“Gaia’s Revolution”, Life after Capitalism: A Canadian Story…

February 22, 2026May 6, 2026 / thealiennextdoor / Leave a comment

A fanatical deep-ecologist, Monica Schlange, harnesses two orphans in her bid to reshape humanity and its place in the natural world.

My upcoming book Gaia’s Revolution (Book 1 of The Icaria Trilogy by Dragon Moon Press) explores a collapsing capitalist society in Canada through ravages of climate change and a failing technology. The story is told through the lives of ambitious twin brothers Eric—a gifted engineer—and Damien Vogel—a brilliant scientist and deep ecologist*—and the woman who plays them like chess pieces in her gambit to ‘rule the world.’

The brothers meet at Treffpunkt, a café near Humboldt University in Berlin, nursing Kellerbiers over a late lunch of Einsbein mit Sauerkraut. They argue ideology and reform. Canada represents an ideal canvas for revolution, argues Eric. Damien is puzzled by this. To him Canada represents a quietly reposed nation of polite intellectuals who accept a healthy multicultural society and whose practical leaders are connected with their people. Not a restive rabble ripe for change.

As if reading his brother’s mind, Eric replies:

“Because it’s a huge nation with a lot of space and few people,” Eric argues. “Did you know that Canada holds on average only 4 people per square kilometer? Germany stuffs 240 people in the same area. And China, which is virtually the same size as Canada, holds 153 people per square kilometer.” He picks up Walden Two and waves it at Damien. “Canada is a perfect place to start these [Walden Two colonies called Icarias*]. And, with global warming, we could settle in the boreal.” He then slides the book back in his pocket and leans back, eyes sparkling with purpose. “But the real reason to start a revolution there is because, like you, Canadians are naïve. Even their leaders. And this is because, unlike the rest of the world, they are still asleep…

“Climate is not our enemy, Dame; it’s our friend. Climate is our fierce archangel of change. And let’s not forget that ‘crisis is opportunity…” … He grins, self-pleased, like a wolf in a hen house. Then he practically snarls out, “We must first destroy before we can create. We must be unruly like climate. We must be relentless like climate. We must ride that wave before we can become the wave, Bruder. And then by being that wave, we change the world.”

*Pine cedar forest in Ontario (photo and rendition by Nina Munteanu)*

The brothers escape the growing racial violence of Berlin, to ‘peaceful’ Canada in a rivalry to control the evolution of the human race. Years later, Eric Vogel, who has created a niche for himself in the technocratic government*, sits in the Canadian prime minister’s office and imagines what a post-capitalist world will look like and how his twin brother Damien—left behind in Germany—would disagree with his vision:

Damien too easily prescribes to the old leftist shibboleth of Nature being the answer to everything and Market being evil. His deep ecology utopia would spring from an atavistic rejection of modern life, a return to ‘the ancient farm.’ But how that fantasy could be achieved without a drastic population reduction is beyond his brother’s imagination. Damien fetishizes the natural world. Just like he does their mother. The naïve fool is a blind romantic, refusing to see reality right in front of him: that Nature is ultimately cruel, cold, and preoccupied with its own survival. Just like their mother.

*First snow in an Ontario marsh (photo and rendition by Nina Munteanu)*

Each brother plans to create a new humanity: one to control through gene manipulation and behaviour engineering; the other to empower through biotechnology and transhumanist AI. The warring brothers end up in Canada and set off a violent revolution that destroys the Canadian technocratic government and whose weapons ultimately risk the survival of humanity. Deep ecologist Monica Schlange snares the brothers in her gambit to reshape humanity and its place in the natural world. Three orphaned children, caught in the web of intrigue and violence, will ultimately determine the direction of humanity by introducing the first veemelds (people who can communicate with machines), a new environmental disease (Darwin), and a new set of rules neither brother envisioned.

You can pre-order the ebook of Gaia’s Revolution on Amazon. Release date is March 10, 2026. The print version will release soon after. Book 2 (Angel of Chaos) and Book 3 (Darwin’s Paradox) of The Icaria Trilogy are already available in both ebook and print form.

