Climate Chaos:
Inconvenient Truths
Elites want us to focus on Climate but not Peak Oil
Carbon reduction through demand destruction
Greenpeace protest at
coal burning center
"global warming starts here"
related pages:
"To me the question of the environment is more ominous than that
of peace and war."
-- Hans Blix, UN weapons inspector
"We do need to cut global carbon dioxide emissions by at least the 50% to 70% recommended by the United Nation Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change. The Bush administration understands that this means the end of economic prosperity and industrial civilization as we know it. That is why Bush refuses to even acknowledge that global warming exists."
-- Dale Allen Pfeiffer, From the Wilderness, www.fromthewilderness.com/free/ww3/021705_world_stories.shtml
"it’s probably too late for pro-active measures on climate change now anyhow. A thorough collapse of the US economy, with people no longer able to afford cars and gas to drive them, might do more to slow the global heating cycle than any measures that a Democratic Congress and administration might pass."
-- Dave Lindorff, Why Not Let the Republicans Deal with This Mess?, August 23 / 4, 2008
www.counterpunch.org/lindorff08232008.html
"One of the hardest tasks we face in life is to be the bearer of
seriously bad news … I now have to bring the worst of news …
that civilisation is in grave danger."
-- James Lovelock, The Revenge of Gaia.
"It seems to be increasingly recognized that Peak Oil and Climate Change are the two greatest challenges
facing modern man. They may be intimately related insofar as the abundant supply of cheap oil-based energy
led to the rapid expansion of industry, transport, trade and agriculture allowing the population to expand six-fold in parallel. It would be surprising if this sudden explosion of population did not have some
environmental impact as forests were cut, cities expanded and industrial smoke filled the air. The
atmosphere is, after all, no more than a thin skin, a few kilometers thick, protecting life on earth from
excessive radiation.
"The climate has of course changed many times in the geological past. Indeed every bedding plane seen on
outcropping rocks reflects some climate change, whether between winter and summer or longer cycles.
There have also been some extreme events, possibly prompted by massive volcanic eruptions, which led to
mass extinctions. They incidentally provided the conditions for oil formation as algae proliferated in the
warm sunlit waters and their remains were preserved in the stagnant depths."
-- Colin Campbell, February 2008 issue of ASPO Ireland
www.aspo-ireland.org/contentFiles/newsletterPDFs/newsletter86_200802.pdf
"Today, there is evidence that severe change can take less than a decade. A committee of the National Academy of Sciences (NAS) has called this reorientation in the thinking of scientists a veritable 'paradigm shift.' The new paradigm of abrupt global climate change, the committee reported in 2002, 'has been well established by research over the last decade, but this new thinking is little known and scarcely appreciated in the wider community of natural and social scientists and policymakers.' "
-- Spencer Weart. "The Discovery of Rapid Climate Change."
Physics Today (American Institute of Physics), August 2003
http://scitation.aip.org/journals/doc/PHTOAD-ft/vol_56/iss_8/30_1.shtml
A chart from the Oregon Department of Transportation showing a proposal for a steep reduction in greenhouse gas emissions over the next several decades looks remarkably similar to the famous Hubbert Curve of oil depletion.
| Rising seas will be a permanent tsunami or Katrina sized storm surge |
Climate Change is a permanent tsunami, a permanent Katrina sized storm
surge.
The 2004 Indian Ocean tsunami was roughly the inundation level that
moderate amounts of climate change would (will) cause to coastlines worldwide.
The Katrina storm surge in Mississippi was almost 10 meters high in
places. If the Greenland ice cap slides into the sea the worldwide rise in ocean level would be almost this much - but on a permanent basis.
As with Katrina, the poor are going to be left to drown even though
the resources to mitigate the problem exist and are accessible - but they are decentralized, require elites to share power, and would have to address the economic, monetary, political and psychological reasons why the crisis has been willfully ignored for decades.
| No Control Planet for the Climate Experiment |
Nearly all of the climatologists on Earth are convinced through
peer reviewed science that burning petroleum, coal and natural gas, and
other human activities are definitely having an impact on the stability
of the planet's climate. There are very few bioregions anywhere
that are not now having substantial changes in temperature and precipitation
extremes. Even many indigenous cultures that are unaware of the scientific
method, petroleum companies and other inventions of industrial society
report that they understand that "modern" man is changing the
future of life on Earth (generally speaking, most of them would like us
to stop what we are doing -- see in particular, a film called "The
Elder Brothers" and book by the same name about the Kogi people of
South America for a particularly poignant view of this). Not all climate
alteration is from burning carbon based fuels -- clearcut deforestation
is
also causing shifts on rainfall patterns. And there are military programs
researching "weather warfare," but
the precise contribution those efforts have toward these changes is probably
impossible to prove.
To quote Bob Dylan, "you don't need a weatherman to know which way
the wind blows." And you don't need to read scientific reports to
realize: most of the world's glaciers are in retreat, the polar ice caps
are melting, the Alaskan permafrost is melting, many places on Earth have
increasing water availability problems, deserts are expanding, forests
are being clearcut, animal migrations are changing, plant communities
are shifting, record heat is being recorded in countless places, and many
other indicators of climatological change.
Articles that claim that the "global warming theory"
is not proven are essentially a "snooze button" urging the citizens
of Earth to go back to sleep, and let the polluters off the hook
for the damage they are doing. Many of the writers and propagandists loudly
denying climate change in the media are paid by polluters. These commentaries
that claim climate change isn't real are about as helpful as those that
prefer an end-of-the-world "rapture"
perspective (that these changes are really indicators that God is going
to physically lift a chosen few into heaven as the rest of us suffer).
In science, a "control" group is usually involved when studying
an impact -- but there is no "control" planet unaffected
by toxic combustion and habitat alteration if the naysayers turn out to
be wrong. Mars is too cold, and Venus is too hot.
There are too many variables to know precisely what impacts digging up hundreds of millions of years of stored energy will do to the biosphere, but I've never met anyone who thinks the impact could be moderate or beneficial who has any experience gardening of farming. Agriculture requires a stable, predictable climate. The disconnection with the "natural" world is the sickness of our time, and this is the underlying problem, not 9/11 or Iraq or rigged elections, those are merely (important) symptoms.
Anyone who has grown food in a temperate climate probably understands that having earlier warm spells before the date of "last frost" risks damage to fruit crops - the premature warming causes early budding or flowering that is then zapped by normal frost (which previously happened before the budding or flowering).
