Posted on 05/29/2007 7:19:19 PM PDT by NormsRevenge
BELIZE CITY (Reuters) - Collapsing bridges, bursting sewer pipes and crumbling roads caused by global warming could cost Alaska up to $10 billion over the next few decades, researchers said.
Atmospheric temperatures in the northernmost U.S. state have risen by more than 3 degrees Fahrenheit (around 2 degrees Celsius) over the past five decades, Peter Larsen, a resource economist at the University of Alaska Anchorage, told a climate change conference in the Central American country of Belize.
Larsen led a study with a team of engineers to calculate how Alaska will cope with the highest temperatures it has experienced in the last 400 years, according to data gathered from ice cores.
"There is a rough magnitude of between $5 and $10 billion of public infrastructure that's vulnerable to climate change just in Alaska," Larsen said on Monday night.
Permanently frozen ground, or permafrost, covers nearly two-thirds of the massive state but buildings, pipelines, roads and bridges crumble as it melts, he said at this week's meeting in Belize of Arctic peoples and tropical islanders who are suffering the worst effects of global warming.
An analysis of close to 20 types of public works in Alaska, from schools to municipal buildings, showed flooding and erosion will increase the burden on state finances.
Regular upkeep until 2080 would cost Alaska between $32 and $56 billion without the extra stresses, said Larsen.
Some coastal areas like the Inupiat village of Shishmaref on a narrow Chukchi Sea barrier island are disappearing as sea levels rise, forcing a $100 million relocation plan.
The temperature is rising in the Arctic regions at more than twice the rate of the rest of the world, according to the 2004 Arctic Climate Impact Assessment, a comprehensive study by scientists from eight nations.
Most scientists say it is very likely that human activities led by burning fossil fuels explain most of the global warming in the past 50 years.
Warming is accentuated in high-latitude regions like Alaska in part because of thinner atmospheres in the polar region, concentrating so-called greenhouse gases, and in part because of the nature of atmospheric currents, say studies.
Sea ice floats within the 1002 Area of the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge in this undated handout photo provided by the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service Alaska Image Library. Collapsing bridges, bursting sewer pipes and crumbling roads caused by global warming could cost Alaska up to $10 billion over the next few decades, researchers said. (HANDOUT/U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service Alaska Image Library/Reuters)
Yeah, and if it occurs, global warming will probably save Alaskans more than twice that in energy costs.
Yes, They failed to mention the benefits.
YEAH! I wonder how much the damn benefits will cost. /sarc
Herr Goebbels nailed it. Repeat a big lie long enough and and often enough and it becomes accepted as fact.
So, the infamous “Bridge to Nowhere” could collapse?
Would that be irony enough for ya?
Now that's a new one. Time for some fact checkers to check facts ~ sea level atmospheric pressure is about 14.7 psi worldwide.
Atmospheric pressure drops 1.0 psi for every 2,343 feet increase in altitude.
This village is at sea level. Barring storms it has the same amospheric pressure that might be found on the Chesapeake Bay on any given day.
That is to say the atmosphere is as "thin" in the Arctic as it is "thin" in Washington DC.
I would imagine the writer is under the false impression that as you go North you go higher ~ just like the maps at school showed.
The other erroneous factoids in that piece are equally incredible.
Al Gorebal learned a lot from Goebbels..
In the 5 previous ice ages (we are in number 6) what caused the ice to melt? Carbon emissions from what? This is the greatest hoax since “we are running out of oil” in 1975. Total crock.
I thought we only have a decade left before we are all toast? So I think money is a mute point.
Is the sky falling again?
So...ahem...what caused the (presumably) higher temperatures 400+ years ago?
The way these Gore"bull" warming toads jigger the statistics is shameful. They must take lessons from politicians and bureaucrats.
Big deal! Our NH infrastructure freezes and thaws repeatedly every year. It's called Winter and Spring. Water mains in Northeast cities pop. Roads get potholes. Get used to it!
Has anyone looked at the benefits of a longer growing season for those living further North? Food production should increase greatly to benefit the masses that are being produced at will in China and the Banana Republics (including Mexico).