*Birch trees in a winter marsh, ON (photo and rendition by Nina Munteanu)*

References:

Munteanu, Nina. 2026. “Gaia’s Revolution, Part 1 of Icaria Trilogy.” Dragon Moon Press, Calgary, AB. 369 pp.

Munteanu, Nina. 2010. “Angel of Chaos, Part 2 of Icaria Trilogy.” Dragon Moon Press, Calgary, AB. 518 pp.

Munteanu, Nina. 2007. “Darwin’s Paradox, Part 3 of Icaria Trilogy.” Dragon Moon Press, Calgary, AB. 294 pp.

Sessions, George, Bill Devall. 2000. “Deep Ecology: Living as if Nature Mattered.” Gibbs Smith. 267pp.

Skinner, B.F. 1948. “Walden Two” The Macmillan Company, New York. 301pp.

*Jackson Creek in the fall, ON (photo and rendition by Nina Munteanu)*

Terminology:

*Deep Ecology: An environmental philosophy and social movement advocating that all living beings have intrinsic value, independent of their utility to human needs. Coined by Arne Naess in 1972, it promotes a holistic, ecocentric worldview—often termed “ecosophy”—that demands radical, structural changes to human society to prioritize nature’s flourishing.

*Icaria: the name of Étienne Cabet’s utopia. Cabet was a French lawyer in Dijon, who published his novel Voyage en Icarie in 1839. The novel was a sort of manifesto-blueprint of utopian socialism, with elements of communism (abolished private property and individual enterprise), influenced by Fourierist and Owenite thinking. Key elements, such as the four-hour work day, are reflected in B.F. Skinner’s Walden Two. The novel explores a society in which capitalist production is replaced by workers’ cooperatives with a focus on small communities.

*Technocracy: A form of government in which the decision-maker(s) are selected based on their expertise in a given area; any portion of a bureaucracy run by technologists. Technocracies control society or industry through an elite of technical experts. The term was initially used to signify the application of the scientific method to solving social problems.

Nina Munteanu is an award-winning novelist and short story writer of eco-fiction, science fiction and fantasy. She also has three writing guides out: The Fiction Writer; The Journal Writer; and The Ecology of Writing and teaches fiction writing and technical writing at university and online. Check the Publications page on this site for a summary of what she has out there. Nina teaches writing at the University of Toronto and has been coaching fiction and non-fiction authors for over 20 years. You can find Nina’s short podcasts on writing on YouTube. Check out this site for more author advice from how to write a synopsis to finding your muse and the art and science of writing.

“Gaia’s Revolution”, Life After Capitalism: Will the Environment—And We Along With It—Survive?…

February 15, 2026June 10, 2026 / thealiennextdoor / Leave a comment

“Bourgeois society stands at the crossroads, either transition to socialism or regression into barbarism.”—Rosa Luxemburg, 1915

I wrote my first novel in 1969 when I was fifteen. Caged in World was a hundred-page speculative story about a world that had moved “inside” to escape the ravages of a post climate-change environment. It would later become Book 2 of The Icaria Trilogy. I was already disillusioned with my world. I saw how corporations and governments and society in general—individuals around me—‘othered’ the environment by either treating it with disrespect and apathy or outright ignoring it in a kind of torpor of obliviousness. As though it didn’t exist.

I remember being chastised by a school teacher for thinking globally about what was happening to the planet at our hands: worldwide deforestation (e.g., clearcutting the old-growth forests of Canada), infilling saltwater and freshwater marshes, massive use of pesticides and fertilizers, contamination of lakes, unregulated mining and toxic pollution, and ultimately climate change. Stick to local concerns, he advised me; recycling and such.

I remember wondering if I was just being weird. That my odd sensibility for the planet-entire was just a nina-thing. I prayed that I was not alone and it wasn’t just a nina-thing.

(Photo: Nina Munteanu, Salk Institute, California)

For a description of how the books of the trilogy came to be (for instance, they were published in backward order!) see my article entitled “Nina Munteanu Reflects on Her Eco-Fiction Journey at Orchard Park Secondary School”.

Throughout high school and university, I read scientific papers, news articles and books on revolution. I became a student of climate change long before the term entered the zeitgeist. I studied industrial capitalism and its roots in neoliberalism and colonialism. I noted how the post-war expansion of capitalism shifted from Fordist mass production to flexible automation, technology and AI. I saw the rise of multinational corporations, income inequality, and the commodification of everything—from water to human beings (Foucault’s homo economicus).