Fossil fuels should be left in the ground, parking lots torn up for gardens, money for missiles redirected to trains, and solar panels put up on every roof top. It's a nice fantasy, but part of the practical steps that would be needed to mitigate the crisis.
the Peak Oil / Climate connection
www.energybulletin.net/36739.html
Published on 4 Nov 2007 by Museletter / Global Public Media. Archived on 4 Nov 2007.
Big melt meets big empty: Rethinking the implications of climate change and peak oil
by Richard Heinberg
www.energybulletin.net/24529.html
Published on 9 Jan 2007 by Energy Bulletin. Archived on 9 Jan 2007.
Bridging Peak Oil and Climate Change Activism
by Richard Heinberg
The problems of Climate Change and Peak Oil both result from societal
dependence on fossil fuels. But just how the impacts of these two problems
relate to one another, and how policies to address them should differ
or overlap, are questions that have so far not been adequately discussed.
www.oildepletion.org/roger/Solutions/solutions.htm
All industries will be affected, beginning with air transport and related
sectors, including tourism which, taken as a whole, is, surprisingly,
the world's biggest employer. Transport in all its forms is also in the
front line of risk; massive fuel price increases, and actual interruptions
in supply would threaten a breakdown of distribution systems and have
economic consequences far in excess of any experienced in the developed
economies in modern times. These consequences would include high unemployment
and inflation.
Secondly, there are implications for the costs, and perhaps even availability,
of food. The food chain is massively hydrocarbon-dependent at every stage:
fertilisers, chemicals, equipment, transport and processing. A rise in
the price of oil will knock-on immediately to a comparable rise in the
price of food. Political and social instability as a consequence cannot
be ruled out.
Thirdly, the coming oil shock transforms the climate-change agenda. The
Kyoto process has been built on the assumption that oil supplies will
not be the constraint that will limit carbon emissions in the future, and that if the latter are to be reduced, this will have to be through
deliberate limitations on demand. In this new situation, however, the
problem is transformed: reductions in affordable oil may turn out to be
faster than the most ambitious targets that have been conceived in the
context of climate change. The CO2 implications of reduced conventional
oil use, vs. the increased use of gas, non-conventional oils, coal, and
perhaps nuclear, need examination.
www.theoildrum.com/node/2239
Noisette on February 2, 2007 - 11:54am
Global warming is a comfortable matter for the public to worry about.
Its reported effects tend to be ‘away’ (polar bears scrabbling
on ice islets), far off into the future (rising sea level), impenetrable
(dying species, new plant and animal life), scientifically disputable
as claimed (see de-bunker shills), hard to grasp (so what if the temp
rises one degree?), welcomed by many: .. Putin could open up Siberia;
cool, no more long lasting ice in the winter on my steps! My heating bill
is way down!- and, last but not least, raises the specter of world ‘Gvmt.’
or world legislation / collaboration, which is anathema to many and in
any case almost impossible to either understand or imagine managing.
Most people’s daily lives are not impacted at all, the change is
extremely gradual, and while in many places noticeable by the individual
senses and brain, has a kind of inevitability about it - the Cosmos, Rays,
Sunspots, warmer water, CO2, God, horrid humans, Weird Stuff! and only
requires, it is thought, that people adapt to changes in the ‘weather’
as they have done for millenia, by growing other crops, moving north or
inland, etc. etc. All together, it becomes a vehicle for smug catastrophism
- exotic examples are thrilling - Tuvalu under water, wow! But who cares?
Climate Change denial:
www.climatedenial.org
This blog explores the topic of the psychology of climate change denial - with observations and anecdotes about our weird and disturbed response to the problem. It seeks to answer a question that has puzzled me for years: why, when the evidence is so strong, and so many agree that this is our greatest problem, are we doing so little about climate change?
The sense of doubt seeded by the denial industry has also encouraged two thirds of people to say ‘I need more information to form a clear opinion about climate change’. When they say this, I don’t believe that they actually want more information - there is plenty out there if they want it. I think they are happily adopting the excuse that the science is undecided to create an obstacle to personal engagement.
www.cbs.com/latenight/lateshow/top_ten/archive/ls_topten_archive2005/ls_topten_archive_20050725.shtml
Top Ten George W. Bush Solutions For Global Warming
10. NASA mission to turn down the sun's thermostat
9. Federal subsidies to boost production of Cool Ranch Doritos
8. Fast track Rumsfeld's "Colonize Neptune" proposal
7. Convene Blue-Ribbon Committee to explore innovative ways of ignoring
the problem
6. Let Hillary worry about it when she takes over
5. I dunno---tax cuts for the rich?
4. Give the boys at Halliburton 90-billion dollar contract to patch hole
in ozone
3. Switch to celsius so scorching 98 becomes frosty 37
2. Keep plenty of Bud on ice
1. Invade Antartica
| the
Empire is planning for climate change |
http://rigorousintuition.blogspot.com/2005/01/extreme-enough-for-ya.html
Thursday, January 20, 2005 Extreme enough for ya?
Just how weird must the weather get before some people acknowledge that
even Kansas isn't in Kansas anymore?
So what is going on with the stubborn refusal of the US to admit and
act upon climate change? I think it's wrong to believe the policy-makers
ignorant. We saw last year what the Pentagon's secret report, suppressed
by US defence chiefs and obtained by the UK's Observer, made of it: climate
change "should be elevated beyond a scientific debate to a US national
security concern." Britain could be Siberian by 2020, and major European
cities sunk beneath rising seas. According to the report, an imminent
scenario of catastrophic climate change is "plausible and would challenge
United States national security in ways that should be considered immediately."
But with a challenge to US national security, also comes an opportunity.
Climate change impacts everyone, but short of a runaway greenhouse effect
(and no worries - we have a good 50 years or so to squander before that
eventuality), some will be impacted more than others. Europe, for instance,
would be expected to fare worse than the United States if the Atlantic
Conveyor shuts down. The continent depends upon the moderating current
to keep it out of the deep freeze. If it fails, then so will Europe.
And which continent of former allies is it, which is now viewed with suspicion
as a potential 21st Century rival to American hegemony?
Having read the CIA's laughable reverse-psychology "advice"
to Europe, I think there are likely some people in places of influence
who wouldn't object to putting the continent on ice. ("The current
EU welfare state is unsustainable and the lack of any economic revitalisation
could lead to the splintering or, at worst, disintegration of the EU."
Oh yes; the CIA would just hate to see the EU fail.)
Perhaps the Bush administration isn't as ignorant as it seems regarding
climate change. Perhaps it knows, even better than we know, what is coming.
And perhaps, weighing everything in the balance, they are saying, in effect,
"bring it on!"
In other words, perhaps what we're seeing in environmental policy is another
instance of Letting It Happen On Purpose.
