This is a photo I took in April of 2004 in Resolute Bay. I was there with the film crew for our NOVA show, and they wanted the iceberg as a backdrop for their interview with Roy “Fritz” Koerner. They’d had Koerner bring an ice core from the Greenland glacier from which he had just returned, and his protest that standing in front of bay-ice with a core from a glacier might be misleading was ignored. He certainly looked the part of an arctic personality, with a narrow, grizzled face that could have stood beside an old photograph of Amundsen. He remained remarkably cordial throughout his interview, despite the cold and the fact that the producer kept having him re-do his lines to hit the specific points she was looking for.

That friend is the Arctic, or so it seem to residents of the Arctic. The third point of focus for this project, this forum on the radiating effects of climate change, is the Arctic. The arctic is the very cold canary that tell us what is happening with our climate before we feel it in more temperate zones. The changes, as we have heard here from Larry Merculieff, are more drastic and hit home not just to the large community of people who live above the imaginary line that describes the arctic Circle, but also the the rest of the world’s land and people. Changes include the much reported: spring thaws are earlier. Fall freeze-ups are later. Sea ice is shrinking. Unfamiliar species of plants and animals are appearing. Intense storms are more frequent.

The Ayles ice Shelf, one of a number of key ice masses in the Arctic, has been found to have broken free from land; as noted in the wikipedia:

“The Ayles ice Shelf was one of six major ice shelves in Canada, all located on the northern coast of Ellesmere Island, Nunavut. The ice shelf broke off from the coast on August 13, 2005, forming a giant ice island 37 metres (120ft) thick and measuring around 9 miles by 3 miles in size (approximately 66 square kilometers or 25.5 square miles in area). The oldest ice in the ice shelf was believed to be over 3,000 years old. The ice shelf was located at (83°1.5′N 77°33.5′W), approximately 800 kilometers (497 miles) south of the North Pole.”

“Shrinking Ice” has made science magazine’s list of Breakthroughs of the Year. While a terrifying phenomenon, I suppose it is good to see it getting plenty of attention still, both in the scientific community, and with the public at large.

I chaired the science Working Group for an international conference of arctic indigenous peoples called Snowchange in August of last year (www.snowchange.org). There were several other working groups. Indigenous leaders from Greenland to Siberia gathered to share their stories of what they are seeing in changes to fish, wildlife and habitat. The list of observed changes grows longer each year:

–beaver are now in the arctic as the tree line moves north

–salmon are showing up with lesions and parasites in greater frequency

–weather is much more unpredictable, causing danger and death to hunters

–more and more salmon are appearing in the Chukchi Sea

–water levels in lakes and rivers are going down

–permafrost is melting

–reindeer are having difficulty accessing forage due to freeze-thaw-freeze cycles,

covering tundra with ice

–migratory birds are arriving earlier and leaving later

When I wrote my new book on global and arctic climate change, I chose to call it The north pole Was Here because scientists had posted a goofy sign on the sea ice near 90 Degrees North with that phrase on it — marking the fact that the camp was drifting 400 yards an hour. It also referred to the idea that the north pole of our history could soon going to be history, given the changes afoot in climate up north. Now both computer climate simulations and fresh measurements of sea-ice trends are both pointing to a much quicker transition to open water around the Pole in summers than earlier studies had projected — possibly by 2040.

I have a story in today’s New York Times on that new work. There are some links in the piece to animations generated by the model and more.

Real Cost of oil Equates to $10 Gallon Gasoline
Source: IAGS
[Apr 02, 2006]

SYNOPSIS: Milton Copulos, president of the [National Defense Council Foundation] and Senior Fellow at the [Institute for the Analysis of Global Security] tells Senate the ‘hidden cost’ premium for imported oil amounts to $825 billion.

“A set of oil supply disruptions similar in scope to those of the 1970 could carry a price tag as high as $8 Trillion - a figure equal to 62.5% of our annual GDP or nearly $27,000 for every man, woman and child living in America,” warned Milton Copulos, president of the National Defense Council Foundation and Senior Fellow at the Institute for the Analysis of Global Security (IAGS).

Once the conversation began around arctic Listening Post and Climate Commons, I suddenly found myself having many more interactions and receiving many more emails in my day-to-day about the increasing interest in using art as a vehicle for expressing environmental concerns.

In the last five weeks, our book tour has stopped into eleven cities around North America. In the context of climate change, it’s an interesting time to be traveling around. Everywhere I go, the locals are talking about how “unusual” the weather is for this time of year. At the beginning of December it’s hot in Denver and snowing in Seattle; DC has tornadoes and rain has flooded numerous areas on both coasts.