I pursued a university degree in ecology and limnology to study and help protect the environment and educate industry and their governments in the process. I became an expert on water. See my book Water Is…The Meaning of Water, which celebrates water from twelve perspectives (and got a shout out from Margaret Atwood!).

I soon concluded that a hegemony that follows the economic system of late capitalism inevitably commodifies and ‘others’ with ruthless purpose. Once something (or someone) is commodified, they are given a finite value and purpose outside their own existence. They become an object, a symbol to use and trade. They become a resource to manipulate, exchange, and dispose of with impunity. And through this surrender to utility, they become ‘othered.’ The consumer. The trees of the forest. Water. Homo sacer*. Each has a role to play in the late capitalist narrative of digital abundance and physical scarcity.

Capitalism hasn’t been kind to the environment. Economic pundits and sociologists insist that Capitalism is devolving. But what will replace it? Cloud capital? Technofeudalism? Something else?

Deep Ecology* & Gaia’s Revolution

*The Icaria Trilogy (Dragon Moon Press)*

My three Icaria novels—starting with Gaia’s Revolution, (the first of The Icaria Trilogy, releasing March 10, 2026, by Dragon Moon Press)—chronicle the collapse of a capitalist society in Canada as climate change, water shortages, habitat destruction, plague and a failing technology devastate the Canadian population.

Gaia’s Revolution (Book 1 of The Icaria Trilogy) explores a transition in Canada from semi-socialized capitalist system to a technocratic* meritocracy of technologists and scientists. Triggered by catastrophic environmental and sociological tipping points and following violent revolution, a dictatorship of deep ecologists* called Gaians seize power. By the end of the book, enclosed cities called Icarias* now populate North America. Separated from their environment, humans now live inside domes protecting them from a hostile and toxic environment.

In truth, the deep ecologists are keeping people “inside” not to protect humanity from a toxic wasteland but to protect the environment from a toxic humanity.

How realistic is this vision? Well, it is science fiction, after all, and though it takes liberties with its narrative, it is science-based and ultimately draws on precedent. As Margaret Atwood so astutely attested of her cautionary SF book The Handmaid’s Tale: “I didn’t put in anything that we haven’t already done, we’re not already doing, we’re seriously trying to do, coupled with trends that are already in progress.”

Science fiction is itself powerful metaphor; it is the fiction of political and social allegory or satire and makes astute social commentary about a world and civilization: how it has come to be, how it works—or doesn’t—and how it may evolve.

So, it is visionary and predictive? I prefer to think as Ray Bradbury:

“The function of science fiction is not only to predict the future, but to prevent it.”–Ray Bradbury

*Jackson Creek in winter, ON (photo and rendition by Nina Munteanu)*

References:

Angus, Ian. 1012. “The Spectre of 21^st Century Barbarism.” Climate & Capitalism, August 20, 2012.

Atwood, Margaret. 2004. “The Handmaid’s Tale and Oryx and Crake ‘In Context'”. PMLA. 119 (3): 513–517.

Atwood, Margaret. 2018. “Margaret Atwood on How She Came to Write The Handmaid’s Tale”. Literary Hub. April 25, 2018.

Bradbury, Ray. 1991. “Yestermorrow: Obvious Answers to Impossible Futures” and “Beyond 1984: The People Machines” by Ray Bradbury, dated 1982, Page 155, Joshua Odell Editions: Capra Press, Santa Barbara, California.

Foucault, Michel. 2010. “The Birth of Biopolitics (Naissance de la biopolitique): Lectures at the Collège de France, 1978-1979.” Picador. 368pp.

Luxemburg, Rosa. 1915. “The Junius Pamphlet: The Crisis in the German Democracy”, Marxist.org.

Munteanu, Nina. 2026. “Gaia’s Revolution, Part 1 of Icaria Trilogy.” Dragon Moon Press, Calgary, AB. 369 pp.

Munteanu, Nina. 2010. “Angel of Chaos, Part 2 of Icaria Trilogy.” Dragon Moon Press, Calgary, AB. 518 pp.

