Welcome to Litsy!

I learned so much from this book. I‘ve always loved the cold and known it was important, but now I understand just how vital it is. It‘s all connected! Stop what you‘re doing and read this book. The whole world needs to read it. We can all take action, right now, before it‘s too late.

Shown: me loving a rare snow storm a few years ago.

Without the cryosphere, life on earth will become difficult. Hundreds of millions will be left without water, heat waves and forest fires will make vast areas uninhabitable, the weather will become steadily more extreme, the ocean will rise to levels well above the places where most large population centers stand today. Even the small actions can prevent it. Then the Kingdom of Frost can strike back, just as it has so many times in the past.

The Inuit hunter who falls through the depleting and unpredictable sea ice is connected to the carswe drive, the industries we rely upon, and the disposable world we have become.

—Sheila Watt-Cloutier, former president of the Inuit Circumpolar Counsel, testimony to the US Senate, 2005

The point is, untouched snow, without animals, insulates the earth so well that winter cold cannot penetrate it. Consequently, the active permafrost layer does not refreeze as much in the winter. Animals‘ presence, their trampling and digging in the snow, reduces the insulating effect, ensuring that the tundra refreezes in winter—thereby preserving the permafrost. And the enormous amounts of carbon concealed by the permafrost—aren‘t released.

When the animals are gone, the snow is left to lie and the earth doesn‘t freeze as far down as it otherwise would. As a result, thawing happens faster. Where as mammoths can‘t be resurrected, bacteria can come back to life after thousands of years in hibernation. As if this scenario wasn‘t worrying enough in itself, thawing can also release climate gases in vast quantities.

(2 of 2) This does not only happen because the snow becomes more constant but also because, even without snow cover, grass reflects sunlight better than shrubs, moss, and forest. That may make it possible to slow the rise in temperature even on a global scale—if the project can be expanded to cover larger parts of the tundra. If this works—and experiments show that it does—this may be the most important of all the climate actions we can undertake.

(1 of 2)

Sergey Zimov wants to stop the melting in the tundra, and with it the omission of catastrophic amounts of greenhouse gases, by restoring the tundra to what it used to be: a steppe landscape where large herds of animals wandered and grazed. The change that this brings with it actually has major climate effects: it causes the melting of the permafrost to reverse, while notably strengthening the albedo effect.

Reindeer slow the warming of the tundra. How? By eradicating the type of vegetation that reduces the albedo effect in both winter and summer, such as brush, and keeping the landscape open to vegetation such as reindeer lichen and grass. In other words, the reindeer grazing offset a doubling of the carbon dioxide content in the atmosphere!

It manifests itself in many different ways: jelly-like bubbles in the tundra, explosions that leave craters, methane bubbles up from fresh water. The cause is the same: the permafrost is thawing. It can release more than carbon and methane. When the tundra thaws, a lot of strange things come to light 🦠. The greatest danger posed by thawing lies in the enormous quantities of carbon released into the atmosphere, triggering an irreversible warming.

Carbon has gradually accumulated in the soil, where microbes digest organic waste from the plants. This happens in the active part of the permafrost, which thaws each summer. In winter it freezes again and, overtime, large amounts of frozen carbon accumulate, which do not have any impact on the climate as long as they remain frozen. We can no longer count on them staying that way.

The frost is significant for life itself—there is life even in areas of permafrost—and especially for the micro organisms in the soil. They control a large share of the carbon turnover – which, again, influences the climate.

Some tiny microorganisms live at subzero temperatures, but the areas where the upper layer thaws every year, in particular, can have a highly active life because the midnight sun enables photosynthesis to take place night and day. This doesn‘t just apply to microorganisms: the tundra and other areas of permafrost have their own flora, especially species of lichen, moss, fungi, and grass – even flowers and shrubs.

