This month’s open thread on climate science topics. Note that summaries of annual climate data from 2021 will start to appear in a couple of weeks, and updates to the model/observations comparisons will appear a week or so after that.
PS. New year, new moderation policy. Please be substantive – sniping, insults, and tedious repetition will just be culled. We want to maintain a civil and productive discourse here, but the comment threads may need to be re-evaluated if that doesn’t happen.
A blast from the past. I’ve been talking about risk-based discussions for at least 11 years. Won’t you join me?
https://www.realclimate.org/index.php/archives/2011/09/unforced-variations-sep-2011/comment-page-5/#comment-215207
Is it proof? No. Is it enough to stop and think to ourselves, “Oh, holy poop in my pants?” Yup.
Given the speed of change in the Arctic and all the other evidence, this is not something we want to be cagey about in discussion….
Let the scientists do their cagey scientist thing, but for heaven’s sake, can’t we simply acknowledge all the evidence is bad, the chance of a significant rise in Arctic methane emissions is very high, and the risk is so great we’d better do something about it regardless of what we can prove or not?
About three years ago Gavin Schmidt wrote an article on this website suggesting the probability of a methane bomb going off in the arctic is very low ( or something like that). Gavin have you changed your views since then? I have seen photos of collapsing holes in the permafrost. Do those change your previous views?
https://www.bbc.com/future/article/20201130-climate-change-the-mystery-of-siberias-explosive-craters
[Response: No. – gavin]
@Gavin
You said “no”, I respect that. At what global temperature rise will/could the methane dragon awaken? 2°C? 3C°? What’s your take?
Nigelj
I have also looked after it.
Look at the Yamal peninsula with Google map air photo. It is full of circular holes of the same size and kind as theese famedous methane blubs, So I conclude that it is natural and very traditional.
And if you judge the landscape type, very flat and moist marshland with deep clay and turf sediments and….. permafrost….you can find the same all over the subarctic, Also in Alaska.
Killian @28 JAN 2022 AT 5:15 AM (responding to Piotr).
Nigel: Killian youre not stupid so please stop digging yourself into a hole. Piotr was broadly right. Anyone with half a brain can see it. Best policy is to either admit your were wrong, or just ignore him. Hes criticised comments I made. Its just painful watching you try to defend the indefensible.
Killian (quoting someone): “ Methane breaches 1900. Prof. Eliot Jacobson seems to think it matters. Nothing to see here…?”
Piotr: “Appears to be mostly mid-latitude and equatorial biological methane from rice farming, natural wetland decay and ruminant livestock. The Arctic/Siberian component is not (yet) substantial. ”
Killian: “Straw Man stupid. I made no statement of where it came from. I made one statement, that it was rising and, via the question form, implied people are not taking it seriously enough.
Nigel: NOT A STRAWMAN. Is it not possible for this Killian guy to understand that Piotr is just discussing and giving his OPINION? How hard can that be?
————————————————
Piotr: “your claim that it may be a harbinger of a widespread CH4 release from the Siberian subsea permafrost is the LEAST LIKELY explanation, because the MORE LIKELY alternatives are:”
Killian: “Again, the lies. Straw Men are a weak-minded person’s refuge. Facts cannot win for you, so you must lie. Nothing in that post made ANY claim at all. IF, learn the word. IF they are ongoing. How the hell is that any kind of prediction? Stupid of you…….. “COULD be permafrost” This is called a modal verb. It is used to express possibilities, probabilities. COULD is one of the weakest. The total if/then + could is so far from a prediction so as to bring into question your general intellect. That is, calling that a prediction is fucking stupid.”
Nigel: Again this is not a strawman because all Piotr was doing was expressing an opinion.
THIS IS ACTUALLY KILLIANS CLASSIC NITPICKING PEDANTRY. Firstly saying ” if they are ongoing ” does not in any way obviate the fact Killian was making a claim / some sort of prediction. Secondly Piotr said “Your claim that it “may be” a harbinger of a widespread CH4 release”. Killian responds he was only saying it “Could be”. Except that heres no substantive difference between may be and could be in this context. Killians comment is meaningless pedantry.
@XRRC & Carbomontanus
You both are spot on. It’s the same with plastic eg:
The normal people should separate their garbage and avoid plastic, while the plastic production goes on and on. There is a German saying:
” The fish starts to stink at the head (not at the tail).”
Of course we are spot on. We’re living breathing know it all geniuses old chap. Y’all so lucky we don’t mind slumming it.
Killian @28 JAN 2022 AT 5:15 AM
Killian says :“Piotr, you always have been, and always will be, a troll and a liar.
Hmmmm. I find it very hard to agree with that. I’ve read all Piotrs comments on this page and many of his other comments and I cant see evidence Piotr is a troll or a liar. Trolling is normally defined as 1) making inflammatory statements to annoy the group and 2) making very personally abusive statements. I cant see any of this in Piotrs commentary on this website. Killian provides no evidence, NO EXAMPLES to back up his claim.
