UA Fairbanks Ecologist - "Permafrost Is Melting Fast All Over The Arctic . . . Methane Bubbling Up"

[hatrack]

I AM shocked, truly shocked," says Katey Walter, an ecologist at the University of Alaska in Fairbanks. "I was in Siberia a few weeks ago, and I am now just back in from the field in Alaska. The permafrost is melting fast all over the Arctic, lakes are forming everywhere and methane is bubbling up out of them." Back in 2006, in a paper in Nature, Walter warned that as the permafrost in Siberia melted, growing methane emissions could accelerate climate change. But even she was not expecting such a rapid change. "Lakes in Siberia are five times bigger than when I measured them in 2006. It's unprecedented. This is a global event now, and the inertia for more permafrost melt is increasing."

The dramatic changes in the Arctic Ocean have often been in the news in the past two years. There has been a huge increase in the amount of sea ice melting each summer, and some are now predicting that as early as 2030 there will be no summer ice in the Arctic at all.

Discussions about the consequences of the vanishing ice usually focus either on the opening up of new frontiers for shipping and mineral exploitation, or on the plight of polar bears, which rely on sea ice for hunting. The bigger picture has got much less attention: a warmer Arctic will change the entire planet, and some of the potential consequences are nothing short of catastrophic. Changes in ocean currents, for instance, could disrupt the Asian monsoon, and nearly two billion people rely on those rains to grow their food. As if that wasn't bad enough, it is also possible that positive feedback from the release of methane from melting permafrost could lead to runaway warming.

EDIT

Most of this is the result of positive feedbacks (see illustration) from lost ocean ice, says David Lawrence of the National Center for Atmospheric Research in Boulder, Colorado. His modelling studies show that during periods of rapid sea-ice loss, warming extends some 1500 kilometres inland from the ice itself. "If sea-ice continues to contract rapidly over the next several years, Arctic land warming and permafrost thaw are likely to accelerate," he says.

EDIT

http://www.newscientist.com/article/mg20127011.500-arctic-meltdown-is-a-threat-to-humanity.html?DCMP=OTC-rss&nsref=climate-change

[phantom power]

1. That doesn't sound so awesome.

Quick, somebody get that woman a Lexus and make it go away.

[hatrack]

2. Quick, Phantom Power - tell me some Clean Coal stories!!!

Or maybe about the amazing ice that burns that will solve all of our problems!!

[phantom power]

3. We aren't clapping very hard, are we...

:rofl:

[GliderGuider]

4. What a privilege it is to be alive today.

:popcorn:

[stuntcat]

6. .

:scared: :grouphug: :scared:

[phantom power]

5. Actually, I'm going to step out of character for a minute.

I'm really scared.

[GliderGuider]

10. Why are you scared?

I'm being serious here. I went through three years of being so frightened by all the shit I knew was about to hit the fan that I was ready to check out.

I suspect a lot of people are fearful because of two things the Buddhists figured out 2500 years ago:

1. Everything is impermanent.
2. All suffering comes from attachment to impermanent things.

Right now we are looking at the inevitable loss of much of what we are familiar with, and by extension much of what we are attached to. This gives rise to suffering, as our egos interpret any change as a risk of annihilation.

Those crafty Buddhists then pointed towards the exit:

3. It is possible to end our suffering by reducing our attachment to impermanent things.
4. The way to reduce our attachment is by following the Eightfold Path.

What this comes down to is that if change, even enormous change, is inevitable (which it is) the way to keep from being frightened by it is by not clinging to notions of permanence that turn out to be ephemeral. For instance, if I don’t define myself by my possessions I am not afraid of losing my possessions.

With a year of this kind of thinking under my belt I can now simply be amazed rather than terrified by articles like this.

[tama]

11. It's a long way, still,

from mostly intellectual understanding of basic buddhist tenets to solid experience of them and becoming "grounded", e.g. facing fear of death is especially hard for individualistic westerners. Especially difficult it is for those of us with children to worry about, which worry seems to me perhaps to strongest human emotion to overcome or deattached from, much stronger than individual or egotistic fear of death.

