In the face of severe climate changes, the Arctic is one of the areas hardest hit, and better leadership is needed on a state and national level to confront this development, says a prominent Alaska participant in a global warming conference at Reykjavik, Iceland.
"We are where the big temperature increases are going to occur, and it's going to affect our runways, our roads, our railroads, the pipeline and foundations of houses north of the Alaska Range," said Walt Parker of Anchorage. This is due to melting permafrost, which will result in flooding rivers, erosion, and diminishing ice, which will cause changes that affect all marine mammals, said Parker, who has spent over half a century involved in environmental issues in Alaska.
Parker attended the meeting of the Arctic Climate Impact Assessment project as chairman of the Circumpolar Infrastructure Task Force. Lead authors in the science report produced by the group included Gunter Weller, Patricia Anderson, Glenn Juday, David R. Klein and John Walsh, all affiliated with the University of Alaska at Fairbanks, and Jim Berner of the Alaska Native Tribal Health Consortium.
Among the key findings of the ACIA are more rapid warming of the Arctic climate, with much larger changes projected, and that reductions in sea ice will drastically shrink marine habitat for polar bears, seals and some seabirds, pushing some species toward extinction.
"There was much more emphasis on severe climate events than in past presentations of ACIA," Parker said in a Nov. 8 interview at his Anchorage home.
In all, conference participants heard 94 oral and 61 poster presentations. "Nothing said at the meeting contradicted the major findings of ACIA so far," he said.
The ACIA, a four-year effort of hundreds of scientists, with input from indigenous peoples, concluded rising atmospheric carbon dioxide levels are associated with rising global temperatures.
"Human activities, primarily the burning of fossil fuels (coal, oil and natural gas), and secondarily the clearing of land, have increased the concentration of carbon dioxide, methane and other heat-trapping (greenhouse) gases in the atmosphere," the ACIA report concluded. "There is an international scientific consensus that most of the warming observed over the last 50 years is attributable to human activities."
The findings should give people reason to pause and consider their habits, Parker said.
"The average citizen should read the literature and examine what affect global change is going to have on him, and decide whether he wants to keep driving an SUV or get a smaller vehicle," Parker said. "The main concern is carbon dioxide, and the question is what is the U.S. going to do about it."
The United States has been roundly criticized for its lack of leadership, he said.
One of the major points of contention at the meeting was the failure of the United States to sign the Kyoto Protocol, and for blocking development of a policy document to be presented to ministers of the Arctic Council on Nov. 24, Parker said. The Kyoto Protocol is an amendment to the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change, an international treaty on global warming. Countries that ratify this protocol commit to reduce their emissions of carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gases.
The Kyoto Protocol put pressure on the United States, Japan and the European Union, but not on developing countries, including China and India, Parker said.
"The United States has been subject to criticism regarding the Kyoto Protocol because we have the most people driving the biggest cars," he said.
"Now that several climate changes are happening, with the U.S. not doing anything about it, China and India and other developing nations are not likely to do a lot," he said. "It's frustrating. The attitude taken by the (George W.) Bush administration early on to Kyoto has been very inflexible."
At the same time, the Kyoto Protocol did not put enough pressure on China, India, Southeast Asia and South America to do the same, he said.
"The U.S. has to establish a major effort in permafrost research again, in order to start providing answers on what to do about global change," Parker said. "Most people don't care until it affects them. Those who are concerned will keep working on it, and that is why U.S. and Alaska leadership is so important in research."
Scientists participating in the Reykjavik meeting noted in their report that about 80 percent of the world's energy is currently derived from burning fossil fuels, and carbon dioxide emissions from these sources are growing rapidly.
"Because excess carbon dioxide persists in the atmosphere for centuries, it will take at least a few decades for concentrations to peak and then begin to decline even if concerned efforts to reduce emissions are begun immediately," the scientists in the ACIA report said. "Altering the warming trend will thus be a long-term process, and the world will face some degree of climate change and its impacts for centuries."
