Scientist Sergei Zimov studies organic matter exposed by melting permafrost in the Arctic tundra, as recorded in a Reuters photoshoot in 2007

“.. if humanity wishes to preserve a planet similar to that on which civilization developed and to which life on earth is adapted, paleoclimate evidence and ongoing climate change suggest that CO2 will need to be reduced from its current 385 ppm to at most 350 ppm.”

That is James Hansen and co-authors, in the abstract to a new paper for Science. He runs the NASA Goddard Institute for Space Studies, among other things.

Riffing around that statement, TomDispatch is suggesting that the climate problem is very very very scarey, and cites the Australian drought as a prime indicator of the problem.


Yesterday, in the arid country beyond the mountains that end in Bendigo, I mowed the half acre we are about to sell for whatever we can get. I put the Victa over the dead remains of the tree under which we buried our previous dog, Coco.

In the bush house we had before that, we had one good year of rain, which brought the summer undergrowth to the trees to create the tangle which the pioneers knew when they cleared what they called “acres of sky”. This was high rainfally country, a bit into the rainshadow from Beech Forest, the wettest place in Victoria. The year was 1992.

Meanwhile, the methane keeps pouring outof the Siberian permafrost, as it melts and preserved organic matter decays anerobically. Much of which turns out to be mammoth shit.

Sergei Zimov has spent 28 years at a research station on the edge of the Siberian Sea.

“The melting of permafrost cannot be stopped, Zimov said, but it could be slowed.

Not far from the research station is a 40,000-acre tract of wilderness that Zimov believes could one day turn the tide against permafrost thaw. He calls it Pleistocene Park, after the Ice Age epoch when mammoths roamed Siberia.

Zimov is reintroducing the grasses and herbivores that dominated northern Siberian steppes 10,000 years ago, and he plans to bulldoze portions of the park’s larch forest and shrubland. Foxtail and cotton grass are taking root, providing fodder for Yakutian horses, reindeer, musk oxen and bison Zimov envisions on the park’s flatlands.

Steppe terrain inhibits permafrost thaw because it retains less heat than forests and lakes, and because grass-eating mammals pack down the snow as they graze, lessening the snow’s ability to insulate the soil and keep it warmer.

It’s nothing less than the creation of a new ecosystem, a daunting task aimed at building a bulwark against global warming. It will take years before the park’s herds are large enough to make a discernible difference. But Zimov hopes the park serves as a template for similar efforts across Siberia’s warming permafrost.

“The key is to show progress here, and show it quickly,” Zimov said. “It’s a very good idea and a very serious idea. It’s not about how many fingers does a beetle have.”

The notion that we can artificially repair the damage is fantastically pathetic.

Just to cap off an extremely grim post, let us contemplate the koala bear. Once hunted towards extinction, recovering in remnant forest, beating off chlamydia, they are now at risk because of their particular culinary biology.

Professor Hume’s group have shown in the laboratory that increases in CO2 affect the level of nutrients and ‘anti-nutrients’ (things that are either toxic or interfere with the digestion of nutrients) in eucalypt leaves. Anti-nutrients in eucalypts are built from carbon and an increase in carbon dioxide levels will favour the production of anti-nutrients over nutrients.

In other words, the plant products that contain more carbon dioxide are less edible to the extremely efficient but picky koala.

Professor Ian Hume’s work is sanely described here.