Methane time bomb
From the article, quoted:
Gas locked inside Siberia’s frozen soil and under its lakes has been seeping out since the end of the last ice age 10,000 years ago. But in the past few decades, as the Earth has warmed, the icy ground has begun thawing more rapidly, accelerating the release of methane — a greenhouse gas 23 times more powerful than carbon dioxide — at a perilous rate.
Some scientists believe the thawing of permafrost could become the epicenter of climate change. They say 1.5 trillion tons of carbon, locked inside icebound earth since the age of mammoths, is a climate time bomb waiting to explode if released into the atmosphere.
“Here, total carbon storage is like all the rain forests of our planet put together,” END QUOTE
Side remark: Science fiction book by Steve Barnes, Mother of All Storms, comes to mind. It’s just sci-fi, but there could be a positive feedback loop to this methane release, and we are NOT vouchsafed a modest, gradual, comfortable world. For all we know, the feedback loop could gear up and shift the climate several degrees in just decades.