Download Alan Morgan - Arctic Adventures

Alan Morgan – Arctic Adventures
Recap by Michael Frind
Kitchener-Waterloo Field Naturalists, Monday, January 28, 2013.
Alan Morgan, a geologist seasoned by many field trips, treated us to an enlightening visual feast
from his many travels to the circumpolar Arctic. Now retired from his role as Professor of Earth
Sciences at the University of Waterloo, he continues to give public lectures on a diversity of topics
including natural history, geology, and climate change.
Canada’s North is largely covered by the Canadian Shield, an igneous rock body that has an average
age of a billion years. Knowing the half-lives of the trace radioactive elements present, a given
rock’s age is easily calculated from the ratio of parent to daughter products. The oldest exposed
rock on Earth, a 4-billion-year-old Acasta Gneiss, sits 300km north of Yellowknife.
Resource extraction is increasing its footprint in the Arctic. There are many environmental
concerns: offshore oil drilling inevitably brings spills (the only questions are magnitude and
number), metal-mining means long-term contamination (sulphide ores mean sulphuric acid in the
tailings, which release their load of toxic heavy metals over time because acids dissolve metals),
and diamond mines require landscape-damaging extra-deep dewatering (because the kimberlite ore
occurs as vertical shafts, known as pipes).
The diamond mining is especially intriguing, because perfect synthetic diamonds (visually
indistinguishable from natural ones) have been available for a number of years now. Mined
diamonds are thus obsolete and woefully overpriced, but they continue to be propped up by a
powerful marketing machine (engineered consumption). It is unknown how many more of the 26
known kimberlite pipes in the Canadian Arctic will be exploited.
Additionally, because of global warming, the Arctic is expected to soon be relatively ice-free, thus
opening the polar regions to global shipping. But preparing for unexpected events in the Arctic
Ocean remains a work in progress—none of the countries nor companies currently involved in any
type of Arctic exploration are prepared for such disasters.
Global warming is bringing rapid changes to the Arctic. Permafrost melting is releasing trapped
methane, which is a 23-fold more powerful greenhouse gas than CO2; this is a positive-feedback
loop. The same warming is also causing the polar ice cap to disappear. Open water absorbs
sunlight much better than ice and snow—another alarming positive-feedback loop.
The Arctic landscape brings many opportunities for photography, with a macro lens being essential.
Orange lichen, Cladonia (reindeer lichen), purple Saxifrage, Locoweed, Marsh Fleabane, black
Poppy, Wooly Louseworth, Arctic Cottongrass, and Mountain Avens are all photogenic. The
significance of a humble mat of Cyanobacteria becomes apparent when one considers that this is the
oldest form of life on Earth (about 1.6 to 3 billion years old).
Caribou migrate long distances in search of lichens. They intelligently congregate on snowy areas
in order to avoid the copious mosquitoes. Meanwhile, in the marine realm, Polar Bears depend on
sea ice as a fishing platform; the receding polar ice caps have forced them to swim longer distances.
The longest recorded polar-bear swim is 685.5 kilometres (further than Waterloo to Chicago): the
bear was tracked with a radio collar, and had lost 22 kilograms of fat. Sadly, her cub drowned.
The topmost layer of the Greenland Ice Cap is already melting—a worrisome harbinger, given that
fossil-fuel consumption is continuing to grow, especially in developing nations. The fact that the
oceans are now becoming acidic implies that their CO2-absorption capacity is nearing its limit.
Global warming may become so severe that we may simply not be able to afford to consume the
still-immense oil reserves that remain on this planet.
If the Antarctic Ice Sheet (which began forming 35 million years ago) were to melt, the ocean
would rise 240 feet. Many cities around the globe would be wiped out. Mass migrations of
refugees would ensue, potentially accompanied by major conflicts and wars over space and
resources. Given the skyrocketing growth in both the raw number of humans and the number of
humans living the modern high-consumption lifestyle, thorny problems are a global certainty.
Global warming due to anthropogenic CO2 releases is clearly happening, and all reputable scientists
have been sounding the alarm—which politicians continue to ignore. The Arctic will warm
proportionally more than other parts of the planet. The anticipated changes give much reason to
worry.
Sincere thanks to Alan Morgan for his deeply penetrating insight into the rapidly changing Arctic.