407]

And I was always told that "they weren't making any more waterfront property."

[doc30]

That's why I mentioned it needs to stabilize first. I just don't know how long that would take.

[hadit2here]

Western Siberia is heating up faster than anywhere else in the world

News Flash from outside of this world!

Sun: More activity since 1940 than in previous 1150 years, combined
Guess driving those SUV's on the Sun is really screwing it up. Need to pass law to only allow SUV driving on Sun during nighttimes.

Mercury: Unexpected polar ice discovered, along with a surprisingly strong intrinsic magnetic field … for a supposedly “dead” planet
Uh Oh, Global Warming here caused by humans is creating Global Cooling on Mercury! Maybe we should send Mercury a few herds of cows to increase the methane levels.

Venus: 2500% increase in auroral brightness, and substantive global atmospheric changes in less than 30 years
Obviously caused by humans here on Earth, specifically located in No. America.

Earth: Substantial and obvious world-wide weather and geophysical changes
But we knew that- all human caused, obviously. Couldn't possibly be part of a natural cycle.

Mars: “Global Warming,” huge storms, disappearance of polar icecaps
We're not only despoiling our own planet but causing major distruptions on our neighbors also.

Jupiter: Over 200% increase in brightness of surrounding plasma clouds
Probably where all our ozone went when we drove it off by driving all those nasty SUV's. When will we ever learn?

Saturn: Major decrease in equatorial jet stream velocities in only ~20 years, accompanied by surprising surge of X-rays from equator
How much more evidence is needed to prove that all those human X-rays machines, mammograms, CAT scans, MRI's and other such stuff is killing Saturnians?

Uranus: “Really big, big changes” in brightness, increased global cloud activity.
What more can you say about clouds around Ur Anus (other than they're probably methane from farting cows on Earth)?

Neptune: 40% increase in atmospheric brightness.
Probably due to reflections of the sun off all the bald heads of humans lounging around the beach, contrary to all the dire warnings about UV caused cancer.

Pluto: 300% increase in atmospheric pressure, even as Pluto recedes farther from the Sun.
Obviously we're driving even the planets away from us! We're sending it so much stress, its blood pressure is rising. Quick, remove all the salt from Pluto and send blood pressure meds.

As an alternative to "the sky is falling and humans are the cause" theory, maybe it would be good to look at the big picture and realize that maybe... just maybe, the Solar System is cycling through its changes. And being a small, miniscule piece of protoplasm that humanity is in the really big picture, maybe mankind just isn't the cause.

Jeez, these people have supremely big egos... like those who knew that the Earth was the center of the universe and everything revolved around it. And that it was flat, too!

What maroons!

Note: All of the above solar system changes are not fantasy or theory but facts and scientific data, from a variety of highly credible institutions (including NASA itself). This material has been publicly available for nearly a decade in some cases.

[cicero's_son]

This is really tragic.

Where are they going to put the gulags now that Siberia is going temperate?

[RightWhale]

Just a few years. There are several well-established fields here abouts that were severely permafrosted fifty years ago.

[opbuzz]

Kinda makes you wonder what the weather was like when this happened.

http://www.s8int.com/boneyard4.html

[TheDon]

LOL!

[TheDon]

I thought restoring the environment to its original condition was a good thing?

Why stop there? We should exterminate all life on the planet to restore it to it's pristine state.

[dr_lew]

You mean there's been more than one?

There have been many Ice Ages. There was a particularly severe one at the end of the Permian Period, about 230 million years ago, before the rise of the dinosaurs.

More recently, there has been a sequence of glaciations, identified as the Wisconsan, Illinoisan, Kansan, and Nebraskan Ice Ages, each lasting on the order of ten thousand years, and with Interglacial ages lasting several times longer. ( Dunbar, Historical Geology )

Of course, some have wondered whether we're in an interglacial period now, with more glaciations in the offing. ( no cite, I just remember this kind of speculation. )

[jimfree]

Thanks. Let's show our support for the Friends of Venus by repeating the chant:

Oh - wah - ta - jur - ky - am

repeat

faster

[FreedomCalls]

If the permafrost were to melt wouldn't the moss in the peatmoss start growing at a faster rate and act as a carbon sink by taking in excess atmospheric carbon dioxide and offsetting any higer temperatures?

[Kevin OMalley]

Bump for later reading. Make sure we pass a law that says no one is allowed to light any candles in Siberia.

[Enchante]

"A vast expanse of western Sibera is undergoing an unprecedented thaw that could dramatically increase the rate of global warming, climate scientists warn today"

Well IF this is true then Kyoto and similar proposals are absurdly, risibly inadequate for the challenge we face anyway.... Greens will now want us all living as agrarian eco-freaks....abandon NOW all of our emissions of "greenhouse gases" and we might have a chance..... I think we need a lot more knowledge before we agree that all of modern society must be promptly dissolved and destroyed, and even that might not be enough to stop the accelerating warming trend, so let's all party until the end of the world..... :^)

[JustDoItAlways]

Here is a link to Siberia's historical temperature records, most go back to 1917.

http://www.john-daly.com/stations/stations.htm#Russia

This one for instance is in the heart of Siberia. There is no increase in temperatures at all.

http://www.john-daly.com/stations/dikson.gif

It continues to surprises me that all these studies get reported saying the temperatures have been increasing 3 Deg. C or something in the arctic when the actual measured records show nothing of the kind.

[Dementon]

Anyone know what caused the ice age?

Global cooling?

[Little Ray]

Actually, soot would reduce the albedo and increase global warming.

[<1/1,000,000th%]

Funny it didn't melt 1000 years ago when the earth was 6 degress warmer than it is now.

[Ma3lst0rm]

I think you have missed the point, the point is the peat bogs have not always been frozen, had we been alive at the time of the last Ice Age we would be hearing an entirely different perspective. It is crazy to think that warming the planet to a pre-ice age state would be bad for humanity. It is clear that biodiversity was much greater in the pre-ice age world and I don't really understand why that is a bad thing. The world will survive ecosystems will adjust and life will thrive as it always has. Either way the warming was already occurring without us and even if we could stop it why would that be a good thing? The climate is not a static system and the end of the world types need to start accepting the fact that we are going to have to deal with a warmer world regardless of whether we eliminate all green house gas emissions or not.