Munteanu, Nina. 2007. “Darwin’s Paradox, Part 3 of Icaria Trilogy.” Dragon Moon Press, Calgary, AB. 294 pp.

Neuman, Sally. 2006. “‘Just a Backlash’: Margaret Atwood, Feminism, and The Handmaid’s Tale“. University of Toronto Quarterly. 75 (3): 857–868.

Sessions, George, Bill Devall. 2000. “Deep Ecology: Living as if Nature Mattered.” Gibbs Smith. 267pp.

Skinner, B.F. 1948. “Walden Two” The Macmillan Company, New York. 301pp.

Streeck, Wolfgang. 2014. “How Will Capitalism End?” New Left Review 2 (87): 47p.

Terminology:

*Deep Ecology: An environmental philosophy and social movement advocating that all living beings have intrinsic value, independent of their utility to human needs. Coined by Arne Næss in 1972, it promotes a holistic, ecocentric worldview—often termed “ecosophy”—that demands radical, structural changes to human society to prioritize nature’s flourishing.

*Homo sacer: a figure from Roman law denoting a person excluded from society who is outside human law (can be killed) and divine law (cannot be sacrificed). The term represents “bare life”: stripped of political rights, legal protection, and social value. Philosopher Giorgo Agamben popularized the term to describe individuals excluded from the political community, such as refugees, stateless persons, or camp detainees. The term illustrates the power of a sovereign in deciding which lives are worthy of protection and which are not.

*Icaria: the name of Étienne Cabet’s utopia. Cabet was a French lawyer in Dijon, who published his novel Voyage en Icarie in 1839. The novel was a sort of manifesto-blueprint of utopian socialism, with elements of communism (abolished private property and individual enterprise), influenced by Fourierist and Owenite thinking. Key elements, such as the four-hour work day, are reflected in B.F. Skinner’s Walden Two. Cabet’s novel explores a society in which capitalist production is replaced by workers’ cooperatives with a focus on small communities.

*Letzte Generation: a prominent European climate activist group, founded in 2021, known for its acts of civil disobedience—such as roadblocks, defacing art, and vandalizing structures—to pressure governments on climate action. The term was chosen because they considered themselves to be the last generation before tipping points in the earth’s climate system would be reached. They are mostly active in Germany, Italy, Poland and Canada. In Germany, they have faced accusations of forming a criminal organization, leading to police raids.

When Art Helps Story

June 2, 2024September 11, 2026 / thealiennextdoor / Leave a comment

No writer works alone. Sure, we may work alone when writing, but all other aspects of getting our writing out to you, the reader, involves a team of other people. Like all good things, writing is a collaborative affair. All professional writers enter a contract with their publisher to work with editors, marketers, and also with cover artists, designers and interior artists. All together create the final artistic expression shared with the reading audience.

I want to focus on the latter here and celebrate how art and design help create more than what the writer alone produces. When my writing career started in earnest in 1995 with my first publication in a professional magazine, I was involved in collaborations with artists, who all improved my work.

Arc of Time was my first short story publication, appearing in Armchair Aesthete in the Summer/Fall issue of 2002. Armchair Aesthete is a small literary magazine in the United States and features funky cover art.

*Magazine cover for Ultra! and interior design for “Arc of Time”*

Arc of Time was then accepted in the premiere issue of Ultra! (Aardwolf Publications) in 2004. That issue contained a fully illustrated and designed interior, which really set off the story—an epistemological exchange of emails linked with narrative. In 2013, MetaStellar Speculative Fiction and Beyond, which provides illustrations for each story it carries, used one of my own photographs to illustrate Arc of Time.

*Feature cover illustration for “Arc of Time” on MetaStellar site*

Virtually Yours first appeared in Hadrosaur Tales in Issue #15 in December 2002. Hadrosaur Tales is a small but vibrant literary magazine out of Las Cruces, New Mexico and featured interesting covers.

*Cover and story illustrations in Nowa Fantastyka for “Virtually Yours”*

Virtually Yours was republished all over the world and is up to its tenth publication this year. Several publications included artwork specifically for the story. Nowa Fantastyka, out of Poland, is a slick magazine that boasts a lot of images, colour interiors and illustrations. My story was introduced with illustrations that enhanced its impact.

