By Dr. Glen Barry

http://www.environmentalsustainability.info/blog/

May 14, 2004

Think environmentalists are a bunch of whacked out hippie communists? Perhaps some. However, if you eat, drink, breathe or crap - what they know and espouse has importance to you and your children's lives, indeed, your very existence.

Dark Greens realize that the Earth's processes and life diversity are required to maintain ecosystems and all aspects of human life. Forests, water, the atmosphere and oceans remain in a delicate balance that provides the conditions for life.

Perhaps nowhere are failing ecosystems more readily evident and acute than the western United States. The region, including California, is in the grips of a severe drought and annual large forest fires - the result of climate change, poor land use, faulty water management and over-population.

The response thus far from the Oil Presidency is to heavily log the forests so they don't burn - his "Healthy Forests" initiative, and to propose massive rollbacks of air pollution rules - the likewise Orwellian "Clear Skies" program. And he has turned his back on climate change by rejecting the Kyoto Treaty while offering no alternatives.

President Bush has no grasp of ecological fundamentals, and rules as if the Earth has no value. These programs are a fraud being waged upon the American people and environment for the benefit of industry. How could fragmented, over-managed, dry forests that are fire adapted do anything but burn?

The not so Wild West's ecosystems have been severely degraded and are nearing collapse. It is wrong to spend millions of dollars to fight fires every year. When possible, let them burn. Fires are an integral part of the region's natural history and are responsible for ecosystem regeneration including making healthy, natural baby forests.

A more effective approach to Western drought and forest fires would emphasize land use planning, reduced logging, restoration of old-growth forests, and an aggressive national climate change policy. Residential sprawl into forested areas must be restricted, fragmented landscapes reconnected through targeted restoration activities, and degraded forests allowed to regenerate - thinning and burning naturally as they mature and acquire late successional old-growth characteristics.

Solutions exist. All Americans and other affluent nations are going to have to change the way they live. Sprawling automobile dependent suburbs will give way to compact walking communities - with smaller houses and cars, but a larger sense of community and well-being.

There are a myriad of personal actions all persons - particularly the affluent - must take to achieve personal ecological sustainability. Choose quality over quantity of consumption. There are many ways to consume wisely including buying compact fluorescent lightbulbs and using 100% recycled paper. Have fewer children, no more than two. Buy and love a piece of land, and help it to rest and restore itself.

Our cumulative actions have caused climate change and fragmented forests, leading to the present crisis in the West and elsewhere. Only immediate remedial action on all of our parts will repair failing ecosystems. These and other measures can be taken now while affluence is relatively high and sustainable options to achieve a comfortable and meaningful life abound, or they can be made under duress as ecosystems fail in times of great scarcity, limited options, and civil strife.

It is not simply whether our civilization survives. How will we do so?

Will it be through imperial militarism and pillaging of other countries, or by reforming our excessive consumption and becoming more efficient?

Will we restrict freedoms, or enlarge them? Will there be prosperity for the few, or the many?

Global ecological sustainability depends upon diffusion of a new code of conduct. Respecting and caring for the Earth must become the highest judge of an individual and the merit of their actions. Living for and of the Earth must become the foundation of an honorable new way of life.

The Earth is truth and beauty and sacred. The Earth is God.

As the West and Earth burns, the Emperor fiddles and bombs.

Failure to recognize, acknowledge and reform your life's impacts upon the Earth makes you the petro-bomber's second fiddle, and implicates you in the burning and demise of Gaia.

Living as if the Earth matters, indeed, is worthy of reverence, must be your code of conduct and become the fundamental organizing principle of society.

ENDS

Stop Climate Change, Insist Russia Ratify Kyoto
http://forests.org/action/climate/

STUDY

AFP

May 19, 2004

http://tinyurl.com/2ub8g

PARIS - Climate change will have a disastrous effect on the flow of rivers which provide water for most of Earth's cities, it was reported.

Rising levels of carbon dioxide pollution, caused by the unbridled burning of oil, coal and gas, will warm the troposphere, the lowest layer of the world's atmosphere, in addition to the land and seas, New Scientist says.

Warmer air temperatures will affect water vapour, cloud cover, solar
radiation and ozone, which in turn will have an impact on evaporation and rainfall.

