When the ground melts in the North

[Newsjock]

Source: Nunatsiaq News (Nunavut)

On Nunavut's Melville Island, where temperatures soared to more than 20 C this past July, a thick layer of cold, gooey topsoil sloughed off and flowed down a slope, much to the shock of a team of researchers camping nearby.

At the valley bottom, where the landslide finally stopped, a series of new ridges formed. Thick mounds of soil were deposited along 200 metres of a river channel, damming the river and changing its flow.

... Permafrost melt may also have an impact on resource development on Melville Island. In the 1960s and 70s, gas was discovered on the island and, at that time, there were even plans to build a deepwater port and a pipeline to Ontario.

Warmer temperatures in the future could make it economically feasible to liquefy Melville Island's natural gas and ship it through the ice-free Northwest Passage or by other means.

... In the Sahka republic of Siberia, melting permafrost has already turned solid land to mud in many villages, with disastrous results. More than 500 private and public buildings have buckled due to permafrost melt in the city of Yakutsk.

Read more: http://nunatsiaq.com/news/features/71012_596.html

[Coexist]

1. ... but the jury is still out.

[Annces]

2. Even my sister does not want to look at the facts

And she and I were science nuts as kids. She married a republican and dropped all her ecology interests. Some people really adapt to their surroundings.

[Swamp Rat]

3. How ironic

Maybe you should send her an article about adaptation via the human ecology school of thought. Redfield, Wirth, Park and Burgess come to mind.

[Annces]

4. I let it go

I figure every person is at their own stage of development. She lives in Alaska too, where she is up close and personal with climate changes.