What "Wake Up and Smell the Permafrost" Means

What “Wake Up and Smell the Permafrost” Means

July 21, 2012, 7:48 am
Filed under: Uncategorized

What “Wake Up and Smell the Permafrost” Means:

”Some say the world will end in fire. Some say ice…” – Robert Frost

”Permafrost” is the layer of ice that’s been keeping large amounts of the earth’s dormant carbon safely frozen in the arctic tundra. As temperatures have risen, the permafrost has started melting, causing all that ancient plantlife to start seeping carbon dioxide and methane into the atmosphere. This creates more warming, which in turn creates more thawing: a feedback loop we’ll soon be absolutely powerless to stop.

What good does putting signs on freeways do? Admittedly, compared to the size of the problem, not much. Although it’s raised some awareness and gotten a lot of west coast motorists to start googling “permafrost” and “wake up and smell the permafrost”, unless it inspires someone incredibly smart to come up with a solution, it’s obviously not going to change things much.

What putting signs on freeways does do, however, is present an aberration. It gives an immediate impression to large numbers of people that things are not entirely normal. And right now an appearance of normalcy is one thing we can no longer afford.