In a computer model that factors in these changes, Princeton University researchers found that precipitation over the next three centuries will increase, boosting the discharge of fresh water around the world by nearly 15 percent.

But the regions that will be benefit are those that are already abundant in water or are sparsely populated, such as the tropics, the far north of Canada and northern Russia.

By contrast, there will be lower flows in many mid-latitude rivers which run through heavily populated regions.

"Those that will start to decline include the Mississippi, Mekong and especially the Nile, one of the world's most heavily used and politically contested rivers, where (the) model predicts an 18 percent fall in flow," the report says.

The scenario, which is published in full in the journal Climate Change, is based on the likely effect from a quadrupling of levels of atmospheric carbon dioxide from levels of this greenhouse gas before the Industrial Revolution.

The predictions are based on what would happen over the next 300 years.

However, research published by experts at France's National Centre for Scientific Research (CNRS) suggests that rivers have already started to be affected by climate change.

They simulated runoff from 200 of the world's largest rivers since 1875 and found that in the past few decades alone, rivers in North and South America and Asia saw an increase in volume, while runoff in Europe was stable, and the flow of water from African rivers had fallen.

The time scale is significant, because records say that global warming moved up a gear in the 1970s. It was at that time that surface temperatures rose quickly in response to the greenhouse effect, New Scientist says.


Informant: NHNE

Summer temperatures in the Arctic have risen at an incredible rate over the past three years, and large patches of what should be ice are now open water, a British polar explorer said Monday.

http://www.enn.com/news/2004-05-18/s_23970.asp

By Kenneth Chang
New York Times
May 13, 2004

http://www.nytimes.com/2004/05/13/science/13DARK.html

In the second half of the 20th century, the world became, quite literally, a darker place.

Defying expectation and easy explanation, hundreds of instruments around the world recorded a drop in sunshine reaching the surface of Earth, as much as 10 percent from the late 1950's to the early 90's, or 2 percent to 3 percent a decade. In some regions like Asia, the United States and Europe, the drop was even steeper. In Hong Kong, sunlight decreased 37 percent.

No one is predicting that it may soon be night all day, and some scientists theorize that the skies have brightened in the last decade as the suspected cause of global dimming, air pollution, clears up in many parts of the world.

Yet the dimming trend ‹ noticed by a handful of scientists 20 years ago but dismissed then as unbelievable ‹ is attracting wide attention. Research on dimming and its implications for weather, water supplies and agriculture will be presented next week in Montreal at a joint meeting of American and Canadian geological groups.

"There could be a big gorilla sitting on the dining table, and we didn't know about it," said Dr. Veerabhadran Ramanathan, a professor of climate and atmospheric sciences at the University of California, San Diego. "There are many, many issues that it raises."

Dr. James E. Hansen, director of the NASA Goddard Institute for Space Studies in Manhattan, said that scientists had long known that pollution particles reflected some sunlight, but that they were now realizing the magnitude of the effect.

"It's occurred over a long time period," Dr. Hansen said. "So it's not something that, perhaps, jumps out at you as a person in the street. But it's a large effect."

Satellite measurements show that the sun remains as bright as ever, but that less and less sunlight has been making it through the atmosphere to the ground.

Pollution dims sunlight in two ways, scientists theorize. Some light bounces off soot particles in the air and goes back into outer space. The pollution also causes more water droplets to condense out of air, leading to thicker, darker clouds, which also block more light. For that reason, the dimming appears to be more pronounced on cloudy days than sunny ones. Some less polluted regions have had little or no dimming.

The dynamics of global dimming are not completely understood. Antarctica, which would be expected to have clean air, has also dimmed.

"In general, we don't really understand this thing that's going on," said Dr. Shabtai Cohen, a scientist in the Israeli Agriculture Ministry who has studied dimming for a decade. "And we don't have the whole story."

The measuring instrument, a radiometer, is simple, a black plate under a glass dome. Like asphalt in summer, the black plate turns hot as it absorbs the sun's energy. Its temperature tells the amount of sunlight that has shone on it.

Since the 50's, hundreds of radiometers have been installed from the Arctic to Antarctica, dutifully recording sunshine. In the mid-80's, Dr. Atsumu Ohmura of the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology in Zurich sifted through the data to compare levels in different regions. "Suddenly," Dr. Ohmura said, "I realized it's not easy to do that, because the radiation was changing over time."

