Permafrost, Icecaps, Erosion, oh my!

Everybody’s heard about the melting icecaps, and about soil erosion, but what about the link between them? How about tying them together with melting permafrost? Well, here’s an article doing that, with some excerpts below.

The storm Solomon witnessed in 2000 flooded the historic whaling settlement at Herschel Island, swept several important archeological sites into the sea, and forced the evacuation of dozens of people camped at Shingle Point, a traditional hunting spot west of Tuktoyaktuk. By the time that storm passed through, the shoreline of Tuktoyaktuk Island had lost seven metres to erosion.
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The more the permafrost melts, the more porous and lubricated the shoreline becomes. The warmer the air and water gets, the less ice there is to stop the waves from ripping into it.
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Even though half of Canada sits on permafrost, the subject doesn't get nearly as much attention as receding glaciers, melting ice sheets and disappearing wildlife in the ongoing debate over climate change.

Permafrost specialist Peter Kershaw considers this a serious oversight. As permafrost melts, the University of Alberta scientist points out, hillsides slide, forests fall, houses and buildings slump, pipelines crack and sections of roads turn into sinkholes. In many places where permafrost occurs, says Kershaw, there is no simple engineering solution to counteract the meltdown.
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Melville is the largest uninhabited island in the world and a place that is very likely to become a hub for future oil and gas developments in the Arctic. Until this year, summers on the island have been largely unaffected by the warming taking place across the north. July temperatures have remained steady at around 5C.

But this year, Lamoureux and his associates basked in temperatures that hit 21.8C. The heat was so intense it melted the permafrost a metre below the surface.

Throughout those warm weeks of July – the mean temperature was almost 11C, far above the normal July mean of 4C – the scientists watched in amazement as the meltwater below lubricated the topsoil, causing it to slide down slopes, clearing everything in its path and thrusting up ridges at the valley bottom.

"The landscape piled up like a rug," says Lamoureux, an expert in hydro-climatic variability and landscape processes. "It was being torn to pieces, literally before our eyes. A major river was dammed by a slide along a 200-metre length of the channel. River flow will be changed for years, if not decades to come.

“Had this happened in a populated or industrial area," he says, "the impact would have been "catastrophic."
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Permafrost is not only the cement that binds the sand, soil and rock in northern Canada, it is also prevents huge reservoirs of carbon dioxide and underground methane from entering the atmosphere and further warming the world.
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Methane, on the other hand, is the dark force of greenhouse gases in the Arctic because it is 20 times more effective than carbon dioxide in trapping heat.
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Bowen and Michelle Cote, on contract with the Geological Survey of Canada, have been monitoring methane seeps in lakes and ponds on the Mackenzie Delta for five years. Three of the biggest seeps they are monitoring produce as much combined greenhouse gases in a year as 9,000 cars.

That last could be seen as an excuse to say, “See! It’s not human interference! Global warming is happening naturally!” No, you bloody idiot, it’s human-caused climate change that’s triggered that offgassing, and now it’s caused a runaway feedback loop. And it’s only going to get worse as it continues to spiral out of control.

The measures listed at the end for “fixing” and monitoring are ridiculous. It’s too late. The damage has been done. How much more damage do we have to witness before we realize that? And it's only going to continue getting worse, and affecting you personally more and more, and most likely sooner than you expect. The sooner you wake up to that, the better off you're likely to be.