The Arctic permafrost is farting. Don't laugh.

The arctic is an odd place.  In recent millenia, it has remained cold enough there for the soils to remain frozen year round. Vegetation in much of the arctic is limited to surface plants that are frozen all winter, then thawed out for the brief summer only to a shallow soil depth.  Deeper than that, the soil is still a frozen brick.

If you live in Alaska, you are probably aware that this is no longer the case. You are probably aware that houses and trees have been tipping over as thawing has gone deeper and deeper underground. Researchers estimate that $6 billion will be needed over the next two decades to repair schools, roads, and bridges that are shifting and cracking as a result of earth melt.

But wait, there's worse. The permafrost is believed to trap enormous quantities of methane, a gas that is usually the product of decomposing plant matter. yes, methane is present in cow farts, but please stop laughing. Seventy percent of the methane that currently enters the atmosphere is the result of human activities: rice cultivation, cattle raising, and coal mining. Methane as a greenhouse gas is thousands of times more effective at trapping heat in our atmosphere than even carbon dioxide. Scientists who currently patrol the arctic, probing the permafrost to measure frozen methane bubbles, are worried. They don't want to alarm you, but this could be a bad thing. Scientists predict that air temperatures are going to rise steeply in the arctic, at a rate far higher than the rest of our planet. It could end up ten degrees warmer in the arctic by 2100. There is no longer any question of preserving the permafrost, it's all going to melt. The only question is: how much methane is going to be released.  What's the worst thing that could happen? I no longer enjoy that question, which used to be a sort of running joke for me.