If Condoleeza Rice can call the South Asian tsunami a "wonderful
opportunity," what must Donald Rumsfeld be calling climate change?
| Elite campaigns to admit to climate change |
this was forwarded by a friend.
I watch the tv on the weekends sometimes. Last weekend, I was barraged with
the following two advertisements played at nearly every commercial break...
Reverend Al Sharpton and Pat Robertson - We Can Solve It
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NhmpsUMdTH8
Newt Gingrich and Nancy Pelosi - We Can Solve It
http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=6171696742574481310&hl=en
For typical us tv watchers, I imagine the image of these political opponents
sitting knee to knee on a couch and being friendly to each other is a
powerful statement that it is agreed (so called) "climate change" is real
and we are going to fix it.
*****
I'm fascinated with the way the media is shifting gears on climate
destabilization. Actually I'm fascinated with the way the dollars and the
financial establishment is shifting gears.
I recognize that the tide has been turning in recent years...
Newt Gingrich "The Evidence is Sufficient" on Global Warming
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=upphPTRr_PE
"A sound American energy policy would focus on four areas: basic research to
create a new energy system that has few environmental side effects,
incentives for conservation, more renewable resources, and environmentally
sound development of fossil fuels. The Bush administration has approached
energy environmentalism the right way, including using public-private
partnerships that balance economic costs and environmental gain.
Hydrogen has the potential to provide energy that has no environmental
downside. Conservation is the second great opportunity in energy. A tax
credit to subsidize energy efficient cars (including a tax credit for
turning in old and heavily polluting cars) is another idea we should
support. Renewable resources are gradually evolving to meet their potential:
from wind generator farms to solar power to biomass conversion. Continued
tax credits and other advantages for renewable resources are a must."
Source: Gingrich Communications website, www.newt.org Dec 1, 2006
**********
I watch tv periodically and I like to think maybe I can more easily see
propaganda trends than someone who is immersed in tv perpetually. Or, maybe
I'm behind the game, always catching up with what is obvious to tv watchers.
This current trend to get all tv watchers on board with the climate change
program intrigues me. I think four years ago, the "climate change is real"
message would rarely have been presented on tv. Three years ago, the
message might have gotten out now and then, but only if the speaker was
publicly humiliated in the process. One and two years ago, we heard the
message from time to time, and gradually it was taken more seriously. In
the last four months, the message that climate change is real, is increasing
to a roar.
Politicians, talking heads, public relations experts and others that work in
the field of mass consciousness may argue that these trends are driven by
the "the people", "the constituency", "voters", "consumers", "democrats",
"republicans" and other mythical creatures who vote with their dollars and
their neilsen ratings. Human beings, it seems to me, tend to be driven by
these campaigns (like herd animals).
The strategy seems similar to previous campaigns to shift public
consciousness. The message is presented with serene urgency as if we have
all known the truth all along. If you want to belong to the mythical class
with which you identify, you will come to believe that you have known all
along. We have all known all along, after all, we in this class are rather
extraordinary people. Surely you don't wish to be ostracized.
I suspect the primary motivation to acknowledge "climate change" for many of
the sociopaths in power is that they now have solidified strategies for
enriching and empowering themselves given the opportunity of climate
destabilization. That's just how sociopaths think.
I wonder, in order to produce the electricity to generate Newt's hydrogen,
will we...
... strip bare the heartland to extract coal? (Clean coal technology, of
course).
www.geography.vt.edu/worldlandscapes/readings2/preread/s1912.JPG
... suck dry the west to process oil sands?
www.ags.gov.ab.ca/activities/cbm/alberta_oil_sands.html
... starve ourselves to produce ethanol?
www.parl.gc.ca/information/library/PRBpubs/prb0749-e.htm
I wonder, will the powers that be thwart the efforts of human beings to
decentralize the power infrastructure and assert local power over energy?
Will the "they" impose a system of energy control, enforcement and rationing
(taking their piece of the action, of course), until the day the
infrastructure is too expensive to operate (in terms of energy)? Will we
come to the brink unprepared, having frittered the last of the cheap energy
on the errands of fools?
I suspect the answer each of these rhetorical questions is yes (of course).
**********
The We Campaign is a high level, high dollar, high tech initiative to get
watcher's of tv in the US to get on board with climate change programming.
*****
http://wecansolveit.org/
"The We Campaign is a project of The Alliance for Climate Protection -- a
nonprofit, nonpartisan effort founded by Nobel laureate former Vice
President Al Gore. Our ultimate aim is to halt global warming."
We "Actions" (from the We Campaign website)
- Sign the petition for a global treaty on climate change
- Tell your friends about our first video
- As Americans, we don't wait for other people to take the lead when a
problem needs to be fixed. In this ad, William H. Macy shows that by solving
the climate crisis, we are honoring an American tradition.
- Urge the press to ask about global warming
- Ask lenders to consider climate impact when funding new coal plants
**********
Some sarcasm for you, the reader...
- THANK YOU GOD, another petition to sign.
- I cannot wait for the next cocktail party!!
- Yes, we Americans are out ahead of the curve again, as always, taking the
lead, a shining example to all the lesser nations of world.
- This document is my letter to the editor.
- The next time you are negotiating your mortgage with your banker, don't
forget to mention the We Campaign.
**********
I hope you feel warm and fuzzy. You are now a member of the mythical class
of creatures I call my readers.
| political
hot air, greenwash, false solutions |
www.alternet.org/envirohealth/46318/
What Al Gore Hasn't Told You About Global Warming
By David Morris
Tuesday 09 January 2007
George Monbiot's new book "Heat" picks up where Al Gore
left off on global warming, offering real solutions without sugar-coating
the large personal sacrifices they will require.
http://jameshowardkunstler.typepad.com
/clusterfuck_nation/2007/01/the_warming.html
The Warming
January 8, 2007
Everyone was walking around upstate New York delirious in their shirtsleeves
on Saturday as the thermometer soared into the sixties (an all-time
record for January here). The resource cornucopians were beside themselves
with glee as the price of crude oil nose dived down to the mid-$50 range,
proving what ninnies we peak oil alarmists are. The mustard greens we
planted last July are still growing in the garden. The cat caught a
garter snake. And later that evening those fluffy things in the headlights
were moths, not snowflakes.
It was hard not to enjoy the end of the world. But despite all the high
spirits and the roller-bladers and the kids hoisting their Ben-and-Jerry's
cones, one was provoked to wonder about all the deer ticks out there
enjoying an extra breeding cycle, not to mention the deer themselves,
fattening up on prematurely swelling buds, and the pine bark beetles
we've been hearing about up the road in the Adirondacks.
