A Sleeping Giant Wakes - Permafrost Melting All Across Arctic Canada

[hatrack]

MACKENZIE RIVER DELTA, N.W.T. -- The sun is beating down on an icy bluff, sending chunks of ancient permafrost crashing to the ground. Rivers of mud stream off the exposed permafrost, cracking and dripping in the 20 Celsius late-summer heat. Enormous ice wedges that have grown metres long over the eons protrude from the top of the bluff like giant fangs.

"Is this cool or what?" asks Scott Dallimore of the Geological Survey of Canada as he scrambles out of a helicopter in his hip waders. He heads for the steel grey bluff to take a closer look. But the melted permafrost is like quicksand and stops him in his tracks. "We first found this exposure two years ago," says Dallimore. The contorted pattern of the exposed permafrost suggests it might be hundreds of thousands of years old. "It's been frozen like this forever."

But not for long. The bluff, on an island that is one of the anchor sites for the proposed $7-billion Mackenzie Valley pipeline, is melting away at the rate of 10 to 20 metres a year. So are hundreds of other permafrost ridges and cliffs across Canada's North.

Geoscientist Rob Bowen, working with Dallimore to assess gases escaping from the frozen ground, likens permafrost to a "sleeping giant" that could awaken with potentially catastrophic consequences. One nightmare scenario suggests that as permafrost warms, it might belch out enough methane -- a greenhouse gas -- to trigger runaway global warming. There is some evidence such giant burps have occurred in the past. Permafrost also contains large stores of mercury, a neurotoxin, and massive amounts of soil carbon, which could speed global warming. But it's the water melting out of the upper layer of permafrost that's of immediate concern to engineers and northern planners. The so-called "active" layer -- the top metres or two of permafrost that melts every summer and then refreezes -- is becoming more active, playing havoc with the region's infrastructure. And vulnerable permafrost cliffs and ridges are melting, sending enormous blocks of the frozen ground sliding and toppling into Arctic seas and rivers.

EDIT

http://www.canada.com/victoriatimescolonist/news/story.html?id=0d7845a5-f776-4323-a49f-72927d83fd42&k=91930

[glitch]

1. I think I'll go with "or what"

"Is this cool or what?" asks Scott Dallimore of the Geological Survey of Canada

[mom cat]

2. Rec #5. I can't even begin to wrap my head around the magnitude

of what is happening to the earth or the maddening lack of action by our government who seem quite OK with the coming destruction of life on earth!

[LisaLynne]

3. The lack of reaction is nearly as frightening to me as what is happening.

The people who are in a position to do things care more about their money and power. I can comprehend how these people can close their eyes to what is going on.

[tex-wyo-dem]

4. Yeah, the ignorance of most and the magnitude of what's happening...

kind of reminds me of the lyrics to The Police "Synchronicity I":


Another suburban family morning
Grandmother screaming at the wall

We have to shout above the din of our rice crispies
We can't hear anything at all
Mother chants her litany of boredom and frustration
But we all know her suicides are fake
Daddy only stares into the distance
There's only so much more that he can take
Many miles away
Something crawls from the slime
At the bottom of a dark
Scottish lake

Another industrial ugly morning
The factory belches filth into the sky
He walks unhindered through the picket lines today
He doesn't think to wonder why
The secretaries pout and preen like cheap tarts in a red light street
But all he ever thinks to do is watch
And every so called meeting with his so called superior
Is a humiliating kick in the crotch
Many miles away
Something crawls to the surface
Of a dark Scottish loch

Another working day has ended
Only the rush hour hell to face
Packed like lemmings into shiny metal boxes
Contestants in a suicidal race
Daddy grips the wheel and stares alone into the distance
He knows that something somewhere has to break
He sees the family home now looming in his headlights
The pain upstairs that makes his eyeballs ache
Many miles away
There's a shadow on the door
Of a cottage on the shore
Of a dark Scottish lake

Many miles away
Many miles away
Many miles away
Many miles away
Many miles away...

[mom cat]

8. I know that I have to start with me. All my friends are also being

badgered into reality. We can't wait for THEM,yet we have to keep screaming at them.

[JohnWxy]

5. This is the aspect of Global Warming that really demands we start doing

something immediately. They don't even know just how much CO2 and methane could be released, but it is likely it will make the Warming we have seen so far look like the 'good ol' days'. the release of methane and CO2 from melting permafrost will most likely blow the hell out of the current predictions of a couple degrees of warming by the end of the century.
We are looking at a bomb with a fuze burning right now. I really think the scientists should be speaking up more vigorously than they have. I know in the scientific community you are supposed to wait until you've got a good amount of solid data before drawing conclusions or making extrapolations but for the sake of humans on earth I think the scientists should go a little bit beyond the constraints of science and point out that this undeniable process (the melting of the permafrost) while we don't have enough data yet to make hard predictions, still the scientists know that the magnitude of the CO2 and methane release will be massive and portends disaster much sooner than so far has been predicted.

We truly are watching a fuse burning to a climatic bomb. We should be taking action to reduce GHGs right now. and scientists should get more adamate about this.

[brokensymmetry]

12. Not going to happen.

And, too, I suspect it's already too late. The bomb
has already exploded and the shrapnel is headed toward
our collective chests. We might be able to mitigate
the problem - a very big might - if the entire world
joined immediately to cut carbon emissions massively.

The chances of that are zero. We'd be better off
hoping for a fleet of UFOs from Beta-Whosis to come
clean up the mess on E-Z credit terms.

[tex-wyo-dem]

6. This is one of many feedback effects, which may accelerate...

the warming effect much faster than previously predicted.

[JohnWxy]

7. And even if we start reducing GHgs it will still be several decades before

we actually see the rising temps stabilize and then start turning around.

I really think the scientific community should be more up in arms about this. This melting of the permafrost is really going to add a lot of fuel to the fire and make it much harder to get it turned around.

[phantom power]

9. We are in big, big trouble.

[hatrack]

10. And do you know what the really funny part of all of this is?

Guess where the Canadians want to spend $7 billion on a giant natural gas pipeline? That's right, along the Mackenzie River valley, where hundreds of large landslides are being reported every year thanks to just the phenomenon described here.

"Business leadership", anyone?

:eyes:

[bagrman]

11. Don't worry Mother Nature will take care of all our problems.

Latr
Bagrman

[SeanQ]

13. 'Slip sliding away'

:puke: :cry:

[CHIMO]

14. Inuit feel the effects of global warming

The arctic is changing so rapidly that Nunavut elders can no longer tell what ice is safe, and new birds and insects are making their way into the region.

Spring starts early and fall starts late, robins are flying into the region and hungry polar bears are fading to little more than skin and bones as global warming radically reshapes the landscape, Inuit elders warned officials in Ottawa Thursday.

Peter Irniq, a former Nunavut commissioner, said the changes had been so swift that local knowledge was no longer keeping up. Ice-fishing grounds that had been in use for 30 years were now cracking, and people were falling to their deaths.

“We're seeing changes, we're seeing with the way that we are living in the arctic, the issue of climate change and global warming is not just a debate any more. It's real, it's there. It's not just an issue for scientists. It's not just an issue for Inuit any more.”

http://www.theglobeandmail.com/servlet/story/RTGAM.20061005.winuit1005/BNStory/Front

[IWantAChange]

15. Dubyha sez

the jury is out on global warming and Corporate America takes that as its cue to do WHATEVER they want. Only when the Repugs are no longer in control can something be done to try and avert this disaster.