I can only offer this anecdote in response: at a presenation by
LANL's Rajan Gupta on the consequences of warming, he was asked:
"What happens if the permafrost starts to melt?"
His highly technical and scientific reply: "We're screwed."
db
On Aug 13, 2007, at 4:24 PM, Robert Cordingley wrote:
Since there's been a fair amount of climate change discussion here...
Does anyone know of, or has anyone seen reports on the rate of CO2
release that _results_ from global warming, as tundra melt and
decomposes, as sea waters warm and are able to dissolve less gases,
etc.? How does that rate compare with anthropogenic atmospheric
CO2? Is it possible the CO2 levels might be intrinsically unstable
until we reach some new higher plateau? I think Al Gore's
presentation refers to a possible threshold (of no return) - same
thing.
There was an interesting NOVA Science Now on PBS (http://
www.pbs.org/wgbh/nova/sciencenow/3318/01.html) that described a
theory/hypothesis of the cause of the Permian mass extinction 250
million years ago and linked it to volcanism/CO2/warming and
anaerobic seas that generated large quantities of the toxic H2S
(there is an anaerobic lake in central NY state, as an example).
It didn't say how the seas returned to their aerobic state and the
website says it's a puzzle requiring more research. Lee Kump had a
computer model of the extinction that included the life forms of
the time to explain how it all came about.
If anyone has references to readings on either of these subjects
I'd be grateful.
Thanks,
Robert C.
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