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Editor's Note
The world as we know it is in free fall. All efforts to shore it up are failing...and elections loom. Our dottering national newspaper tells us to stick with our current bunch, the tried and proven, those very same suits whose lack of transparency, creativity and vision have led us to this demise. Steady as she goes. Lets bail out our financial players and please God don't rock the boat. Forget climate change, forget that our planet is slowly choking and that we are running out of, or being run over by water, the very resource that ensures our survival. Yet, while we are told to stick to the trodden path we all know in our hearts of heart that this is wrong. The only way out of this mess is to look to the future. Sure it won't be rosy but neither is the alternative.
Today we look at the Arctic where the undeniable signs of climate change are most prevalent in the hope that somewhere out there, there are men and women who care. As we usually do with the Weekender, we bring you what is publicly available, google information. Alas, we well know that the most nefarious plans of drilling, polluting and conquering, still lurk behind closed doors.
Global Warming Triggers an International Race for the Arctic
In just the past five years, summer ice has shrunk by more than 25 percent, and so has its average thickness. NASA climate scientist H. Jay Zwally now anticipates that most of the Arctic will lose summer ice in only five to 10 years.
The Arctic meltdown—an early symptom of global warming linked to the buildup of atmospheric greenhouse gases—heralds tantalizing prospects for the five nations that own the Arctic Ocean coastline: the United States, Canada, Russia, Norway, and Denmark (through its possession of Greenland). But this monumental transformation also carries risks quite aside from the climate implications for the planet—risks that include renewed great-power rivalry, pollution, destruction of native Inuit communities and animal habitats, and security breaches. "The world is coming to the Arctic," warns Rob Huebert, a leading Arctic analyst at the University of Calgary. "We are headed for a lot of difficulties."
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Already, the ice melt is threatening the traditional livelihoods of native Inuit peoples from Alaska to Greenland. In Alaska, Inuit hunting has grown more difficult because walrus herds have moved away with the receding ice. In Greenland, where glaciers are thawing, similar dislocations are happening, even while commercial interests undertake a "new gold rush" for natural resources, in the words of Inuit leader Aqqaluk Lynge. The Inuits want more say in how the High North is developed. "You have to settle things with us," says Lynge.
US News & World-10/9/08
‘Methane time bomb’ ticks away in the Arctic
Scientists have discovered that massive deposits of subsea methane are bubbling to the surface as the Arctic region becomes warmer and its ice retreats.
According to a report in The Independent, this is the first evidence that millions of tons of a greenhouse gas 20 times more potent than carbon dioxide (CO2) is being released into the atmosphere from beneath the Arctic seabed.
News Post Online-9/23/08
Frozen Arctic soil reveals new clues to climate change
A new research has found that frozen arctic soil contains nearly twice the greenhouse-gas-producing organic matter as was previously estimated, which reveals new clues to climate change. Agricultural Sciences professor Chien-Lu Ping and a team of scientists used jackhammers to dig down more than one meter into the permafrost to take soil samples from more than 100 sites throughout Alaska.
This deep layer of organic matter first accumulates on the tundra surface and is buried during the churning freeze and thaw cycles that characterize the turbulent arctic landscape.
The resulting patterned ground plays a key role in the dynamics of carbon storage and release, Ping found.
When temperatures warm and the arctic soil churns, less carbon from the surface gets to the deeper part of the soil.
The carbon already stored in the deeper part of the soil is released into the atmosphere as carbon dioxide, methane and other gases.
Ping predicted that a two- to three-degree rise in air temperatures could cause the arctic tundra to switch from a carbon sink - an area that absorbs more carbon dioxide than it produces - to a carbon source - an area that produces more carbon dioxide than it absorbs. Newspost Online - 10.8.08
Melting permafrost gives Canadian North that sinking feeling
Across the Arctic, melting permafrost has damaged housing, airport runways, roads, water mains and treatment plants. There has been some talk of the need to relocate communities — always an unpopular notion. And, increasingly, there is talk of different building design and materials.
Truckers who rely on the so-called “ice roads” across lakes to make deliveries during the winter, have found their season is anywhere from two to four weeks shorter than it was just a decade ago.
In one community the fire station had to be moved because its concrete slab floor had collapsed. Predictably perhaps, given the amount of permafrost in the state, the University of Alaska has done quite a bit of research on the subject. More than 30 years ago, one of its scientists wrote a paper on the subject, and, over the years, it became such a respected summary of the problem that another scientist, Richard Seifert, updated it a few years ago for republication.
