SeniorJunior

...While You Are Looking at Melting Permafrost I'm just bubbling with CO2, mercury and germs. There are visible, dramatic effects of the rapidly warming Arctic. The permafrost – up until now, permanently frozen land and soil – is thawing out, and revealing its hidden secrets. Alongside Pleistocene fossils are massive carbon and methane emissions, toxic mercury, and ancient diseases. This is a fake but, you know, dramatic! The "ancient diseases" are from thousands of  reindeer killed by anthrax, frozen and now thawing and releasing their microbes. I didn't know about the mercury.   "The Arctic is home to the most mercury on the planet. The US Geological Survey estimates there’s a total of 1,656,000 tonnes of mercury trapped in polar ice and permafrost: roughly twice the global amount in all other soils, oceans, and atmosphere."  Who wudda thunk? Worse, of course, it that as the permafrost in the Arctic melts, the extra CO2 and methane will ac...

"I’m losing the ability to communicate the magnitude of change," said  Jeremy Mathis, current board director at the National Academies of Sciences.   "I’m running out of adjectives to describe the scope of change we’re seeing."* It's a bird! It's a plane! No, it's Arctic Ice doing a nosedive! It must be really frustrating trying to get the public (thee and me) properly exercised about our climate sinking into chaos.  We've got more important stuff to think about, don'tcha know. * Mashable ME