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40,000 years ago during the commencement of the ice age, the area of Western Siberia (and Alaska) permafrosted...producing a sort of flash frozen soil. All the carbon contained in it became inactive and trapped. This as carbon monoxide, carbon dioxide and methane. The worst part is, global warnming is melting the permafrost (at an alarming rate), and these greenhouse gases are entering the atnosphere. More specifically, Siberia itself is a frozen peat bog, but as it begins to thaw out, billions of tons of these greenhouse gases will cause even more global warming. Also, methane as a greenhouse gas, is about 22 times more potent than simple carbon dioxide. This is not a prediction, it is starting to happen. The warnings at Kyoto went unheeded by the shortsighted politicians, and now the effects are starting to be seen. Worse even still is that these phenomena are self-perpetuating. The increase in temperature melts more permafrost, releaseing more greenhouse gasses, increasing the overall earth temperature. These temperatures are going to be dramatic, and perhaps a preview was experienced this summer in the United States and Europe. Other large-scale environmental changes are possible, and may now be unstoppable. As to the amount of methane that could be released (in the thawed out Siberian permafrost), scientists at the University of California in Los Angeles estimate it to be about 70 Billions tons, or about 25% of all the methane now trapped in the earth. With that entering the atnosphere, we could expect a 10% to 25% increase in the predicted global warming scenario (according to the British Metrological Office). As the United States (the world’s worse polluter) anagonizes with what action to take, countries like China and India are in full industrial expansion and will create a condition that could be disasterous. Temperatures could rise to a level that has not been anticipated, with acccompanying consequences that are hard even to imagine. Friends of the Earth’s Tony Juniper has warned political leaders that “if we don’t take action very soon, we could unleash runaway global warming that will...lead to social, economic and environmental devastation worldwide”. It may already be too late, maybe not , but action to cut immediately greenhouse gas emission is crucial and urgent. Meanwhile, the permafrost goes on melting, the oil companies and automobile manufactures keep on perputuating the internal combustion engine (based on fossil fuels), govenments do not regulate air emission of crucial industries, and global warming progresses. As it progresses the permafrost goes on melting, revealing soil, and not ice and water. This soil releases its trapped carbon (as carbon dioxide and methane) at even increasing rates, adding to the man-made greenouse gas emission. The temperature rises. The real trouble here is that there are no real mechanisms to stop the cycle of events and consequential phenomena. This vicious cycle was not previously factored into the global warming scenarios. Each government has to take notice now, and restrict the emissions of greenhouse gases by drastic amounts. Not to do so, will result, very quickly, in a Huxleyesque brave new world.
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