And for the really farsighted, there is the contemplation of what summer
might be like. After all, if it is 67 in January, might it be 107 in
July? And maybe that won't be so groovy. The electric grid is much more
stressed out when all the air-conditioners are humming across the land.
I'm not looking forward to Lyme disease, West Nile virus, or maybe even
Dengue fever, either.
While it seems morally upright to inveigh against global warming Al
Gore style, personally I don't believe there is anything we will do
about it, or can do about now. The feedback loops are in motion. Something
ominous is underway far greater than our measly powers can correct.
Even if we started it with about two hundred years of our fossil fuel
fires, there is no evidence that can just stop burning coal, oil, and
methane gas on the grand scale, or that the warming would stop if we
did.
The response of our political leaders is laughable. The most "progressive"
among them will demand rapid conversion of the US automobile fleet to
hybrid engines. I am confident that this would do absolutely nothing
to put the brakes on global warming.
As usual, I am much more interested in how events are likely to turn
out than in how we wish them to turn out. My guess is that the weird
weather we are getting will increasingly affect crop yields. With populations
growing, and weather anomalies increasing, grain surpluses worldwide
are now at their lowest point in decades. All the major grain-growing
regions have suffered either significant drought (US, Australia, Ukraine,
China, Argentina) or flooding (East Africa, India) in recent years.
(See this report from the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United
Nations.)
The poorer, "undeveloped" nations are feeling the pain first,
as usual, and this pain is translating into political breakdown, violence,
starvation, and genocide. At the same time, these poorer places are
leaving the oil age behind. they have dropped out of the bidding as
oil made its move above the $50-a-barrel mark. In these countries, there
will no longer be fuel for electric generators or motor transport, and
the primary manifestation of all that will be a breakdown of public
health. Between the political death squads and the hospitals with no
running water, tremendous forces for attrition are underway.
Oil priced beyond the means of Third Worlders means more for America,
for the moment, and indeed the public here is glorying in still-affordable
gasoline. Judging by the evidence in the supermarket aisles, there have
been no noticeable Cheez Doodle shortages. There are certain Third World
countries, however, that also happen to be major oil producers. Nigeria,
for instance. It is already a very chaotic state. The oil there is extracted
mainly by multinational corporations who pay substantial royalties and
licensing fees to the Nigerian government. The people of Nigeria mostly
do without. Increasingly, they are tapping into pipelines illegally
and siphoning off oil. Meanwhile, a quasi Civil War has provoked assaults
and kidnappings against the oil infrastructure and foreign workers.
Sooner or later, Nigeria will become too chaotic and its oil supply
will go off-line, so to speak, perhaps permanently. When that happens,
the happy motorists in Atlanta and the San Fernando Valley may start
to notice that something is happening.
Global warming will not get our attention this winter. It's too pleasurable
here in the northeast US, where so many decisions are made. The new
Democratic congress may blather about it, but there will be no policies
or protocols, just as there will be none about the other "elephant
in the room" -- overpopulation. There's not a damn thing we're
going to do about it. You can deplore it, but then what?
Of course, I maintain that there is a broad range of actions we could
take in the US that would constitute an intelligent response to this
Long Emergency of climate change and oil depletion. The most important
thing we could do at the moment is to stop debating about all the different
"innovative" ways to run our cars, and come to grips with
the fact that we have to leave the happy motoring era behind us, period.
I don't see Nancy Pelosi taking the lead on this one. She'll just bring
a new kindergarten veneer to the same old politics of denial. The mid-winter
cherry blossoms will only make the denial seem more festive.
| scientific
information about the climate crisis |
www.climateark.org
Climate Ark - Climate Change Portal
www.climatesolutions.org
(Cascadian perspective)
www.ipcc.ch - Intergovernmental
Panel on Climate Change
www.ncdc.noaa.gov/paleo/globalwarming/temperature-change.html
A Paleo Perspective ... on Global Warming
Temperature change and carbon dioxide change
www.realclimate.org
a commentary site on climate science by working climate scientists for
the interested public and journalists
| beyond
bizarre: a giant umbrella to block the sun? |
This story seems like a strange, infantile approach to the climate change
problem. But it might also be a covert effort to develop weather
modification weapons. As strange as that sounds, the military has
long sought such technology, and this article could be an clue that they
are conducting such experiments. Whether this article is a real story
or not, and whether it has military implications or not, it is a distraction
from the need to shift the way civilization behaves so that a stable biosphere
may continue to provide for the needs of homo sapiens and the millions
of other species on planet Earth.
www.guardian.co.uk/usa/story/0,,1999966,00.html
US answer to global warming: smoke and giant space mirrors
Washington urges
scientists to develop ways to reflect sunlight as 'insurance'
David Adam, environment correspondent
Saturday January 27, 2007
The Guardian
The US government wants the world's scientists to develop technology
to block sunlight as a last-ditch way to halt global warming, the Guardian
has learned. It says research into techniques such as giant mirrors
in space or reflective dust pumped into the atmosphere would be "important
insurance" against rising emissions, and has lobbied for such a
strategy to be recommended by a major UN report on climate change, the
first part of which will be published on Friday. ....
The US response, a copy of which has been obtained by the Guardian,
says the idea of interfering with sunlight should be included in the
summary for policymakers, the prominent chapter at the front of each
IPCC report. It says: "Modifying solar radiance may be an important
strategy if mitigation of emissions fails. Doing the R&D to estimate
the consequences of applying such a strategy is important insurance
that should be taken out. This is a very important possibility that
should be considered."
Scientists have previously estimated that reflecting less than 1% of
sunlight back into space could compensate for the warming generated
by all greenhouse gases emitted since the industrial revolution. Possible
techniques include putting a giant screen into orbit, thousands of tiny,
shiny balloons, or microscopic sulphate droplets pumped into the high
atmosphere to mimic the cooling effects of a volcanic eruption. The
IPCC draft said such ideas were "speculative, uncosted and with
potential unknown side-effects".
www.smh.com.au/news/environment/us-urges-scientists-to-block-out-sun
/2007/01/28/1169919213362.html
US Urges Scientists to Block Out Sun
By David Adam and Liz Minchin
The Sydney Morning Herald AU
Monday 29 January 2007
The US wants the world's scientists to develop technology to block
sunlight as a last-ditch way to halt global warming.
