Green Daily

Could methane from melting permafrost be the tipping point that brings us endless summer within a few decades?

A new study in the science journal Nature explores the idea that global warming could release huge amounts of methane from oceans and arctic permafrost, creating a feedback mechanism that would lead to runaway global warming at a speed previously unimaginable.

Methane is a greenhouse gas about 25 times more powerful than CO2, and it's estimated that there are about 10,000 gigatons frozen up which could potentially be released. The new paper suggests that a release of frozen methane triggered an abrupt climate change 635 million years ago which turned an ice age into an era of global heat.

Martin Kennedy, lead author of the study, suggests that rising CO2 could be sufficient to destabilize what's known as "clathrate" (methane frozen with water) reserves, setting off a climate shift so rapid that the consequences for humanity would be pretty dire.

Not everyone agrees with Kennedy, of course. Anyway, keep your fingers crossed that he's wrong, because if he isn't, there's probably not much we can do about it. You know, it was really much nicer when we didn't understand this stuff.