Global Warming in a Very Cold Place
Alaska Bears the Brunt of the Nation’s Fossil Fuel Addiction
Reprinted from Lonely Planet Alaska 7 (2002)
Though most Americans still don’t believe in global warming, the well-documented trend of rapidly increasing global temperatures that (perhaps coincidentally) parallels humankind’s growing reliance on fossil fuels, the majority of Alaskans concede that the weather is, indeed, changing. Sure, plenty of folks here, as in the lower 48, complain that hand-wringing environmental types are irresponsibly sabotaging the US economy with their silly concerns, but changes are simply more dramatic, and obvious, as you approach the poles. Just as every climate change model has predicted.
According to various estimates, by 2100 Alaska’s temperatures will rise between 2- and 9-degrees Fahrenheit in the summer, 6- and 16-degrees Fahrenheit in the winter. (For some perspective, note that that during the last ice age, temperatures were about 8-degrees Fahrenheit cooler than today.)
Scientists have also predicted that glaciers could begin shrinking by up to 50 inches per year as global warming accelerates, causing sea levels to rise by 3 to 6 feet by this century’s end. Native wildlife would suffer as species better adapted to heat – for instance, certain hairless African primates – spread northward, assuming that these scientists’ predictions are correct.
But they’ve been talking about this global warming crap for years, while you were shoveling snow. It’s just a theory, after all, like evolution and gravity. You need proof before squishing the family into a subcompact instead of a luxury RV for your three-week vacation. And in science, as we all know, there’s no such thing as proof. Just evidence.
And there is plenty of evidence around here in Alaska. For starters, while temperatures in the lower 48 have only increased by about 1 degree Fahrenheit since the 1960s, Alaska has seen at least a 1.5 degree rise in summer, 2 degrees in winter; some estimates are higher. Back in the 1950s, Barrow got almost 80 snow-free days each year; today it gets more than 100. Four of the five earliest breakups in the famed Nenana Ice Classic occurred in the 1990s.
Still not convinced?
A ten-year study of 67 glaciers by the University of Alaska Fairbanks revealed that Alaskan ice is thinning at a rate of between 40 and 60 inches per year – a bit more than what scientists had predicted for peak global warming temperatures. Alaskan ice alone is raising the global sea level between .14mm and .27mm annually. No big deal? Well, that’s enough water to flood the entire Anchorage Bowl more than 630 feet deep, annually. Moreover, the meltdown is accelerating; Columbia Glacier thinned by almost 1000 feet between 1955 and 1995, and another 490 feet from 1996 to 2001. That’s an estimated 1.8 trillion gallons of water that’s got to go somewhere.
Fuel storage facilities in Shishmaref, Alaska, were built 300 feet from the sea; today they’re only 35 feet from advancing waves. What’s worse is that fall storms, once moderated by coastal ice, now wallop Native villages unimpeded.
The spruce bark beetle infestation devastating the Kenai Peninsula forests is spreading inexorably northward, into the Chugach Mountains and Denali. There, and throughout the interior, permafrost temperatures have risen 3.5 degrees Fahrenheit since the 1960s, causing ground subsidence of 16 to 33 feet, buckling beneath the 800 impossible-to-protect miles of the Trans-Alaskan oil pipeline.
Not all the news is bad, of course. The fabled Northwest Passage, which could shave about 4000 miles off a trip between Europe and Asia, may be open for shipping as early as 2015. Specialty cruise lines are already making the voyage, unimaginable in the days of Captain Cook. And then there’s that Prudhoe Bay Beach Resort, where you can tan 24 hours a day! Although that’s probably a few years off yet.
And whether you take a bus, pack up that subcompact car or go ahead and rent the RV, be sure to stop off at Exit Glacier, which once stretched all the way to Seward. Signs mark the dates of the glaciers retreat, apparently increasing with the onset of the Industrial Revolution; it’s receded about 1000 feet in just the last decade.
Note that despite all the warnings posted, some visitors still like to cozy up to the face of the crackling, calving glacier for photos, which has removed such people from the gene pool before, by dropping large chunks of ice on their heads. Which is why this is such a great spot to explain the theories of global warming and natural selection to the kids.