MELTING PERMAFROST HERALDS ACCELERATED CLIMATE-CHANGE

Permafrost covers a fifth of the earth's surface. An estimated 200 billion tons of carbon is locked up in it. In Siberia, because of manmade global-overheating, land that has been frozen for 40,000 years is now melting, said a recent report on the BBC World Service (only a verbal report unfortunately, so there is no specific link for it, the nearest being this one, which only skated round the edges of the verbal report).

That makes a vicious cycle. The subsequent increase in greenhouse gases in the atmosphere increases the speed of that melting, which increases the level of greenhouse gases. And so on. The final consequence could be a doubling of greenhouse gases. Double! That is a global catastrophe in the making, bubbling up unstoppably.

So the fuse on the 200-billion-ton timebomb has been lit and cannot be extinguished. As has been said many times in this blog, we have passed the point of no return. Everything is changed, except man's thinking. The planet we grew up with, the planet that mankind has lived on for 10,000 years, has gone. It will never come back; it will keep getting worse and worse; billions will die.

So enjoy driving your fragment of the biggest weapon of mass-destruction every built (the 900 million fossil-fuel vehicles). Enjoy using the electricity generated by those other weapons of mass-destruction, the coal-fired power-stations. Enjoy killing your children, your grandchildren, your great-grandchildren; and if not yours, someone's.