Is this proof of global warming?
I know this headline is becoming an almost daily occurrence, but I’d feel remiss if I didn’t keep linking to some of them. Do you ever get the feeling you are hovering on the edge of a very dangerous precipice?
Today’s Independent is reporting the following:
At this time of year the shoreline in this remote, northerly spot should be frozen solid. The sea water should be locked into a huge, ridged ice-sheet many inches thick and stretching for hundreds of miles. But this year, that ice is more than 100 miles from the shore.
Technorati Tags: Arctic, climate change, eco, environment, evacuation, genocide, politics, meltdown, the beginning of the end
I’ll quote selected parts of the article here, but the full story is well worth reading.
On a recent fact-finding tour of Alaska The Independent was confronted by glaciers dating from the last Ice Age that are in rapid retreat; by spruce forests that have been destroyed by a surge in the spruce bark beetle population; and by roads and buildings that have collapsed because the permafrost on which they were built is thawing.
[E]verywhere we went there were people - scientists, park rangers, native hunters and ordinary citizens - ready to attest to the changes they had seen themselves. For all the ongoing debate about the extent and causes of global warming, as well as the Bush administration’s unwillingness to confront the issue, here in Alaska the evidence is easy to see. Indeed, the evidence is more obvious here than anywhere else. Senators Hillary Clinton and John McCain recently made a similar visit to Alaska. Mrs Clinton returned, warning: “I don’t think there’s any doubt left for anybody who actually looks at the science. There are still some holdouts, but they’re fighting a losing battle.”
Fairbanks, Alaska’s second largest city, has the world’s greatest extremes of temperatures, ranging from a record -52C in winter to 37C in summer. It is also where Ruth Macchione and her late husband, Peter, literally made their home. The couple built the 26ft by 16ft (8m by 5m) log cabin by hand almost 50 years ago. But in the late 1970s the couple felt the ground move beneath their feet.
Around Fairbanks the implications are considerable. Roads and cycle paths have twisted and buckled, buildings have cracked and across the town there are large “sink holes” where the land has simply fallen in on itself. Residents say the local authority has stopped repairing the damage to roads in anything other than a temporary fashion, knowing that each spring the land will likely melt and sink again.
Vladimir Romanovsky, associate professor of geophysics at the University of Alaska, has been studying permafrost for more than 30 years. … Professor Romanovsky took The Independent to visit his field experiments in the silver birch woods surrounding the university campus. He has scores of test sites across Alaska where thermometers take soil temperatures all year round and where he tests the depth of the permafrost with a spike. This summer’s temperatures at the sites close to the campus were the warmest since Professor Romanovsky started the tests 10 years ago. “We are very, very close to this point when it all starts to thaw,” he said.
This is the kicker for me though…
It is not only damage to infrastructure that will result from the melting permafrost in Alaska and Siberia. Vast amounts of organic material remain frozen within the permafrost and any melting would result in the release of unmeasured amounts of methane and carbon dioxide. The release of these gases would, in turn, add to global warming, impacting Alaska’s fragile ecosystem.
Now I saw ‘The Blob‘ and it came from under the Arctic ice! Who knows what else is down there! But seriously, we are desperately trying to reduce the amount of co2 we emit so this sudden release would be a catastrophe of cinematic proportion.
In the remote Inupiat island community of Shishmaref in the far west of Alaska, the erosion has already ended a way of life that had lasted for centuries. At its highest point the island stands at just 22ft, and confronted by thinner protective sea ice and storms that have eroded large chunks of the island, villagers voted to move their community to the mainland in 2002.
Native people say there are a number of similarly threatened villages. Mr Aamodt believes that Barrow - the most northerly community in the US - may also soon have to consider relocation if the current erosion continues. Asked when the situation might become critical, he said: “This month! It could happen at any time.
- DS
