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Comment by Pfhreak | Hacker News Reader

Are the fires typically peat fires or forest fires? Because right now they are having the former.

Forest fires. Not sure how common peat fires are - don't know almost anything about them. Looks like a much bigger deal (because it's rare, hence the ecosystem/communities are not prepared to deal with them).

Also they're having forest fires too, like every year: http://smoke.alaska.edu/current_fires.html

> Pierre Markuse, a satellite imagery processing guru, has documented some of the blazes attacking the forests and peatlands of the Arctic.

I was just there a few weeks ago. Reduced visibility in many places due to smoke, many "thank you firefighters!" signs along the road, helicopters picking up water from some of the millions of Alaskan lakes. It's still a very beautiful place.

This isn’t about local ecosystem disruption. It’s about releasing more global warming gasses into the atmosphere than humans have produced since the start of the industrial revolution.

Carbon monoxide is probably preferable to methane in the atmosphere. (attached link discusses carbon dioxide vs methane as greenhouse gases, carbon monoxide is less troublesome than CO2) https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2014/03/140327111724.h...

This is my optimistic take! :D

The peat consists of methane, fyi.

Burning down the entire world's vegetation would result in less carbon emissions than we've already emitted. It's actually a pretty mind blowing fact.

http://www.futureearth.org/blog/2018-jan-31/how-much-carbon-...

> Trees and other vegetation are the planet’s carbon storage closet – absorbing and releasing carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gases in an ongoing cycle. But just how big is that potential? A study from December has calculated that the world’s vegetation, from Amazonian rainforests to Eurasian grasslands, may hold about 450 billion tonnes of carbon today.

https://www.co2.earth/global-co2-emissions

> From 1870 to 2014, cumulative carbon emissions totaled about 545 GtC. Emissions were partitioned among the atmosphere (approx. 230 GtC or 42%), ocean (approx. 155 GtC or 28%) and the land (approx. 160 GtC or 29%).

But we're discussing peat, which is accumulated over thousands of years.

Pardon my ignorance, that does indeed look worse.

Actually it's about carbon trapped in the permafrost, not in the peat. Idk how burning peat contributes to permafrost melt.

Elsewhere in the comments someone mentions that the released carbon from all peat burning is about 2.5 times more than all emissions since the start of the industrial revolution.

What's discussed here are Siberian permafrost peat fires, not Alaskan forest fires.

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