3/15/2010 10:08:00 PM Sierra Club leader talks Arctic climate change here Thursday
Courtesy photo Richard Cellarius, a former Sierra Club president who now lives and teaches in Prescott, shot this photo in 2006 of one of the Arctic’s melting glaciers, Worthington.
PRESCOTT - Kit McGurn, the Sierra Club's national Arctic organizer, will speak here Thursday about how climate change is affecting the Arctic in America.
His talk starts at 7 p.m. at the Marriott Springhill Suites, 200 E. Sheldon St.
The Arctic is warming at nearly twice the rate of the rest of the globe, according to the Arctic Climate Impact Assessment's final report by an international team of 300 scientists. The assessment was commissioned by the Arctic Council (a forum of eight nations including the U.S. and six Indigenous Peoples federations) and the International Arctic Science Committee (an international scientific organization appointed by 18 national academies of science).
Already, average winter temperatures have increased 4-7 degrees Fahrenheit over the past 50 years in Alaska, Western Canada and Eastern Russia.
The report estimates these areas will warm another 7-13 degrees by 2100, melting at least half of the Arctic's summer sea ice by the end of this century. Some computer models predict all the summer ice will be gone.
"These changes will have major global impacts, such as contributing to global sea-level rise and intensifying global warming," according to a press release accompanying the 2004 report.
If the Arctic is ice-free in the summer, it's likely to drive polar bears and some seal species toward extinction, the study concluded.
"This is very likely to have devastating consequences for some Arctic animal species such as ice-living seals and for local people for whom these animals are a primary food source," the press release said.
Another report by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) agreed that for several decades, Arctic temperatures have been warming at twice the rate of the rest of the world and sea ice is retreating.
The IPCC report also agreed the warming and thawing of permafrost will have detrimental impacts on Arctic indigenous communities.
Already, some of these communities such as Newtok, Alaska, are trying to figure out where to relocate as permafrost already turns to a muddy mush. The village is sinking and some studies say it could wash away within a decade.
Reader Comments
Posted: Thursday, March 18, 2010
Article comment by:
Head buried in sand
"Junk science" = science my church says doesn't exist"
Posted: Thursday, March 18, 2010
Article comment by:
Sheesh Deluxe
"Junk science" = "science I don't like".
Posted: Tuesday, March 16, 2010
Article comment by:
Susan B
More global warming nonsense from the Sierra Club. The Sierra Club is nothing but a pseudo terrorist organization with junk science. Why are they coming here? What a waste of time and they are only contributing to their carbon footprint by driving out here.
