| Teesus | Date: Wednesday, 2013/07/24, 7:15 PM | Message # 1 | DMCA |
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The rapidly melting Arctic is not only a looming climate catastrophe, but new research shows it could be an economic disaster, as well. In findings published in the journal Nature, economists and polar scientists from the University of Cambridge and Erasmus University Rotterdam found that the ripple effects of climate
change in the Arctic — unlocking frozen reserves of methane that speed global warming and cause destructive and costly climactic changes across the planet — could deal a severe blow to the global economy.
The release of methane from thawing permafrost beneath the East Siberian Sea, off northern Russia, alone comes with an average global price tag of $60 trillion in the absence of mitigating action — a figure comparable to the size of the world economy in 2012 (about $70trillion). The total cost of Arctic change will be much higher.
While much has been made of the coming economic boom that will result from an increasingly ice-free Arctic — shipping lanes, fisheries, and fossil fuel reserves that previously were inaccessible — little research has been done on the potential economic damage these unprecedented changes may incur.
“People are calculating possible economic benefits in the billions of dollars and we’re talking about possible costs and damage and extra impacts in the order of tens of trillions of dollars,” said Chris Hope, professor at Cambridge’s Judge Business School and report author, in an interview with Financial Times.
The Arctic is melting at an alarming rate — about twice as fast as the rest of the globe — and the impacts thus far have been devastating.
The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration’s 2012 Arctic Report Card documented a very grim year for the region and found “strong evidence of widespread, sustained change driving Arctic environmental system into new state,” including record-low sea ice extent, record ice sheet surface melting in Greenland, record-high permafrost temperature, and record-low snow extent.
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Message edited by Teesus - Wednesday, 2013/07/24, 7:19 PM |
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| inbluevt | Date: Wednesday, 2013/07/24, 8:47 PM | Message # 2 | DMCA |
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Thanks Tee! Great article about a scary subject. But it gets even worse... there is also methane trapped in ice in the ocean itself: methane clathrates. As the oceans warm...and these clathrates are not in deep water... even more methane will be released as the ice crystals holding the methane melt. And then there is energy deprived Japan trying to "mine" the methane crystals to solve her needs.... I don't see a good ending here.
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