The Permafrost Carbon

Terra Daily:

http://www.spacedaily.com/reports/Is_a_Sleeping_Climate_Giant_Stirring_in_the_Arctic_999.html
Is a Sleeping Climate Giant Stirring in the Arctic
by Staff Writers
Pasadena CA (JPL) Jun 11, 2013

Over hundreds of millennia, Arctic permafrost soils have accumulated vast stores of organic carbon - an estimated 1,400 to 1,850 petagrams of it (a petagram is 2.2 trillion pounds, or 1 billion metric tons).
That's about half of all the estimated organic carbon stored in Earth's soils. In comparison, about 350 petagrams of carbon have been emitted from all fossil-fuel combustion and human activities since 1850. Most of this carbon is located in thaw-vulnerable topsoils within 10 feet (3 meters) of the surface...

Even our politicians might be able to get together and seriously address things like this that are going to figure in that "grand scheme of things".

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