Permafrost

www.physorg.com February 17th … the southern limits of the permafrost zone, frozen ground, is now said to be 130km further north than it was 50 years ago. This actually applies to the area studied, the James Bay locale. It is being predicted that permafrost will disappear in the near future – releasing dangerous amounts of methane. However, although AGW is fingered the researchers admit a lack of long term climatic data in the region and in fact the study involves just the last 20 years – not the 50 years in the blurb. The last 20 years represents a natural warming cycle and as we are entering a cooling cycle that will last the next 20 + years the story can be said to be somewhat premature.