Submitted by Anonymous on Sat, 08/31/2013 - 07:47
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Arctic Sunlight and Microbial Interactions

Climate change has been a hard issue to deal with and solve for a long time now. With the introduction of this cyclical self-reinforcing process with the permafrost do you think global warming is reversible on the human time scale or has the problem progressed too far? What would be required at this point to tip the scales back in the other direction (if possible)?? Immediate action, greater technology and innovations, different economical structure??

Alison Duerwald

Sat, 08/31/2013 - 17:19

Anonymous

Alison -
It's very hard to make predictions of how climate will change in the future, but it seems that at this point some warming is pretty much irreversible over the short term. In fact, we really haven't done much to even slow down the steady increase in CO2 emissions, much less reduce them. All of the things you mention would help - immediate action (ANY action!), technological innovation, and economic changes. This year we'll look at some of these possibilities and maybe figure out what the best approaches would be.
- Mr. T