Exposed Coffin | Oil and the Caribou | 2006 | 59 in. x 74 in.

Early August, Barter Island, along the Beaufort Sea coast, Alaska. The permafrost around the coffin melted away and exposed the coffin. Robert Thompson, an Iñupiaq hunter and conservationist from Barter Island, speculated that perhaps a grizzly bear broke it open and scattered the bones, and that perhaps the coffin is not of an Iñupiaq, but possibly of a commercial whaler of the late nineteenth century. Arctic warming increases the thawing of permafrost, which releases methane—a ticking time bomb of the Arctic. On a twenty–year time–scale, methane is about eighty–six times more potent as a greenhouse gas than carbon dioxide. There is an enormous but unknown amount of methane trapped in the arctic permafrost—terrestrial and subsea, and it is already escaping with warming. The result of widespread methane release in the arctic could be catastrophic for life on earth. Moreover, as permafrost thaws, ponds connect with the groundwater system, leading to the drying of steams, lakes, and wetlands that significantly impact the ecology and local communities.