*Interior illustrations for “Virtually Yours” in Amazing Stories and MetaStellar, respectively*

Its reprint in Amazing Stories was illustrated evocatively by Duncan Long. In the story’s later reprint in MetaStellar Speculative Fiction and Beyond, Brigitte Werner created a beautiful illustration for the story.

*Nowa Fantastyka cover art and story art* *for “A Butterfly in Peking”*

A Butterfly in Peking first appeared in Issue #17 of Chiaroscuro in 2003. Its reprint in the Polish magazine Nowa Fantastyka in 2005 included interior art that introduced the tone and feel of the story.

*Megan Survival Anthology cover art and story art* *for “Fingal’s Cave”*

Fingal’s Cave was first published in The Megan Survival Anthology (Reality Skimming Press) in December 2016. The publication included art by Jeff Doten specific to each story in the anthology and I found his artwork for Fingal’s Cave wonderfully intriguing.

*Artwork for “The Way of Water” in various publications*

The Way of Water was first published in Future Fiction then in a smart print publication by Mincione Edizioni in Rome, Italy in May 2016. The story was reprinted several times and artwork associated with it included in some of the publications. One is Little Blue Marble, an online magazine that features artwork for each story it runs.

*Cover art of Eagle Magazine and story art for “Natural Selection”*

Natural Selection first came out in my short story collection of the same name in 2013. It was then reprinted in the premiere issue of Eagle Magazine and featured stellar and evocative interior illustrations by Ionuț Bănuță.

*Interior story art for “Natural Selection”*

Out of the Silence first appeared in Issue #85 of subTerrain Magazine in May 2020 and featured diverse and rich interior art and design (not pictured here). Its reprint in A House of Dawn in 2021 received its own artwork, which enhanced the tone and subject of the story.

*Cover art for subTerrain Magazine and story art for “Out of the Silence” in A House of Dawn*

I’d be remiss if I didn’t add the important artwork of artists on the covers of several of my novels and collections. As a reader, I can attest that cover art plays an important role in introducing a book to a potential reader. Whether we pick up a new author’s book to peruse depends upon the image, title and design of the cover. I have been very fortunate with my publishers and their artists.

*Book covers for “Collision with Paradise” (Liquid Silver Books) and “The Cypol” (eXtasy Books)*

My first published novel (Collision with Paradise) and novella (The Cypol)—both SF erotica—were designed to intrigue and titillate.

Costi Gurgu illustrated and designed the covers of my space detective thriller The Splintered Universe Trilogy for Starfire. The three books and their covers, formed a tryptic that reflected the journey of the lead character—a badass galactic detective—and her evolution.

*Cover art for books of “The Splintered Universe” Trilogy*

Costi Gurgu also designed the cover of my short story collection Natural Selection for Pixl Press in 2013 using an illustration by West Coast artist Anne Moody that showed the fluidity of nature.

*Tikulin-illustrated covers for “Darwin’s Paradox” and “The Last Summoner”*

Tomislav Tikulin illustrated the cover of my novel Darwin’s Paradox for Dragon Moon Press in 2007. The cover image ostensibly represented a work of hard science fiction and attracted much attention from SF fans. Tikulin’s evocative illustration of a knight in a drowning cathedral was then used for the cover of The Last Summoner for Starfire, with attractive typology design by Costi Gurgu. As with all of Tikulin’s work, this mysterious cover attracted the attention of many readers with many questions.

L’Ultima Evocatrice, a novella version of The Last Summoner in Italian was illustrated and designed for Delos Digital Publications in 2021 and draws the reader into the intrigue of the story.

My most recent novel, A Diary in the Age of Water, published by Inanna Publications in 2020, features elegant cover art by Val Fullard and over thirty pieces of interior art work by my own hand.

*Interior art representing the diarist’s sketches in “A Diary in the Age of Water*

I wasn’t sure if the publisher would agree to use my sketches, but she did, to my surprised delight. She agreed with me that the interior illustrations, which represent sketches by the scientist diarist, lend a tangible reality to the story and a further focus of interest.

