Alaska Feels the Effects of Global Warming
Posted Feb 8th, 2006 at 8:57 pm in Science
While some in our country, and sadly our churches, stick their head in the ground and deny the very existance of global warming, small towns in Alaska are getting destroyed by it.
Some changes have been spectacular. Edwin Weyiouanna of the Inupiat Eskimo village of Shishmaref presented the latest on well-documented changes to his island community of about 600 people in the Chukchi Sea just north of Bering Strait.
No longer protected by early winter sea ice or ground that’s permanently frozen, the community has been pounded and eroded by storms. Villagers in 2002 voted to relocate to the mainland and hope to obtain millions in federal dollars money to make the move.
I am by no means an expert or even very informed on the subject of global warming.
But isn’t the issue the cause of the warming and not the fact that the average temp has raised a few degrees?
I was also wondering what happened to the coming ice age everyone was talking about in the mid seventies. I think Leonard Nimoy was the one doing a lot of the talking.
Mark
Mark, we share something in common. It’s really not my area either, and getting myself into discussions or arguments is counterproductive, because I do not know or understand the science like I do basic evolutionary biology, for example.
I think the issue is both the cause and the raise in temperature. The raise in temperature causes issues like the one I blogged about, where towns become suseptible to erosion of the sea and issues like glaciers and mountain snow retreating all over the world.
One of the scariest issues is that global warming threatens to radically modify ecosystems. As plants respond to changes in temperature, they will have profound effects on the animals that live in those habitats. For example, many animals that live high up the mountain may have no where to go as habitats from lower elevations encroach upon their space. They literally may find themselves out of a home.
As far as people’s predictions in the 1970’s, that decade was before my time. I can claim to be a product of it, if only by a few months, but that hardly means I remember any of it. (I think my excuse for not remembering is much better than some.) If Leonard Nimoy was advancing that theory, it’s hard to blame the scientific community. For example, my concern with global warming is because the scientists that study that issue are strongly of the opinion that humans are driving the change. My concern does not spring from the fact that some idiot with a house in Malibu talks about the issue. (Though I’m sure many do…)
I did a little googling (perhaps the best way to find things quickly) and came up with a couple of sources that may well proove informative, if you’re interested enough to spend a lot of time going through them.
The first is from the respected blog Real Climate, from scientists that are interested in global warming. It’s called The Global Cooling Myth
The second is a list of references to scientific literature of the 70’s to counter the claim that the scientific community was not predicting a coming iceage. You can find it here: http://www.wmconnolley.org.uk/sci/iceage/
My quick reading of both was that there was minor speculation from the scientific community about factors that could cause cooling and factors that could cause warming, and that rarely the popular press ran a story on the issue that may have been a little too sensationalistic.
I would also say that the evidence of warming in the world today is quite strong and quite diverse. From erosion like I pointed out above, coral bleeching, glacier retreat virtually worldwide, expansion of species ranges both northword and “upward” (moving to higher elevations) in response to habitat changes, pathogens like the fungus that’s killing frogs off worldwide, etc.
It’s hardly a time to throw up our hands and say nothing’s happening.