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<DIV><FONT size=4>Ted, et al,</FONT></DIV>
<DIV><FONT size=4></FONT> </DIV>
<DIV><FONT size=4>I've been meaning to post this for awhile. Your timely
remarks offer a context.</FONT></DIV>
<DIV><FONT size=4><BR>Art Deco (Wayne A. Fox)<BR><A
href="mailto:deco@moscow.com">deco@moscow.com</A><BR></FONT></DIV>
<DIV><FONT size=4></FONT> </DIV>
<DIV><FONT size=4><A
href="http://www.newscientist.com/article/mg18725124.500.html">http://www.newscientist.com/article/mg18725124.500.html</A></FONT></DIV>
<DIV>
<H2>Climate warning as Siberia melts</H2>
<UL class="straptext notlist highlight colspacer">
<LI>11 August 2005
<LI>NewScientist.com news service
<LI>Fred Pearce <!----></LI></UL>
<P>THE world's largest frozen peat bog is melting. <STRONG><FONT
color=#ff0000>An area stretching for a million square</FONT></STRONG> kilometres
across the permafrost of western Siberia is turning into a mass of shallow lakes
as the ground melts, according to Russian researchers just back from the
region.</P>
<P>The sudden melting of a bog the size of France and Germany combined could
unleash billions of tonnes of methane, a potent greenhouse gas, into the
atmosphere.</P>
<P>The news of the dramatic transformation of one of the world's least visited
landscapes comes from Sergei Kirpotin, a botanist at Tomsk State University,
Russia, and Judith Marquand at the University of Oxford.</P>
<P><STRONG><FONT color=#ff0000>Kirpotin describes an "ecological landslide that
is probably irreversible and is undoubtedly connected to climatic warming". He
says that the entire western Siberian sub-Arctic region has begun to melt, and
this "has all happened in the last three or four years".</FONT></STRONG></P>
<P>What was until recently a featureless expanse of frozen peat is turning into
a watery landscape of lakes, some more than a kilometre across. Kirpotin
suspects that some unknown critical threshold has been crossed, triggering the
melting.</P>
<P>Western Siberia has warmed faster than almost anywhere else on the planet,
with an increase in average temperatures of some 3 °C in the last 40 years. The
warming is believed to be a combination of man-made climate change, a cyclical
change in atmospheric circulation known as the Arctic oscillation, plus
feedbacks caused by melting ice, which exposes bare ground and ocean. These
absorb more solar heat than white ice and snow.</P>
<P>Similar warming has also been taking place in Alaska: earlier this summer Jon
Pelletier of the University of Arizona in Tucson reported a major expansion of
lakes on the North Slope fringing the Arctic Ocean.</P>
<P>The findings from western Siberia follow a report two months ago that
thousands of lakes in eastern Siberia have disappeared in the last 30 years,
also because of climate change (<I>New Scientist</I>, 11 June, p 16). This
apparent contradiction arises because the two events represent opposite end of
the same process, known as thermokarsk.</P>
<P>In this process, rising air temperatures first create "frost-heave", which
turns the flat permafrost into a series of hollows and hummocks known as salsas.