It says research into techniques such as giant mirrors in space or reflective
dust pumped into the atmosphere would be "important insurance"
against rising emissions, and has lobbied for such a strategy to be
recommended by a UN report on climate change, the first part of which
is due out on Friday.
www.sciam.com/article.cfm
?SID=mail&articleID=00010234-09A9-1C68-B882809EC588ED9F
November 15, 2000
Planting Trees Won't Save the Climate
If you thought planting trees would take care of global warming, think
again. The results of a new study, which looked at how increased carbon
dioxide concentrations influence forest growth, are not as promising as
some had expected. In the past, some people have argued that the increase
in carbon dioxide (CO2) in the air would be partially offset by an increase
in plant growth, caused by that additional (CO2): increased CO2 concentrations
in the atmosphere should work like extra fertilizer and lead to increased
plant growth. This growth in turn should bind to much of the CO2. In other
words, the plant growth should act like a sink, absorbing the gas released
into the air by burning fossil fuel.
But the new analysis, published in last week's issue of Science, found
that although there has been an increase in biomass, most of it must be
attributed to land use history. The authors, a team of scientists from
Princeton University and the U.S.D.A. Forest Service, uncovered plant
growth rates of only 2 to 4.4 percent. These numbers stand in sharp contrast
to some earlier studies, which suggested that rising CO2 concentrations
would bring a 25 to 75 percent growth increase. The researchers used data
from the Forest Inventory and Analysis (FIA) database, taking samples
from more than 20,000 acre-size plots in Minnesota, Michigan, Virginia,
North Carolina and Florida. To examine historical changes in growth and
mortality rates of the vegetation there, the scientists looked at forest
biomass, the cumulative result of past growth. "The U.S. has a fairly
unique history in that a hundred years ago, a large fraction of the landscape
was deforested," explains John Caspersen, who led the study. "Subsequently,
there has been a reforestation of much of the eastern ...
This is LONDON
23/12/03 - News and city section
UK cold snap kills 2,500 in a week
By Alexa Baracaia, Evening Standard
The cold spell has killed more than 2,500 people across England and Wales
in the past week, experts today revealed.
New research shows that a higher proportion of the British population
dies as a direct result of winter weather than in Russia or Finland.
Between 15 and 22 December there are estimated to have been more than
540 deaths in London and the South-East alone and it is predicted that
the number of people dying " unnecessarily" from the cold could
rise to 50,000 this season.
"The UK remains one of the worst countries in the world at
coping with unseasonal temperatures," said Professor Sian
Griffiths, President of the Faculty of Public Health which carried out
the study along with the Met Office.
The findings come after it was revealed that an elderly couple in Tooting
were found dead in their flat 13 weeks after their gas supply was cut
off.
The bodies of George Bates, 89, and his wife Gertrude, 86, were found
huddled in the living room of the home they had shared for 64 years.
British Gas, which was owed £140.62 by the couple, said the
Data Protection Act had prevented them from passing information to social
services.
But David Hinchcliffe, chairman of the Government's health select committee,
said: "I don't think there are any excuses."
The new research, which calculates the number of deaths caused by the
cold in England and Wales over the past week, claims that the victims
will have died from treatable ailments.
Professor Griffiths warned: "All of us must be vigilant to look out
for family, friends and neighbours who may be suffering. Often illnesses
develop after a cold snap has finished."
Find this story at www.thisislondon.co.uk/news/articles/8306085?version=1
©2003 Associated New Media
www.economist.com/business/displayStory.cfm?story_id=3276015
Hudson's warmer bay
Oct 7th 2004 | TORONTO
From The Economist print edition
Less ice means new transport opportunities
ABOUT now, the polar bears arrive near the Canadian port at Churchill
to await the winter freeze. Then they will walk north across the ice of
Hudson Bay towards the Arctic. It was -6º C this week at the port, although
a warmer world means the ice comes more slowly these days. That is bad
news for the polar bears, but good news for shipping.
Global warming means Hudson Bay is now open to shipping an extra week
a year. Some scientists predict that as soon as 2010 there could be a
regular shipping service during the summer in the Arctic, and that by
2050 there will be a year-round sea passage to Hudson Bay.
This year the ice-free season started on July 28th. The last ship will
leave in early November. The ships coming to Churchill, 1,700km (1,057
miles) north of Winnipeg, save on fuel since it is closer to ports in
Europe. Churchill to Antwerp is just eight days' sailing.
Louis Dreyfus, an international trader, believes its Canadian grain operation
will benefit from a combination of ice-reinforced ships and warmer weather
expanding the shipping season from the first week of July until past the
middle of November. Grain is just about the only cargo shipped out of
Churchill, and the ships arrive empty. But there are plans to change that.
The port and the railway, which provides Churchill with its only land-link
to the outside world, were bought in 1997 by OmniTRAX. This Denver-based
company owns a number of “short line”, or industrial, railroads—although
the Hudson Bay Railway is hardly short at 1,303km. OmniTRAX has made a
go of a port which the Canadian government was thinking of closing and
wants to get annual grain shipments up to 1m tonnes. This year it might
reach 600,000 tonnes, although a weak harvest on the prairie could reduce
that. The company also wants to handle imports.
This is where Russia's ambassador to Canada, Georgiy Mamedov, comes in.
He is trying to revive the idea of a “Murmansk to Manitoba”
cross-Arctic shipping corridor. His vision: liquefied natural gas from
Russia shipped to North America via Churchill. If the ice does melt, freighters
could cut across water that was once permanent ice. At first, icebreakers
would be needed. And if not, Mr Mamedov says: “Commission nuclear
submarines. We are no longer in a confrontational state, so they can be
used for peaceful purposes.” Those hardy tourists who venture north
to see the polar bears shiver at the prospect.
http://news.independent.co.uk/world/environment/story.jsp?story=603975
Countdown to global catastrophe
By Michael McCarthy, Environment Editor
24 January 2005
The global warming danger threshold for the world is clearly marked
for the first time in an international report to be published tomorrow
- and the bad news is, the world has nearly reached it already.
The countdown to climate-change catastrophe is spelt out by a task force
of senior politicians, business leaders and academics from around the
world - and it is remarkably brief. In as little as 10 years, or even
less, their report indicates, the point of no return with global warming
may have been reached.
The report, Meeting The Climate Challenge, is aimed at policymakers
in every country, from national leaders down. It has been timed to coincide
with Tony Blair's promised efforts to advance climate change policy
in 2005 as chairman of both the G8 group of rich countries and the European
Union.
And it breaks new ground by putting a figure - for the first time in
such a high-level document - on the danger point of global warming,
that is, the temperature rise beyond which the world would be irretrievably
committed to disastrous changes. These could include widespread agricultural
failure, water shortages and major droughts, increased disease, sea-level
rise and the death of forests - with the added possibility of abrupt
catastrophic events such as "runaway" global warming, the
melting of the Greenland ice sheet, or the switching-off of the Gulf
Stream.
