Boy scout with bow in hand,
Twirls stick in woody recipient,
Friction induced calories remand
To raise temps, the boy’s intent.

Dry tender awaits phase transition,
High temps drive gas from cellulose,
Begins spontaneous chain of ignition,
Heating flammables that juxtapose.

Hot flames, virally contagious,
 Drive gas from adjacent fuel supply,
Contagion grows rampageous,
And flame breeds flame in reply.

Positive feedback actuated —
Self-sustained, will multiply.
Chain reaction goes unabated,
While fuel’s in supply,

So what of global warming case,
How can chain reaction work,
Become earth’s runaway furnace,
Oven of hot gaseous murk?

High temps cause earth’s lands
To lose CO₂ — invisible trail.
Thirty percent, as it now stands,
Soil’s gift to air cocktail.

Ice has some peculiarities —
White is great reflective tool,
With insulation, has similarities,
Oceans, polar caps keep cool.

Due to latent heat, caps stay,
Expectation is thirty years.
But hardness rots slowly away
‘Til phase change nears,

Absorb heat slowly — then
Quick, water — sea green,
That absorbs heat. — Of a sudden,
For rays a sponge, not a screen.

Permafrost is melting fast,
Both methane and CO₂ eject.
Methane’s twenty times as vast,
As CO_2’‘s greenhouse effect.

Most ominous of environ heaters,
Lies beneath ocean floors,
Methane hydrate — world beater,
Dwarfs our coal and oil stores.

Ten trillion tons, waiting to erupt,
Needs little heat to release,
Methane gas, bubbling, abrupt,
Multiplies greenhouse increase.

Fifty millennia ago, last release,
Great extinctions ensued,
Caused many species to cease,
As atmosphere, gas accrued.

Earth heats, driving gasses out,
Makes greenhouse more efficient,
Ever hotter earth, brings about
Global warming — self-sufficient,

That now needs no human aid.
Will hordes meet dreadful dawn
After positive feedback escalade?
Will gas win and life be gone?

© 2008 R. Leland Waldrip

Information source: Free Inquiry Magazine, Feb/Mar, 2008 “Can We Survive” by Paley, Oister, and Hull