[JR: Rest of this deleted because "It's cold outside" as a response to climate science is now officially more sad than funny.]

I don’t know, but I notice that there seems to be a much larger land mass in northern Europe/Asia than northern America.

That might be a good place to start looking for an answer.

I’ve just started a project to try to get climate change on the radar in the Great White North. It’s early days yet… The web site is active, but we’re still finalizing the design, and we’ll be adding content regularly (which includes a blog).

We’re supporting the coalition — having a leader who believes the science has to be better than having one who thinks climate change is a socialist plot — and we’re hoping to create another coalition of environmental, social, and even religious groups to speak together with one voice in Canada…This has been working very well in Scotland.

I’m new to this… I have no training as an activist, and very little money, but I want to see if I can help make a difference. Keep an eye out for us.

finding 3. “There are a number of suggestions in the scientific literature about the possibility of catastrophic release of methane to the atmosphere based on both the size of the hydrate reservoir and indirect evidence from paleoclimatological studies. However, modeling and detailed studies of ice core methane so far do not support catastrophic methane releases to the atmosphere in the last 650,000 years or in the near future. A very large release of methane may have occurred at the Paleocene-Eocene boundary (about 55 million years ago), but other explanations for the evidence have been offered.”

finding 4. “The current network of atmospheric methane monitoring sites is sufficient for capturing large-scale changes in emissions, but it is insufficient for attributing changes in emissions to one specific type of source.”

finding 5. “Observations show that there have not yet been significant increases in methane emissions from northern terrestrial high-latitude hydrates and wetlands resulting from increasing Arctic temperatures.”

and

finding 6. “Catastrophic release of methane to the atmosphere appears very unlikely in the near term (e.g., this century). However, it is very likely that climate change will accelerate the pace of chronic emissions from both hydrate sources and wetlands. The magnitude of these releases is difficult to estimate with existing data. Methane release from the hydrate reservoir will likely have a significant influence on global warming over the next 1,000 to 100,000 years.”

As far as Canadian awareness of climate change goes, its looking pretty bleak up here. The last federal election featured one party, the Liberals, who had been in office longer in the 20th century than any other party in any other developed country, go down to one of its worst defeats because they put a carbon tax at the center of their campaign. I just heard a Canadian Broadcasting Corp radio panel discussion on the Bush legacy, and his climate record was not mentioned.

Just anecdotal, but it sure matches up with the map above.

Meanwhile, I hate it when feedbacks push us into a huge disaster. Makes it hard to keep your sense of humor.