So it's time to build beach-front condos in Nome?
Yeah, to think, Greenland might even become......er......uh......green.
Sort of depends on what a "few" means.
Holy Cats! It sounds like the sun is on a jihad!
The snow had only been off the front yard at this lodge for 3 weeks by the 15th of May.
As long as they’re making up numbers, why not make it $471bn?
When all is done and said, I s'pect the weather on the sun determines what happens temperature-wise hereabouts.
excellent point!! “longer growing seasons” and lower heating costs. The only problem is that it is all a lie. This was a horribly cold winter and this spring has been very much cooler than last. We all know that this is anti-capitalist propaganda designed to instill an anti-God secularist view on our dumbed down population. The measured increment in world wide temperatures is estimated to be .97 degrees F per hundred years!! It is estimated because half the world had no temperature measurement worth a damn a hundred years ago. Be sure and make no change to anything on this crap data they never even tell you. Get some damned refineries built or suffer RIOTS!!!
SOLUTION:
“The way these Gore”bull” warming toads jigger the statistics is shameful. They must take lessons from politicians and bureaucrats.”
LOL!!
B U M P
ROTFLOL!!
That is an outrageous lie. Most scientists do not believe that. If they are true scientists they will say they do not know how much is anthropogenically derived.
Plus, their solution will be to spend several billion to try and turn the tide. No guarantees. Global Warming hysteria is the 21st Century’s version of Y2K. Cui bono?
FORGET PHOENIX!!
I’m packin for a condo in Anchorage.
Didn`t Alaska just have a very cold winter?
HEY! Mica is a reporter, what do facts have to do with anything?
Hysterical rubbish from predictable sources of utter nonsense aiding and abetting the larcenous criminals in third world countries seeking to rob the developed countries of the world with blackmail.
Note well the advocates and supporters of this sham.
And the revenue from increased yields on their crops.
5.56mm
—HEY! Mica is a reporter, what do facts have to do with anything?—
Fact: mica is not a reporter, but a sheet silicate group that includes phlogopite, biotite, and muscovite.
Ms. Rosenberg will be suprised, she thought Mica was a gem.
Nothing like precision in language eh.
Collapsing bridges, bursting sewer pipes and crumbling roads caused by SLOPPY WORKMANSHIP by contractors.
We must note at this juncture that none of this occurs except in the presence of a strato-cumulus fornicatus, and then only rarely.
I don't think so Newt. It was in the low 40's that day.
LOL!
No, if the permafrost were to melt, those failures would not because of SLOPPY WORKMANSHIP, as you are trying to lay blame. It would be bcause the support for said strucures was insufficient.
You may have noticed on the Alaska Pipeline sections that run through permafrost have little cooling towers on each support to maintain the frost. You can se them in the upper ight of this picture: http://www.hickerphoto.com/data/media/30/alaska_pipeline_T1848.jpg
Rarely are situations like this the result of SLOPPY WORKMANSHIP as the ignorant like to claim, but aging structures and forces not accounted for in the design of the structure.
Have a nice day. Oh yeah, I do not believe Al Gore and his bunch of liars when it comes to globull wrrming, or any matter.
They may not be technically condos but people do live on the beach in Nome. Many still look for gold, myself I live just north of Anchorage and all I see is booming construction for locals if indeed we have a warming crisis but I don’t see it here, unfortunately I am in the construction industry and its really slow this year so I am hoping there will be a demand in the future. Alaskans hire Alaskans.
I would LOVE to see it warmer by 30 degrees in the winter. Our last winter was colder and longer, NOT warmer, I still have to wear thermal underwear in the summer, and stupid Walmart refuses to stock it until mid december.
Look, if global warming does occur then we won’t need to burn as much fuel to heat our homes. If the whole concept weren’t such a big pile of horse hockey, it would be a self limiting process.
WOW, don’t have a coronary there. I was putting forth another possible scenario other than ‘globull wrrming’ which the left is always looking for.
I didn’t even mention the pipeline but I did click on that website you provided but I didn’t know where to se the upper ight.
Thanks anyhow.
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