permafrost
-
Critical List: A small fracking victory; fracking still sucks
In New York, government officials are extending the public comment period on fracking rules. In Pennsylvania, a judge gave Cabot Oil & Gas Corp. permission to stop supplying fresh water to families whose well water was tainted by fracking operations. And the Chesapeake Bay Foundation used infrared video to document emissions pouring out of natural […]
-
Digging for permafrost in the Last Frontier
How much carbon is being released by the thawing of the Arctic's so-called permafrost? Ecologist Ted Schuur braves Alaska to find out.
-
Costs of inaction: the price of ice
Click for a larger version.Image: NASAArctic sea ice extent averaged over Januray 2011 its lowest recorded levels since satellite records began in 1979. It was 19,300 square miles below the record low of 5.25 million square miles, set in 2006, and 490,000 square miles below the 1979 to 2000 average. Climate change, the crisis many […]
-
If you’re not worried about melting permafrost, you should be
“If we lost just 1 percent of the carbon in permafrost today, we’d be close to a year’s contributions from industrial sources. I don’t think policymakers have woken up to this. It’s not in their risk assessments.” — Permafrost expert Chris Burn of Carleton Universiy
-
NCDC: Second hottest June on record — and El Nino “to threaten previous record highs”
Fast on the heels of the fourth warmest May on record, NOAA’s National Climatic Data Center reports: Based on preliminary data, the globally averaged combined land and sea surface temperature was the second warmest on record for June, and the January-June year-to-date tied with 2004 as the fifth warmest on record. NCDC notes that the […]