Feedback Loop of Deep Concern

There are several different feedback loops that concern climate scientists.  Perhaps the most obvious is the changes to Earth’s albedo, i.e., its capacity to reflect incoming solar radiation back into space.  As the arctic ice melts into liquid water the Earth’s surface absorbs more heat and reflects less, causing more ice to melt, etc. 

Here’s a piece on another major feedback loop, the melting of permafrost.  As ice melts that’s been around hundreds of thousands of years significant quantities of methane, a greenhouse gas 28 times more powerful that CO2, is released into the atmosphere.  This too causes more heat to be trapped into the atmosphere, resulting in the same feedback loop.

From the Wikipedia article: In 2012, Russian researchers proved that permafrost can serve as a natural repository for ancient life forms by reviving of Silene stenophylla from 30,000 year old tissue found in an Ice Age squirrel burrow in the Siberian permafrost. This is the oldest plant tissue ever revived. The plant was fertile, producing white flowers and viable seeds. The study demonstrated that tissue can survive ice preservation for tens of thousands of years.^[78] A 2016 outbreak of anthrax in the Yamal Peninsula is believed to be due to thawing permafrost.^[79]

An even more frightening issue, though, is that it’s probable that pathogens are being released that modern science has never seen.  We know what anthrax is; we have no idea what microbes do that have been absent from the Earth for millennia.