Global warming accelerates global warming

Global warming has attained self-sustainability and has begun to make itself worse.

Global warming is causing the Siberian permafrost to thaw. Yes, you read that right. The permafrost is thawing.

At this point, you might be tempted to say, "So what, 'Sense? Is there a patch of ice or snow on this big, blue marble that isn't melting these days?"

To that, I would respond, "No, gentle reader. You are correct. In fact, there is not an expanse of frozen water on this planet that is not reverting slowly to its liquid form as a result of global warming. Glaciers are melting. Polar bears are drowning. The polar ice caps themselves are getting smaller by the day."

But you see, gentle reader, the permafrost is a whole 'nother matter. The permafrost, it turns out, contains hundreds of billions of metric tons of carbon, locked currently inside the carcasses of plants and animals trapped within the frozen earth.

This vast carbon reservoir, contained in permafrost soil in northeastern Siberia, contains about 75 times more carbon than the amount released into the atmosphere each year by the burning of fossil fuels, the researchers said in a statement.

Siberia isn't the only place on Earth with massive lodes of permafrost -- parts of Alaska, Canada and northern Europe have them too. The Siberian area is possibly the world's largest, covering nearly 400,000 square miles, with an average depth of 82 feet, and probably holds about 500 billion metric tons of carbon.

By any measure, this is a lot, and it is in fact twice what scientists previously believed was there, ecologist Ted Schuur of the University of Florida said in a telephone interview.

As the permafrost thaws, those carbons will be emitted into the atmosphere where they will join the hundreds of billions of metric tons of carbon emissions already there, which caused the permafrost to thaw in the first place. At that point, the earth will get even warmer, causing the thawing of the permafrost to accelerate, causing even more carbons to escape into the atmosphere, causing... well, you get the point.

If all Siberian permafrost thawed and released its carbon in the form of heat-trapping carbon dioxide, it could nearly double the 730 billion metric tons of carbon now in the atmosphere, the scientists said.

Is it likely that these warnings will be taken any more seriously than the early warnings about global warming itself? Probably not.

And even if they are, I have to say it's starting to feel like much too little, way too late.