He recalled his reaction, saying, "I thought it is rather unbelievable."

After an analysis, he was convinced that the figures were reliable and presented his findings at a scientific conference.

Asked about his colleagues' reaction, Dr. Ohmura said: "There's no reaction. Very disappointing."

At that time, Dr. Gerald Stanhill of the Israeli Agriculture Ministry noticed similar darkening in Israel.

"I really didn't believe it," Dr. Stanhill said. "I thought there was some error in the apparatus."

Dr. Stanhill, now retired and living in New York, also looked around and found dimming elsewhere. In the 90's, he wrote papers describing the phenomenon, also largely ignored. In 2001, Drs. Stanhill and Cohen estimated that the worldwide dimming averaged 2.7 percent a decade.

Not every scientist is convinced that the dimming has been that pronounced. Although radiometers are simple, they do require periodic calibration and care. Dirt on the dome blocks light, leading to erroneous indications. Also, all radiometers have been on land, leaving three-fourths of the earth to supposition.

"I see some datasets that are consistent and some that aren't," Dr. Ellsworth G. Dutton, who heads surface-radiation monitoring at the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, said. "Certainly, the magnitude of the phenomenon is in considerable question."

Dr. Beate G. Liepert, a research scientist at the Lamont-Doherty Earth Observatory of Columbia University, has analyzed similar information and arrives at a smaller estimate of the dimming than Drs. Stanhill and Cohen. Dr. Liepert puts it at 4 percent from 1961 to 1990, or 1.3 percent a decade. "It's a little bit the way you do the statistics," she said.

A major set of measurements from the Indian Ocean in 1999 showed that air pollution did block significant sunlight. Following plumes of soot and other pollution, scientists measured sunlight under the plumes that was 10 percent less bright than in clear air.

"I thought I was too old to be surprised by anything," said Dr. Ramanathan, who was co-chief scientist of the projects.

Dr. Ohmura said he hoped to finish his analysis of the numbers since 1990 by late next month or early July.

"I have a very strong feeling that probably solar radiation is increasing during the last 14 years," he said. He based his hunch, he said, on a reduction in cloud cover and faster melting rates in glaciers.

But clearer, sunnier days could mean bad news for global warming. Instead of cloudiness slowing rising temperatures, sunshine would be expected to accelerate the warming.


PREVIOUS NHNE ARTICLE;

GLOBAL DIMMING (1/2/2004):
http://groups.yahoo.com/group/nhnenews/message/6534


Informant: NHNE

An article by Alan Blanes

What would be the consequences of oceans rising of one meter over the next few decades?

This is the forecast from the WorldWatch Institute,
( http://www.worldwatch.org/mag/2000/00-6.html ). See, for example, the article by Don Henrichson "The Oceans Are Coming Ashore" [Nov/Dec 2000] which states that the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) predicts a 1 meter rise in oceans by 2080 according to computer models.

The same forecast is made by Molly O'Meara in her article "The Risks of Disrupting Climate" in the WorldWatch Reader 1991. She estimates almost a one meter rise in ocean level if temperatures rise 6 degrees. And it could be worse. Bentley and Bindschlader in their article "On Thin Ice" December 2002 "Scientific American" warn that unpredictably greater problems can happen due to the slippery subsurface of the Western Antarctic Iceshelf. Their article is available from sadigital@sciam.com, and more details of their research can be accessed at http://www.glacier.rice.edu/.

The consequences would be terrible, but we can avoid it.

We could de-salinate the sea water and use it to make forests in the deserts and other regions that need water. This could turn things around so that the land areas of the planet would retain water instead of over-filling the oceans. (For more information e-mail prosci@ecn.ab.ca ).

To do this, we must restructure our engineering and industrial priorities from war to peace. The world spends the equivalent of more than $1.2 trillion Canadian dollars a year on armaments according to the Stockholm International Peace Reseach Institute
( http://www.sipri.org ). We need to convert the defense contract companies from weapons production to civil engineering programs involving restoration of unfertile regions of the continents. This would enable the continents to retain enough water and plant life (i.e. dense forests) in order to offset the water flow from melting icecaps and glaciers.

