Excellence in Wanker/Wingnut Science!

Today's winner: the Prairie Pundit, for linking to this WaPo article and commenting...

This is a long article, but the lead has the sound of a paranoid belief in powerful uncontrolled forces at work. The fact is they probably are, and man is not responsible for them. The more we go on a fools errand of trying to control these forces the bigger waste of our energy and efforts will take place.

True, it's a long article. But if "Merv" were to have read a bit further than the part that he quotes, he may have learned how this all works. Starting with the paragraph immediately following his quote:

Those forces, which scientists are only starting to understand, could free vast stores of carbon and methane that have been collecting since the last ice age in the frozen tundra and northern forests. Their release would push the world's climate toward a heat spiral that would raise ocean levels, spawn fierce storms and scorch farmlands, scientists believe.

But the land is impartial. It could also be enlisted to help abate global warming, as both a storehouse for man-made carbon dioxide and a natural sponge for greenhouse gases. Policymakers are considering changes to protect and expand the forested areas that store carbon; outside the boreal forest, they are experimenting with techniques to bury man-made carbon dioxide in underground vaults and porous seams. ...

Carbon is freed from the land in numerous ways. Permafrost melting because of warmer weather exposes peat, deadwood and buried pine needles to decay, freeing the carbon they contain. Fires, raging through forests more often because of hotter and drier weather, send wood -- and its carbon -- up in smoke. Insects thriving in milder winters girdle trees and send them to rot on the forest floor. Miners and oilmen build roads that expose the earth and warm the land, and loggers cut down old forests and replace them with young ones that will take decades of growth to absorb and store the same amount of carbon.

OK, real slow:

1.) Carbon released from human activity leads to dramatic temperature increases in the far north.
2.) This leads to melting of the permafrost which could release carbon and methane and to increased fires which would also release carbon.
3.) This further increase will then cause even more warming.

This would not be good. Therefore, we ought to consider putting the brakes on this cycle where we can. That'd be the first step.