Land in Juneau Rising as Alaska Glaciers Melt

In most coastal areas threatened by global warming, it’s rising seas that are a big concern. But in Juneau, Alaska, the opposite is true. As the glaciers melt, the land is actually rising, causing the sea to recede. As a result, the region’s ecology – and geography – is changing rapidly.

From The New York Times:

The geology is complex, but it boils down to this: Relieved of billions of tons of glacial weight, the land has risen much as a cushion regains its shape after someone gets up from a couch. The land is ascending so fast that the rising seas — a ubiquitous byproduct of global warming — cannot keep pace. As a result, the relative sea level is falling, at a rate “among the highest ever recorded,” according to a 2007 report by a panel of experts convened by Mayor Bruce Botelho of Juneau.

Greenland and a few other places have experienced similar effects from widespread glacial melting that began more than 200 years ago, geologists say. But, they say, the effects are more noticeable in and near Juneau, where most glaciers are retreating 30 feet a year or more.

As the sea level falls, streams and wetlands are drying out and channels that were once navigable are being silted up. People can actually wade across the Gastineau Channel, where large boats once were able to sail. Eventually, experts say, Douglas Island will be linked to the mainland by dry land, effectively erasing all 4,000 acres of the boggy Mendenhall Wetlands State Game Refuge.

This surprising revelation simply highlights the fact that we can’t predict the ways in which climate change will affect the earth. And, the unexpected effects can be just as devastating as those scientists have already predicted.

Link [The New York Times]
Photo credit: Michael Penn for The New York Times

Escaping Global Warming: Climate Refugees in Alaska

Residents of a tiny coastal town in Alaska will soon be among America’s first climate change refugees, forced from their homes by flooding caused by melting permafrost. The 340 residents of Newtok, Alaska have seen the Ninglick River overtake their town, forcing them to rely on a network of boardwalks to get from building to building. Helpless to stop the damage, Newtok residents are moving to a new site nine miles inland, on higher ground.

From Discover Magazine:

“We are seeing the erosion, flooding and sinking of our village right now,” said Stanley Tom, a Yup’ik Eskimo and tribal administrator for the Newtok Traditional Council…. The U.S. Army Corps of Engineers has estimated that moving Newtok could cost $130 million. Twenty-six other Alaskan villages are in immediate danger, with an additional 60 considered under threat in the next decade, according to the corps [CNN].

The townspeople’s decision illustrates global warming’s impact on people living near the Arctic. While the  Yup’ik Eskimos of Newtok were making their decision, the first Indigenous Peoples’ Global Summit was taking place in Anchorage, Alaska, with representatives from 80 nations on hand to discuss how global warming is affecting their communities. Indigenous people are among those contributing least to the worsening problem of greenhouse gases and climate change, said Miguel d’Escoto Brockmann, president of the United Nations General Assembly. However, he said they are the first to feel the impacts of climate change [AP].

Most of us tend to think of climate refugees as poor people in places like the sinking Maldives or the flood-plagued western coast of Africa, but this just goes to show that we Americans are not immune to the effects of climate change, no matter what the majority of us might think. It’s extremely unfortunate, however, that people who have done so little to cause it compared to the rest of us have to deal it first. The bottom line is, it’s happening here, it’s happening now, and it’s not going to magically go away.

Link [Discover Magazine]
Photo credit: Wolfdance.de

Sarah Palin Files Suit to Avoid Protecting Whales in Alaska

What’s the biggest threat to beluga whales in Alaska’s Cook Inlet? Two words: Sarah Palin. Belugas already have a lot stacked against them. Cloudy water in the summer forces them to rely heavily on echolocation to get around, and they must venture into dangerously shallow waters to find food. Palin, who is already infamous for her total disregard for animal lives, is filing suit to prevent the federal government from protecting the whales.

Her argument? “Alaska is already doing enough for whales”.

From Salon:

Palin’s chief of staff published an Op-Ed in the Anchorage Daily News on Jan. 28 titled “Protection Requirements for Cook Inlet Belugas Are Silly.”

While there are five stocks of beluga whales in waters near Alaska, the ones in Cook Inlet are isolated and genetically distinct from their cousins. That population has declined dramatically since the 1980s, from over 1,000 to about 375 now. More than 300 whales perished in one four-year stretch (1994 to 1998) alone, according to the National Marine Fisheries Service. Marine mammal biologists and conservationists were hopeful that sharply limiting subsistence hunting of the whales by native Alaskans would see the whales bounce back. But despite only five whales being killed by hunting since 1999, when new regulations went into effect, the whales have not rebounded.

Even the Bush administration took note of the Cook Inlet belugas’ decline, after being pressured by environmental groups. In October 2008, the National Marine Fisheries Service announced the listing of the Cook Inlet population of beluga whales as a full-fledged endangered species. Yes, the Bush administration, infamous for its disdain for science when it came to protecting endangered critters, saw fit to offer protections to the belugas living in Cook Inlet. But not the Palin administration.

