That insight has turned Tas-Yuryakh, a tiny village of log cabins that depends on the ice highway for business at its truck stop and gas station — the last gas for 508 miles — into a hotbed of true believers in the human contribution to climate change.

“Of course people are to blame,” Mr. Andreyevsky said. “They pump so much gas, they pump so much oil. Brother, we need Greenpeace out here.”

With highways made of ice, including the icy surfaces of deep lakes and rivers, all it takes is one pleasantly warm spring day for the highway to vanish. Every year, officials say, at least one big rig goes through the ice of a lake or big river.

“The danger is always with the daring truck drivers,” said Aleksandr A. Kondratyev, the director of the regional department of roads in Mirny, a diamond-mining town in northeastern Siberia linked to the rest of Russia to the south only by the Vilyui ice road. Most of the time, he said, they escape with their lives.