Warming climate triggers sweeping change for Interior Alaska Natives
Warmer winters, thinner ice, stranger weather — climate change has begun to undermine subsistence life along the Yukon River, according to a new federal study that collected and analyzed observations by Native residents in two southwestern Alaska villages.
“They expressed concerns ranging from safety, such as unpredictable weather patterns and dangerous ice conditions, to changes in plants and animals as well as decreased availability of firewood,” say the researchers in this story about their work that was posted by the U.S. Geological Survey.
The study, published this month in the journal of Human Organization, found that hunters and elders in the Yup’ik communities of St. Mary’s and Pitka’s Point noticed a litany of dramatic climate shifts over the course of their lives, forcing changes in how they gather food and wood while making it more difficult to read the sky correctly before heading out into the tundra.
Among the findings:
- The weather seems to change more quickly than it used to — sometimes growing unexpectedly worse — making it harder to plan trips into the country to hunt or gather food.
- Spring snow depth has decreased, leading to failures in the summer crop of salmonberries — an important food staple — once the tundra dries out.
- Spring flooding doesn’t last as long, and the quicker plunge in river levels following breakup has an unexpected consequence. The year’s new supply of driftwood logs — traditionally used to replenish firewood caches for heating homes — now sometimes gets stranded away from the riverbank in brush, where it’s harder to find, haul out and cut up.
- Rivers themselves don’t freeze as hard or as long during winter, and contain larger and more frequent spans of open water, making travel by snowmachines and dog team dangerous. During summer, more extensive gravel bars make boating more difficult.
Careful climate practices boost businesses
Several Republican presidential candidates — Texas Gov. Rick Perry at the fore — are dismissing climate change as a concoction of misguided or self-serving scientists.
But a growing number of Main Street and regional business leaders — types often viewed as Republican-leaning — are taking the issue ever-more seriously, if not to save the world at least to serve their bottom lines.
Each year the American Chamber of Commerce Executives, Partners for Livable Communities and the Institute for Sustainable Development give out “Green Plus” awards to local chambers and communities that have launched exemplary, community-wide efforts to “go green” with varieties of carbon-saving initiatives.
Winners for 2011 include Cleveland, Chattanooga, Tenn., Savannah, Ga., North Myrtle Beach, S.C., and Gatlinburg, Tenn.
Local efforts have been getting hands-on carbon counseling for several years from ICLEI-Local Governments for Sustainability USA.
Climate change may leave Mount Everest ascent ice-free, say climbers
Climbers and custodians of Everest say that rapid climate change could soon make for an ice-free ascent of the world’s tallest mountain.
Their warning comes come amid a new international effort to gauge the effects of climate change in the Himalayas – and shield local people from potential hazards. A US-funded mission, led by the Mountain Institute, is meeting in Kathmandu to try to find practical solutions to the threat of catastrophic high-altitude flooding from lakes forming at the foot of melting glaciers.
Udall wants GAO to investigate whether mining profits are being properly taxed
With profits soaring for hard-rock mining and oil and gas companies doing business on public lands, U.S. Sen. Tom Udall, D-N.M., is leading the charge to get the Government Accountability Office (GAO) to investigate whether American taxpayers are getting their fair share.
Udall, cousin of Colorado Sen. Mark Udall, sent a letter to GAO officials Thursday asking the agency to “undertake an examination of the value of minerals extracted and the amount of revenues collected in fiscal year 2010.” U.S. Rep. Raúl Grijalva, D-Ariz., also signed the letter.
“The U.S Department of the Interior manages approximately 700 million acres of subsurface federal minerals on public land and 1.7 billion acres on the Outer Continental Shelf,” the lawmakers wrote. “These minerals include hard-rock minerals — such as gold, silver and copper — that are available without having to pay a royalty.
“It is vitally important that the American taxpayer receives a fair return for the mineral resources extracted from federal land.”
The lawmakers want the GAO to prepare a report on the minerals being extracted under the 1872 Mining Law, which does not require royalties, and various other mineral leasing acts. Specifically, they want to know:
BP asks permission to start new Gulf drilling
BP is asking regulators to approve a blueprint for new deep-water drilling in the Gulf of Mexico for the first time since its Macondo well blew out last year, triggering the nation’s worst oil spill.
In a filing with the U.S. government made public this week, the British oil company seeks to expand on previously approved drilling plans at its Kaskida prospect, about 220 miles off the Louisiana coast.
Federal regulators broadly signed off on BP’s plans to drill up to five wells at the site in 2008. In the new filing, BP is asking permission to drill two more wells at Kaskida and change the location of two others.
If the exploration plan were approved, BP still would have to get the government’s approval to drill individual wells at the site, with each vetted separately.
BP said its plan embraces “enhanced performance standards” that go beyond federal requirements, including backup emergency equipment and engineer-witnessed testing of cement used in wells.
In July, the company pledged to abide by those voluntary safeguards for its Gulf drilling, in a bid to reassure regulators and the public that it can resume safe offshore exploration and has learned the lessons of last year’s disaster.
Previous in TP Climate Progress
Language Intelligence: Lessons on persuasion from Jesus, Shakespeare, Lincoln, and Lady Gaga
I recommend a book about an Akapathskan tribe along the Yukon, called Make Prayers to the Raven (available used on Amazon). It will change you- they are so much more tuned in to important things than we are.