The report says this point will be two degrees centigrade above the
average world temperature prevailing in 1750 before the industrial revolution,
when human activities - mainly the production of waste gases such as
carbon dioxide (CO2), which retain the sun's heat in the atmosphere
- first started to affect the climate. But it points out that global
average temperature has already risen by 0.8 degrees since then, with
more rises already in the pipeline - so the world has little more than
a single degree of temperature latitude before the crucial point is
reached.
More ominously still, it assesses the concentration of carbon dioxide
in the atmosphere after which the two-degree rise will become inevitable,
and says it will be 400 parts per million by volume (ppm) of CO2.
The current level is 379ppm, and rising by more than 2ppm annually -
so it is likely that the vital 400ppm threshold will be crossed in just
10 years' time, or even less (although the two-degree temperature rise
might take longer to come into effect).
"There is an ecological timebomb ticking away," said Stephen
Byers, the former transport secretary, who co-chaired the task force
that produced the report with the US Republican senator Olympia Snowe.
It was assembled by the Institute for Public Policy Research in the
UK, the Centre for American Progress in the US, and The Australia Institute.The
group's chief scientific adviser is Dr Rakendra Pachauri, chairman of
the UN's Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change.
The report urges all the G8 countries to agree to generate a quarter
of their electricity from renewable sources by 2025, and to double their
research spending on low-carbon energy technologies by 2010. It also
calls on the G8 to form a climate group with leading developing nations
such as India and China, which have big and growing CO2 emissions.
"What this underscores is that it's what we invest in now and in
the next 20 years that will deliver a stable climate, not what we do
in the middle of the century or later," said Tom Burke, a former
government adviser on green issues who now advises business.
The report starkly spells out the likely consequences of exceeding the
threshold. "Beyond the 2 degrees C level, the risks to human societies
and ecosystems grow significantly," it says.
"It is likely, for example, that average-temperature increases
larger than this will entail substantial agricultural losses, greatly
increased numbers of people at risk of water shortages, and widespread
adverse health impacts. [They] could also imperil a very high proportion
of the world's coral reefs and cause irreversible damage to important
terrestrial ecosystems, including the Amazon rainforest."
It goes on: "Above the 2 degrees level, the risks of abrupt, accelerated,
or runaway climate change also increase. The possibilities include reaching
climatic tipping points leading, for example, to the loss of the West
Antarctic and Greenland ice sheets (which, between them, could raise
sea level more than 10 metres over the space of a few centuries), the
shutdown of the thermohaline ocean circulation (and, with it, the Gulf
Stream), and the transformation of the planet's forests and soils from
a net sink of carbon to a net source of carbon."
www.latimes.com/news/science/la-sci-passage19jan19,1,4174909.story?coll=la-utilities-environment
Melting Ice, Winds of Change
By Usha Lee McFarling
Times Staff Writer
January 19, 2003
RESOLUTE BAY, Canada ˜ For 500 years, explorers nudged their
ships through
these Arctic waters, vainly seeking a shortcut to the riches of the
East. The
Northwest Passage, a deadly maze of sea ice, narrow straits and misshapen
islands, still holds the traces of those who failed.
There are feeble cairns, skeletons lying face down where explorers fell,
makeshift camps piled high with cannibalized bones and, on one rocky
spit, a
trio of wind-scoured tombstones. Whole expeditions, hundreds of men
and entire
ships, are missing to this day. The first explorer to survive a crossing,
in
1906, spent several winters trapped by ice.
Despite that -- or maybe because of it -- Canadian Mountie Ken Burton
wanted
nothing more than to join the pantheon of polar explorers who had threaded
their ships through the passage's narrow ice leads and around its shimmering
blue-green icebergs.
In the summer of 2000, Burton gingerly nosed a 66-foot aluminum patrol
boat
into the heart of the Northwest Passage. Ice floes could crumple the
boat like
paper. Even the smallest iceberg, a growler, could rip apart its delicate
hull.
But there were no bergs. No growlers. No thin cakes of pancake ice.
To his
surprise, Burton found no ice at all. A mere 900 miles south of the
North
Pole, where previous explorers had faced sheets of punishing pack ice,
desperation and finally death, Burton cruised past emerald lagoons and
long
sandy beaches. Crew members stripped and went swimming. Burton whipped
through
the passage, "not hurrying," in a mere 21 days.
"We should not, by any measure, have been able to drive an aluminum
boat
through the Arctic," said Burton, still astonished and just slightly
disappointed. "It was surreal."
It was also a glimpse of the future. For several summers now, vast stretches
of the Northwest Passage have been free of ice, open to uneventful crossings
by the flimsiest of boats. Climate experts now blandly predict what
once was
unimaginable: In 50 years or less, the passage will be free of ice throughout
the summer, a prospect that could transform the region and attract a
flotilla
of cruise ships, oil supertankers and even U.S. warships.
"It's something no one would have dreamed up for our lifetime,"
said Lawson
Brigham, deputy director of the U.S. Arctic Research Commission and
former
captain of the U.S. Coast Guard icebreaker Polar Sea, which made it
through
the passage in 1994.
The parting of the ice is the product of natural, long-term atmospheric
patterns that have warmed the Arctic in recent decades and, to a lesser
extent, the gradual heating of the planet by greenhouse gases.
The planet's temperature has risen 1 degree Fahrenheit over the last
century.
In the Arctic, temperatures have risen 3 to 4 degrees. In these northern
seas,
at the boundary between water and ice, that small difference has changed
the
landscape for thousands of miles.
"The image of the Arctic was always one of an ice-locked, forbidden
spot,"
said James P. Delgado, director of the Vancouver Maritime Museum and
author of
"Across the Top of the World: The Quest for the Northwest Passage."
"If we as
a species have wrought this change, it's humbling, given its history
as such a
terror-filled place."
'Panama Canal North'
The receding ice is throwing open a gateway to the Far North, a region
long
defined by its isolation, sparse population and stark, simple beauty.
Ship
traffic could carry with it a rush of civilization and commerce.
"It's not just about transport; it's about the whole development
of the Arctic
frontier," said Lynn Rosentrater, a climate-change officer with
the World
Wildlife Fund in Norway. "It's going to happen, so we need to plan
for it."
The once-deadly route has been re-christened "Panama Canal North"
by shippers
eager to shave nearly 5,000 miles off the trip from Europe to Asia.
Already, a
parade of strange ships and faces is streaming through the passage.
Canadian
transit officials who monitor the route dub the newcomers "UFOs,"
for
"unaccustomed floating objects."