Cryoactivist Chewang Norphel of India became so concerned about the shrinkage of the glaciers that he decided something had to be done. He built small dams to channel the water out of rivers and into fields where it could freeze in the winter, thereby accumulating ice. In this way, he managed to create artificial glaciers, which keeps several villages supplied with water in the dry periods.

Fucking amazing!

Rock Glaciers are all over the world. Far from being trivial curiosities, these are vital components of the bigger ecological and hydrological picture. They affect plant and animal life, since some species will disappear if these glaciers melt, and they help provide water for the people below during the dry seasons.

(They may look lifeless on top, but because of the melt water, there is lush vegetation beneath)!

When the first phase of melting has ended and the glaciers are spent, the lack of water during the dry months, will affect as many as 1.5 billion people. For several thousand years, since the end of the last ice age, the Glaciers on the Roof of the World have done their job, serving as water towers for some of the world‘s oldest and most powerful civilizations. And they still keep at least a fifth of the Earth‘s population alive.

The Roof of the World is in the process of melting. The glaciers that have been here for thousands of years, serving as a water tower for billions of people in south Asia and China, are shrinking discernibly. If the melting continues and ultimately accelerates, the consequences in the first instance will not be a lack of water but the opposite... catastrophic flooding.

The Industrial Revolution was based on an energy source that the cryosphere had planted in the earth 300 million years before, during an ice age period. For the past two centuries, we have lived well off it, but now we see that the use of fossil fuels (not just coal, but eventually also oil and gas) is precisely what threatens to melt the remains of the cryosphere.

It was the transition to fixed settlements and eventually agriculture (the cultivation and harvesting of agricultural plants, and animal husbandry) that would lead to what we call civilization. And that dramatic change in human life – this time more cultural than genetic in nature—also had a connection with, and was probably triggered by, changes in the cryosphere and the resulting climate fluctuations.

What happened when the ice ages set in, from around 2.5 million years ago, was that the climate changes came more quickly and more frequently than before. This favored species capable of adapting, which required them to both have larger brains that enabled them to produce and use tools, and travel long distances. It was precisely these factors that would distinguish us from the other hominins.

New antelopes weren‘t the only ones entering the field; the first species in our own line, Homo, were emerging. And there was a particular cause for this: a dramatic growth in a cryosphere that resulted in a colder, drier climate. The start of the great ice ages, from around 2.5 million years ago, was also the start of our own species line. Without this glaciation, there is no guarantee that humans would‘ve appeared. We are children of the ice.

During the Proterozoic, a remarkable thing happened: a meeting between two single-celled organisms, probably an archaeon and a bacterium. One of them tried to eat the other, but they ended up entering into a symbiotic relationship instead, thereby forming the first eukaryotic organism. All multicellular organisms that live on earth today are descended from this fateful meeting.
🌏💦🦠🧬

Amazing!!!

The periods in the history of life in which old species have died out and new species have emerged have largely been connected to periods of dramatic climate change. And most of them have been linked to major changes in the cryosphere.

Antarctica did not begin to freeze until around 30 million years ago, when it separated from Australia and New Guinea, and an ocean current formed around it, isolating it from the rest of the world.

Sea ice is one of the least stable elements in the context of climate change, because melting sea ice can trigger number of unclear processes: a diminished albedo effect and changes in ocean circulation. Some would say that the very key to the future of the climate lies here in the Arctic sea ice.

What the pilgrims seek really is the source of life. The four rivers that come from here alpha/omega for hundreds of millions of people in Asia. The Indus water system, with its irrigation canals, is the main artery of Pakistan, and in dry season (for the greater part of the year), most of its discharge is meltwater from glaciers and snow...for the largest concentration of people living in poverty, they live at the mercy of the river goddess.

Some had heard of snow and became very curious when they found out I came from a country where we spent parts of the year living in it. “What does it feel like? Is it cold? Can you eat it?” But these eager questions had no idea that snow and ice had anything to do with them and that the cryosphere was, in fact, what kept them alive for several months of the year.

