By Dr. Robert Thorson

Summer at the lake. What a wonderful image. Blue skies. Reflections on cool water, swirled by the wind.

Now imagine the lake disappearing right before your eyes, right in the middle of your vacation. The waters recede. Then it’s gone, down the drain.

Imagine your boat foundering on its side. Imagine an enormous mud puddle perfumed by the smell of dead fish and fetid muck.

To most American lake lovers, such a scenario probably sounds like an unthinkably bad dream. But if you live near the Arctic Circle, you could be watching this scene play out thousands of times.

Since 1973, lakes have disappeared in a sparsely populated geographic area of north-central Siberia that is about three times the size of New England. Some lakes have merely shrunk. But 125 have disappeared completely, as if behind Harry Potter’s invisible cloak.

This unusual vanishing act was discovered by a team of geographers and environmental scientists from UCLA, the State University of New York at Syracuse and the University of Alaska- Fairbanks. They reported their results in a June issue of Science.

I first heard about these bizarre happenings from several of my half-crazed Fairbanks friends who phoned “outside” to learn what I thought was taking place in the subarctic. They wanted to know if the story had hit the Lower 48, which it hadn’t.

Well, here’s what I think: Every U.S. citizen is partly to blame because we’ve failed to develop a sane national energy policy, despite the many voices advocating for energy conservation and for energy sources other than Big Oil and King Coal.

Also partly to blame is every person who drives to a lakeshore vacation in a gas-guzzler. A gasguzzler (to me) is any vehicle that would pinch my wallet hard enough to make it say “ouch,” a category that certainly includes every Hummer, RV, full-size pickup truck and large SUV. Ditto for anyone who drives to the lake in more energy- efficient vehicles only to guzzle gas in oversized boats and jet skis.

Here’s the connection between our energy use and the disappearance of subarctic lakes. As we burn fossil fuels, we dump gigatons of invisible carbon dioxide into the air. This enhances Earth’s greenhouse effect, making it warmer. The subarctic is particularly sensitive to global warming because the rise in temperatures is most dramatic at high latitude and because the subarctic lies in the permafrost zone. Atmospheric warming causes the permafrost to melt back into soil. At first, melting causes a temporary increase in wetness and in lake area. But as melting continues, the rock-solid layer of permafrost beneath every lake thins to the point where it develops a hole. At this point, the surface water drains straight down to groundwater aquifers. From there, it flows to a stream or the sea.

The vanishing lake story is by no means over. More lakes drain each summer. They are unlikely to return before the next ice age, which may or may not be cold enough to replug the thermal holes. Meanwhile, we cruise along at lower latitudes, spewing carbon either in happy oblivion or with a tinge of guilt at changes up north.

If lakes were disappearing in the densely populated northeastern United Sates, I suspect there would be a mass uprising against the federal government for its failed energy policy. Fortunately, we Northeasterners don’t have to worry about our soils turning to pudding and our lakes draining. We have other environmental problems to deal with.