The permafrost – up until now, permanently frozen land and soil – is thawing out, and revealing its hidden secrets. Alongside Pleistocene fossils are massive carbon and methane emissions, toxic mercury, and ancient diseases.
Now is the time to demand Climate Accountability
The organic-rich permafrost holds an estimated 1,500 billion tons of carbon, about twice as much carbon in the atmosphere, and three times as much carbon than that stored in all the world’s forests. Around 10% of the carbon that does defrost will probably be released as CO2, amounting to 130-150 billion tonnes. That is equivalent to the current rate of total US emissions, every year until 2100.
Now is the time to demand Climate Accountability
In the summer of 2016, a group of nomadic reindeer herders began falling sick from a mysterious illness. Rumors began circling of the “Siberian plague”, last seen in the region in 1941. When a young boy and 2,500 reindeer died, the disease was identified: anthrax. Its origin was a defrosting reindeer carcass, a victim of an anthrax outbreak 75 years previously.
Now is the time to demand Climate Accountability
A French study in 2014 took a 30,000 year-old virus frozen within permafrost, and warmed it back up in the lab. It promptly came back to life, 300 centuries later.
Now is the time to demand Climate Accountability
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http://www.bbc.com/future/story/20190612-the-poisons-released-by-melting-arctic-ice