Daily Commercial News - 9/3/08
Rising Seas and Powerful Storms threaten global security
Without a dramatic reduction in emissions of greenhouse gases like carbon dioxide, the global average temperature is projected to increase by up to 12 degrees Fahrenheit (6.4 degrees Celsius) and sea level could rise some 3 feet (1 meter) by the end of this century.
Alarmingly, recent accelerated melting on the Greenland and West Antarctic ice sheets--which together contain enough ice to raise global sea level by 39 feet--means that seas could rise even faster than predicted.
The warming of the globe also provides more energy to fuel stronger storms. More-powerful storms can combine with even a modest rise in sea level in a dangerous synergy, allowing for ever larger storm surges that can flatten coastal communities.
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Click on Images
Population distribution
Indigenous Groups
Economic Dsitribution
Industrial Development
Impact on biodiversity
Strategic Issues
Permafrost Distribution
Protected Areas
Unprotected Coastal Areas
Source:UNEP-Arctic
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Because much of humanity, including many residents of the world's major cities like Kolkata (Calcutta), London, Shanghai, and Washington, DC, are located in vulnerable coastal areas, hundreds of millions of people are directly at risk. A large part of the New York metropolitan area is less than 15 feet above sea level; a Category-3 hurricane could easily swamp a third of lower Manhattan.
Op Ed News - 10/9/08
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The Arctic and the global economy
In 2003, the economic activity of the Arctic totalled
some USD-PPP 225 billion. Globally, this economy is
comparable in size to that of Malaysia (USD-PPP 222
billion), which has a population of 25 million and
Switzerland (USD-PPP 237 billion), which has a population
of 7.4 million (see Table 2.1).
The population of the circumpolar Arctic was estimated
at approximately 9.9 million in 2002. This represents
0.16 per cent of the world population and two
per cent of the total population of the countries covered
by the study (see Table 2.2, Table 2.3). Consequently,
the Arctic GDP accounts for 0.44 per cent of
the global economy, which is greater than its demographic
weight of 0.16 per cent. This gap suggests
that income generation is more concentrated in the
Arctic than in the rest of the world. On the other
hand, Arctic GDP includes resource rents from extraction
of non-renewable resources, parts of which
should rather be viewed as replacement of wealth
from one asset into another asset than income generation.
The Economy of the North, Oslo, Statistics Norway
Development in the Arctic: Economic opportunities, environmental and cultural challenges
The wilderness of the Arctic has not remained intact this long due to strong legislation and good spatial planning practices- but rather because of its remoteness from industrial centres, inaccessibility, and the harsh climatic conditions of this region, protected primarily by the pack ice during winter. These conditions are now changing.
Oil and gas development is accelerating other development in the Arctic through the creation of roads, economic activity and new settlements. Two corridors of development in particular will carry major influence on the future of many Arctic indigenous peoples, 1) The Beaufort-Mackenzie-North Slope corridor which is associated with gas and oil and also increased mining; and 2) the Barents Sea-Pechora basin oil and gas fields. Both projects bring new economic activity and development into vulnerable regions with traditional caribou hunting or reindeer herding and many sensitive coastal and marine habitats.
Development in the Arctic is not limited to oil and gas exploration. Mining operations and hydro power development, power lines, windmill parks and military bombing ranges have also been developed across the past decades. Growing affluence allows ever-greater numbers of tourists to visit remote areas.
All of these activities require infrastructure that produces additional impacts through fragmentation, direct habitat destruction, and the provision of corridors for people to reach new areas.
For many indigenous peoples and organizations, revenues from development are often not made available to them, or they become entirely dependant upon them, which, in turn, raises serious problems if companies leave or new, more damaging exploration is planned (NRC, 2003).
The Arctic wildlife and flora are sensitive to development and fragmentation and major development projects are still controversial (NRC, 2003). The fragmentation of Arctic habitats will, at the currently predicted levels of development, seriously threaten biodiversity and ecosystem function (UNEP, 2001). Coastal regions are particularly vulnerable, because they constitute key breeding areas for so many species.
A large proportion of caribou and reindeer migrate to coastal regions for calving and for the summer. Coastal areas are of major importance for the productivity of these herds. Throughout the Arctic, caribou and reindeer are under pressure from development including pipelines, roads, oil fields, mining operations, tourist resorts, hydro power and power lines, dams and military bombing ranges. Forestry and progressing development appears historically and in recent times to displace or even result in abandonment of areas by both caribou and reindeer (NRC, 2003; Schaefer, 2003; Nellemann et al., 1996, 2003).
UNEP -Arctic
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