There is bad news all around here, with the most alarming being the sudden rise in emissions of methane, a very potent greenhouse gas (25x that of carbon dioxide). If the arctic tundra has begun to seriously outgas, the outlook is very grim.
Greenhouse Gases, Carbon Dioxide And Methane, Rise Sharply In 2007. Science Daily
Carbon dioxide, methane up sharply in 2007-US govt. Reuters.
In British Columbia, a beetle upsets climate calculus. A record infestation of beetles is turning western Canada’s forests from a carbon sink into a CO2 source. By Peter N. Spotts. Staff writer of The Christian Science Monitor.
Bad news beetles in Colorado: Tree killers could add to global warming. By Mike Saccone. The Daily Sentinel
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Ralph Maughan
Dr. Ralph Maughan is professor emeritus of political science at Idaho State University with specialties in natural resource politics, public opinion, interest groups, political parties, voting and elections. Aside from academic publications, he is author or co-author of three hiking/backpacking guides, and he is past President of the Western Watersheds Project.
This will take more measurements and more time but if the methane increase is true and continues then the possibility exists that the frozen tundra is now thawing and releasing methane or even worse the methane sequestered in the ocean is being released. If true this is an irreversible change (the so-called tipping point). Recall that methane has a half-life of 7 years in the atmosphere. It ultimately gets converted to carbon dioxide.