Speaking of Alaska, where I dwelled for 12 years 1979 to 1991, two years in Nome, the rest in Juneau and Fairbanks, where I almostmet my Maker in a burning mid-air near fatal accident in a DC-3 prop plane on June 26, 1983……
and as many of you here know, I have been on a one-man campaign since 2006 to get people to seriously
consider a worst-case prediction of the British chemist and inventor
James Lovelock: life in “polar cities” arrayed around the shores of an
ice-free Arctic Ocean in a greenhouse-warmed world, as Dot Earth blogged
about in March of 2008.
Most of you here mocked me and made fun of me, par for the course, and no hard feelings at all. But now I have teamed up with science ficiton writer in Texas to write a sci fi novel about a family
survival
saga in a fictional polar city set in 2080 in northern Alaska.
Thinking that a novel about polar cities might be useful as art,
rather than science,
I am putting the the book — as it is wriiten, chapter by chapter — online for
free for anyone to read and comment on. Here are the first three
chapters, with
another 27 to go:
http://nelsonmandelacom.blogspot.com/
I told Andy Revkin back in 2008 that my intent with my polar cities media campaign back then
was to conduct a thought experiment that might prod people out of
their comfort zone on climate — which remains, for many, a someday,
somewhere issue. But since my media outreach never
got very far, and met mostly with derision, even here at Real Climate, since I of course have no academic background
or science credentials, I decided to take the polar cities meme and
turn it into a sci fi novel, a kind of “the day after” “The Day After
Tomorrow.”
It’s not Cormac McCarthy level writing, as he did so well in ‘The
Road” which won a Pulitzer,It’s more of an airport
paperback
‘polar western’ survival story, and only the Texas author’s name will
appear on the cover, as I am serving here as the book’s producer and
will
get no byline or money from the sales. It’s his book entirely, and so
far from what I’ve read, it’s the kind of sci novel that polar
opposites such as Marc Morano and Joe Rommm could both enjoy. It’s
just a story, a yarn, and it’s set in a polar city.
Add Shishmaref Island to the list of now-being-destroyed traditional homelands of the Inuit. Google Earth will take you there. See for yourself why the Island is rapidly being washed out to the Chukchi Sea. Something about Arctic ice melt back? Yeah, that’s it.
“The holy land is everywhere.” Black Elk
Here is a 54 minute movie of the Inuit Knowledge and Climate Change. It is in First Nations language with sub titles and good cinema work. Engrossing.
http://www.isuma.tv/hi/en/inuit-knowledge-and-climate-change
Health and Climate Change: 7 Ways You Are Being Harmed
Then, to extreme events. Extreme weather events are increasing in frequency and their very nature is intensified by global warming. With the warmed atmosphere holding more water vapor and the warming ocean the repository for the last century’s global warming, rain is coming down with increasing intensity across the continual U.S. The yearly amount has increased seven percent overall since 1970, while two-inch/day rains, four-inch/day rains, and six-inch/day rains have increased 14 percent, 20 percent, and 27 percent, respectively. Rains in the U.S. over two-inches/day are associated with E. coli and cryptosporidium infections. Heavy rains and flooding can also spread toxic chemicals and leave new breeding sites for mosquitoes.
http://www.theatlantic.com/life/archive/2011/09/health-and-climate-change-7-ways-you-are-being-harmed/245607/
Hog Waste Producing Electricity and Carbon Offsets
ScienceDaily (Sep. 26, 2011) — A pilot waste-to-energy system constructed by Duke University and Duke Energy this week garnered the endorsement of Google Inc., which invests in high-quality carbon offsets from across the nation to fulfill its own carbon neutrality goals. The system, on a hog finishing facility 25 miles west of Winston-Salem, converts hog waste into electricity and creates carbon offset credits.
http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2011/09/110908141445.htm
The U.S. Army has embarked on an ambitious $7 billion series of utility-scale renewable energy projects.
The new program involves building twenty utility-scale renewable energy installations that rely on a mix of solar, wind, geothermal, and biomass power. The installations will be constructed on land owned by the Department of Defense, at Army bases throughout the U.S.
The program calls for the Army to use its land as equity to leverage about $7 billion in private investment for the twenty projects.
Link -
http://idealab.talkingpointsmemo.com/2011/09/us-army-embarks-on-7-billion-renewable-energy-overhaul.php?ref=fpblg
The temp dropped below 32 on Saturday in Barrow, AK for the first time since June 29th. 85-day streak > 32 is longest on record! Previous record 68 days. The average temperature over the streak was 41.9°. The September average temp has been 5.2 degrees above normal.
Average first freeze is September 7th in Fairbanks – have not had a freeze yet. This is the 6th year in a row the first freeze has taken place after September 20th.
http://www.startribune.com/blogs/130529403.html
Wow, how things change….
New boom reshapes oil world, rocks North Dakota.
Lindsey G./flickr
Two years ago, America was importing about two thirds of its oil. Today it imports less than half. And by 2017, investment bank Goldman Sachs predicts the US could be poised to pass Saudi Arabia and overtake Russia as the world’s largest oil producer. Places like Williston, North Dakota, are the reason why. All Things Considered
Here is one way to bury carbon…
Getting the steel out.
Automakers are increasingly looking to combine emission-limiting propulsion technologies with stiff, lightweight carbon composite frames. Their hope is that the new components will replace steel and aluminum in the assembly of energy-efficient hybrid and all-electric vehicles
This article showed up in our paper and a number of others. Refreshing that it didn’t contain all the usual “he said she said”, but does address the skeptics.
Wonderer, thanks for that link to the article. Dr. Broecker has been a giant in the early study and understanding of the global impacts of climate chaos. His published works are a treasury of insight and common sense. Find a few and read about your future.