My good friend Tim Wirth has alerted me to this powerful article on the increasing threat of methane accelorating climate change. Margot Roosevelt, in a remarkable piece of journalism, has written "Bubbles of Warming, Beneath The Ice" for the Los Angeles Times. She takes us to Bering Land Bridge National Preserve in Alaska to cover the critical work of Katey Walter from the University of Alaska. The young aquatic ecologist is one of most exciting young minds in the field of climate change.

While the world has been debating carbon base gases, it appears that other elements are having a more dramatic impact on climate change than we expected. Walters has spent years researching the effect of methane on global warming. Apparently, this is not a new phenomenon. According to the young scientist, methane was a major contributor, if not the contributor, to a period of global warming that took place 11,000 years ago.

Journalist Roosevelt writes in her article:

"International experts are alarmed. "Methane release due to thawing permafrost in the Arctic is a global warming wild card," warned a report by the United Nations Environment Program last year. Large amounts entering the atmosphere, it concluded, could lead to "abrupt changes in the climate that would likely be irreversible."

Methane (CH4) has at least 20 times the heat-trapping effect of an equivalent amount of carbon dioxide (CO2). As warmer air thaws Arctic soils, as much as 55 billion tons of methane could be released from beneath Siberian lakes alone, according to Walter’s research. That would amount to 10 times the amount currently in the atmosphere."

This is a must-read article for anyone interested in climate change. The video below is a good place to start.