The excitement never ends for me as a writer … With the newest installation to The Icaria Trilogy imminent, Dragon Moon Press will be re-issuing Darwin’s Paradox and Angel of Chaos, along with the newest addition Gaia’s Revolution together with new covers and interiors. Below is what Dragon Moon Press came up with! …

*The Icaria Trilogy by Dragon Moon Press* (updated covers, 2026)

Post Script, 2026: Here are Dragon Moon’s newly issued covers for The Icaria Trilogy. They look fantastic and well-reflect the trilogy’s narrative progression. And, as I write this, I anticipate my newest book with Inanna Publications Thalweg, which continues in the same world as A Diary in the Age of Water. Thalweg will release early in 2027.

*Cover art of print publications my work has appeared in up to 2021-end*

Nina Munteanu is a Canadian ecologist / limnologist and novelist. She is co-editor of Europa SF and currently teaches writing courses at George Brown College and the University of Toronto. Visit www.ninamunteanu.ca for the latest on her books. Nina’s bilingual “La natura dell’acqua / The Way of Water” was published by Mincione Edizioni in Rome. Her non-fiction book “Water Is…” by Pixl Press (Vancouver) was selected by Margaret Atwood in the New York Times ‘Year in Reading’ and was chosen as the 2017 Summer Read by Water Canada. Her novel “A Diary in the Age of Water” was released by Inanna Publications (Toronto) in June 2020.

When the Permafrost Thaws…

April 30, 2023February 1, 2024 / thealiennextdoor / Leave a comment

*Ice and snow cover the Otonabee River in winter, ON (photo and rendition by Nina Munteanu)*

In my upcoming novel “Gaia’s Revolution,” one of the protagonists, Damien Vogel, contemplates in 2022 a key event from 2020 that only a few seem to take seriously:

In Siberia in June 2020, record heat of thirty degrees Centigrade, over the average of 11 degrees, collapsed permafrost and caused oil tanks in Norilsk to rupture. Over twenty thousand tonnes of diesel spilled into the Pyasina lake and river system. Damien remembers looking at the veins of red on satellite images from space. That disaster is just the beginning of what the ‘sleeping bear’ of methane hydrates promise to unleash when the permafrost reaches a critical thaw and those hydrates awaken. Melting permafrost is a quiet sleeper in the climate change procession, he considers. At a microscopic level, in the chemistry of the water and in the change in the atmosphere, a time bomb is ticking.

A decade later, Damien’s twin brother, Eric, notes that:

“Back in the ‘20s scientists started noticing major permafrost melt on the Siberian Shelf,” Eric goes on. “The melting released hydrates, which set the oil and gas companies frothing at the mouth with joy and the climate scientists spinning in a panic because of what they knew it meant for the planet. It was the harbinger of the largest methane ‘burp’ ever.”

Eric then adds:

“Permafrost thaw kicked us into this devastating global warming, Dame, and everyone—even the climate modellers—ignored it, because they didn’t have enough data. Gott verdammt! They’re all still asleep, Dame!”

In his book The Treeline, Ben Rawlence writes about the ongoing extinction of indigenous peoples in the north as the treeline migrates northward into tundra and the permafrost and sea ice change and go extinct themselves.

*Ice fragments on the Otonabee River, ON (photo by Nina Munteanu)*

Methane & The Clathrate Gun Hypothesis

Because methane is present in much smaller concentrations many scientists have mistakenly deemed it as important as carbon dioxide in the climate change equation; however, it is becoming obvious that methane poses a real and largely unacknowledged danger. Methane is twenty times more efficient in trapping heat than carbon dioxide. Permafrost—which is currently melting rapidly in the north—contains almost twice as much carbon as is currently in the atmosphere. In the rapidly warming Arctic (warming twice as fast as the globe as a whole), the upper layers of this frozen soil are thawing, allowing deposited organic material to decompose and release methane.

The clathrate gun hypothesis is the notion that sea temperature rises (and/or drops in sea levels) may trigger a catastrophic positive feedback on climate: warming would cause a sudden release of methane from methane clathrate (hydrate) compounds buried in seabeds, in the permafrost, and under ice sheets.

