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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