Worrisome News

The methane that had for a very long, long time (think millennia) underneath the near-frozen Arctic Ocean has begun to be released as the Arctic Ocean has warmed due to warmer flow from the Atlantic Ocean to the south.  Gas bubbles have been observed to be escaping from the suboceanic permafrost at depths of 150m-500m along a continental gradient, and some of those gas bubbles are making it to the atmosphere.

The BBC article about it can be found here:
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/science/nature/8205864.stm

This release of methane is troubling (in terms of the human species' survival) because methane is about an order of magnitude (think 10x) more effective as a greenhouse gas than carbon dioxide, meaning that it only takes one tenth as much methane to cause the same amount of warming in the atmosphere as carbon dioxide, or that the same amount causes ten times the heat-trapping capacity of the atmosphere.  We're already at 401 ppm CO2, past the symbolic 400 ppm about which we'd been warned over a year ago.  We've increased the percentage of carbon dioxide by that much in only the past year and a half, and it doesn't look like humans have even begun to stop pumping the stuff out.

We are still living our daily existence, paying attention to more the more immediate concerns of making a living (for wage earners), raising families (for parents), and taking care of our own physical well-being (all of us, in general).  It is not for many people that the Earth's chemical balance presents an immediate emergency.  We are so wrong and short-sighted.

There really is no other environmental issue that is as pressing as controlling the level of pollution we are spewing into the atmosphere, dumping into the oceans and burying in the ground.

Some people, like the brothers Koch (I pronounce it rhyming with "notch," whereas Peter pronounces it as "cock", which does seem more fitting, as they are really f*cking the world over in a big, big way), aren't concerned with future generations because once they are dead, the world ceases to exist for them, so it may as well be on its way to ceasing to exist for all humans.

Again, I want to plug the People's Climate March that is taking place in New York City (and in other cities around the US), with which we (at least those who care enough to get off our duffs) are showing international leaders and representatives from all the countries of the United Nations that Climate Change is an issue that must be addressed on an international level.  We have a president who actually recognizes and wants to deal with climate change.  I hope he and his supporters (along with Congressional lawmakers and international leaders) are able to do at least something to mitigate our fast-approaching doom.