Someone wise said, only with broken heart we can truly smile.

[tama]

13. In many ways

Jungian teaching about fear ("Shadow") and facing them are often more usefull for those afflicted by Western culture. In short, our egos or persons want to keep up good self-image, culturally conditioned, and push unwanted and unacceptable - feared - characteristic into mostly subconscious lump or aggregate called "Shadow", which is then projected onto the "world outside" - we see our own (denied) "faults" in others, hence blame games etc. etc.

The liberation from projecting and facing Shadow to make it less powerfull or powerless is according all the good teachers the age old maxim "Know thyself" - just observing the mechanisms that guide one's behaviour, without judging them good or bad.

[GliderGuider]

14. The path that I'm on combines the two approaches

Self-knowledge is the first key, spiritual/philosophical awareness is the second.

The psychological side draws a lot from Jung, Freud, Rogers, Fritz Perls and Berne's Transactional Analysis. My perception is that at some point deep self-awareness becomes indistinguishable from spirituality, as the boundaries and partitions of the personality are transcended.

My philosophical/spiritual side includes Zen Buddhism, pantheism, Deep Ecology, a bit of Neopaganism and a description of reality taken from a 1970's channeled book called "Seth Speaks". The work of A. H. Almaas links the psychological and the spiritual into a coherent framework.

It's a bit of a Mulligan Stew, but it works for me...

[tama]

16. Much of the same

plus Greek and other philosophy and especially Herakleitos, Jiddu Krishnamurti, David Bohm and the whole Quantum Mind scene, U.G. Krishnamurti etc.

But most importantly not just books but friends in this life and their guidance, all of us learning together, to learn... each of us teacher and a pupil.

[GliderGuider]

17. It's important not to just know things, but to experience them.

It's the only way transformation happens.

[tama]

24. To experience = to transform

some transforming experiences just feel "more radical" than others - in the interpretative chains of religions and all other "liberating" philosophies. Like from worm to butterfly, larvae to frog, live to dead to live etc. Letting go of the central experiencer-interpreter and letting all parts or senses experience as they most naturally do...

[phantom power]

18. I think the short answer is that I *am* attached to impermanent things.

I've never quite agreed with buddhism. Without connections, we aren't much of anything. Any connection is a thing that can and eventually will be taken from us. Thus, some amount of fear and sorrow is a byproduct of being alive and engaged in the world. Also, I just can't think about 5 billion people starving to death without being upset. When I consider the fact that I'm a cog in the machine that brought it upon us, that upsets me too.

It may be that what the buddhists were saying is that it's a good idea to choose one's attachments with some careful thought.

At any rate, I avoid wallowing in my fear. Some days I am afraid, and this is one of those days. Meanwhile, I'm a cog with a family and a career so I also spend time enjoying them for as long as I have them.

[tama]

20. Like Jeebus said

"Don't judge lest you be judged", Buddhist consept of "emptiness" is just funny way of saying "fullness of interconnectness with everything and all". Not attached to some things and un-attached to some others by making value based judgements of good and bad, but accepting everything as it happens - including our judgemental habits of reacting... :)

[phantom power]

22. I suppose, then, that I am still in favor of value-based judgements.

[tama]

23. No problemo

that's the way of I.

And the cause of suffering/frustration is that I and I make value-based judgements. So why make a value-based judgement for or against suffering/frustration? :)

[OKIsItJustMe]

25. A nice summary

What is life without attachments like love for example?

[GliderGuider]

29. It's possible to love without being attached.

It's just not what we've been taught love is. Our acceptance of jealousy as a natural part of relationships is evidence that what we've been sold is attachment rather than love. It's possible to love in such a way that there is no jealousy, but there's precious little cultural support in the West for that idea.

[OKIsItJustMe]

30. No, love is not possible without attachment

Don't confuse attachment with feeling of possession. Some people believe they possess their mates. That's not a mature love.

However, if you feel there is no attachment, that is not a mature love either.

Even if you're polyandrous, you are still attached.

If the pain of a loved one isn't your pain, then you don't really love them.

