Tag: global warming

That’s the question one must ask concerning certain events and individuals when one considers past actions and statements.

Now that Native Alaska Villages will probably have to relocate, because the ice is melting underneath them,I have no words at this point, only tears.

Emily Dickinson – I measure every grief…

There’s grief of want, and grief of cold,–

A sort they call ‘despair,’

There’s banishment from native eyes,

In sight of native air.

[Update #2]:

I want to respond to all the beautiful comments, I just can’t think right now. I came home from work sick and need to take care of myself. I’ll remember this moment though, etched in my memory forever…of where I was and what I was doing when just before the tipping point was by and large unavoidable and highly likely to be totally breached in the near future – and it already has been breached
“on parts of the world – in particular Africa, Asian river deltas, low-lying islands and the Arctic.” My god, am I reading that right?

I’m choosing love over fear

Mitakuye Oyasin

Three recent news accounts reveal the reality and complexity of the looming global disaster. Anyone who has studied human evolution knows that we’re a resilient species, but we’re going to be put to the test.

Bad.

The Associated Press had this little story:

Arctic ice has shrunk to the lowest level on record, new satellite images show, raising the possibility that the Northwest Passage that eluded famous explorers will become an open shipping lane.

At face value, that sounds kind of cool. Take a cruise from Alaska to Europe. Or from Alaska to New England, via the Beaufort Sea.

Except that this could make for some brand new military tensions. As the University of British Columbia’s Liu Institute explains:

With the ice disappearing, the currents and narrow channels pose less of an impediment to navigation: an experienced sailor could now take a large tanker through the straits during the late summer and early autumn. Governments are gradually waking up to this new reality. In 2001, a report prepared for the US Navy predicted that, ‘within five to ten years, the Northwest Passage will be open to non-ice-strengthened vessels for at least one month each summer.’ A briefing given to the Canadian defence minister, Gordon O’Connor, in February 2006 was confident that ‘the Northwest Passage could be open to more regular navigation by 2015’ if ‘the current rate of ice thinning continues’.

And as CNN and the BBC explain, the valuable natural resources under the Arctic are already causing disputes.

But even more dangerous than any of that is what this means for the rest of the world. The melting of the ice up north means rising sea levels. Everywhere. More on that, below.

The International Institute for Strategic Studies (IISS) has released their latest annual Strategic Survey report for 2007 likening the impact of global warming to nuclear war according to a story in Reuters today. The report states:

The most recent international moves towards combating global warming represent a recognition … that if the emission of greenhouse gases … is allowed to continue unchecked, the effects will be catastrophic — on the level of nuclear war.

The IISS is a forty-nine year old British think tank that describes itself as “the world’s leading authority on political military conflict”.

If you read some newspapers, you’ll find global warming is good for business. No, strike that. Global warming is GREAT for business. This is how the “science” journal at the Wall Street Journal enthusiastically describes what Global Warming means to its readers.

Researchers aboard the U.S. Coast Guard icebreaker Healy are mapping claims to the spoils of global warming.

North of Alaska, the 23 scientists of the Healy are gathering the data legally required to extend national territories across vast reaches of the mineral-rich seafloor usually blocked by Arctic ice. Fathom by fathom, multibeam sonar sensors mounted on the Healy’s hull chart a submerged plateau called the Chukchi Cap, in a region that may contain 25% of the world’s reserves of oil and natural gas.

In an era of climate change, these frozen assets are up for grabs, as melting ice allows detailed mapping and, one day perhaps, drilling.

The faster the ice goes, the sooner the oil flows. And vice versa. The faster we burn oil, the sooner the ice goes. Where there’s oil, there’s money to be made. The stunning, accelerating loss of the polar ice cap merely opens up the Arctic for oil and gas exploitation. If the polar bears go extinct along the way, then sobeit — no cost to doing business.

Not sure if there’s really a “Foghorn Leghorn” coral, but the other two appear to have just paved a path for the few remaining penguins and the polar bears.  The Christian Science Monitor reports: New tool to fight global warming: Endangered Species Act?  A recent deal to protect the habitat of endangered coral may offer US environmentalists new leverage.

The elkhorn and staghorn coral won protected status under the ESA in May 2006. But it took a second legal battle to win a preservation of the corals’ “critical habitat,” part of last week’s settlement between environmentalists and the US fisheries service.

The act’s leverage will grow, environmentalists say, as climate change becomes recognized as a factor in species’ decline. The number of species-recovery plans that cite global warming as a damaging factor has gone from zero as recently as 1990 to 141 today – with most of the growth since 2000.

While that’s still just 9 percent of the 1,494 species listed at one time or another, the increase suggests that a large group of species still awaiting listing will have global warming cited as a major cause in their decline. The polar bear, 12 species of penguins, and the Kittlitz’s Murrelet, an Alaskan bird that nests on the edges of glaciers, are all candidates, Mr. Suckling says.

Note: You may recall Mr. Suckling’s work from melvin’s writing recently about a mother of a lawsuit v. Interior ahead.  Rest up Mr. Suckling!