Though I study climate change and its impacts on the arctic landscape for living, I don’t really study what causes climate change and what we should do about it, and so have no special expertise there. My personal take on these differ from most people’s, so I thought I’d share them.

My family and I live in a small cabin in Fairbanks that is electrically off-the-grid, heated by local wood, and has no running water. Do I think this has any measureable or useful impact on climate? Not a bit. Driving hybrid cars, recycling, etc – I don’t think any of these things are going to help, as they just address the symptoms of the problem, not the causes.

Hi,

I am an environmental and natural resource economist who studies the effects of projected climate change on our state’s built environment. The built environment in my current project includes bridges, roads, water/sewer, and many different types of buildings.

Prior to arriving in Alaska, I was an economist at the National Center for Atmospheric Research (Boulder, CO USA) where I built sophisticated models to study the effects of weather variability on the U.S. economy.

As a researcher who works in the arctic where these changes seem to be the most pronounced, I am happy to write in to climate commons to report on my observations.

I have been working at the Alaska Native science Commission for the past five years, and in the last two as its Deputy Director. In this position, I have the privilege of traveling to many Native and rural communities throughout most regions of Alaska. In these communities, the stories about climate change are the same. The list of observed changes can fill several pages, and many of them are alarming. There is no debate in any of these villages that climate change and global warming is here and intensifying in its effects. The State of Alaska has created a climate change Commission that will conduct hearings throughout Alaska. Many Native groups have already held several meetings and conferences where climate change was discussed. I also chaired the science Working Group of Snowchange, an international gathering of indigenous peoples from 8 arctic countries and no one disputes that climate change is upon us and describe many adverse consequences in graphic detail (see www.snowchange.org).

Happy new year everyone! Lets change the world this year, OK?

I’m still thinking about the questions raised earlier in the comments to various posts on this site, asking what kind of role art can play in climate change issues. As I plan out my year, I am trying to keep my feet to the fire of my focus this past year or two: thinking about how to continue creating projects that combine visual, technological, interdisciplinary, collaborative, conversational, and site-responsive works about our human impact on climate change in the arctic in the past and future. In a nutshell I think that I will be gathering much more information, perspectives, narratives, images, and collaborators, trying to keep a balance between my studio practice and a practice of aesthetic alliances with so many different people. I want to go to a science research station in the arctic (any ideas anybody?)–Toolik in Alaska has been suggested to me, so that I can do some work there in the actual landscapes and technologies of the site itself. I’m trying to create visualizations of what the deep arctic will look like in 2110? What kind of transportation will we use to get there and travel around while we’re there? Will we live there? And if so in what kind of house? How will we grow food? What kind of phones will we have to communicate with? How will we get pictures/news of the rest of the world? I want to imagine these things with the combined mind of a science fiction illustrator and a sustainable design innovator.
Will these efforts or their resulting art/activist/conversation projects make a difference? Still wondering. Probably its a one person at at time thing.

I just finished convening a workshop of 20 arctic experts to put together a plan to measure climate, climate change, and its impacts on the Arctic, particularly within the Brooks Range of Alaska. Here we brought together climate modelers, field ecologists, glaciologists, air quality experts, micro-climotologists, permafrost scientists, and permitting and compliance specialists to devise a long-term (50 year) plan. The main issue we were addressing is the sorry fact that there is only one long-term weather station in the US arctic (Barrow) and it is on the coast and not representative of the vast majority of the mountains and coast plain there. A few other weather stations exist, but they are not designed for long-term measurement analysis nor do they have the funding mandate to support them long-term. Similarly, there are no permafrost boreholes or glacier studies for long-term analysis through most of the Brooks Range. The National Park Service controls most of the lands within the central and wester Brooks Range, and the US Fish and Wildlife Service controls most of the eastern Brooks Range. All of these regions are therefore under a protected status where any developments are discouraged, and much of it is within “Designated Wilderness” which is under even more strict control. This poses a problem for scientists (and the public) interested in understanding climate, climate change, and its impacts on the landscape and ecology here — how do measure and monitor such changes without affecting it? And how should we decide what a reasonable comprimise is? The wilderness Act and ANILCA (the guiding legislation for these regions) both allow for scientific study, but discourage ‘permanent installations’. Though not specific beyond this, a permanent weather station is a piece of technology that is a permanent installation. For some, installation of a weather station would decrease the value of their wilderness experience (or more likely, their imaginary wilderness experience since only a few hundred people actually visit these areas annually and most would never actually notice such stations), but for others knowing that scientists are implementing the tools that they need to properly understand and manage the areas would increase their wilderness experience. Interpretation of this legislation by park superindendents varies widely, with some wholeheartedly endorsing the need for such data (and the necessary installations for this) and some stating that such installations would occur ‘over their dead body’.

I am an Alaska Native, an Aleut, born and raised in the Pribilof Islands in the Bering Sea off the west coast of Alaska. My people have lived in intimate connection with the Bering Sea for almost ten thousand years, and we are still here with our connection still strong. Because of our intimate connection, we are able to notice the subtlest changes to the Bering Sea, and the fish and wildlife dependent on it, long before any highly trained scientist. Aleuts of the Pribilof Islands first noted anomalous things about wildlife that indicated that food stress was likely beginning and that this was likely an ecosystem-wide phenomenon. St. Paul Island, my home and home to some 500 Aleuts, was truly a magical, mystical place, hidden from the world by dense blankets of fog throughout the summer months. St. Paul was home to some of the largest cliff nesting seabird colonies in North America, two and a half million strong. And it was also the home of some 1.2 million northern fur seals (the largest fur seal colony in the northern hemisphere), as well as thousands of steller sea lions. In 1977, our people noted adult birds with their breast bones protruding, with chest muscles “caved in”; murre and kittiwake chicks (cliff nesting seabirds) falling off of cliff ledges and dying in larger numbers than normal; fur seal pelts so thin that we could see light through them when the fat was fleshed off; and sea lions chasing after and eating fur seal pups in greater frequency than any other time in living memory. From this, Aleuts knew that there was big trouble, and that it encompassed the entire Bering Sea because near-shore foragers, distance foragers, depth foragers, and surface foragers were all indicating food stress. Indeed, since this time, these animals having been precipitously declining in populations.