7. Bad news from Siberia
 Reporters didn't have difficulties to fill newspapers last months. International attention was directed to Gaza, Syria, Ukraine, Irak, Nigeria. Amidst all this human suffering, we should not forget to heed an even scarier development: methane emissions from the melting permafrost.
The permafrost is perennially frozen ground occurring in about 24% of the land surface in the Northern Hemisphere. Its soils contain nearly twice as much carbon in the form of frozen organic matter than is currently in the atmosphere. (Source http://www.unep.org/pdf/permafrost.pdf)
For quite some years, climate scientists have been warning us that the melting of the permafrost will lead to massive greenhouse gas emissions, in particular in the form of methane. As such, the melting would be a 'tipping point': a change resulting in an out-of-control climate change.
Last months, huge craters have been discovered in Russian Siberia, and the most reasonable explanation is that they are the result of massive escape of methane. See an article about this issue in Nature. The speed of this change exceeds, once more, the most pessimistic scenarios and reminds us of the urgent need to reduce emissions, and do much more to keep climate change in check.
Picture: Siberian Times
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