Read here. Climate alarmist scientists have designed climate models that predict that methane (CH4) gases will increase as the world warms, causing a positive feedback that will then accelerate the warming increase, potentially to a "tipping" point.
New peer-reviewed research, though, sheds light on poorly understood climate processes that will actually negate additional releases of CH4, thus eliminating the beloved "runaway" positive feedback scenario from causing accelerated warming. (The "OMG-were-all-going-to-fry" type of warming that Gore, Hansen and the MSM speculate about.)
Scientists have discovered that soils in forested areas act as a huge sink for methane, absorbing even more as the soil becomes drier from warming - a negative feedback that climate models are presently incapable of predicting.
"Guckland et al. report that "the variation of CH4 uptake over time could be explained to a large extent by changes in soil moisture in the upper five centimeters of the mineral soil," such that "the CH4 uptake during the main growing period (May-September) increased considerably with decreasing precipitation rate," which finding, as they describe it, is "in accordance with the general observation that soil moisture is the primary environmental control on CH4 uptake in soils because it regulates methane flux into the soil through diffusion....."The results suggest that climate change [in this case, global warming] will result in increasing CH4 uptake rates in this region because of the trend to drier summers and warmer winters." And this response represents a negative feedback that should help to temper predicted increases in CO2-induced global warming." [Guckland, A., Flessa, H. and Prenzel, J. 2009.]
