Melting permafrost is the thing that terrifies me. For a long time now scientists have been warning of the potential bomb lurking there. But, my understanding i

Melting permafrost is the thing that terrifies me. For a long time now scientists have been warning of the potential bomb lurking there. But, my understanding is it hasn’t factored heavily in the IPCC reports because feedback loops have historically been difficult to quantify. Anecdotally, the trend seems to be that when it comes to Climate Change, things rarely break in our favor and those “worst case scenarios” seem to be coming up frequently. I’m a pragmatist, I remain optimistic (foolishly, perhaps), but I think it’s fair to say that society isn’t sufficiently grappling with the potential catastrophe on the horizon. In particular I don’t think enough attention is given to the possibility of climate dynamics at some point rapidly flipping to some new normal.