These have included, in the last few years, a Russian tug that dragged
a
five-story floating dry dock through the passage, adventurers skimming
through
in sleek sailboats and a boatload of Chinese sailors that arrived unannounced
in the Arctic village of Tuktoyaktuk, disembarked to take photographs
and left
abruptly when a local Mountie arrived.
This summer, the Canadian navy sent warships north of the Arctic Circle
for
the first time since the end of the Cold War. And U.S. naval officers
are
circulating a report called "Naval Operations in an Ice-Free Arctic"
that
discusses, among other things, the need for a new class of ice-strengthened
warship to patrol newly opening Arctic waters.
The Northwest Passage winds through land so far north it doesn't appear
on
most maps, a rolling tundra cut by wild rivers and deep fiords dotted
with
icebergs, walruses and ghostly white beluga whales. It is too far north
for
trees or shrubs, too far north for paved roads and, in most places,
too far
north for people.
The Inuit-controlled territory Nunavut, which includes much of the passage
and
stretches across 750,000 square miles, is home to just 26,745 people.
That's
like sprinkling the population of South Pasadena into a few villages
in an
area 4 1/2 times the size of California.
Nunavut's capital, Iqaluit (pronounced ee-KA-loo-it), is already something
of
a boomtown. Chosen as the government seat when the territory was carved
from
the Northwest Territories in 1999, the town of 5,000 people includes
a lavish $12-million legislative building.
Just down the street is the Kamotiq Inn, an aging, igloo-shaped restaurant
that serves shavings of raw, frozen caribou meat and cold bottles of
Canadian
beer. Farther down, a grocery offers fresh basil, prosciutto and Thai
curry paste. It is a confluence of government dollars and commercial opportunity.
Though
the territory of Nunavut is 85% Inuit, outsiders -- government workers,
hermits and fortune-seekers -- are trickling in. French Canadian cabbies
dream
of retiring to tropical islands as they drive 18-hour shifts. South
Indian
hotel magnates rent snowmobiles to North Pole-bound adventurers as they
wait
for a boom to hit remote Inuit villages. And hardy construction workers
leave
their families behind in Halifax to come here and build apartment buildings.
And then there are the Inuit, many of whom feel change is coming too
fast. In
a place where most still put food on the family table by hunting musk
oxen,
caribou and seal, there is growing fear that these changes in the weather
herald the end of a way of life that dates to the end of the last Ice
Age.
"We are a people who only 50 years ago lived only in igloos,"
said Sheila
Watt-Cloutier, who lives in Iqaluit and heads the Inuit Circumpolar
Conference, a global organization fighting to preserve Inuit culture.
"Now,
the land is changing literally right under our feet."
With each summer warmer than the last, and with species such as dragonflies
and moose showing up for the first time, many here are bracing for a
stranger,
warmer world. Unlikely as it seems in a town where residents still skin
and
dry seals in their frontyards, some of those taking a long-range view
hail
this remote outpost as the next Singapore.
"If it's handled correctly, you sit on an international strait,
take a
proactive stand and profit nicely," said Rob Huebert, the associate
director
of the Center for Military and Strategic Studies at the University of
Calgary.
It was the promise of wealth that first drew European explorers to the
passage. John Cabot first sought the shortcut in 1497. English pirate
Martin
Frobisher reached the mouth of the passage in 1576 but stopped his quest
after
finding what he took to be gold. It turned out to be worthless ore.
Ill-Fated Expedition
The most famous voyage was Sir John Franklin's expedition of 1845. Laden
with
100,000 pounds of meat, a steam engine for heat and a library of 2,400
books,
the two-ship expedition was the pride of the British Admiralty.
The 61-year-old Franklin died shortly after his ships entered the passage,
apparently of a heart attack. His men, addled by lead poisoning from
their
canned provisions, were trapped by ice. They attempted to walk to safety,
hauling unnecessary luxuries such as books and bolts of silk cloth.
All 128
men perished. Subsequent expeditions revealed, to the horror of Victorian
England, evidence of cannibalism.
The passage wasn't traversed until 1906, when legendary polar explorer
Roald
Amundsen completed the trip after three years. The feat was not accomplished
again until Canadian Mountie Henry Larsen took a schooner with a hull
made of
2-foot-thick Douglas fir through the passage and then back again in
the 1940s.
Although common sense mandated that the passage could never be practically
used, the siren call of the shortcut has never been silenced. The first
contemporary test of the passage for commerce was prompted by the modern-day
equivalent of spice: crude oil. In 1969, Humble Oil & Refining Co.
sent
through a 114,000-ton supertanker. Double-hulled and ice-strengthened,
the
Manhattan became the world's biggest icebreaker.
The 43,000-horsepower monster easily cruised through 15-foot-thick piles
of
ice and would reverse, gather steam and try to plow through 40-foot
ridges of
ice. But it ground to a halt several times and broke free only with
the help
of a Canadian icebreaker. The ship eventually reached Prudhoe Bay with
several
holes in its hull.
"When all was said and done, economically, it didn't make sense,"
Huebert said.
That was before the ice started its retreat.
The Canadian Ice Service reports that Arctic ice has disappeared at
a rate of
about 3% each decade since the 1970s. It is getting thinner as well.
Ice
sheets that used to be 10 feet thick are now less than 6 feet from top
to
bottom. Last month, scientists at the National Snow and Ice Data Center
in
Boulder, Colo., announced that Arctic sea ice had reached a record low
since
satellite measurements started 24 years ago.
"In some years now, you can do the Northwest Passage almost in
a rowboat,"
said the Canadian Ice Service's Lionel Hache.
The passage remains notoriously unpredictable from year to year, and
even from
week to week. In August, it was clogged with some of the thickest ice
seen
this decade, said J.P. Lehnert, the officer in charge of the Canadian
Coast
Guard station in Iqaluit.
Warmth May Worsen Ice
In one of the many strange nuances of the global climate, the appearance
of
this thick, multiyear ice may be a result of warming, not cooling. In
recent
years, ice bridges that usually last all summer and keep out the harder
and
colder ice from the north were not in place, allowing this brawnier
ice to
travel south.
"Ironically, warm weather can give us worse ice conditions,"
said Henry
Hengeveld, Environment Canada's senior advisor on climate change.
To those who have been watching the passage, it seems only a matter
of time
before all manner of ships, from supertankers to sailboats, start plying
these
once-formidable waters.
A few new ships test the waters each year. A hardy breed of tourists
has begun
disembarking from massive icebreakers in the few small towns along the
passage. They could soon cruise through on skimpier vessels. A sailboat
from
New Zealand recently made the transit.
There are no traffic jams yet. But shipping companies in Europe and
Asia are
quietly sniffing out opportunities.
