Bookmarked Joshua Yaffa explores the dilemmas assocaited with the thawing of the Siberian permafrost. One of the issues is that once the process starts, nature takes over, pushing it forward.

“The problem is, you can’t just turn off, let alone reverse, permafrost thaw,” Natali said. At a certain point, nature takes over. Even the most forward-thinking legislature in the world can’t pass a law banning emissions from permafrost. As Natali put it, “It won’t be possible to refreeze the ground and have it go back to how it was.”

Joshua Yaffa https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2022/01/17/the-great-siberian-thaw

In addition to the release of carbon dioxide, the thawing releases ancient organism, such as the bdelloid rotifer.

Permafrost thaw has brought to the surface all sorts of mysteries from millennia past. In 2015, scientists from a Russian biology institute in Pushchino, a Soviet-era research cluster outside Moscow, extracted a sample of yedoma from a borehole in Yakutia. Back at their lab, they placed the piece of frozen sediment in a sterilized culture box. A month later, a microscopic, wormlike invertebrate known as a bdelloid rotifer was crawling around inside. Radiocarbon dating revealed the rotifer to be twenty-four thousand years old.

Joshua Yaffa https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2022/01/17/the-great-siberian-thaw

One answer to limit the thaw is to bring back bring back mammals to return nature to order:

During the Pleistocene era, the Arctic was covered by grassy steppe, which acted as a natural buffer for the permafrost. The mammals that roamed this lost savanna depended on it for food and also perpetuated its existence. Zimov wants to re-create that ecosystem. “We must return nature to order,” he said. “It will then take care of the climate.”

The theory rests on the warming effect of snow. As Zimov explained, there isn’t much hope of quickly cooling air temperatures. But lessening the snow cover during the winter would allow more cold air to reach the permafrost.

Joshua Yaffa https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2022/01/17/the-great-siberian-thaw

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