I would suggest that we begin by developing a dialogue with groups such as Engineers Without Borders.

Source:

http://cpnn-usa.org/cgi-bin/read/articlepage.cgi?ViewArticle=38

The Inuit living in the Arctic region are being "poisoned from afar" as climate change takes its toll on the area and threatens their existence, the head of the Inuit Circumpolar Conference said Wednesday.

http://www.enn.com/news/2004-05-13/s_23841.asp

By Sharon Waxman
New York Times
May 12, 2004

http://www.nytimes.com/2004/05/12/movies/12AFTE.html

LOS ANGELES - Any studio that makes a $125 million movie about global warming is courting controversy. But 20th Century Fox does not seem to have fully anticipated the political firestorm being whipped up by its film "The Day After Tomorrow http://www.thedayaftertomorrow.com/."

Environmental advocates are using the film's release, scheduled for May 28, as an opening to slam the Bush administration, whose global warming policies they oppose. Industry groups in Washington are lobbying on Capitol Hill to make sure the film does not help passage of a bill limiting carbon-dioxide emissions, which many scientists say contribute to global warming.

Meanwhile on Tuesday Fox sparred with celebrity advocates who complained that they had been disinvited to the movie's premiere, only to be reinvited later in the day.

All this is occurring as the entertainment industry is on the defensive, with television networks acknowledging they are censoring themselves to avoid being accused of promoting indecency and the Walt Disney Company distancing itself from a film critical of the administration's foreign policy.

In a telephone news conference on Tuesday former Vice President Al Gore compared the exaggeration of the film's premise to the approach of the Bush administration to global warming.

"There are two sets of fiction to deal with," Mr. Gore said. "One is the movie, the other is the Bush administration's presentation of global warming." He accused the White House of "trying to convince people there's no real problem, no degree of certainty from scientists about the issue."

The news conference was organized by moveon.org, an Internet-based liberal advocacy group.

Dana Perino, the spokeswoman for the Council on Environmental Quality, which coordinates environmental policy for the White House, said the administration's policies would reduce global warming threats without destroying jobs.

"While they're working on movies," she said, "we are advancing our
scientific knowledge, developing transformational energy technologies and reducing the greenhouse-gas intensity of the American economy."

Early this week Laurie David and Robert Kennedy Jr., vocal anti-Bush environmentalists, said that Fox had withdrawn their invitation to the film's premiere in Manhattan but later called to reconfirm the invitation.

In between, a Fox spokesman said the studio had arranged a special screening for them and Mr. Gore a day before the premiere, and another screening for scientists.

Ultimately Fox chalked the invitation issue up to miscommunication.

Invited or not, Ms. David, a prominent member of the Natural Resources Defense Council, said Fox rejected an offer to have the premiere serve as a fund-raiser for any one of numerous environmental groups. (Studios often use premieres as charitable fund-raisers.)

Before learning from Jim Gianopulos, Fox Studio's chairman, that her invitation to the premiere had been reinstated, Ms. David said: "Fox is completely disinterested in raising any consciousness. In fact they're bending over backward to disassociate themselves from the environmental community."

She continued, "Any connections to anything political they're afraid will hurt the opening."

A Fox spokesman denied any attempt to play down the movie's environmental message or to distance the film from activists. "Clearly the movie is entertainment, but all of this activity creates additional interest, making it more topical," Jeffrey Godsick, the spokesman, said. "It's been wonderful."

Directed by Roland Emmerich, "The Day After Tomorrow" imagines a
catastrophic climate change and the rapid arrival of a new ice age caused by global warming. Massive storms destroy Western Europe, Manhattan is covered in a sheet of ice, and tornadoes blast Los Angeles.

The film's trailer shows Dennis Quaid, who plays a paleoclimatologist, warning the vice president ‹ played by an actor who closely resembles Vice President Dick Cheney ‹ that "if we don't act now, it will be too late."

Fox, which financed the big-budget movie, is part of News Corporation, whose chairman and chief executive, Rupert Murdoch, is a strong supporter of Mr. Bush. Mr. Godsick said he did not know if Mr. Murdoch had seen the film.

