Coping with Climate Dread (Bryan Zandberg)

  Enviro experts battle despair as doom scenarios roll in.

   By Bryan Zandberg -- TheTyee.ca

  Oct., 20, 2006 -- It's not just crazy people with the sandwich boards anymore: a lot of level-headed professionals believe the end of our world is nigh. Some top scientists see global warming making much of the planet barely habitable within a few generations. Or sooner.

  "We've overshot," sighs William Rees into the receiver at the other end of the line. "We've overshot the long-term carrying capacity of the planet to support human life."

  Rees is the father of the "ecological footprint" and a world famous professor at UBC. We've been talking about new studies that suggest that because of global warming, methane gas previously frozen under the Arctic permafrost is bubbling up and escaping into the atmosphere, forcing us into the arms of global meltdown faster than you can say the Book of Revelations. As a greenhouse gas, methane is 20 times more powerful than carbon.

  Climatologists call it an example of a positive feedback loop, which are like vicious ecological circles on crack. The more temperatures rise, the more permafrost melts, contributing more methane into the atmosphere, which in turn causes the earth's temperature to climb again, melting more permafrost, and on and on. We're already seeing the results.

  "This year is the first time in tens of thousands of years you could take a kayak to the North Pole," Rees continues, his voice rising and his tone taking on a harder edge. "That's the evidence. So don't give me optimism about technology moving us forward, because it isn't."

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