Although water was so important, people were not aware of where it came from. They thought all of it came from the sky as rain, which fell into the hair of the river goddess, Ganga (i.e., the forest), and then ran down toward the Bay of Bengal.

What is new, at least in our times, is that the mountain itself, the bedrock, is not as stable as it used to be. The permafrost has begun to shift, unleashing landslides and rockslides.

Drought isn‘t unusual, what‘s new is when it‘s dry *and* hot. Even a slightly higher degrees can have big effects. Hotter temperatures mean less snow, resulting in heavier rain which isn‘t absorbed well or stored, therefore wasted and also resulting in major flooding. In turn, we have two crises: climate+water. In turn, more immigration. Later, fewer resources and more violence. It‘s all connected. Climate change is already here. Act now.

‘Mr. Vile I don‘t believe science knows‘ could learn a thing or two about managing forest fires from this chapter...
IF he actually knew how to read!

That‘s something to think about as you sit enjoying a Californian Zinfandel accompanied by cheese from Provence and olives from Andalusia. They taste of the Mediterranean, of sun and heat. But they wouldn‘t have been possible without snow and ice. The cryosphere is the origin of these fine flavors.

Without snow, glaciers, California, other regions would be anything but paradise. The hot, dry months would be unpleasant for plants, animals, people. It‘s precisely because of the frozen world, because water is stored in mountains as snow and ice that can be released gradually in the hot season, that those hot months appear pleasant, heavenly. And it is because of the meltwater that these regions in particular are among the Earth‘s most fertile.

Because we live our lives on a time scale much shorter than the geological time scale and also have a poor overview of history going back more than a few thousand years, we‘ve failed to realize we‘re involved in this dance. We‘ve lived through a tiny moment of history, unusually calm and stable. It was only recently discovered we were living in a short breathing space between the ice ages. We didn‘t have a clue that such things existed.

The very last ice age started around 116,000 years ago. Glaciers begin to develop in Canada and Scandinavia. Then the ice spread out, across North America, Europe, parts of Asia, South America, New Zealand. It peaked just 21,000 years ago, before the new interglacial period—the era we live in—took over, with a couple of interruptions. At that time, the whole of northern Europe and large swaths of North America were covered in ice.

In the past 800,000 years, there have been at least nine ice age “episodes.” Earth has spent most of the past million years in ice ages, has been much colder than it is in our times. Even though solar radiation has increased, Earth has basically become colder. According to this pattern, we should now actually be on our way back to a new ice age. But because of what we are currently doing to the atmosphere, it is far from certain this will happen.

Louis Agassiz (1807-1873) moved to the United States, where he garnered considerable recognition as a scientist and became a professor at Harvard. In his new homeland, he saw many signs that North America had also had an ice age. The great lake that formed when these glaciers melted was named Lake Agassiz.

The discovery of these mighty frozen creatures helped give his theory credibility. At first, people thought they were elephants, washed north to Siberia by the flood described in the Old Testament.🤣 But the French natural scientist Georges Cuvier (1769-1832) proved mammoths were a separate species, specially adapted to life in the cold Arctic.

‘Noah‘s Ark‘ is one of the most ridiculous stories. How anyone believes it is a mystery!

It wasn‘t until the mid 1800s that people learned glaciers carved the U-shaped valleys, leaving fertile earth in the valley bed. A Danish immigrant discovered that there was something strange about this, demanding explanation. The huge stones that often stood balanced on top of a hill couldn‘t have ended up there all by themselves. And the huge, continuous ridges of rock and gravel down in the valley: who were what had created them?

I didn‘t see that the whole landscape in Norway had been shaped by the ice. The distinctive, world-famous fjords, valleys, the huge erratic boulders you could see in the most peculiar places—all of this was the work of the ice. And I was far from the only person who was blind to it. People had walked around here for hundreds, thousands of years without realizing it. They just took for granted that the landscape was the way it was, didn‘t ask why.

