Thursday, September 3, 2009

Trouble in the Tundra

Letter to Editor of Chemical and Engineering News:
I was attracted to your article "Trouble in the Tundra" (8/17/09 Edition; page 39) primarily because of its length. I thought that since it was four pages, there must be something good there.
I read about half of it. I like adventure stories. It isn't an adventure story. I thought maybe it contributes something to the advancement of science. It isn't that. I thought maybe we can find the writers "agenda" from the last paragraph, which is usually the case in most semi-scientific writing. It's there in the last sentence, "Our best mitigation is slowing down overall warming ". Ha! It's CLIMATE CONTROL.
Now I started looking for some of the detail which has led to this author's conclusion. I saw the word "Thermokarst". It's a new word, but is that any reason to beat it to death.
More specifically on detail, it says, "permafrost contains layers upon layers of carbon that has been locked away for tens of thousands of years. This is an important point, because it appears to be factual, rather than an opinion.
When the author talks about "carbon", he likely refers to what we normally call "humus". He likely does not refer to solid carbon, such as anthracite coal or diamond.
Humus is formed from decaying vegetation by the action of soil bacteria. Vegetation is only produced at temperatures above freezing. Similarly, soil bacteria are only active at temperatures above freezing. This means that each layer of humus formed, and which constitutes the permafrost, was generated at a time when temperatures were above freezing.
This means that there were many periods in the tens of thousands of years that temperatures were above freezing. Does this imply that during each of those periods, there was a lot of man-made global warming from automobiles, electricity generation, etc.? That would be a ridiculous assumption. The more likely fact is that global warming has occurred many times in the past, without any involvement by man-made activities.
It would be ridiculous assume that we can control global warming in the Arctic. Let it proceed naturally, as it has done in the past. Why not let nature lay down another "layer of carbon"? There were probably Thermokarsts thousands of years ago. We just weren't around to see them.

No comments:

Post a Comment