Posted on 04/16/2004 12:46:33 PM PDT by Alouette
ANCHORAGE, Alaska (Reuters) - Anyone who doubts the gravity of global warming should ask Alaska's Eskimo, Indian and Aleut elders about the dramatic changes to their land and the animals on which they depend.
Native leaders say that salmon are increasingly susceptible to warm-water parasites and suffer from lesions and strange behavior. Salmon and moose meat have developed odd tastes and the marrow in moose bones is weirdly runny, they say.
Arctic pack ice is disappearing, making food scarce for sea animals and causing difficulties for the Natives who hunt them. It is feared that polar bears, to name one species, may disappear from the Northern hemisphere by mid-century.
As trees and bushes march north over what was once tundra, so do beavers, and they are damming new rivers and lakes to the detriment of water quality and possibly salmon eggs.
Still, to the frustration of Alaska Natives, many politicians in the lower 48 U.S. states deny that global warming is occurring or that a warmer climate could cause problems.
"They obviously don't live in the Arctic," said Patricia Cochran, executive director of the Alaska Native Science Commission. The Anchorage-based commission, funded by the National Science Foundation, has been gathering information for years on Alaska's thawing conditions.
The climate changes are disrupting traditional food gathering and cultures, said Larry Merculieff, an Aleut leader from the Pribilof Islands in the Bering Sea.
Indigenous residents of the far north are finding it increasingly difficult to explain the natural world to younger generations. "As species go down, the levels of connection between older and younger go down along with that," Merculieff said at a recent Anchorage conference.
SAFETY AFFECTED
Climate and weather changes even affect human safety, said Orville Huntington, vice chairman of the Alaska Native Science Commission.
"It looks like winter out there, but if you've really been around a long time like me, it's not winter," said Huntington, an Athabascan Indian from the interior Alaska village of Huslia. "If you travel that ice, it's not the ice that we traveled 40 years ago."
River ice, long used for travel in enterior Alaska, is thinner and less dependable than it used to be.
Global warming is believed to result from pollutants emitted into the atmosphere, which trap the Earth's radiant heat and create a greenhouse effect. The warming is more dramatic in polar latitudes because cold air is dry, allowing greenhouse gases to trap more solar radiation. Even a modest rise in temperature can thaw the glaciers and permafrost that cover much of Alaska.
There is no question that global warming is having pronounced effects in Alaska, said Gunter Weller, director of the University of Alaska Fairbanks' Center for Global Change and Arctic System Research.
Average temperatures in Alaska are up about 5 degrees Fahrenheit from three decades ago, and about twice that during winter, said Weller, who also heads the Cooperative Institute for Arctic Research established by the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) and the university.
That causes serious problems not only for rural Natives who live off the land but for major industries and for public structures, he said.
Most of Alaska's highways run over permafrost that is now rapidly thawing, meaning maintenance headaches for state officials. The thaw has already caused increased maintenance costs for the trans-Alaska oil pipeline, which uses special vertical supports for suspension over the tundra.
If the plight of Alaska Natives does not get politicians' attention, then the economic toll should, Weller said.
He cited the cost -- estimated at over $100 million -- of moving Shishmaref, an Inupiat Eskimo village on Alaska's northwestern coastline, to more stable ground. The village of 600 is on the verge of tumbling into the Bering Sea because of severe erosion resulting from thawed permafrost and the absence of sea ice to protect the coastline from high storm waves.
Along with Shishmaref, there are about 20 Alaska villages that are candidates for relocation because of severe erosion, with similar costs, Weller said.
Alaska's economy has already suffered from the permafrost thaw, said Robert Corell, chairman of the international Arctic Climate Impact Assessment committee.
The hard-frozen conditions needed to support ice roads around the North Slope oil fields now exist for only about 100 days a year, he pointed out. Thirty years ago, oil companies could use ice roads for about 200 days of the year, he said.
This statement alone renders the writer suspect. Water vapor is a more powerful greenhouse gas than CO2. That's why moist nights are warmer than dry ones. That's why desert temperatures can drop from the 100s to near freezing overnight. Persons not knowing something as basic as this have no business writing 'scientific' articles.
They have no intention of being scientific. They are out to influence the idiot vote. Morons suck this up like the author sucks up yellow snow.
These things have been melting and receding since the last ice age. These con artists are just after the idiot vote. Art Bell listener types.
Web posted Monday, July 22, 2002
Residents of the island village of Shishmaref have voted overwhelmingly to move their community to escape the violent storms that have eroded huge chunks of shoreline.
Residents of the community about 600 miles northwest of Anchorage voted Friday. The unofficial count released by village officials Saturday was 161-20 in favor of moving.
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The U.S. Army Corps of Engineers in December released a study of what it would cost to move Kivalina, at the tip of a barrier reef north of Shishmaref. Moving Kivalina's 400 residents to a 100-acre gravel pad on the mainland would cost $102 million, the corps said.
U.S. Sen. Ted Stevens hoped emergency funds would help the eroding coastal communities, said spokeswoman Melanie Alvord. He has said he thinks global climate change is largely to blame for villages being overtaken by the sea.
"Unfortunately there's no federal program for relocating villages," Alvord said.
In Shishmaref, the Native corporation, village council and city government have formed a relocation coalition. Nayokpuk said residents are leaning toward a barge-accessible spot known as West Nunatak on the mainland about seven miles southwest.
Part of the reduced travel time is increased enviromental regulations, but still it is a real reduction. My lead designer has been here 50 years; he has stated many time how much less severe the winters are. (although this year was pretty cold, it snowed in Eagle River today)
Temps warm in alaska, thus over time the blood (and thereby marrow) of it's various indigineous creatures gets thinner (runny). This means their hearts do not need to pump as hard to circulate throughout the body. This causes the metabolism to slow, thus fat increases. Now it gets harder for them to run from point A to point B. And the males are nolonger fast enough to catch a cow for rutting, thus the population naturally decreases, and offspring inherit the new health problems. But I digress.
Now, since running is more difficult, they're more likely to eat whatever food catches their fancy as they stroll through the forests. Eventually, they happen upon a block of rotten cheese (set out by hunters trying to avenge a terrible biting of the younger sister of one of the hunters). They eat the cheese, but because the air is less crisp from cold, Marty Moose doesn't hear the snap of a branch as brother hunter steps forth to blow his brains out. The Temperature variance, however, causes the drop of the bullet to be overestimated, and it instead hits the cheese block, frightening said Marty into a cheese-induces myocardial infarction and death occurs.
Hunters argue a bit until beer is gone, and they take Marty home on the front of their hoods (the ornament phase of forgotten youth). They bleed him (more easily done) prepare him and cook him up. But without the gravy and such normally present, their own hearts begin to weaken, and eventually they are found beaten to death by a psychotic PETAphile.
This happens to a variety of other leaf-eating animals, great and small. Thus the forests begin to fill in thicker and thicker, then one summer a lightning strike burns alaska down and we have no choice but to annex Canada for future moose hunts, and as a disposal ground for bad cheese.
Simple, yes?
The earth has been oscillating between glacial and interglacial periods for a while, so I agree with you that the temperature has been increasing since the peak of the last glaciation. Increasing on average -- there was the warm period that allowed Viking settlements in Greenland and the Little Ice Age that wiped them out.
But the oscillations are between certain limits -- if it had gotten too hot at any time, animals completely adapted to the Arctic like polar bears and musk oxen would have been wiped out.
So the question is, are manmade greenhouse gases driving the temperature beyond the natural limits of the glacial cycle?
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