A tale of two Alaskas 13 October 06

When I visited Alaska way back in 2000 in the first piece of research I did for High Tide, one thing above all really struck me: that here, in one of parts of the world most affected by global warming, people still seemed to be in denial. It didn’t take me long to discover the source of this denial: the powerful grip of the oil industry.

How things have changed. A new opinion survey of Alaskans carried out by researchers from Columbia University found that four out of five people now believe global warming is happening and is a serious threat to the state. In addition, 81 percent of Alaskans believe global warming is already causing or accelerating the loss of sea ice and melting permafrost, while more than 72 percent believe it is leading to coastal erosion and forest fires in the state.

Perhaps most surprisingly of all, while most Alaskans still oppose higher taxes on electricity or petrol, they now support the regulation of greenhouse gas emissions from power plants and the signing of international treaties to reduce emissions. So – now that Bush does not speak for Alaska, that most Republican of states, who does he speak for?

Meanwhile, the meltdown continues apace. One of the places I visited in Alaska was an Indian village called Huslia, where I reported that the lakes were disappearing, negatively affecting peoples’ way of life. At the time there was nothing much in the way of scientific evidence to support these anecdotal reports – but now that too has changed. A study by scientists at the University of Alaska in Fairbanks has concluded that 10,000 lakes have shrunk in size or completely dried up, primarily since the 1970s. The epicentre of this dramatic change is the area of discontinuous permafrost in the state’s interior lowlands, an area where Huslia is pretty much at the heart.

The report appears in the 10 October issue of the Journal of Geophysical Research, and the authors note with concern that a lowering water table might become a global warming feedback by enhancing carbon dioxide release from aerobically decomposing soils.

So the question remains: can Alaskans, like the rest of us, act in time before the feedback effects get too severe? The clock is ticking.