Alaskans Warn House Panel about Global Warming’s Effects
WASHINGTON - Scientists, conservationists and even the mayor of the eroding village of Shishmaref painted a grim picture of the effects of climate change in Alaska, including the loss of habitat for polar bears and the end of a way of life for native people.
“Going, going, gone,” said Deborah Williams of Alaska Conservation Solutions, speaking to the House Select Committee on Energy Independence and Global Warming. “We must take action now; it is urgent. We want to be part of the solution, not just the poster child of the problem.”
Williams and other Alaskans, including a professor of forestry from the University of Alaska, came to Washington for the meeting of the House committee, which no Republican committee members attended. The Democrats who were there had little positive to say about the Bush administration’s efforts to slow or reverse global warming.
“Where is the urgency to deal with this crisis?” said the committee’s chairman, Rep. Edward Markey, D-Mass. “Not in our government. This week, President Bush sat out the U.N. summit on climate change.”
But this week in Washington also functioned as something of a mini-summit on climate change, as congressional committees considered a host of global warming-related questions.
Monday, a Senate committee heard testimony about the effect of global warming on forest fires. Another Senate committee heard Tuesday about the economic effects of efforts to reduce the country’s carbon footprint. Later this week, the president is set to host a climate meeting with 16 so-called “major emitter” countries, including China and India.
On Tuesday, though, the House committee focused on Alaska. The meeting was a substitute for a tour Markey was supposed to lead to Alaska in August, which he canceled after he ruptured his Achilles tendon. On Tuesday, Alaskans came to him with a plea for help in addressing the effects of global warming.
The committee heard from a scientist with the U.S. Geological Survey, who summarized its findings about the faster-than-forecast declines in arctic sea ice and projected declines in polar bear populations. It also heard from scientists who discussed the effects of global warming on Alaska’s forests.
“The bottom line is, it is warmer, and it is warmer a whole lot more,” said Glen Juday, a professor of forest ecology at the University of Alaska Fairbanks. “The warming is very substantial, in temperature terms, and has reached, the last few years, the highest values in the record.”
The higher temperatures mean that permafrost will melt, Juday said, simply because the sustained temperatures needed to keep it frozen no longer will exist. His most recent studies show that higher temperatures have led to more tundra fires; when tundra burns, it releases a tremendous amount of stored carbon dioxide. This year alone, 100,000 acres of tundra burned, Juday said.
“The tundra is starting to burn and that means, potentially, a very large amount of carbon could be released in the atmosphere,” further concentrating greenhouse gases and contributing to global warming, he said.
Tuesday’s meeting also focused on some of the more immediate concerns of global warming, such as the Alaskan villages that have seen their coastlines battered as the ice that used to protect them from fall storms has retreated.
“We have lived here for 4,000 years,” Shishmaref Mayor Stanley Tocktoo said, as he showed the committee photos of the erosion that’s washing away his village and its way of life. “We are unique and need to be valued as a national treasure. We are worth saving.”
Tocktoo first visited Washington last spring, testifying before a Senate committee at the invitation of Sen. Ted Stevens, R-Alaska. Tocktoo’s village, just below the Arctic Circle on the Bering Strait, has seen such severe erosion that there are efforts to move it.
Stevens visited Shishmaref to see the progress of a seawall that the Army Corps of Engineers is building, spokesman Aaron Saunders said.
Rep. Jay Inslee, D-Wash., who’s about to release a book about the efforts of ordinary people in fighting global warming, said the information he’d heard in the past year had terrified him and that Tuesday’s committee meeting amplified his concerns.
“This has been a doom and gloom session, and it’s discouraging, the picture we’ve painted,” Inslee said.
But he added as the meeting concluded, “I’m going to try to end on an upbeat note. Things are moving here in Congress. The ice is melting in the Arctic, but the political ice and resistance is melting as well.”
© 2007 McClatchy Newspapers
“The tundra is starting to burn and that means, potentially, a very large amount of carbon could be released in the atmosphere,” further concentrating greenhouse gases and contributing to global warming, he said.
Great, one more feedback into the loop. This is in addition to all the methane released from the melting permafrost.
Consider this. We would consider, say, an airliner with a one-percent chance of catastrophic failure in it’s normal life, killing 150 people, to be completely unacceptable. So, if there is just a one percent chance that we may be triggering our own extinction - killing billions, even if it is still a thousand years out (not very long - even on the time scale of some human societies). Then should there not be calls for unprecedented action?
>>>>>>Then should there not be calls for unprecedented action?