“It’s hard to imagine that anyone could be more anti-environmental than Bush, but Palin is Exhibit A,” says Brendan Cummings, oceans program director for the Center for Biological Diversity. “Here we had the most anti-environmental administration in U.S. history, and Palin still feels compelled to sue over one of the few environmentally positive things to come out of that administration.”

Marine mammal biologists don’t yet know what’s preventing the beluga whale population from making a comeback, but they do know that the health of the species could have implications for the rest of the ecosystem they inhabit.

Designating the beluga whales as endangered will also turn Cook Inlet into a ‘critical habitat’ for the whales, which is exactly why Palin’s administration is fighting the measure. They’re afraid that such protected status will hamper the “unfettered industrial activity” going on in the inlet – including the dumping of toxic waste by the oil industry. It could also affect plans to expand the port of Anchorage and build the Knik Arm Bridge – famously known as “the bridge to nowhere” – and curtail oil and natural gas drilling.

This is the same woman who advocates shooting wolves from helicopters and has an office full of dead animal trophies and a pile of caribou antlers sitting outside her house.  Her antipathy toward animals and the environment knows no bounds. So, none of this is too surprising. Luckily, advocates of protecting the whales are confident that the Obama administration will defend the beluga listing from Palin’s lawsuit.

Link [Salon.com]

Exxon Valdez Payments Delayed Again After 19 Years of Waiting

An imminent payment from Exxon Mobil Corp. to the commercial fishermen affected by the nation’s worst oil spill has been delayed once again.  The damages have been put off for 19 years so far, and this time it’s due to lawyers for Sea Hawk Seafoods, Inc., a Seattle-based company that ran a fish-processing plant in Valdez, filing court papers objecting to the allocation plan.

From The Huffington Post:

They are seeking a new plan that conforms to the U.S. Supreme Court ruling in June, which awarded up to $507.5 million in punitive damages to nearly 33,000 commercial fishermen, cannery workers, land owners, Alaska Natives and others who claimed harm from the 1989 crude oil spill. The plaintiffs had been seeking $5 billion.

After the Supreme Court decision, lawyers for the plaintiffs and Exxon worked out a partial settlement under which Exxon agreed to release $383 million.

The money was to be distributed under an allocation plan approved in 1996 by Anchorage federal Judge H. Russel Holland, and Sea Hawk contends that it is flawed.

According to the company, the Supreme Court decided that the size of punitive damage awards must be proportional to the size of compensatory damage awards already paid to plaintiffs. The company argues the current plan assigns some plaintiffs larger or smaller shares than they deserve.

Big shocker. This payment has been delayed so many times for so many reasons – usually through efforts of Exxon to avoid opening their wallet. This time, it’s infighting among the plantiffs. Exxon, of course, is fighting this effort by Sea Hawk Seafoods, claiming that their demands will deprive other plaintiffs of their fair share of the damages (like they’re really worried about that – they just don’t want to pay).

Prior to this development, Exxon had avoided paying the damages because ever since Sarah Palin stepped in as governor of Alaska, she has failed to collect the money. The previous governor had presented Exxon with a demand to pay the extra $92 million in estimated damages due for ‘unanticipated environmental injuries’ from the spill. Since Palin was elected, she hasn’t pressed the issue, while Exxon has continued to reap record profits in Alaska.

Aren’t the damages for this spill a drop in the bucket for a company that has raked in ungodly amounts of money in the last few decades? It’s obscene.  This needs to be laid to rest as soon as possible.

Link [The Huffington Post]
Photo credit: Wikimedia Commons

Whale Protection Increased Despite Sarah Palin’s Protests

Whales 1, Sarah Palin 0.  While the Republican vice presidential nominee has been railing against increased measures to protect Beluga whales that live in the Cook Inlet of Alaska, her objections failed to keep the federal government from putting the whales on the endangered species list.  Palin’s administration has opposed the Beluga listing because of its potential to restrict offshore oil and gas drilling.

From The New York Times:

The relatively small, whitish whales, sometimes visible from downtown Anchorage, declined by almost 50 percent in the late 1990s, and federal scientists say they have not rebounded despite a series of protections, including a halt to subsistence hunting by Alaska Natives. About 375 whales have been counted in Cook Inlet each of the last two years, according to scientists with the National Marine Fisheries Service.

The announcement, made on a predetermined schedule under the Endangered Species Act, drew further attention to Ms. Palin’s positions on environmental issues. The governor, the Republican nominee for vice president, has come under scrutiny for her ambiguous statements about climate change and her administration’s failed effort earlier this year to prevent another species, the polar bear, from being listed as threatened. The state is suing the federal government over the polar bear listing.

The fisheries agency says that the Beluga whale population has been threatened by general development, pollution and oil and gas exploration.  So, for now, these whales may be saved from the brink of extinction – no thanks to Sarah Palin, running mate to so-called ‘environmental advocate’ John McCain.

Link [The New York Times]
Photo credit: Wikimedia Commons

Sarah Palin’s Record on the Environment? Not so great.

