Seabed methane could spell climate disaster. In
a new study published in the journal “Science,” a team of researchers
from Russia, United States and Sweden have found that thawing permafrost
is causing 8 million tons of methane to be released from the seabed of
the East Siberian Arctic Shelf each year.
This alarming amount
from just one location is equivalent to the total that had been
previously estimated for all the world’s oceans and causes concern that a
tipping point may have already been reached.
Lead researcher,
Dr. Natalia Shakhova of the University of Alaska-Fairbanks in the USA
noted that current average methane concentrations in the Arctic are
already the highest in 400,000 years.
Of equal concern is the
fact that, averaged over a 20-year period, methane is 72 times more
heat-trapping than CO2; however, these potentially vast permafrost
methane emissions are not included in climate change prediction models.
Dr.
Shakhova and international colleagues, we are grateful for your sharing
of such factually urgent observations. Let us act in accordance with
their dire implications and move swiftly toward sustainable ways to save
our ecosphere.
Supreme Master Ching Hai has spoken with concern
on several occasions about the risks of melting permafrost, as during a
September 2009 videoconference in South Korea.
Supreme Master Ching Hai: Since
2007, scientists have seen more and more evidence of methane from
permafrost melt, with recent discoveries of pure methane gas bubbling up
from the bottom of the Arctic lakes in both northern Canada and Russia.
This situation is so alarming that
UN Intergovernmental Panel
for Climate Change Chairman Dr. Pachauri has referred to the potential
for “abrupt, irreversible climate change” from the melting permafrost.
This irreversible effect, we want to avoid at all costs, especially
since it may not be as far away as we would like to think.
The
more people who eliminate meat and, indeed, all animal products from
their lives, the more we have a chance to save the planet and not only
that, to actually restore our earthly home to her original grace and
beauty and even more so, more than what we have known, more beautiful,
more abundant, more peace, more gladness than what we have known up to
now.
So please, be a part of the solution and join in first by
being vegan yourself and helping to spread this message as much, as
quickly as possible: Be Veg, Go Green, Save the Planet.
http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/environment/article7050312.ece http://esciencenews.com/articles/2010/03/04/methane.releases.arctic.shelf.may.be.much.larger.and.faster.anticipated http://www.theage.com.au/national/seabed-methane-leaks-cause-alarm-20100305-pox2.html
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