In my long-ish response to Freeman Dyson's article in the New York Review of Books, I mention blogger and environmental scientist Joseph Romm's prediction about the melting of the permafrost in the arctic tundra releasing more CO2 into the atmosphere. Today, Gerry linked to a Wired article reviewing a new study that points to massive methane deposits under the permafrost as well:

Methane is 25 times more potent than carbon dioxide as a greenhouse gas. And the frozen reserve is twice as large, by volume, as the world's known fossil fuel reserves.

The study, appearing in next Thursday's issue of Nature suggests that a release of methane similar to the one projected "rapidly warmed the Earth 635 million years ago, replacing an Ice Age with a period of tropical heat."

In other climate news, Why aren't we getting it? Joseph Romm has a pretty good answer.

The answer is that ideology trumps rationality. Most conservatives cannot abide the solution to global warming--strong government regulations and a government-led effort to accelerate clean energy technologies into the market. According to the late Jude Wanniski, Elizabeth Kolbert’s New Yorker articles [on global warming], did nothing more “than write a long editorial on behalf of government intervention to stamp out carbon dioxide.” His villain is not global warming, but is the threat to Americans from government itself.

We'll take freedom all the way to mass graves if we need to!