IMAGE: Icebergs in Greenland Despite denials from governments and large companies are beginning to see clearly the consequences of climate change.
ANCHORAGE, Alaska - Anyone who doubts the seriousness of global warming should ask the elderly Eskimos and Aleuts of Alaska Indians on the dramatic changes that have had their land and animals on which they depend.
Native leaders say that salmon is becoming increasingly susceptible to warm-water parasites and suffer from lesions and strange behavior. The flesh of the salmon and moose has a funny taste, and marrow of the bones of moose has become weirdly runny, they say.
The ice is disappearing, making food is scarce for sea animals and causing difficulties for the Natives who hunt them. It is feared that the polar bears, to name a species, the northern hemisphere could disappear by mid-century.
Trees and shrubs are moved to the north, where once stood the tundra. The same goes for the Beavers, who are building new dams in rivers and lakes, to the detriment of water quality and possibly salmon eggs.
However, despite the frustration of Alaska Natives, many politicians of the 48 U.S. states which are further south, deny that global warming is occurring or that a warmer climate could cause problems.
"Obviously, we do not live in the Arctic," said Patricia Cochran, executive director of the Science Commission Alaska Native. The commission, based in Anchorage, and funded by the National Science Foundation, has been collecting information for years about the conditions of melting in Alaska.
Climatic changes are disrupting the culture and traditional food gathering, said Larry Merculieff, a leader Aleutian Pribilof Islands in the Bering Sea.
indigenous residents of the far north find it increasingly difficult to explain the natural world to future generations. "As species disappear, the levels of connection between older and younger people are declining," Merculieff said at a recent conference in Anchorage.
emotional security
Changes in climate affect even the safety of humans, said Orville Huntington, vice chairman of the Alaska Native Science.
"It seems like winter out there, but if you've been around a long time like me, know that this is not winter," said Huntington, an Athabaskan Indian village of Huslia, Alaska inside. "If you travel on that ice, you will see that there is ice transitábamos 40 years ago."
river ice, long used to travel to the interior Alaska, is thinner and less reliable than it used to be.
is believed that global warming is the result of pollutants emitted into the atmosphere that trap the Earth's radiant heat and create a greenhouse effect. The warming is more dramatic in polar latitudes because cold air is dry, allowing greenhouse gases trap more solar radiation. Even a modest rise in temperature can thaw the glaciers and permafrost that cover much of Alaska.
There is no doubt that global warming is having pronounced effects in Alaska, said Gunter Weller, director of the Fairbank Center for Research on Global Change and Arctic System Research, University of Alaska.
Average temperatures in Alaska have risen about three degrees Celsius in 30 years, and approximately double that in winter, said Weller, who also heads the Cooperative Institute for Arctic Research established by the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA = National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration) and the university.
This causes serious problems not only to the rural Natives who live off the produce of the land, but for large industries and government structures, he said.
Most roads in Alaska are on the permafrost, which is now rapidly thawing, which means headaches for state officials. The thaw has already caused increased maintenance costs for the trans-Alaskan pipeline, which uses special vertical supports to hold them on the tundra.
If the request of Alaska Natives are not getting the attention of politicians, then the economic problem should, Weller said.
cited the cost, estimated at 100 million dollars for the relocation of Shishmaref, an Inupiat Eskimo village on Alaska's northwest coast, a more stable ground. The village of 600 inhabitants is about to fall into the Bering Sea due to severe erosion resulting from thawing permafrost and the absence of sea ice that protects the coast of the big waves produced by the storms. Besides
Shishmaref, there are about twenty villages in Alaska that are candidates for relocation due to erosion, with similar costs, according to Weller.
Alaska's economy has suffered from melting permafrost, said Robert Corell, chairman of the International Advisory Committee on the Arctic Climate Impact Assessment.
hard frozen conditions needed to support ice roads in the North Slope oil fields are now only about 100 days a year, he said. 30 years ago, oil companies used the ice roads for about 200 days a year, he said.
Source: Yahoo News
Article: Warming Climate Disrupts Alaska's Native Lives by Yereth Rosen
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