And its very hard to know if someones lying. You have to show deliberate intent. There is nothing to suggest Piotr has lied, not even remotely.
Piotr does criticise things. Criticism is not trolling. And he is sarcastic. Piotr: Bachelor of Sarcasm Degree. But sarcasm is amusing and is not trolling.
I do see evidence Killian is a troll because he is both inflammatory and personally abusive:. For example: “Straw Man stupid….The world burns, you mewl like a an adult with an infant’s intellect…. What a tool…” The list doesn’t stop there. And isn’t it ironic. Pot kettle very black indeed.
I occasionally disagree with some of Piotrs comments, but Piotr’s technical and scientific criticisms of peoples commentary do look mostly accurate to me. If I thought he was wildly wrong on something significant I would say. I get quite picky at times.
XRRC: “ On this page there are 56 matches for ‘Killian’ indicating there are some extremely unstable obsessive compulsive people posting offensive abuse and insults at will and lying about others using slander and distortions. ”
So, your ENTIRE (and therefore sufficient) proof is that … His name appears on this page 56 times?
Encouraged by your numerical analysis, I tried it too: “On this page there are 65 matches for ‘Piotr'”. Whaaat ???
I must be the target of EVEN MORE “extremely unstable obsessive compulsive people posting offensive abuse and insults at will and lying about [Piotr] using slander and distortions.” Who those individua might be? Let’s see:
1) Killian, 2) the Artist Formerly Known as Reality Check, 3) Knows it All, 4) Keith Woollard, 5) Macias Shurly, and 6) Nemesis. The Magnificent Six!
Here’s the CH4 link. Oops.
You don’t have to believe me; believe Zach Labe.
https://twitter.com/ZLabe/status/1487988356654919683?t=rW9VDpdY-pIaUUNQJu8lDA&s=19
I’m wrong about ‘lying’ that’s not the right word to use. I take that back. It is what it is and doesn’t matter anyway..
The temperatures in Germany this winter are still unreal, still up to +12C° the coming days (expires):
https://wetter.tagesschau.de/deutschland/aussichten.html#aussichten
I have experienced almost 60 winters so far, but I have never seen anything like this, total failure, just unreal. U.N.R.E.A.L.
UN Climate Change @UNFCCC 16h 30 January 2022
What happens in the Arctic doesn’t stay in the Arctic, and this also applies to the impacts of rapidly melting #permafrost. The only solution is to cut emissions.
If you’re not thinking about the climate impacts of thawing permafrost, (here’s why) you should be
https://news.un.org/en/story/2022/01/1110722
Earth’s permafrost is thawing, and indigenous communities in the Arctic and scientists around the world say it’s high time this alarming loss of ground ice receives the global attention – and dedicated research – it deserves. As this phenomenon reshapes landscapes, displaces whole villages, and disrupts fragile animal habitats; it also threatens to release dangerous microorganisms and potential carbon emissions that have been locked in ice for thousands of years.
Dr. Merritt Turetsky @queenofpeat Jan 19
In some Arctic regions, permafrost can thaw over weeks to months. Abrupt thaw affects <20% of the Arctic, but these areas have stockpiled the most carbon. Reducing human emissions will keep some of this carbon in the ground where it is climate-safe. https://twitter.com/queenofpeat
Although ground temperature increases in permafrost regions are well documented there is a knowledge gap in the response of permafrost carbon to climate change.
http://www.permafrostcarbon.org/syntheses.html
3.2. Uncertainties of subsea permafrost estimates and greenhouse gas exchange
Based on expert comments, the primary contributor to uncertainty in the subsea permafrost domain is insufficient field observations. Almost every expert mentioned this conspicuous knowledge gap. The lack of data reduces the reliability of estimates of carbon pools and fluxes as well as the thermal and hydrological conditions of submerged permafrost. Experts pointed out that our ignorance of terrestrial and marine permafrost linkages does not simply create uncertainty in current estimates, it limits our ability to anticipate thresholds and unexpected linkages.
One unexpected finding of this research was that the dearth of data on the subsea permafrost domain is partially due to divisions in the subsea permafrost research community. While previous expert assessments on other topics have always involved strong opinions and evidence-based disagreements (Schuur et al 2013, Abbott et al 2016), we found that many invited experts declined to participate or at least expressed serious concerns because of political and territorial considerations, including perceived or real threat of retribution or negative professional consequences. These rifts between research groups and culture of antagonistic competition long precede this paper, as evidenced by unsuccessful synthesis efforts in the past and frequent rebuttals and conflict surrounding published and presented research products (e.g. Thornton et al (2019)).
https://iopscience.iop.org/article/10.1088/1748-9326/abcc29