Copious volumes of previously stored carbon dioxide
The Beeb on the burning of the Arctic:
Wildfires are ravaging the Arctic, with areas of northern Siberia, northern Scandinavia, Alaska and Greenland engulfed in flames.
Lightning frequently triggers fires in the region but this year they have been worsened by summer temperatures that are higher than average because of climate change.
Plumes of smoke from the fires can be seen from space.
Climate change is making the summer temps higher and the resulting fires will make climate change worse, aka hello feedback loop.
In June, the fires released an estimated 50 megatonnes of carbon dioxide – the equivalent of Sweden’s annual carbon output, according to Cams.
Jonathan Amos offers some analysis:
The fires are releasing copious volumes of previously stored carbon dioxide and methane – carbon stocks that have in some cases been held in the ground for thousands of years.
Scientists say what we’re seeing is evidence of the kind of feedbacks we should expect in a warmer world, where increased concentrations of greenhouse gases drive more warming, which then begets the conditions that release yet more carbon into the atmosphere.
A lot of the particulate matter from these fires will eventually come to settle on ice surfaces further north, darkening them and thus accelerating melting.
It’s going to get worse and worse faster and faster.
If Terraforming is the engineering other worlds to be more like this one, what’s the term we use to designate the effort to turn our own planet into Venus?
Right? There was a NOVA thing on Venus the other day and I kept thinking “Earth’s future.”
Bruce, Ophelia, I have had conversations with people who believe we could live on Venus. I thought they were kidding, but they weren’t. They figured we could just build strong enough air conditioners to cool a dome! I tried to explain a few basic physics, chemistry, and ecological precepts to them, but I ended up walking away in disgust.
Oh good lord.