Permafrost, farming and fracking: What's the story with methane?

Dr Hinrich Schaefer is an atmospheric scientist at NIWA who specialises in researching methane. It's a particular problem for New Zealand due to our high proportion of agricultural emissions but is becoming an increasing issues overseas as well with increasing reliance on natural gas. In the longer term there are concerns that thawing permafrost could release huge amounts of the gas into the atmosphere, further accelerating climate change.