world, vast stores of methane and CO2 are likely to be released.
I've contributed an illustration to a post at www.skepticalscience.com
summarizing the mechanisms of greenhouse gas release from the
arctic. My diagram appears in Part 1 of the series:
Subcap Methane Feedbacks, Part 1
Humanity is getting a 2 for the cost of 1 deal on our greenhouse gas
emissions: because the oceans and terrestrial biosphere have been
absorbing half of our emissions, we incur half the environmental
cost of our energy use. Eventually, the ability of the oceans and
biosphere to absorb emissions may become saturated and even
reversed, so that these regions emit greenhouse gases, a process
that's starting in the Arctic.
jg
