Mere om dokumentasjon for oppvarmingen: Permafrosten i alaska tiner i
rasende tempo. Den inneholder store mengder metan, som er en sterk
drivhusgass.
Ellers kommentar til klimakonferansens fallittbo.
Karsten Johansen
http://news.bbc.co.uk/hi/english/world/americas/newsid_1024000/1024585.stm
Wednesday, 15 November, 2000, 17:01 GMT Alaskans face the thaw
Rising waters threaten the village of Shishmaref. As ministers gather in the
Hague to discuss climate change, environment correspondent Robert Piggot
visits West Alaska
It's -10°C in Shishmaref, an Eskimo village on the edge of the Arctic
circle, but that's warm for the time of year. Beyond the beach the narrow
strip of water dividing Alaska from Siberia remains unusually free of ice.
The average temperature in Alaska is rising almost 10 times faster than the
world average, blighting both the landscape and ecosystems of America's
largest state. But for Shishmaref's 600 Inupiaq people, it means the
abandonment of their village.
The once-permanently frozen ground that used to reinforce this coast is
thawing. Climate change has also brought a higher sea level and more
destructive storms.
The result is that the narrow island on which Shishmaref stands is being
rapidly eroded. Each house strong enough to survive the process will be
physically moved to a new site, further away from the sea.
Heating up
Percy Nayokpuk is a village elder, who runs the village store. He's watched
as one end of the village has been eaten away. Another five feet disappeared
in a single storm last month. His store, and its collection of fuel tanks
stand next in the path of the resurgent sea.
For more than a decade the Arctic tundra surrounding Shishmaref has been
warming. The thaw threatens not only the village's buildings, but also its
people's fragile way of life.
Herbert Nayokpuk, who is 71, has hunted animals like moose and caribou for a
living for all his adult life. By early November hunters should be
travelling over the ice with teams of huskies, or fishing in local rivers
but he has noticed that each year they are having to wait longer.
"In my younger days we would normally have been out over the ice covering
the inlet" says Mr Nayokpuk. "Now there's nothing but water back there. I
think the climate is becoming warmer, all around us."
Almost all Alaska is covered by a layer of permanently frozen ground. But
this permafrost is thawing in the higher temperatures, steadily destroying
millions of acres of spruce and birch trees, and with it the habitat for
much of the state's wildlife.
Scientists from the University of Alaska in Fairbanks are working in the
wide Tanana Valley in the centre of Alaska, where the forest is turning into
a watery fenland. The valley was once covered with birch trees. If the
warmer climate persists, they are all expected to be dead by the end of the
century, unable to survive in standing water.
Vicious cycle
It's not only Alaska's huge forests that are drowning in the swamps created
by this great thaw. Forests on once permanently-frozen ground across vast
tracts of Russia, Canada and Northern Europe are also in jeopardy.
Dr Glenn Juday, a forest specialist with the University of Alaska in
Fairbanks, says that as the forests die, they are feeding the process of
global warming in a terrible vicious cycle.
Rotting trees are producing millions of tonnes of carbon dioxide, and of
methane, one of the most potent greenhouse gases of all.
"The great forests of the north are a storehouse of carbon", says Dr Juday,
"and the warmer weather causes them to give off carbon dioxide and methane.
Those are contributing to the warming itself. It's a positive feedback
mechanism - the more it warms the more these processes are putting these
gases back into the atmosphere."
Fleeing the rising seas
Surface ice is disappearing even faster than the permafrost. On average
Alaskan glaciers have been losing 15% of their length every decade. Many
have lost almost half their thickness and some are in rapid retreat, melting
far more quickly than they can form new ice.
Water locked up for centuries in glaciers and ice caps is being added, drop
by drop, to the rising level of the sea.
In Shishmaref, isolated in the tundra on the very edge of North America, it
means the abandonment of a village inhabited for more than 4,000 years.
Thirteen houses have already had to be moved from the sea cliff. The US army
will jack the houses up on sleds and drag the other buildings five miles
away to safer ground. Some in the village are reluctant to leave, but a
young mother, Mina Nayokpuk, is keen to make a start on the evacuation.
"It's been a lot warmer than how it usually was, and we need to go where
it's safe" she says, watching three of her children building an igloo out of
compacted snow. "I feel for my children, they need to go where it's safe and
continue their education and careers."
Some in Shishmaref see the abandonment of their village as a lesson in the
folly of adding so recklessly to greenhouse gases in the atmosphere. So far
this is one of only two American villages which must be sacrificed to the
increasingly brutal climate.
But if, over the next two weeks, the Hague Conference does not find a way to
curb the burning of fossil fuels, myriad other communities in much poorer
countries are likely to go the same way.
http://Politiken.dk/VisArtikel.iasp?PageID=138034
Kampen mod klimaændringer er udsat
Kampen for at bremse opvarmningen af Jorden er udsat. Det er facit efter to
ugers fejlslagne forhandlinger mellem alverdens lande på FN's
klimakonference i Haag. Det sammenbrud, som mange havde frygtet, blev en
realitet lørdag formiddag, efter at ministre havde forhandlet uafbrudt i
næsten 30 timer. Hovedproblemet var USA's krav om store CO2-kreditter for
skovenes og landbrugets opsugning af kuldioxid.
Forslaget ville i givet fald have medført, at USA næsten kunne slippe for at
nedskære sit hjemlige energiforbrug, der er skyld i en fjerdedel af det
globale udslip af drivhusgasser.
Også Canada, Japan og Australien ville slippe meget billigere, end de
forpligtede sig til i Kyoto for tre år siden, og det var helt uacceptabelt
for de 15 EU-lande.
Auken skuffet
Miljøminister Svend Auken (S) var skuffet:
»Vi har gjort et kæmpearbejde, men det lykkedes altså ikke denne gang. I
Kyoto enedes vi om en CO2-reduktion for industrilandene på 5,2 procent, og
den eneste mulighed for en aftale i Haag ville have bragt det resultat i
fare. Der er noget, der hedder miljømæssig troværdighed. Det vedvarende
pres, EU har udfoldet, er en fælles sejr for de progressive
miljøorganisationer, uafhængige forskere og de europæiske ministre. Det er
flot, at EU ikke har krævet en eneste fordel for sig selv«, sagde han.
USA kræver handel med kvoter USA's chefforhandler, Frank Loy, var skuffet
over sammenbruddet, men erklærede sig rede til at fortsætte forhandlingerne
næste år.
Han understregede USA's krav om »fleksibilitet« for at beskære CO2-udslippet
- det vil bl.a. sige handel med CO2-kvoter uden begrænsninger og
godskrivning af skovenes CO2-optag.
USA lovede i Kyoto at reducere med syv procent mod EU's otte. Men da det
amerikanske energiforbrug på grund af den økonomiske vækst er løbet løbsk
siden udgangsåret 1990, vil USA omkring år 2010 skulle begrænse
CO2-udslippet med hele 35 procent - en opgave, de fleste anser for umulig.
Mens fabriksskorstene og biler i de rige lande nu får lov at udstøde
drivhusgasser som hidtil, er det meningen at fortsætte klimamødet på en
ekstraordinær konference i maj 2001 - formentlig i Bonn.
(25. nov 2000 kl. 16:35)
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