Mr. Kennedy, an environmental lawyer, said on Tuesday that Fox's attitude toward environmentalists seemed comparable to other instances of self-censorship by media corporations in a politically charged climate.

"This is part of an unfortunate pattern that fits in with CBS canceling the Reagan mini-series and Disney refusing to distribute Michael Moore's film" "Fahrenheit 9/11," he said in an interview before his invitation to the premiere was reinstated. He was referring to recent controversies over political considerations affecting entertainment decisions.

"This is like back to the 1950's and 60's, where people in Hollywood were scared to death of Joe McCarthy, censoring artists, not distributing films, blackballing people," he said. "It's a classic thing that you're supposed to avoid in democracy, the merger of state and corporate power."

Mr. Godsick said that Fox, which plans to spend about $50 million to market the film, was not keeping any interested party at arm's length. The marketing strategy had no connection to the other recent episodes in Hollywood, he said.

"Look, different groups have different agendas," Mr. Godsick said. "Some are to politicize things, some are to go beyond that. The real power of the movie is to raise consciousness on the issue. That's a win-win for everybody."

The studio's Web site promoting the film, thedayaftertomorrow.com, does not include the words "global warming" in its synopsis of the story. But the site does include a section labeled "What can you do?" with a link to Future Forests, a nonprofit British group that promotes limiting carbon-dioxide emissions.

Mr. Emmerich ensured that the movie production participated in CarbonNeutral, a program that involves buying credits to offset carbon-dioxide emissions created during the movie's filming, Mr. Godsick said.

Fox marketing executives have expressed concern that the movie not be perceived as a scientific "treatise," as one executive put it, emphasizing that its appeal is as an action-adventure, roller-coaster-style experience.

Moveon.org said it planned to have thousands of volunteers handing out leaflets about global warming outside theaters when the movie opens. Meanwhile in Washington a coalition of industry groups, including the National Association of Manufacturers, is working to make sure that the movie does not contribute to the passage of a bill limiting carbon-dioxide emissions.


THE DAY AFTER TOMORROW WEBSITE:
http://www.thedayaftertomorrow.com/index.php

PREVIOUS NHNE ARTICLES:

NASA CURBS COMMENTS ON ICE AGE DISASTER MOVIE (4/26/2004):
http://groups.yahoo.com/group/nhnenews/message/7111

SCIENTISTS RIDICULE ICE AGE CLAIMS (4/17/2004):
http://groups.yahoo.com/group/nhnenews/message/7091

HOLLYWOOD DISASTER FILM SET TO TURN HEAT ON BUSH (3/15/2004):
http://groups.yahoo.com/group/nhnenews/message/6912


Informant: NHNE

Melt comes sooner, speeded up by hot spring temperatures and soot. Flowers, trees blossom early, but water runs short in summer heat.

By Don Thompson
Associated Press Writer
May 9, 2004

http://www.latimes.com/news/nationworld/nation/la-adme-snowmelt9may09,1,5690563.story

ECHO SUMMIT, Calif. -- Frank Gehrke skied out on an unseasonably warm March day to take the final Sierra Nevada snowpack measurements of the season near this mountain pass south of Lake Tahoe -- only to be stopped short by a muddy meadow where usually there would be deep snow.

Something is happening to the snowpack, according to measurements Gehrke has collected for 20 winters as chief of California's water survey program.

Near-record snows are melting under record-setting early temperatures this year, a harbinger of the Sierra Nevada spring -- and of a trend that is bringing vast changes across the West.

The snow that piles up in the Sierra, Rockies and Cascades forms an
immense frozen reservoir that drives western power turbines, waters crops and cattle, and flows hundreds of miles to thirsty lawns and throats in desert cities like Las Vegas, Phoenix and Albuquerque.

Snowmelt provides roughly 70% of the West's water flow. But the icy
trickle is becoming a roar earlier as spring creeps into what used to be winter.

Spring temperatures in the Sierra have increased 2 to 3 degrees since 1950, bringing peak snowmelt two to three weeks earlier. Trees and flowers bud one to three weeks sooner.

Western rivers are seeing their peak runoff five to 10 days sooner than 50 years ago. Glaciers are melting from Alaska through the Cascades and east into Montana. And in the Pacific Northwest, snowpack has dropped by as much as 60% over the last four decades.

