Warming climate disrupts Alaska natives' lives

Reuters ^ | Tuesday, April 20, 2004 | Yereth Rosen

[Einigkeit_Recht_Freiheit]

ANCHORAGE, Alaska — 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.

[cogitator]

Question two: is the climate changing due to pollution. Answer questionable. You see, a single volcano or asteroid would cause more pollution than all our factories.

Depends on the size of the volcano (and the eruption) and the size of the asteroid. Though sulfur dioxide (SO2) emissions from a large volcanic eruption, such as Pinatubo in 1991, can be a significant fraction of human emissions (the SO2 output of Pinatubo was estimated to be about 25% of annual human-caused SO2 emissions), most eruptions aren't that big, and thus the emissions aren't on par with human emissions. For carbon dioxide (CO2), they aren't even close.

Fortunately large asteroid impacts are rare, even though I advocate better NEO detection efforts and planning on a diversion mission for a possible impactor. The largest reference to a recent impact would be Tunguska, in the early 1900s -- it had a large blast zone, but apparently the global environmental impacts were significantly less than the Katmai eruption which occurred a few years earlier.

[CathyRyan]

A cable TV program called Connections did a show on this I think it was called fragile flower

[cogitator]

As for CO2, go ask your mother how much CO2 is released by a single volcanic eruption.

Actually, very little compared to fossil fuel energy production.

Gases: Man versus the Volcanoes

"Present-day carbon dioxide (CO2) emissions from subaerial and submarine volcanoes are uncertain at the present time. Gerlach (1991) estimated a total global release of 3-4 x 10E12 mol/yr from volcanoes. This is a conservative estimate. Man-made (anthropogenic) CO2 emissions overwhelm this estimate by at least 150 times."

http://www.fs.fed.us/gpnf/press/2001/pr284.htm

"The greenhouse gas carbon dioxide (CO2) is the most abundant gas (after water) emitted by volcanoes. Volcanologists estimate an annual global output of 200 million tons of volcanic CO2 per year. This natural source is balanced by natural processes that remove CO2 from the atmosphere-specifically by the weathering of rock into soil by atmospheric CO2 dissolved in rain and surface waters.

By comparison, human activities such as the burning of fossil fuels and deforestation produce 130 times more CO2 than all the world's volcanoes put together (adding 26,000 million tons of CO2 to the atmosphere each year, the equivalent of 8,000 Kilaueas (Hawaii's most active volcano). This comparison suggests humans are producing CO2 at a rate unprecedented in a geological history stretching back many millions of years."

[CathyRyan]

OOPS! Wrong thread

[valkyrieanne]

From what I've read, we're coming out of an ice age. It's a big, long-range global warming trend. It's probably going to wipe out a lot of species; wipe out some coastal cities, and make it *really* hot everywhere else. Mother Nature doesn't always have our best interests at heart...

[valkyrieanne]

Hmmm...trees and shrubs for building and heating sources, beavers for food and fur, new lakes created by damming for alternative fishing. Humans are quite adaptable.

Yup - if it gets warm enough for the permafrost to melt, land in northern Canada might become very valuable.

[Einigkeit_Recht_Freiheit]

If you would like to see thoughtful and intelligent commentary that espouses an opposing point of view see what LadyDoc and capt.norm wrote.

Rather than immediately begin with insults they have taken the tack to honestly and straight-fowardly argue a certain point of view based on clear thought, reasoning, anecdote and observation. All in good humour I might add.

You Publius6961 and Lazamataz, on the other hand think it is enough to beat your chest grunt, spit, shout a few names and assume that everyone will think you are right.

This is the type of behaviour that I would expect of Liberals, but not you. Shame.

Now you have 2 options: you can prove I am right by calling me more names, or you can thoughtfully disagree. It will certainly be a test of character.

[Lazamataz]

Now you have 2 options: you can prove I am right by calling me more names, or you can thoughtfully disagree. It will certainly be a test of character.

When pompously "tested" by arrogant liberals who undoubtably possess faux-British accents and wear too much tweed, I like to purposely fail¹.

Ergo: Bite me².

Q.E.D.

Bibliography:

¹ Post #48, Thread http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/1123003/posts?page=48#48, FREE REPUBLIC, April 23, 2004.

² Ibid.

[Condor51]

With all due respect:

Nehmen Sie Ihre gefälschte sozialistische Wissenschaft und haften Sie sie herauf Ihre arroganten arischen Hinterteile, Sie kommunistische Endlosschraube. Zusätzlich ist Ihr Land Deutschland, und würde NICHTS ohne die Staaten von Amerika sein! Gehen Sie so zur Hölle.

By the way, in case you can't tell, I was kidding about the respect part Manfred!

[Einigkeit_Recht_Freiheit]

A couple of things.

First, what you wrote qualifies as personal abuse. But, since you wrote it so well, I would rather compliment your German skills. Ausgezeichnet.