I never learned the three hundred Sami words for snow. In the Arctic Ocean town of Tromso, I experienced a slightly different side of the cryosphere: severe snowstorms and endless snowfall. Some winters, so much snow fell that you just had to give up trying to keep the path clear and simply dig a tunnel to your door instead. It could stay like that until late April.

Ahhhh...sounds like home! ❄️😍🤍

My husband and I were talking about how funny it would be to use these words living in the North, and how we‘d have to create new ones, because snow up to his armpit (giedavuolmuohta) is quite a difference between us since he‘s 6”4 and I‘m 5”1! Badaradjmuohta is butt cheak height! I used our photos from a rare snow a few years ago. Our husky Fenris loved it! We plan to move to a cold climate one day, where it‘s always cold. We love the cold!

There are different words for falling snow: single snowflakes are called muohtatjalme, which translates literally as “snow eyes.”

⬆️That is beautiful!❄️❄️❄️

Please enjoy these beautiful Sami words, which all have different meanings in relation to snow and ice.
❄️❄️❄️
Gassadalvve•Sekkadalvve•Skarkkadalvve•Dalvvevuodo•
Doavvge•Dalvvemuohta•Atsadahka•Atsat•Buolvvamuohta•
Giedavuolmuohta•Tjibbemuohta•Muohtatjalme•Halbllek•
•Vahtsa•Larkkat•Slabttse•Skartta•Tjalssa•Sänaaj•Abadahka•Abat•Dahapadahka•Siebla•Tjarvva•Linadahka.

You‘re welcome.

The mountain Sami also had a rich vocabulary for ice, because in their world it was vitally important to be able to move over streams, rivers, other waters, so people needed to have words that told them whether the ice could bear the weight of people and animals. Almasjjiegna is “people ice,”, hässtajiegna is ice that can bear a horse; gabdda is the very first thin ice to form on lakes in the autumn.

This is about a lot more than an advanced vocabulary, rich in tradition, that is on the point of extinction. What we are now seeing vanish is also a *lifeworld*—the world of the Snow Queen—to which this language belongs and which it describes.

Shown: Russian mythology‘s dying/melting snow daughter Snegurochka; ice shelf breaking off this year.

The topic was never snow as an “objective,” physical entity but snow as one approached it, used it, and had to adapt to it. It was how it fell in autumn, in winter; how it remained on the ground from winter through to spring. It was how snow behaved in relation to people and animals, restricting their movements or grazing possibilities—a vocabulary about snow that grew through practice.

One reason why knowledge of snow was so vital, was that snow—how much snow, what kind of now, and so on, could drastically alter living conditions for humans and animals. People‘s reliance on snow and ice shifts between extremes, and this may have contributed to the rich vocabulary. People used so many words about snow and snow conditions because they were talking about snow from different points of view, in different situations.

North Sami language contains 175-180 root words for “snow” and “ice.” Once you factor in derivations, inflections, variants—example, the noun njeadgga means “drifting snow,” while the verb njeadgat means “to drift” and the adjective njeadgi refers to a type of weather involving snowdrifts—the number of words for snow and ice adds up to around a thousand.

WOW. English is so bland and boring!

Snow was the reindeer‘s element. Beneath it, properly insulated, not frozen regardless of how far below zero temps lay, they could dig down to their main winter food: reindeer lichen. They were dependent on snow and its insulation. If not for snow, the lichen would freeze and reindeer starve as can happen in winters with scarce snow. A layer of ice forms over the lichen and the reindeer cannot reach it.

Permafrost is the ground that doesn‘t thaw entirely in the summer, but only in the upper, “active” layer. A bit further below, the earth is still frozen and this makes it difficult for any vegetation other than reindeer lichen, heather, and dwarf birch to thrive.

(Shown: Cladonia rangiferina. Aka reindeer moss, reindeer lichen)