"The incentive is there," Huebert said. "You cut a huge
amount of travel time,
and in international shipping, time is money."
The largest supertankers, which don't fit through the Panama Canal and
must go
around South America, would save even more time.
The discovery of mineral resources in the far north, such as the diamond
strikes of the Northwest Territories, could spur efforts to export such
riches
by ship. Canada's vast stores of fresh water may one day be valuable
enough to
export to drier regions.
Experts on the Arctic environment worry that shipping could have deleterious
effects but also say there will be no way to keep the traffic out. Dave
Cline,
a consultant in Alaska and expert on northern shipping, fears that ships
could
disrupt the polar bears and bowhead whales that live amid the ice and
could
jeopardize eider ducks that congregate by the thousands in polynyas,
open
water areas within ice sheets.
He's also concerned about smuggling of polar bear hides and walrus tusks
and
about the trash that would be left behind by waves of tourists. "It'd
be a
whole new world up there," Cline said.
The biggest concern is an oil spill in places more pristine and harder
to
reach than Alaska's Prince William Sound, an area only now recovering
from the
11 million gallons of oil spilled by the Exxon Valdez in 1989.
The person whose phone will ring in the middle of the night if there
is such a
spill is Earl Badaloo, Nunavut's director of environmental protection
services. He's worried enough about it that he keeps track of what he
calls
"the incidents" -- recent crossings of the passage by ships.
"Five vessels went through in 2000; only two requested permission,"
he said,
quickly scrolling through a list on the computer in his office in Iqaluit.
Although Canada has stringent shipping rules for its northern waters,
compliance is voluntary.
In 1996, the tourist vessel Hanseatic ran aground on a sandbar in the
passage.
The weather was good, those aboard were evacuated safely and very little
fuel
leaked into the passage. Many fear the next grounding may not end so
happily.
"When you're dealing with land all over the bloody place and tons
of icebergs
floating around you, you make one mistake or your boat's a rust bucket,
and
you're going to have oil and toxins all over the place," Badaloo
said. "It
would be really, really messy."
The most northerly human settlement on the passage, and in all of Canada,
is
Grise Fiord, about 900 miles from the North Pole. The Inuit call the
town
Aujuittuq, for "place that never thaws out." Even the Inuit
find some places
too cold. These bleak shores were not settled voluntarily.
During the Cold War, the Canadian government decided to relocate a few
Inuit
families from the relative warmth and good hunting grounds of northern
Quebec
to the country's northern reaches: the bleak, rocky shores of Ellesmere
and
Resolute Bay on Cornwallis Islands, where there is little to hunt and
even
less to gather.
So many American military personnel had flooded into the Arctic to monitor
Russian threats by air and sea from stations at Eureka and Alert that
the
Canadians feared losing control of their northern flank. The Inuit were
human
flagpoles, dispatched north to establish Canadian sovereignty.
Since then, the Canadians have considered the frozen archipelago of
ocean, ice
and islands to be their land and the Northwest Passage to be their internal
waterway. "It's ours," said Col. Kevin McLeod, commander of
the Canadian
Northern Forces.
Any waterway that connects two oceans is considered international waters,
but
with the passage impenetrable, no countries had pressed Canada on the
issue.
With an open passage, all that has the potential to change. "Our
sovereignty,"
said passage expert Huebert, "is on thinning ice."
Since an open passage would link two oceans, U.S. State Department officials
argue it should be treated as international waters, open to all who
wish to pass.
"It's one of those issues on which we've agreed to disagree,"
said a spokesman
at the U.S. Embassy in Ottawa.
With the waters open to new traffic, Canadians are taking a renewed
interest
in their Arctic backyard.
"I never imagined I'd be this far north, but these are our waters
and we
should know what's going on in them," said Canadian Naval Lt. Cmdr.
Chris Ross
as his warship, the Goose Bay, stood anchored in Frobisher Bay outside
Iqaluit, the first warship to pass this far north in 14 years.
Fears of Lawlessness
A prominent concern is illegal fishing. As ice recedes, rogue vessels
have
been moving into the area, lured by the rich Arctic seas, which are
almost
wholly unregulated.
"They're just scooping the shrimp up. They're scooping the turbot
up," said
Lt. Cmdr. Scott Healey, a Canadian navy officer who spent 10 years aboard
coastal patrol vessels out of Halifax and watched the once-rich North
Atlantic
fishery collapse.
International waters elsewhere have been plagued with modern piracy
and
frontier lawlessness.
"You become a magnet for smuggling humans, diamonds, guns, drugs,"
Huebert
said. "We're blind if we think that just because we're Canadian
it's not going
to happen."
How best to patrol the passage remains a question. It all depends on
how
quickly the ice melts and how brave interlopers are. "I don't want
to scream,
'The sky is falling and we have to build a nuclear-powered icebreaker
in the
next 18 months,' " McLeod said. "But we don't want to get
behind the eight ball."
U.S. Navy officials are worried about falling behind as well. Their
report an
ice-free Arctic cites the potential need for an entirely new class of
Navy
ships -- icebreakers -- and a new focus on a harsh part of the globe
the
military has been able to ignore since the Soviet Union broke up.
"There's no logistics base up there. There's no place to get resupplied. There's bad weather. The charts are woefully bad," said Dennis
Conlon, an
oceanographer with the Office of Naval Research, which commissioned
the
report. "It's your basic nightmare in terms of running an operation."
If the ships come, so will the infrastructure: hotels, bars and even
stoplights.
The vision is almost unimaginable to the Inuit, who are still reeling
from the
first wave of change: the trickle of explorers, whalers and soldiers
who
penetrated this frozen realm and altered it forever.
"We didn't know what a cold was -- or what measles were -- until
the whalers
came. And we had no problems with alcohol until 1940," said Dinos
Tikivik, 39,
a corrections officer and member of the Canadian Rangers, an Inuit and
Indian
reserve force that patrols Canada's most remote regions.
Today's Inuit face an epidemic of broken families, alcoholism, poor
education
and the highest suicide rates in Canada. Many, like Peter Irniq, 55,
an Inuk
who was born in an igloo in Repulse Bay but now lives in an elegant
house in
Iqaluit and serves as the territory's commissioner, blames many of the
problems on the relentless encroachment of the modern world. Watt-Cloutier,
the Inuit leader, fears that the destiny of her people is in the hands
of
strangers who see opportunity where the Inuit simply see home. With
each new
ship that pulls in and with each new patch of clear water, the isolation
that
has protected them for 5,000 years is melting away.
"They say it would be easier if we move over and modernize,"
she said. "Easier
for whom?"
Copyright 2005 Los Angeles Times
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