Carbon cycle conundrums: cave deposits show surprising shift in permafrost over the last 400,000 years

Six most common speleothems [image credit: Dave Bunnell / Under Earth Images @ Wikipedia]

The MIT research article this report is based on includes the phrase ‘carbon cycle conundrums’ in its title. In the discussion section we find this: ‘However, atmospheric CO2 and CH4 concentrations did not exceed Holocene levels during MIS 11, seemingly indicating that widespread ground thaw did not initiate a permafrost carbon feedback where increased atmospheric greenhouse gases and subsequent warming thaw permafrost that releases more greenhouse gases.’ If no ‘carbon feedback’, what does that say about the theories behind current climate paranoia?
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Nearly one quarter of the land in the Northern Hemisphere, amounting to some 9 million square miles, is layered with permafrost—soil, sediment, and rocks that are frozen solid for years at a time, says Phys.org.

Vast stretches of permafrost can be found in Alaska, Siberia, and the Canadian Arctic, where persistently freezing temperatures have kept carbon, in the form of decayed bits of plants and animals, locked in the ground.

Scientists estimate that more than 1,400 gigatons of carbon is trapped in the Earth’s permafrost.

Cart before horse: Agenda driven science

This email from the FOIA2011 release demonstrates one of the ways in which the agenda of those funding scientific work skews the way proposals for research are constructed. The back story to this one is the desire of the political paymasters of the Carbon Climate Catastrophe Crew to downplay uncertainty in the science. This bolsters the appearance that ‘the science is settled’ and those dissenting from the ‘consensus’ can be safely ignored.

(italics are mine)

date: Fri, 22 Nov 1996 08:42:56 +0100
from: Wolfgang Cramer
subject: Re: missing-c
to: Mike Hulme ,  Colin Prentice

Dear Mike, dear Colin,
I like the acronym, in general, but at the same time I think it 
would emphasize too much of the missing C story which I believe many 
funding agencies are tired to hear about. Even though this is a 
missing-C-proposal, too, I think we should really emphasize the 
interannual question, rather than the absolute location of the C sink.
But this made me wonder, and I’ll ask this to Colin as well: What 
about the “political preparation” for this proposal. Do you have any 
idea who to contact in Brussels and ask about further views on the 
draft before the deadline?