Warming could speed up

We've learned much about planetary greenhouse gas effects. Together they bring us global warming. It's moot whether the phenomenon is human generated, a normal heating-cooling planetary cycle or a combination of the two.
 
Whatever the sources, worldwide temperatures must decline. If not, our planet will become radically different for eons. Any surviving descendents who endure rising temperatures will face disastrous consequences. They will confront harsher relationships and living conditions among human societies. They will witness further extinction of the globe's flora and fauna.
 
We recognize global warming most clearly in seeing Greenland and Alaskan glaciers dissolve. Scientists calculate that should all of Greenland's ice disappear our oceans will rise some 20 feet. Located at 138 feet above the current sea level, the predicted heightening should not present a direct problem for Yumans. However, with the southern California beach front property underwater that I once dreamed of owning, future residents here can expect an influx of coastal California refugees!
 
For months I have heard and read about a greenhouse gas - methane - asleep in the world's seas. Scholarly thought concludes that as ocean temperatures rise, this gas will break the surface and disperse into the atmosphere. That calamity will bring higher global temperatures faster.
 
I had only a vague idea, however, how this could happen. I came to better understand the possibility as I read a magazine article about ecological changes in Siberia.
 
Imagine going next summer to a brackish lake, a child's metal sand pail in hand. Enter the water. Walk backwards, agitating the surface. Invert the pail just above the water. For 60 seconds capture bubbles leaving the surface. Light a match under the pail. You've ignited a blue flame, a burning ring of methane gas.
 
It'll happen, that is, if you strike your match lakeside in the Texas-size Kolyma River basin of eastern Siberia. Here, and further west in Russia's Yakutia region (Earth's coldest expanse), a carbon bomb ticks. Your blue flame is the first hint.
 
This is the Siberia of stereotypical images. It's a land of permafrost. But as worldwide temperatures nudge upward, the region's underlying frozen soil has begun to liquefy annually. With each thaw, tons of carbon trapped in the soil, known as yedoma, moves skyward. These greenhouse gases readily mix into the atmosphere.
  
Since the Industrial Revolution began, humans have released some 450 billion tons of airborne carbon. Geologists meanwhile estimate that this Siberian yedoma soil alone holds 500 billion tons of carbon. So as warming continues, we are subjected each year to the release of its trapped greenhouse gases long lodged in plant and animal remains. It's a land-based version of what also lurks in our oceans.
  
Yedoma is a unique soil of ice and silt and bones, flesh and dung. The organic matter is mostly the remains of millions of mammals, including cave bears, mammoths and the predecessors of other large animals we know today.
 
They roamed the region until 10,000 or 20,000 years ago. In death they froze in place. Now, as their sarcophagus slowly melts away in rising temperatures, their flesh and other organic matter deteriorates into greenhouse gases. Your nose tells you. It stinks there.
 
The burning "carbonated" methane lake started as a small depression in the region's black soil. The exposed dark color warmed the soil when the snow was too sparse to accumulate. The warmth collected water. Released from its former solid state, it percolated downward to melt underlying ice. The greater heat collapsed more surrounding permafrost to create a pond. As the adjoining yedoma warmed a larger lake emerged.
 
Since it's yedoma country, every lake sits atop decomposing animal remains along with millenniums of decaying plant material. Through decomposition, the organic matter generates its own internal heat (think backyard compost pile) accelerating greenhouse gas production. Voila, a bubble-producing methane lake. It helps shift our planet's environmental equilibrium.
 
Today we gaze into an ecological kaleidoscope. We recognize commonly understood elements even as we slowly turn the device. In my childhood optical toy, however, once in awhile the array would make an unexpectedly radical, wholesale realignment, unlike what appeared moments before. Such a change may be in the offing globally as the Siberian landscape warms and our oceans heat up.


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Gary Knox is a retired Yuma area school superintendent and guest columnist for The Sun.