There are. The American people are largely on board with saving the planet, and I believe the more they know the more they will see that things have to change. There are movies and tv shows about climate change and they are popular. Going ‘green’ is trendy now.
But, even the most green environmentalists these days are all trying to figure out how to keep our car focused culture continuing. They want medals for driving hybrids. But as others have said better than me, even if someone waves a magic wand and makes all cars hybrids this doesn’t address the fact that the supply of oil is in irresversible decline according to many scientists, so there just won’t be enough oil to go around to feed the way of life we live today much longer. Hybrids also use roads, need batteries, etc, etc, and everything we produce today, everything we use in our daily lives basically, comes from oil. But, the party is over for the age of oil (roughly WWII to now). There just won’t be enough affordable oil to make our way of life possible much longer. It’ll become too expensive to truck food over great distances anymore, not to mention all the other products we depend upon poor countries to manufacture for us. We are at a tipping point of civilization and climate change is only one facet of what is happening, unfortunately.
We need to get away from using cars and live more localized lives focused around helping each other grow food and make the products we need ourselves. Unfortunately, climate change isn’t the biggest gorilla in the room right now - it is probably Peak Oil. I’m not saying climate change isn’t important, it is a deadly serious problem, clearly. But, Peak Oil will likely trump climate change as it will make any ideas of continuing our way of life using algea-power or whatever totally irrelevant since any such solution would take a huge amount of cheap oil in order to take up even a fraction of the power we currently get from oil.
But, I don’t see India and China wanting to stop attempting to live like us Americans and even the Europeans. And, I don’t think anyone envisions Americans giving up their cars since they mostly live lives that are completely dependant on cheap oil (suburbs, long commutes to work, buy food grown 1500 miles away, buy products made out of oil derivitives like plastic - meaning most everything) any time soon…
A huge dramatic change to the way everyone save for the few tiny communities of self-sufficient peoples in far flung corners ofthe world lives is coming, and if we don’t make serious fundamental changes soon there could be horrendous problems as we ‘power down’.
My advice? Start a garden for vegetables. Get some chickens. Learn how to do any and all self-sufficient type things like fix bicycles, metal work, farm using animals, sew, and on and on. Be positive and get prepared. Buy a sleeping bag that will get you through the coldest nights. Little things will help and especially by knowing the change is coming you will better off than the majority who thinks only about American Idol and driving their status symbol gas guzzler vehicles.
Peace.
Don’t worry, the market will fix it!?
Of course the market will fix it — vast pineapple plantations will cover what had been useless tundra free from roaming polar bears. It just won’t be Alaska anymore.
I just dont see the kind of deep cuts in carbon emissions coming from just buying green. It is a known economic phemomenon that efficiency gains just lead the more efficient good being used more, leading to the same levels of oil consumption. Most Prius owners in my area live in far flung owners and so are still using far more fuel than someone living closer where public transit is practical.
The solution needs to be comprehensive and focus on radical infrastructure changes. Our current infrastructure is deliberately designed to maximize resource consumption. We need to rebuild the compact, car free cities that we had before the car - such places are incredibly nicer places to live anyway, and accrue enormous social benefits as well. The philosophy of Buckminster Fuller needs to be dusted off.
Since cars will always be a necessity in rural areas, - I really don’t see heading out to the country as being a solution. This ismpulse is exactly what led to the social and environmental catastrophe called suburbia. A true city dweller, who doesn’t need to own a car at all, can live with with a far smaller carbon footprint than a country dweller.
I haven’t burned any gasoline in a month myself.
George is careless in the way he treats himself, he frequently fails to alter his behavior in a way that would prevent him future discomfort.
thanks chuck.
Alaskans are worth saving huh. How much are you worth??
Remember this is a bunch of capitalist pigs running the world not Quakers.
Both Peak Oil and Global Warming are serious problems, but GW may be more serious because the businessmen will just switch to selling natural gas instead of petrol for cars. It is a short term solution of a couple hundred years, but they will junp on it and hope for a fix in the meantime. If GW continues as it is, and I see no reason to believe otherwise, it may lead to superstorms, floods, drought, sea level rise, loss of farm productivity, and a host of things that have not been forseen. The proberbial shit is going to hit the fan around 2100 perhaps, and the results will not be pretty.
How about it people? what do you say about carving into a mountain somewhere on this Earth to future Greet visiting space people who will visit here after the human race is all gone.
Shall we just write
Howdy Visiters.
