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.
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.
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