Seabed methane could spell climate disaster. - 27 Mar 2010  
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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