The trend is consistent with global warming, scientists say, although
they're less sure of the consequences. The Pacific Northwest could
become wetter or drier as weather patterns shift; Northern California could develop the Santa Ana winds that fed Southern California's record wildfires last fall -- or not.

The uncertainty illustrates that scientists still have too little information to conclude that the trend is more than a regional cycle,
said Bonner Cohen, a senior fellow at the National Center for Public
Policy Research.

"Lots of things can happen, and right now it's way beyond what the
computer modelers can even pretend to understand," said Myron Ebell, global warming policy director at the Competitive Enterprise Institute.

Global or not, if the warming trend continues as projected,
scientists say it means a smaller snowpack no matter if precipitation increases or diminishes.

More moisture will fall as rain instead of snow, endangering ski
resorts as well as alpine meadows that will see encroachment from plants and trees that today grow only at lower elevations.

Two studies last year showed the range of many species has moved north at nearly 4 miles per decade over the last century, while spring
activities like egg-laying, flower blooming and ending hibernation have come three to five days earlier each decade.

"The elevation of the snowpack keeps creeping up. That affects us quite a bit," said Scott Armstrong, whose family has operated All-Outdoors Whitewater Rafting for nearly 40 years.

The Pacific Northwest National Laboratory this spring predicted snowpack reductions of up to 70% in the Sierra and Cascade mountains of California, Oregon and Washington. The 400-mile-long Sierra range supplies water to two-thirds of California's population and much of northern Nevada, irrigates 3 million acres of California farmland, and provides about one-fourth of California's power.

"There are a lot of places in the Cascades and the Northern Sierra where the average winter temperature is above freezing. It's those places that have seen 50% to 80% declines, in some places 100% declines," said Philip Mote, a University of Washington climate researcher.

Climate changes are muted farther inland, where average temperatures are generally colder. But as much as a 30% reduction is predicted for the Rocky Mountains of Colorado and New Mexico over the next 50 years, with snow melting about a month earlier than it does now.

Soot darkens snow and ice, deadening their ability to reflect sunlight, contributing to a near-universal melting and causing as much as a quarter of global warming, the National Aeronautic and Space Administration reported. The process accelerates each spring as soot accumulates on the surface, making the remaining snow darker and speeding the melting cycle.

The economic and social impacts flow downstream along with the earlier snowmelt.

"That's where the river really meets the road," Mote said. "Then you're talking [about] affecting a lot of people's lives, a lot of people's livelihoods."

The changes mean less water flowing down western rivers in the dry
summers when it is needed most. The Columbia and Sacramento rivers could be hardest hit because of warmer temperatures there. Runoff into the Sacramento River has dropped 11% over the last century even as needs have grown exponentially in the nation's most populous state.

A University of Washington study this spring predicted that the Colorado River could see runoff drop 14% to 18%, sparking more water warfare between Southern California and upstream states. But the Colorado's Rocky Mountain headwaters are colder and the basin has more existing storage capacity to mute the effects.

More spring flooding and longer summer droughts mean pressure for
reservoirs to capture more water when it's available. Dams and
reservoirs "are not politically correct to talk about right now both
because of cost and ... environmental impact. But there may be a cost to not building reservoirs as well," said David Kranz of the California Farm Bureau Federation.

Environmentalists say water conservation is the answer, with
desalinization and water transfers between regions.

Copyright 2004 Los Angeles Times

Informant: Teresa Binstock

Tuesday, April 20, 2004
By Yereth Rosen, Reuters


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.


Source: Reuters

http://www.enn.com/news/2004-04-20/s_22971.asp

09.04.2004

Das grönländische Inlandeis droht komplett zu schmelzen. Ursache ist die Klimaerwärmung durch Treibhausgase. Zu diesem Ergebnis kommt eine neue Studie, die in der britischen Zeitschrift "Nature" veröffentlicht wurde. Bis zu drei Kilometer dick ist die Eisschicht, die Grönland bedeckt. Sie enthält zehn Prozent der globalen Süßwasserreserven.

http://www.sonnenseite.com/fp/archiv/Akt-News/4669.php

--------

Als das Netz nach Grönland kam
http://omega.twoday.net/stories/1174798/