Could a “Mercury Bomb” Explode in the Arctic?

As frozen Arctic permafrost thaws in a warming climate, an enormous amount of toxic mercury could be released, which would have serious health implications locally, regionally and globally, according to USC Dornsife Earth Sciences Prof. Josh West. Permafrost holds more mercury than the Earth’s oceans, atmosphere and all other soils — combined. West and his team are conducting experiments in Alaska’s Yukon River Basin to determine how quickly mercury is being released from permafrost and how soon a “mercury bomb” might explode.

[AviNerd]

lets not forget that we are releasing tons of water from the reactor in Japan.... The Earth's Axis is changing and there is nothing we can do about it, the ice will continue to melt as the earth continues to warm from within and the pole's are shifting.

[the_Novelist]

I'm not sure this video had the intended affect they were going for...

[robertmoore]

Magnets, or some way to attract that stuff or catch it before it has the chance to spread around.

[ibezag]

these prophetic events happening around us!!!!

[TheGreatTimtini]

Another definite maybe, but give us more money.

[MarcosRodriguez-yhzv]

OH my GOD ; now we can forget 1.6 million tonnes of unexplodes weapons on the sea floor of North and Baltic sea . Goverments around the world dump obsolete munitions into the sea ; read for example ( en/wikipedia : Paardenmarkt )

[grnhrntskato]

"We won't get fooled again..." Song lyrics to live by. Don't get sucked into this latest climate alarmism. Just look at the lack of uncertainty in their own statement.

"The Arctic is warming four times faster than the global average, destabilizing permafrost soils that have remained frozen for two or more years and that underlie much of the Arctic, " the researchers wrote in the paper. "While moderate climate scenarios project 15 [percent] to 87 percent permafrost loss by 2100, extreme scenarios estimate up to 99 percent loss."

They project a permafrost loss somewhere between 15 and 99 percent. Sweet Jesus. This simply tells us there they give themselves a 75% margin of error. Given that size of error, there is no reason to believe that the they are correct about the 15%. Further, the airspace over the Artic is not a sealed system. How could the Artic warm 4 times faster than the rest of the globe?

The second law of thermodynamics does not recognize a geopolitical designation on a map. The artic and the areas of the planet around it are not separate and isolated systems. There are no physical barriers preventing the atmosphere from moving freely in and out of the artic. In other words, if the temperature in the artic went up 4 times, the areas around it would experience rising temperatures AND the artic temperature would drop as it lost energy to the rest of the atmosphere.

"When two initially isolated systems in separate but nearby regions of space, each in thermodynamic equilibrium with itself but not necessarily with each other, are then allowed to interact, they will eventually reach a mutual thermodynamic equilibrium. The sum of the entropies of the initially isolated systems is less than or equal to the total entropy of the final combination. Equality occurs just when the two original systems have all their respective intensive variables (temperature, pressure) equal; then the final system also has the same values."

I suppose it's a way to get grant money.

[witch]

the two "cities" that were studied were beaver and some other population of both less that 300...(millions) are a better eye catcher

[jedcletis]

Title "Could a “Mercury Bomb” Explode in the Arctic?" reads like question, not a fact just saying. :)

[scott]

More fear porn by the media. You folks never disappoint.

[ctwatcher]

Who did it? US govt or Russia? I bet US because Russia owns Alaska.