Those of the readership who believe in a God my like to ponder on whether he has global warming in mind for the earth at this time. Forget the Kyoto agreement on carbon emissions, which embarrassingly Australia has not yet signed. It seems that the worlds peat bogs are taking it upon themselves to spew vast qualities of carbon into the atmosphere.

Before you write this off as an insignificant issue consider that one estimate of the bogs of Europe, Siberia and North America hold the equivalent of 70 years of global industrial emissions and that we have only been pouring carbon into the atmosphere in significant quantities for around 100 years. Chris Freeman of the University of Wales at Bangor, UK says that billions of tonnes of carbon could pour into the air from peat bogs in the coming decades.

The world’s peatland stores of carbon are emptying at an alarming rate. It’s a vicious circle. The problem gets worse and worse, faster and faster.

There has been a deal on conjecture on why this might be so with a number of initial hypothesises now discounted. Chris thinks he has it nailed. The increase in CO2 in the atmosphere is actually promoting an increase in the release of dissolved organic carbon from the peat bogs which is converted to CO2 by bacteria in the rivers which then bubbles into the atmosphere. This is creating an ever accelerating biofeedback loop. Recent data from the Centre for Ecology and Hydrology in Lancaster, UK shows a 90 per cent increase in dissolved organic carbon levels in Welsh mountain rivers since 1988.

It's not a good time to be investing in a ski lodge at Aspen folks. And some final words from Chris Freeman on the subject.

The rate of acceleration suggests that we have disturbed something critical that controls the stability of the carbon cycle in our planet. On these trends, by the middle of the century, DOC emissions from peat bogs and rivers could be as big a source of CO2 to the atmosphere as burning fossil fuels.

Read more here.