When the Mercury Rises... The Mercury will Rise!

Ok, so the title is a bit corny. I don't deserve a star, lol. I couldn't think of anything more alluring and I really don't like using titles from research papers. So, it is what it is.

On a more important note:

Remember back in the day when Russia thought that launching a massive mirror in space was a good idea so they could have a massive nightlight? Were they scared of the dark? I didn't think Russians were scared of anything... Perhaps it was more:

In Russia, Nightlight sleeps with you!

I remember reading it a long time ago and I found a clip from back in 1993. I wondered at the time if this was supposed to be some kind of warming tool since they wanted to use it over Siberia but the information said no that it was only to keep the dark places in an almost a constant twilight like state. Like having many moons in the sky at once. If this was done or not, I really don't know. It wasn't all that important to me at the time to keep up with it.

I only thought about this (and likely not related) because of a research letter I read just recently.

Permafrost Stores a Globally Significant Amount of Mercury

Apparently, many scientist are worried that we soon could be dealing with so much mercury that it will wreak havoc all around the world, poisoning the environment.

Schuster's research is to model how climate change could cause the permafrost to release mercury, and how it would spread around the world.

"24 percent of all the soil above the equator is permafrost, and it has this huge pool of locked-up mercury," he said.

"What happens if the permafrost thaws? How far will the mercury travel up the food chain? These are big-picture questions that we need to answer."

Forgive me as I like to use an easier to read version of research so I tend to go HERE for easier understanding. Sides... It has all the cool stories I like to read in one place. Kind of like the Drudge of Science information.

24% is a lot of mercury. However, they go into a little more detail. Imagine:

According to the team's calculations, there are 793 gigagrams (793 million kilograms), or more than 15 million gallons, of mercury frozen in the northern hemisphere's permafrost. That is, the researchers said, roughly 10 times the amount of all human-caused mercury emissions over the last 30 years.

That's a LOT of mercury spilling into water ways, saturating plants and animals, your food... your drinks... It's could feel like Rome all over again, minus the lead. You think we're getting dumber now... Just wait.

If we include non-permafrost soils in the permafrost regions, there are 1,656 gigagrams of mercury stowed away down there. This is nearly twice as much as is found in non-permafrost regions, the oceans, and the atmosphere combined.

Woah!!! Lots more still!!!


Maps of Hg (μg Hg m−2) in Northern Hemisphere permafrost zones for four soil layers: 0–30 cm, 0–100 cm, 0–300 cm, and permafrost derived by multiplying maps of carbon from Hugelius, Tarnocai, et al. (2013) and Hugelius et al. (2014) by the median RHgC. The permafrost map represents the Hg bound to frozen organic matter below the ALD and above 300 cm depth. The relative uncertainty is 57% for all pixels.

So, as per the article:

If it were to leach into the waterways, it could have grave implications. Inorganic mercury can be transformed by microbes into methylmercury, a potent neurotoxin. Cases of methylmercury poisoning have occurred in humans after eating fish from methylmercury-contaminated water, and it can cause central nervous system damage and birth defects.

"There's a significant social and human health aspect to this study," said Steve Sebestyen, a research hydrologist at the USDA Forest Service in Grand Rapids, Minnesota. Sebestyen was not involved with the study.

"The consequences of this mercury being released into the environment are potentially huge because mercury has health effects on organisms and can travel up the food chain, adversely affecting native and other communities."

And if the mercury gets into the atmosphere, it could travel around the world.

.... Pair this up with Other News:

Argentina, Indonesia and Nigeria among world's top 10 most polluted places due to jewellery and other chemical processing

Man.. That's a lot of rivers. Pair that with all the leaching of water that Nestle and other companies are sucking out of the ground, leaving the water tables saturated with bad stuff.... Chemical spills, toxic waste, toxic earth, bottomless trash dumps. Gues that would pretty much cover any land and water we haven't screwed up. Before long, we wont have a drop to drink, a place to plant, or ground to shelter over and under.

I'm not one to throw around biblical references but I like to when I feel like it could sit well as a possibility or strong metaphor. I don't dismiss much in the realm of possibility.

I'm going to just close and leave this right here:

Rev 8:10-11

And the third angel sounded, and there fell a great star from heaven, burning as it were a lamp, and it fell upon the third part of the rivers, and upon the fountains of waters.

And the name of the star is called Wormwood: and the third part of the waters became wormwood; and many men died of the waters, because they were made bitter.

Drink up and

a reply to: StallionDuck

There is all sorts in soil . the problem with the permafrost melting was the high levels of methane being released.

And if the mercury gets into the atmosphere, it could travel around the world.

So does plutonium
How would that get there?

a reply to: StallionDuck

The stock market way down and you're worrying about this?

No the Russians never put a giant mirror in orbit.

On a long enough timeline, we're all doomed!

originally posted by: TonyS
a reply to: StallionDuck

The stock market way down and you're worrying about this?

No the Russians never put a giant mirror in orbit.

On a long enough timeline, we're all doomed!

Stock Market? I thought that was just imaginary boys club for greedy banker types who want to control everything you buy and sell. Why would I worry about that?