We all know that Republican VP pick Sarah Palin questions global warming science and favors drilling for oil in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge. But after last night’s Vice Presidential debate in which Palin’s answer to a direct question about climate change was vague to say the least (see below), we thought we’d give her environmental record another look.

Palin in response to climate change question in the VP debate:

I’m not one to attribute every man — activity of man to the changes in the climate. There is something to be said also for man’s activities, but also for the cyclical temperature changes on our planet.

But there are real changes going on in our climate. And I don’t want to argue about the causes. What I want to argue about is, how are we going to get there to positively affect the impacts?

We have got to clean up this planet. We have got to encourage other nations also to come along with us with the impacts of climate change, what we can do about that.

[Trascript via New York Times]

GOP VP Pick Sarah Palin is a Global Warming Denier

Sarah Palin questions global warming science and favors drilling for oil in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge. She also opposed a state initiative that would have banned metal mines in her state from discharging pollution into salmon streams, and dropped a lawsuit intended to prevent polar bears from being listed as a threatened species. Not that any of these things are surprising considering that she’s a Republican, but the party’s questionable pick for VP is governor of Alaska, where the ANWR is located, and the state that has already seen the most dramatic effects of global warming.

From the Sydney Morning Herald:

The Alaska Governor has said that she has tried to persuade McCain to agree with her on drilling in the wildlife refuge. She also has said that she was happy that he changed his position over the summer and now supports offshore oil drilling.

Palin’s environmental views could get more of an airing now that she has landed on the national stage.

Last month, the state of Alaska under Palin’s guidance sued Interior Secretary Dirk Kempthorne in an attempt to reverse his decision to list polar bears as a threatened species. Palin said that scientists’ predictions that global warming would eliminate the ice where the bears live in summer were unreliable.

As we noted in an article posted yesterday, ‘7 Places Global Warming is Smacking the Crap Out of the Earth Right Now’, Alaska is the only U.S. state currently experiencing global warming effects on par with other areas of the world.  In some areas of the remote state, villages are being relocated because global warming has battered them with severe storms and melting ice has caused erosion and floods.

Besides, how does McCain aim to protect the environment when his #2 would be fighting him all the way?

Link [Sydney Morning Herald]
Photo credit: AP/Sydney Morning Herald

GOP Senator Ted Stevens Indicted for Gifts from Oil Company

The longest serving Republican senator, Ted Stevens, was indicted yesterday on seven felony counts of concealing over a quarter of a million dollars in house renovations and gifts from an oil contractor that lobbied him for government aid. Stevens, 84, has been a central figure in Alaskan politics since before statehood and is the first U.S. senator to be indicted since 1993.

From Yahoo! News:

He is accused of lying on his annual Senate financial disclosure reports between 1999 and 2006 — an indictment that caps a lengthy FBI investigation that has upended Alaska politics and brought unfavorable attention to both Stevens and his congressional colleague, GOP Rep. Don Young. Both are running for re-election this year.

Stevens’ indictment further damages Republican prospects in the November election as Senate Democrats, who now enjoy a 51-49 majority, try to capture a filibuster-proof 60-vote majority. Stevens faces both Democratic and Republican challengers who are trying to capitalize on his legal woes.
The Justice Department accused Stevens of accepting expensive work on his home in Girdwood, Alaska, a ski resort town outside Anchorage, from oil services contractor VECO Corp. and its executives. VECO normally builds oil processing equipment and pipelines, but its employees helped do the work on Stevens’ home.

VECO’s requests included funding and other aid for their projects and partnerships in Pakistan and Russia, federal grants from several agencies and help in building a pipeline in Alaska’s North Slope Region. If convicted, Stevens will face up to five years in prison for each count. He’s expected to turn himself in.

Ha ha – jerkass. I wonder how many other GOP senators are up to the same game with oil companies? Undoubtedly plenty of them…

Link [Yahoo! News]
Photo credit: Wikimedia Commons

Volcano Power Could be Harnessed for Energy

Experts are recommending that companies begin looking in to tapping volcanoes for power. Alaskan officials believe that the state’s volcanoes could be a source of geothermal energy for thousands of homes, and is offering companies a lease option to explore the resources beneath Mount Spurr, an 11,070-ft volcano that most recently erupted in 1992.

From The Telegraph:

The move echoes a trend underway across much of the US as fuel prices, worries about dependence on foreign oil and climate change trigger a surge in geothermal projects, particularly in the West and along the Gulf Coast.

According to experts, America is only just waking up to the ancient power source lying beneath dozens of states that has the potential to supply as much as 25 percent of the nation’s energy needs.

“High prices and climate change are definitely creating a renaissance in geothermal interest, particularly on a state and local level,” said Karl Gawell, executive director of the Geothermal Energy Association.

What a macho power source. I bet Chuck Norris gets his power directly from volcanoes. No, Chuck Norris is probably responsible for the formation of volcanos by doing roundhouse kicks on mountains that look at him wrong.

Link [The Telegraph]
Photo credit: Wikimedia Commons