Something of this nature has already occurred in Siberia in 2020. In his book The Treeline Ben Rawlence reports the following warning by Dutch scientist Dr. Ko van Huissteden, a leading authority on permafrost:

“It is hard to measure methane release … [but] some studies have suggested that an unstable seabed could release a methane ‘burp’ of 500-5000 gigatonnes, equivalent to decades of greenhouse gas emissions, contributing to an abrupt jump in temperature that humans will be powerless to arrest.” (Wadhams, 2015)

Creation of gas hydrates requires high pressure; water; gas—mainly methane—and low temperatures. Three environments considered suitable for this process to occur include: sub-seabed along the world’s continental margins; permafrost areas on land and off shore; and a process for storing methane hydrates: ice sheets. As long as the climate is cold and the ice sheet stable, the gas hydrate zone remains stable. As the ice sheets melt, the pressure on the ground decreases; hydrates destabilize and release methane into rising seawater and finally into the atmosphere.

A recent study in Science revealed that hundreds of massive, kilometer-wide craters on the ocean floor in the Arctic were formed by substantial methane expulsions. Because methane is a powerful greenhouse gas, temperatures would rise exponentially. Once started, this runaway process could be as irreversible as the firing of a gun—and on a time scale less than a human lifetime.

The sudden release of large amounts of natural warming gas from methane clathrate deposits in runaway climate change could be a cause of past, future, and present climate changes.

Latest research on the Greenland ice sheet and elsewhere throughout the Arctic has revealed major methane discharges in Arctic lakes in areas of permafrost thaw. Scientists are exploring areas where methane is bubbling to the surface and releasing to the atmosphere.

If human emissions continue at their current rate, rapidly changing ocean currents and retreating ice sheets may uncork methane from under ice caps, ocean sediments and Arctic permafrost, causing a jump in radiative forcing. Even if rapid ice sheet disintegration were to scatter large amounts of ice into the oceans, the net cooling effect would be strongly countered and likely overwhelmed. The areas that did cool would likely trigger severe weather outbreaks.

As I write, we are pumping out CO₂ into the atmosphere at a rate 10 times faster than at any point in the past 66 m years, with the resulting sea level rises, extreme weather events, heat waves, droughts, unseasonal storms, and stress on biodiversity around the globe. Research published in the journal Nature Geoscience demonstrates that “the world has entered ‘uncharted territory’ and that the consequences for life on land and in the oceans may be more severe than at any time since the extinction of the dinosaurs,” writes Damian Carrington of The Guardian.

In an interview with Guardian reporter John Abraham, Woods Hole expert Robert Max Holmes, exhorted:

It’s essential that policymakers begin to seriously consider the possibility of a substantial permafrost carbon feedback to global warming. If they don’t, I suspect that down the road we’ll all be looking at the 2°C threshold in our rear-view mirror.

*Ice break up on the Otonabee River in early spring, ON (photo by Nina Munteanu)*

References:

Hansen, James and Sato, Makiko; Update of Greenland ice sheet mass loss: Exponential?; (26 December 2012).

Adams, J., M.A. Maslin and E. Thomas Sudden climate transitions during the Quaternary; Progress in Physical Geography, 23, 1, 1-36 (1999)

Andreassen et al. 2017. “Massive blow-out craters formed by hydrate-controlled methane expulsion from the Arctic seafloor,” Science. science.sciencemag.org/cgi/doi … 1126/science.aal4500

Carrington, Damian. 2016. “Carbon emission release rate ‘unprecedented’ in past 66 m years.” The Guardian, March 21, 2016.

Hansen, James and Sato, Makiko. 2012. Update of Greenland ice sheet mass loss: Exponential?; (26 December 2012).

Portnov et al. 2016. Ice-sheet-driven methane storage and release in the Arctic. Nature Communications 7

Rawlence, Ben. 2022. “The Treeline.” Jonathan Cape, London. 342pp.

Sachs, Julian and Anderson, Robert. 2005. Increased productivity in the subantarctic ocean during Heinrich events; Nature 434, 1118-1121;(28 April 2005).

Sojtaric, Maja. 2016. Ice Sheets May be Hiding Vast Reservoirs of Powerful Greenhouse Gas. CAGE.

Wadhams, Peter. 2015. “A Farewell to Ice.” Penguin.

*Flowing water in a river, ON (photo by Nina Munteanu)*

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