Thursday, September 07, 2006

New Climate Change 'Time Bomb' Detected


Looks like things might be getting a whole lot worse a whole lot faster than scientists thought...... [The picture here is of a huge hole caused by melting permafrost in Alaska.

WASHINGTON (Sept. 7) - Global warming gases trapped in the soil are bubbling out of the thawing permafrost in amounts far higher than previously thought and may trigger what researchers warn is a climate time bomb.

"The higher the temperature gets, the more permafrost we melt, the more tendency it is to become a more vicious cycle," said Chris Field, director of global ecology at the Carnegie Institution of Washington, who was not part of the study. "That's the thing that is scary about this whole thing. There are lots of mechanisms that tend to be self-perpetuating and relatively few that tend to shut it off."

"I don't think it can be easily stopped; we'd really have to have major cooling for it to stop," Walter said.

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