Sorry We Are We Missed You
You See We Became Extinct Because We Thought We Knew Better Then Our Earth
(Joke Of The Day)How much methane will it take to destroy all life on this planet? answer? We Are About To Find Out
TWISTOFLEX
2100 eh? as late as that?
GENAMAN
liked the joke……..probably a very realistic scenario.
as far as writing something onto the side of a mountain for future visitors, how about: WE APOLOGISE FOR THE INCONVENIENCE.
Let’s move the killers out of positions of power, world-wide, …we don’t have to go down this road of planet death killing each other just for the chance to burn the last barrel of oil.
Vote ‘em out, ridicule them, ignor them, arrest them, if you have to drive, drive the speed limit in front of them, whatever.
The article closes with comments from Rep. Jay Inslee, D-Wash, who has also been stumping for Hillary’s credentials to be president. She *must* have the best plan to combat global warming.
Or does she have the plan that just teeters on acceptability and is tolerated by critics? Rep. Inslee must take a really aggressive stance on climate change with such an endorsement…
Sorry Lads!
That’s not going to do it. Some scientist estimate that it takes 30-50 years for the released heat energy to effect the global temperature. “Going Green” now is not likely to help enough. Mass armies of peasants are slashing away rain forest in Brazil and Indonesia. Even if we park all the cars, it doesn’t stop these massive smoke clouds.
Oh, and here’s some more potentially bad news: the 24 inch rise in one hundred years didn’t take into account the incredible non-linear galloping greenland glaciers which are now moving at about 17 km/year for the sea and accelerating. (just 13 km/yr. in 2004) Also it didn’t take into account earthquakes caused by (they think) the bottoms of these glaciers ripping off the islands bedrock. If the ice cap breaks up the way the Antarctic Larson B shelf did in 2002 (which was totally unexpected,) it will make the sea rise by 20 feet worldwide. 2050 is the new estimate I read in some the new scientific journals as a inundation of worldwide coastal cities. That means millions are up to their necks coughing, and super bugs are headed our way….. of course this may only take ten years, nobody knows
Am I trying to scare you?
Yes, I am.
IMHO, the only thing that can help now is mandatory worldwide massive human sterilization.
But it may be too late even if we do that….. existing peasants all use cooking fires out in the bush….
I’ve been flying over the Island of Borneo and Indonesia for twenty years, and from altitude I don’t even recognize it anymore, there’s so many individual fires…. especially on Sumatra…. The “haze” they call it, blankets entire countries….
These sick people in the white house are incompetent custodians of public safety. We can’t wait another year to purge them…. we need to do it now….
Sorry, I know this post sounds alarmist, but that’s what my training has always been about: quickly diagnosing the emergency and executing an effective procedure.
I don’t see anybody doing that yet and this thing has 911 written all over it….
pacplyer, I agree with you that nobody is doing this thing right. The house is burning down and people are still arguing over the cause, “Was it matches?” “No, how many times no! It was a spark.” “Wasn’t. It’s matches.” “Spark!” “Matches!” And that is the level of scientific discourse on this problem and the twerp-useless media are keeping that paralyzing debate alive. Trash your subscriptions and stop paying attention to these lunatics vote with your dollars and pay some of the independent presses who are doing a far, far better job.
Scientists, stop the arguing and start the solving. Have the argument later after you’ve earned back your (taxpayer supplied) research grants by finding some solutions we can put to good use…IMMEDIATELY. But stop the arguing about cause. We no longer care what the cause is. We want the solutions. Real ones, not those that create New Problems, or exacerbate others. Real solutions do not create new problems. E.g. the corn crop for ethanol bullshit.
While parking ALL the cars, may not be enough, it would be a start. An effective start to real action that people can take on the ground right away.
As I have been saying elsewhere, on other articles at Common Dreams nobody is getting this right. It’s all talk, and not much do. And the time is just frittering away along with species and erosion, etc.
But a full moratorium on fossil fuels for the next 50 years — get used to living without oil and develop truly intelligent alternatives…that’s the sort of courageous intelligent thinking that has to be put into action right away. That’s the sort of effort that will get things happening.
Abandon trucks. Bring back rail. Bring back sailing ships for tourism and coastal goods transportation. Park the big ships and rent them out as hotels and apartments. Turn off the oil and get real substitutes now. We just have to bite that bullet and get incredibly real about what is happening to our planet.
And then minimize the consumption that’s causing all this, particularly American consumption, which is well known to be THE WORST.
Oh, yeah, and get those blithering idiots out of the US Government and recycle them so they at least do the earth some good and return some nutrients fast. You guys need a purge over there.