If the loss of a loved one doesn't wound you, then you never really loved them.

It's used so much it's almost cliché, but the "Love chapter" of I Corinthians really does contain wisdom:
http://bible.oremus.org/?ql=105161624

⁴Love is patient; love is kind; love is not envious or boastful or arrogant ⁵or rude. It does not insist on its own way; it is not irritable or resentful; ⁶it does not rejoice in wrongdoing, but rejoices in the truth. ⁷It bears all things, believes all things, hopes all things, endures all things.

[GliderGuider]

31. The discussion doesn't have much to do with E/E at this point

I think we can agree that in this context love is a good thing, and possession isn't. I'm content to let any more subtle differences of opinion ride.

[XemaSab]

50. .

:thumbsup:

[tama]

34. Bible quoting

A friend of mine made this the motto of his book of poems:

"Love has been perfected among us in this: that we may have boldness in the day of judgment; because as He is so are we in this world. There is no fear in love; but perfect love casts out fear, because fear involves torment. But he who fears has not been made perfect in love." -1 John 4:17-18.

I like this quote too: "Love is a many splendoured thing". We shouldn't try to define or limit love or perfect love as this or that, whatever we say about love, it's also something else, something more.

Western intellectual understanding of Buddhism often borders with nihilism, wich is a distortion. The Buddhist criticism of attachment is not criticism of love or compassion, but of the act of separation and alianation by mechanisms of objectifying and subjectifying) - in "perfect love" there are no hard barriers of separation, but "what is done to least of us is done to me".

[kristopher]

26. Congratulations. nt

[dreamnightwind]

28. Thanks, I needed that!

As sad as it is that things are degrading to the degree that it requires a spiritual perspective to maintain sanity, for people conscious of the horrors unfolding, it really is necessary.

Ultimately, of course, 'tis always so, since death awaits, the ultimate expression of impermanence.

I've been immobilized by the terror and disgust I feel as I learn more about what's going on in this world, and it's because I lost perspective.

I came around to the Buddhist path about 20 years ago, yet my practice is poor. So I appreciated the reminder of the true nature of things (impermanence).

[XemaSab]

15. You packed for New Zealand?

:popcorn:

[phantom power]

19. I've heard their immigration policy is pretty strict.

I would hesitate to be a citizen of any country that would accept me.

[XemaSab]

21. My step-cousin's mom is a kiwi

I've got family ties down there. Don't worry about immigration...

[gulfcoastliberal]

7. I didn't know about the "compost" feedback mechanism.

It makes perfect sense of course, that as the little bugs are making methane they're generating heat too.

[hatrack]

8. Yet another positive feedback loop - heat = increased repro = more heat = even more repro . . . .

And so on and so on and so on . . . .

[truebrit71]

12. That is the key...and why I say that we are already well past the "tipping point"...

...and that we should be planning for how to limit the damage, rather than stop it...

The deniers won't stop bleating about climate change being a "hoax" until FLA is under water...and that might not be that far off...

[HillbillyBob]

9. We have been warned and warning that

climate change is coming if we don't quit polluting our environment.
There are things we can all do individually and collectively (oh thats communsocialism) Folks seem to forget there was a big difference between communal and stalin policies.
Or to quote Ben Franklin..hope I get this right,
"We must stand united or we will surely hang separately" I think I have that right..
We need to come together and stop the polluting.
We are trying to do our part in making the house more efficient and drive only multiple errands on a trip to town.

[OKIsItJustMe]

27. A couple of astonishing videos from 2007

http://www.alaska.edu/uaf/cem/ine/walter/videopage.xml
2008 videos here:
http://www.alaska.edu/uaf/cem/ine/walter/videopage2.xml

And what does it say about me that I see a photo like this and get distracted from the research publications listed beneath it?
http://www.alaska.edu/uaf/cem/ine/walter/publications.xml


I'm so shallow…

[NickB79]

32. We're so far past the tipping point it's not even funny

Hell, we may have passed the tipping point back in the late 90's, and have been just deluding ourselves the past decade with visions of fixing our mess.

