This week the most spectacular cover up in recent history was revealed. No it wasn't the massacre of innocent Iraqi civilians by U.S. troops who've forgotten what flag they wear...we've known about incidents like that(graphic images) for some time. The cover up I'm referring to was discovered in the Arctic by an international team of scientists who refused to give up until the TRUTH was known.

Core samples taken near the North Pole reveal a much higher average temperature in the region than the - for lack of a better word - arctic temperatures we know today. Scientists claim that approximately 55 million years ago the Arctic region of the globe was a balmy 65 degrees. Waterfront property for everyone! But that's not the cover up.

The real story is the massive release of greenhouse gases that followed shortly after this period which caused a spike in global temperature raising the already warm Arctic climate to 75 degrees.

Vast fields of permafrost methane slurry exist on the ocean floor today held in stasis by enormous pressure and low water temperature. So long as these two factors remain constant - pressure and temperature - we have no problem. However, ocean temperatures world-wide have been inching up for decades. This new research may hold the key to predicting when this frozen-green-belch-of-death will reach a critical stage. According to the National Science Foundation "the initial results also suggest that Earth's recovery to a "normal state" took as long as 100,000 years." Said one researcher of the findings:

"It far exceeds what has been estimated by models, assuming a release of 2,000 gigatons of methane."

Current theories predict that should a critical water temperature threshold be reached the methane trapped below the world's oceans will escape rapidly changing global climate far more drastically than current climate change models take into account. Why isn't this part of the story bigger news? That's the cover up.

When will we reach this threshold? Only They know for sure.

Labels: climate change, environmentalism, methane expulsion