The walrus may have more to fear from global warming than polar bears. Both are tied to the sea ice in the Arctic that has been melting every summer at record paces.
Like the polar bear, the walrus often finds itself too far out to sea to swim safely back to shore when the ice melts. Perhaps thousands drown every year. Many more reach shore, only to die in stampedes that are triggered when walruses get spooked.
It’s the walrus’ unique, but fatal, reaction to global warming.
Tuesday, March 31, 2009
Monday, March 30, 2009
Drill Baby Drill
All the easy places on Earth to find oil have been explored. The most fragile environments have been left for last. And the oil companies intend to go after them – to satisfy our driving habits. To fill our gas tanks. And, of course, for big oil profits.
The consequences to the environment can most easily be seen in the Arctic, where the last major, undiscovered oil fields remain, and where global warming is having observable, measureable impacts. Sea ice is melting, permafrost is melting, even Greenland is melting.
Wildlife in the Arctic are demonstrating a fatal reaction to global warming, and not just the charismatic polar bears. In Russia’s far east, for example, the walrus are succumbing in large numbers.
As if global warming is not enough, the United States government has leased most of the areas where polar bear dens for oil exploration. It predicts that oil operations have a 40 percent chance of causing a major oil or chemical spill, yet it proceeds because it has a mandate to produce fuel for our engines.
And what will the government do plan if there is a big spill? There is no way to clean up an spill in the frigid, forbidding Arctic. In fact, there is only one way to deal with such a spill.
The plan is to burn it. Drill baby, drill.
The consequences to the environment can most easily be seen in the Arctic, where the last major, undiscovered oil fields remain, and where global warming is having observable, measureable impacts. Sea ice is melting, permafrost is melting, even Greenland is melting.
Wildlife in the Arctic are demonstrating a fatal reaction to global warming, and not just the charismatic polar bears. In Russia’s far east, for example, the walrus are succumbing in large numbers.
As if global warming is not enough, the United States government has leased most of the areas where polar bear dens for oil exploration. It predicts that oil operations have a 40 percent chance of causing a major oil or chemical spill, yet it proceeds because it has a mandate to produce fuel for our engines.
And what will the government do plan if there is a big spill? There is no way to clean up an spill in the frigid, forbidding Arctic. In fact, there is only one way to deal with such a spill.
The plan is to burn it. Drill baby, drill.
Wednesday, March 25, 2009
This piece was... I cared about this piece so much because...
It allowed me to present the views of native peoples who live 1000s of miles away. They all said the same thing at the same time even with geographical differences. They came forward and spoke to their elders; in simple words they described what they saw, and how they felt about it.
Reinventing what it means to be Inuit: Indigenous peoples adapt to climate change
Reinventing what it means to be Inuit: Indigenous peoples adapt to climate change
Monday, March 23, 2009
Thinking out loud, I want to say something like...
Get With the Times.org will be a place for Cascadia Times and its readers to share important information and insights that don't make it into the magazine. We plan to be offbeat and to have some fun.
Our new issue is Arctic Meltdown.
The facts about the recent warming of Earth’s north pole, as described in this new issue of Cascadia Times, are truly frightening. Journalists who report the facts about global warming are often accused of fear-mongering, as if reporting the facts about climate change is somehow a crime. It would be a crime not to do so.
We also believe that it is much worse to deny the truth about these facts. Global warming is not just a theory. It is already happening.
What frightens us most is that global warming is arriving with unexpected speed and ferocity. The United Nations International Panel on Climate Change, has underestimated global warming. Its models did not take into account several important factors. The IPCC did not expect the late-summer sea ice in the Arctic Ocean to melt as thoroughly and as rapidly as it has.
Nor did the IPCC factor in the vast quantities of methane that are already seeping from the permafrost as it melts under the Arctic Ocean floor. Methane is 60 times more efficient as a greenhouse gas than carbon dioxide. CO2 is far more abundant in the atmosphere than methane, but scientists say this methane gets into the atmosphere, the results could be staggering.
For every fact, it seems there will always be someone who is a denier.
"Global warming is a gigantic hoax, pure and simple," Philip Brennan, a writer for the conservative news site Newsmax.com, told me in December 2008. "Baby it’s getting cold out there — and it’s going to get worse, much worse!"
People who dispute the facts about global warming may be making it harder than it needs to be to implement a solution. They can paralyze political leaders who need to be taking action before it’s too late, if it’s not too late already. Some experts say there’s already a chance the planet will never return to a climate most of us would consider normal.
Nothing could be more frightening than that.
- Paul Koberstein, Editor, Cascadia Times
Our new issue is Arctic Meltdown.
The facts about the recent warming of Earth’s north pole, as described in this new issue of Cascadia Times, are truly frightening. Journalists who report the facts about global warming are often accused of fear-mongering, as if reporting the facts about climate change is somehow a crime. It would be a crime not to do so.
We also believe that it is much worse to deny the truth about these facts. Global warming is not just a theory. It is already happening.
What frightens us most is that global warming is arriving with unexpected speed and ferocity. The United Nations International Panel on Climate Change, has underestimated global warming. Its models did not take into account several important factors. The IPCC did not expect the late-summer sea ice in the Arctic Ocean to melt as thoroughly and as rapidly as it has.
Nor did the IPCC factor in the vast quantities of methane that are already seeping from the permafrost as it melts under the Arctic Ocean floor. Methane is 60 times more efficient as a greenhouse gas than carbon dioxide. CO2 is far more abundant in the atmosphere than methane, but scientists say this methane gets into the atmosphere, the results could be staggering.
For every fact, it seems there will always be someone who is a denier.
"Global warming is a gigantic hoax, pure and simple," Philip Brennan, a writer for the conservative news site Newsmax.com, told me in December 2008. "Baby it’s getting cold out there — and it’s going to get worse, much worse!"
People who dispute the facts about global warming may be making it harder than it needs to be to implement a solution. They can paralyze political leaders who need to be taking action before it’s too late, if it’s not too late already. Some experts say there’s already a chance the planet will never return to a climate most of us would consider normal.
Nothing could be more frightening than that.
- Paul Koberstein, Editor, Cascadia Times
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