[GliderGuider]

33. You're right.

It's hard to establish "the" tipping point in a system as complex as global climate, but it's becoming clearer every day that we're now past it. It's also a little annoying that it happened at the same time as Peak Oil, a global economic collapse and the death of the oceans...

[phantom power]

35. Is anybody modeling the impact of this?

Does anybody even know how?

[tama]

36. Does anyone even really want to know?

Perhaps it's not wise to fixate on a certain future but open up new possibilities.

[phantom power]

37. Are you interested in spending time on realistic possibilities?

If you are, then modeling is your friend.

[tama]

38. Been there, done that

the problem is that all the modellings based on "realistic possiblities" lead pretty soon to dead end, at least from the viewpoint of human civilization.

If revolutions are defined as truly unpredictable events or moments, then let's have some and radical and ASAP.

[phantom power]

39. I'm thinking more in terms of "what will the new climate be like?"

Where will it be most habitable? Or least uninhabitable? Will Greenland and Antarctica be the new grain belt? Should we mount an orderly retreat from everywhere within 30 degrees of the equator? Will my spice harvesting business plan be funded? Can we expect jellyfish to be the new ocean-dwelling apex predator?

I mean, I realize that in the macro sense, any actual "plan" is highly unlikely. Even now, nobody is planning anything, and a preposterously large fraction of the world's leaders still think climate change is some kind of liberal fraud.

I'm just personally curious. I loves me some climate modeling.

[GliderGuider]

40. The problem is that it puts our attention on the model instead of the reality

The real question that needs to be asked is not where it will get most or least inhabitable. It is "Why the fuck did things turn out this way and what are the lessons we should learn from it?" That is not a question with an algorithmic answer.

[phantom power]

42. I propose that they are *both* useful questions.

Even neo-buddhist post collapse antibody communes will want to know where to live.

Won't they?

[GliderGuider]

43. What's wrong with living right where you are?

Unless you're an antibody living in Kirabati of course...

[phantom power]

44. I don't know. That's what I'd like to predict!

Well, actually I do know a couple potential problems. I live in a city of five million people in the sonoran desert.

That might be a problem.

[GliderGuider]

45. Mmmm. I see your point.

Though I don't think it takes much of a computer model to predict what you should do.

Maybe just a text file with some ASCII characters in it:













GET THE FUCK OUT! NOW!!!!!

[GliderGuider]

46. Hmm. That isn't as funny as it seemed when I wrote it.

Sorry, PP.

[phantom power]

48. Actually, that was pretty funny.

And probably good advice. Perhaps we will even take it, before it is too late.

We are talking about FAIL that can be seen from space.

[XemaSab]

47. I hear New Zealand is nice

:popcorn:

[tama]

41. Well

science can't even predict when the magnetic poles of Earth will switch next time because the causalities involved are not understood.

Same with dynamic self-reinforcing processes with multiple (practically infinite) variables. Butterfly effects and chaos theory.

Plus and especially all the "unknown unknowns"...

Social predictions are somewhat easier. Somehow even I knew many years ago that the "worst-case scenarios" of the Academic establishment would not realize - what would realize and is now being realized is much worse, much faster than their "worst-case scenarios". Basically because group thinking - when not panicking - tends to be wishfull thinking and "polite".

And because Mother Earth is growing impatient.

[pscot]

49. We haven't seen panic yet

but it will happen. The public is going to figure it out eventually, Maybe it will take a methane firestorm sweepng across the tundra, or a hurricane that inundates Miami or Washington D.C. When awareness dawns people will go from bland indifference to stark, raving panic. The politics will change dramatically. Fundamentalists will be preaching hellfire and damnation, abandoning their possessions and lining up for the rapture. Strange new cults will spring up and already tenuous cultural norms will disintegrate. A lot of people will figure, 'were doomed,so we may as well party like it's 1999'. (Prince was on to something there.) Suicides, individual and Jonestown style will proliferate, and survivalists will dig themselves in. Mental illness is likely to increase. Showing up for work is likely to decline. The global economy will stumble badly. Things are going to get really interesting when the sheep finally look up.