On July 25 the journal Nature published an article about the “Economic time bomb” that is slowly being detonated by Arctic warming. Gail Whiteman of Erasmus University in the Netherlands, and Chris Hope and Peter Wadhams of the University of Cambridge suggest—based on economic modeling that the “release of methane from thawing permafrost beneath the East Siberian Sea” would come with an “average global price tag of $60 trillion.” The news should have sent a shock wave through the media. But instead, predictably, the public were encouraged to celebrate—again and again, and again—the birth of the royal son.

My first encounter with methane release in the Arctic was in early August 2006. It was a grey, cold day along the Beaufort Sea coast in Alaska…

via Let Us Now Sing About the Warmed Earth.

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• Cost of Arctic methane release could be ‘size of global economy’, experts warn (sciencedaily.com)
• Arctic Methane Release and Global Warming (rinf.com)
• Cost of Arctic methane release could be ‘size of global economy’ warn experts (eurekalert.org)
• Arctic Methane Claims Questioned (livescience.com)