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Damage from climate change may cost Alaska $10 bln
Reuters on Yahoo ^ | 5/29/07 | Mica Rosenberg

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.


TOPICS: Business/Economy; Culture/Society; US: Alaska
KEYWORDS: ak; alaska; alaskaisdoomed; climatechange; damage; doomage; envirohysteria; environment; galblowingram; globalalarmists; globalwarming; goreasm; gorebalism; permafrost; religionofgore; temperature; wearedoomed
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To: NormsRevenge

As long as they’re making up numbers, why not make it $471bn?


21 posted on 05/29/2007 7:47:24 PM PDT by elkfersupper
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To: NormsRevenge
This calls for................


22 posted on 05/29/2007 7:48:55 PM PDT by ChildOfThe60s (If you can remember the 60s........you weren't really there)
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To: NormsRevenge
Well, I grew up in Minnesota. I've pulled for global warming all my life. The winter just ended was, by no means, the warmest I can recall. It wasn't the coldest, either. In other words, it resembled most winters.

When all is done and said, I s'pect the weather on the sun determines what happens temperature-wise hereabouts.

23 posted on 05/29/2007 7:49:15 PM PDT by stevem
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To: vetvetdoug

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!!!


24 posted on 05/29/2007 7:51:12 PM PDT by Dutch Tulip
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To: NormsRevenge
PROBLEM:Some coastal areas like the Inupiat village of Shishmaref on a narrow Chukchi Sea barrier island are disappearing as sea levels rise

SOLUTION:

Image Hosted by ImageShack.us

25 posted on 05/29/2007 7:51:40 PM PDT by bikerMD (Beware, the light at the end of the tunnel may be a muzzle flash.)
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To: NormsRevenge
They made it up on the NJVC bill by Ted Stevens already.

NJVC

26 posted on 05/29/2007 7:54:36 PM PDT by bmwcyle (Satan is working both sides of the street in World Socialism and World Courts.)
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To: Bernard Marx

“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


27 posted on 05/29/2007 7:58:24 PM PDT by stephenjohnbanker ( Hunter/Thompson/Thompson/Hunter in 08! "Read my lips....No new RINO's" !!)
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To: bikerMD

ROTFLOL!!


28 posted on 05/29/2007 7:59:34 PM PDT by stephenjohnbanker ( Hunter/Thompson/Thompson/Hunter in 08! "Read my lips....No new RINO's" !!)
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To: Bernard Marx
The way these Gore"bull" warming toads jigger the statistics is shameful.

We may have a winner here.

Gorebull warming !
29 posted on 05/29/2007 8:02:54 PM PDT by caveat emptor
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To: AlaskaErik
I was just about to jump on that whopper when I read your post.

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?

30 posted on 05/29/2007 8:09:00 PM PDT by Roy Tucker ("You can avoid reality, but you cannot avoid the consequences of avoiding reality"--Ayn Rand)
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To: FairWitness

FORGET PHOENIX!!

I’m packin for a condo in Anchorage.


31 posted on 05/29/2007 8:09:09 PM PDT by petertare (--)
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To: NormsRevenge

Didn`t Alaska just have a very cold winter?


32 posted on 05/29/2007 8:11:58 PM PDT by neverhillorat (HILLORAT WINS, WE ALL LOSE)
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To: muawiyah

HEY! Mica is a reporter, what do facts have to do with anything?


33 posted on 05/29/2007 8:14:51 PM PDT by neverhillorat (HILLORAT WINS, WE ALL LOSE)
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To: NormsRevenge

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.


34 posted on 05/29/2007 8:16:40 PM PDT by CBart95
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To: NormsRevenge
Only 10 Billion, hell we are looking at 2 Trillion in cost for immigration.
35 posted on 05/29/2007 8:17:23 PM PDT by edcoil (Reality doesn't say much - doesn't need too)
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To: Always Right
Yeah, and if it occurs, global warming will probably save Alaskans more than twice that in energy costs..

And the revenue from increased yields on their crops.

5.56mm

36 posted on 05/29/2007 8:21:18 PM PDT by M Kehoe
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To: neverhillorat

—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.


37 posted on 05/29/2007 8:34:57 PM PDT by rfp1234 (Nothing is better than eternal happiness. A ham sandwich is better than nothing. Therefore...)
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To: rfp1234

Ms. Rosenberg will be suprised, she thought Mica was a gem.


38 posted on 05/29/2007 8:50:18 PM PDT by neverhillorat (HILLORAT WINS, WE ALL LOSE)
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To: bikerMD
Looks like the dog fainted from the heat.
39 posted on 05/29/2007 10:38:12 PM PDT by Constitutionalist Conservative (Global Warming Heretic -- http://agw-heretic.blogspot.com)
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To: muawiyah
The atmosphere is thinner wrt to thickness, not density. Due to earth's rotation the atmospheric mantle flattens at the poles. Look at a picture of Jupiter - its high rotational speed produces a much higher diameter at the equator than from pole to pole.

For the atmospheric pressure to remain the same, the air layers will have to be denser in order to compensate for the lack in thickness. Any gas, greenhouse or not, will thus exist at a higher concentration.

That's actually only one effect. There are Coriolis forces, seasonal changes related to temperature, and other effects. But that'll have to be another day.
40 posted on 05/29/2007 11:03:56 PM PDT by drtom
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