Secondly, I am an American living in Germany (try not to make so many assumptions. You know what they say when you assume.) Thirdly, if it weren't for the United States, Germany would have dominated Europe and we would be living in an Orwellian nightmare. But, Germany would certainly not be "nichts". Moreover, given the fact that the plurality of Americans can claim German heritage, it may not be unfair to say that America would be the lesser without German blood as well.

German history did not begin in 1933 nor end in 1945.

[Einigkeit_Recht_Freiheit]

Didn't you notice my screen name was German? The least you could have done was be intelligent enough to make an anti-German remark.

The British are our allies. Even the pompous liberal ones realise the value of supporting the United States. The Germans are much easier targets.

Hopefully you are more competent in your professional life.

[djf]

In fact the planet may be warming, but I agree with you, humans play little role in it at all.

One single moderate volcano event puts more CO2 up there than all the things man does in a year.

[Liberal Classic]

I would say the risk of doing nothing outweighs that of taking action.

Not only do I disagree, but laugh at catastrophism.

Fact: The world's temperature is cyclical.
Fact: The world's temperature has varied from ice ages to hot houses.
Fact: The world is just now coming out of an ice age.

How can one accurately calculate the "risk of doing nothing" weighted against the "risk of doing something?" We still can't predict the weather more than a couple of days out, how can we be sure of anything 100 years out?

Once again, this is very much proof that things are changing.

Change is the only constant.

The debate still remains, however as to whether it is human activity that is causing or contributing to the change.

This is asking the entirely wrong question. The debate is not how to stop human activity. The real debate to ask is how to guarantee humanity's survival when the climate does change. And change it will, with us or without us. The question is how will we survive as a species, not how can we stop change.

[Einigkeit_Recht_Freiheit]

Although I may disagree with what you have written, I certainly appreciate the intelligent, well thought point of view.

At a certain point individuals see the facts as they present themselves differently.

Your views are legitimate although I do not share them.
In my opinion, you and those who are of similar opinion are on the wrong side of history. Only time will tell.

[Lazamataz]

Didn't you notice my screen name was German? The least you could have done was be intelligent enough to make an anti-German remark.

You assume I care.

Besides, pompous and pretentious liberals are the same the world over.

Hopefully you are more competent in your professional life.

Might I ask what you do for a living?

And before you ask: No, collecting German socialist handouts doesn't count.

Hope that helps heaps.

[Nowhere Man]

Change or die.

A bit extreme, but it is true in a sense, maybe if temperatures go up the Eskimos can take up farming or get other jobs. I know myself, I was trained in the IT field but it has gone flat so now I'm working in real estate titles and so on so in a way I had to change to survive. Hey if I can do it, they can do it.

[Liberal Classic]

I would rather be on the wrong side of politics than the wrong side of science.

Here is a graph that I use to explain what I mean. It is from the University of Pittsburgh.

If we have a difficult time forcasting the weather a couple of days out, then how can we pass law based on the weather 100 or even thousands of years out? How do you justify such a law? Surely not science. Science shows that the climate is changing, but our data sample is extremely limited compared with geologic time. The temperature over geologic time, or the history of the earth as far back as we can tell is shown on the chart. So you're saying the government should pass all sorts of laws to regulate my life and livelihood based on predictions of hundreds of years into the future?

But science can tell us with certainty what the future will bring, it will change. The proper role of government should be to plan to cope with the change not to try to stop the change. Might as well try to stop the sun from rising.

[Nowhere Man]

Well, Junior, many of us are old enough to have been there. By now we are all supposd to be under 200 feet of ice, 75% of the world is supposed to have starved to death, the oceans are supposed to be boiling and barren, all wildlife is supposed to have disappeared, ad nauseum.

I remember they tried pushing this in the 1970's where we would end up in an Ice Age if we don't stop CO2 emission. I remember seeing depictions of New York City under ice, with the World Trade Center being two spires of ice and so on. Was talking about it with my father and he told me the scientists said the same things in the 1940's and 1950's where he used to read articles on the "coming ice age" in Look and Colliers magazines. Heck, I have a June 1959 Science and Mechanics magazine where there is a blurb about global warming where perhaps the sun goes through cycles although they also bring up the CO2 issue. So who knows, I basically see a lot of this Greenie talk basically a Communist plot (I often wonder if we "won" the Cold War, but for another time) to control our lives.

Well, remembering back to the 1970's, all I can say is, "WE WILL BE ALL DEAD BY 1985!!!!!!" (insert Howard Dean scream here) B-P

[UnbelievingScumOnTheOtherSide]

DANG! What happened to my land bridge to Siberia??!

[sweetliberty]

"Is this an enlightened comment addressed to the gas guzzling, coal burning global polluters or a crude remark to a small population living in a remote place that is feeling the initial effects of climate change?"

Neither. It's just the way it is. Humans are the most adaptable beings on the planet. Changes are inevitable and those who fail to adapt don't survive. It may seem crude and harsh, but nature often is. Sometimes things really are that simple.