Meltdown Scrambling Life In Arctic Alaska For Animals, Natives, Oil Cos.

[hatrack]

Migrating whales, the backbone of Alaska's Inupiat culture, now arrive up to 45 days early, completely altering seasonal rhythms for Inupiat who harpoon them. Winter ice roads are collapsing months sooner than they did 35 years ago, prompting oil companies to ask the government to build highways across easily scarred tundra. Minute changes to plants and animals are unraveling intricate biological webs. And no one really knows how much stranger it's going to get.

"It's hard, at times, trying to comprehend what's going on out there," said Eugene Brower, an Inupiat whaler and fire chief for the North Slope Borough, the municipal government for Arctic Alaska. "It's like we have no control over what's happening to us." For now, the best chance to understand the future rests with a motley band of respected scientists — adventurers and misfits, cowboys and computer geeks, paid by governments, universities and noted foundations — who flock each summer to a former Navy research lab outside Barrow.

EDIT

Average annual temperatures in the Arctic have risen as much as 7 degrees Fahrenheit in 50 years — even more in Alaska — according to the Arctic Climate Impact Assessment, a report by the eight nations with land inside the Arctic Circle.

The amount of ice covering the ocean in late summer has shrunk 15 to 20 percent in three decades, and 2005 was the worst year ever. Melting ice and warming in the Arctic contributed to a rise of about 8 inches in sea level, helping erode the shorelines of coastal towns such as Barrow. These changes, scientists agree, can't simply be explained by weather fluctuations. In fact, ice melt is now coming faster than some computer models projected. And a thawing Arctic can actually speed up warming across the globe. Already, ice-dependent animals, such as ivory gulls that fish through cracks in the ice, are struggling to find shelter and food. Walruses that haul out to rest on the floes sometimes find themselves too far from shore to feed on clams. "If they don't have ice they must swim, but it takes energy to swim, and life in the Arctic is about preserving energy," said Jesse Ford, an Oregon State University ecology professor.

Inupiat, whose ancestors for thousands of years have camped on ice while hunting whales, suddenly find themselves bewildered trying to read the frozen sea. The ice now is increasingly unpredictable, "freezing up later, melting earlier, and generally confusing us," said Richard Glenn, a geologist, ice expert, Inupiat whaling captain and board president of the Barrow Arctic Science Consortium, which offers logistic support for scientists. "The ice itself changes daily, which, in a way, keeps you alive. You don't just look at how it looks today, but how it looked yesterday. You have to keep a running inventory, or you'll end up floating away."

EDIT

http://seattletimes.nwsource.com/html/localnews/2002714404_arctic01main.html

[pretzel4gore]

1. they say arnold shwatrzenegger owns a dozen humvees!

like a junkie whose lifestyle's killing him, though we enjoy every moment being stoned, we '1st worlders' are hooked big time on our junk.....though, as fox henhouse news daily reassures us, we can quit any time we want, and besides, junk grows on tree and is free (to take from owners) so eat drink and be merry. If it wasn't for the horrific suffering human ignorance has caused to the little animals (including elephants, whales and grizzly bars) one could sit back and enjoy the shameful spectacle of the pig that looks like man running into the meatgrinder and squealing to hi hi heaven.....