Then as the permafrost begins to melt, water collects on the surface, forming
ponds that are prevented from draining away by the frozen bog beneath. The ponds
coalesce into ever larger lakes until, finally, the last permafrost melts and
the lakes drain away underground.</P>
<P>Siberia's peat bogs formed around 11,000 years ago at the end of the last ice
age. Since then they have been generating methane, most of which has been
trapped within the permafrost, and sometimes deeper in ice-like structures known
as clathrates. Larry Smith of the University of California, Los Angeles,
estimates that the west Siberian bog alone contains some 70 billion tonnes of
methane, a quarter of all the methane stored on the land surface worldwide.</P>
<P>His colleague Karen Frey says if the bogs dry out as they warm, the methane
will oxidise and escape into the air as carbon dioxide. But if the bogs remain
wet, as is the case in western Siberia today, then the methane will be released
straight into the atmosphere. Methane is 20 times as potent a greenhouse gas as
carbon dioxide.</P>
<P>In May this year, Katey Walter of the University of Alaska Fairbanks told a
meeting in Washington of the Arctic Research Consortium of the US that she had
found methane hotspots in eastern Siberia, where the gas was bubbling from
thawing permafrost so fast it was preventing the surface from freezing, even in
the midst of winter.</P>
<P>An international research partnership known as the Global Carbon Project
earlier this year identified melting permafrost as a major source of feedbacks
that could accelerate climate change by releasing greenhouse gases into the
atmosphere. "Several hundred billion tonnes of carbon could be released," said
the project's chief scientist, Pep Canadell of the CSIRO Division of Marine and
Atmospheric Research in Canberra, Australia.</P></DIV>
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style="PADDING-RIGHT: 0px; PADDING-LEFT: 5px; MARGIN-LEFT: 5px; BORDER-LEFT: #000000 2px solid; MARGIN-RIGHT: 0px">
<DIV style="FONT: 10pt arial">----- Original Message ----- </DIV>
<DIV
style="BACKGROUND: #e4e4e4; FONT: 10pt arial; font-color: black"><B>From:</B>
<A title=Tbertruss@aol.com
href="mailto:Tbertruss@aol.com">Tbertruss@aol.com</A> </DIV>
<DIV style="FONT: 10pt arial"><B>To:</B> <A title=vision2020@moscow.com
href="mailto:vision2020@moscow.com">vision2020@moscow.com</A> </DIV>
<DIV style="FONT: 10pt arial"><B>Sent:</B> Sunday, October 09, 2005 3:32
PM</DIV>
<DIV style="FONT: 10pt arial"><B>Subject:</B> [Vision2020] "Damn the
torpedoes, full speed ahead!"</DIV>
<DIV><BR></DIV><FONT face=arial,helvetica><FONT lang=0 face=Arial size=2
FAMILY="SANSSERIF" PTSIZE="10"><BR>Dear Fellow Oil Hogs-<BR><BR>"Within a
century the melting could lead to summertime ice-free ocean conditions not
seen in the area in a million years, the group said Tuesday."<BR><BR>Above
quote from this web link:<BR><BR><A
href="http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/9053898/">http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/9053898/</A><BR><BR>Global
warming? Just a questionable theory, like evolution! There are too
many gaps in the fossil record to really say for sure for the heck
happened! And don't forget, how do you explain the "evolution" of a
complex molecule like DNA? Those silly scientists! And the "law of
gravity," also, just a theory, supported by sampling a very small percentage
of all the possible samples of matter in the billions of light years of volume
and billions of years of time passed in our universe...Well, that is, unless
the universe popped into existence just a few thousand years ago, which is
entirely "possible," with all memories and evidence to indicate otherwise just
a fantastic trick to test our faith. That's what those pre-homo sapien
sapien hominid remains (my "mother" Lucy!) from millions of years ago are
there for, correct? <BR><BR><A
href="http://www.asu.edu/clas/iho/lucy.html">http://www.asu.edu/clas/iho/lucy.html</A><BR><BR><A
href="http://www.d.umn.edu/cla/faculty/troufs/anth1602/pctimes.html">http://www.d.umn.edu/cla/faculty/troufs/anth1602/pctimes.html</A><BR><BR>What
do these elitist scientists know, anyway? Why, they have no "absolute
proof" that suddenly gravity will not suddenly weaken, that evolution resulted
in human intelligence, nor that the Earth will not soon become colder, making
a fool of those who think the best scientific evidence indicates major climate
change will likely kick humanity's ass in the next century or two, caused in
large part by human activity.<BR><BR>I hope "intelligent design" is true, in
some sense. Then perhaps whatever or whoever is behind "intelligent
design" can now induce the advent of "intelligence" on Earth. As implied
by the comedy act once done by Tily Tomlin, "The Search for Signs of
Intelligent Life in the Universe," whether "intelligence" exists seems open to
question. Current human responses from the most powerful in the bastions
of political/economic/ideological hegemony to the coming crisis caused
by melting ice raising ocean levels appears to indicate minds ruled by
instinctual short sighted immediate gain, a characteristic of "lower" life
forms, rather than leaving behind a better world for future generations not
yet born.<BR><BR>Now, on to my fire breathing CO2 belching dragon (usually
referred to as a "car") to be a good American consumer!<BR><BR>"Damn the
torpedoes, full speed ahead!"<BR><BR>Admiral David G. Farragut Mobile
Bay,<BR>Alabama August 5, 1864.<BR>-------------------------------<BR>Ted
Moffett<BR></FONT>
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