Fw: Santa Claus rapidly losing his home according to new US sponsored report

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Monday, November 01, 2004 8:11 PM

Santa Claus rapidly losing his home according to new US sponsored

report

 

 

Published on Monday, November 1, 2004 by OneWorld.net

 

Global Warming Has Arrived: Arctic Study

 

by Jim Lobe

 

 

 

WASHINGTON - With only eight weeks left before the elves finish

their work and Santa Claus mounts his sleigh, an eight-nation study on global

warming co-sponsored by the United States has concluded that the North Pole is

melting beneath St. Nick.

 

The 144-page report, which is due to be officially released a week

after Tuesday's elections, says the accelerated warming of the globe - which it

blames mostly on the emissions of carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gases

produced by the industrial age - is transforming the Arctic region dramatically.

 

 

This undated composite image from NASA shows a fully dark

(city lights) full disk image centered on the South Pole. Greenhouse gases have

contributed to a gradual warming of the ecologically-fragile Arctic region,

causing massive climate changes, including melting glaciers and sea ice,

according to a soon-to-be-released environmental study. (AFP/NASA/File)

 

The Arctic " is now experience some of the most rapid and severe

climate change on Earth, " according to the report, which was obtained by the New

York Times and the Washington Post this weekend, apparently from European

sources that wanted to publicize its findings before Tuesday.

 

The European Union (EU), some of whose member states co-sponsored

the study, strongly supports the Kyoto Protocol to reduce greenhouse emissions,

while President George W. Bush has rejected the accord. His Democratic

challenger, Sen. John Kerry, has called for the U.S. to rejoin negotiations on

the treaty's terms.

 

" Over the next 100 years, climate change is expected to accelerate,

contributing to major physical, ecological, social and economic changes, many of

which have already begun, " the report stated, adding that greenhouse gas

emissions have clearly become " the dominant factor " in the Arctic's changing

climate.

 

The study, whose conclusions were disclosed as the Russian

government, another co-sponsor, completes its ratification of the Protocol this

week, was based on the work of nearly 300 scientists, as well as elders from

native - mainly Inuit communities living in the Arctic regions of North America

and Eurasia - over the past four years.

 

The governmental sponsors of the study include Canada, Denmark,

Finland, Iceland, Norway, Russia, and Sweden, as well as the United States.

 

It confirms earlier studies that the Arctic has warmed and is

warming at a much faster rate than the Earth as a whole. While the Earth has

warmed by roughly one degree Fahrenheit over the past century - that is, the

bulk of the industrial age - temperature increases in the Arctic area have been

as much as ten times greater.

 

That warming has produced dramatic, across-the-board effects on both

the climate and the land. Once solid tundra or permafrost has turned ever

soggier, while animal, fish, and plant species that have thrived in the region

for millennia are either moving northward or dying out. The report predicted

that polar bears, ice-loving seals and indigenous people who rely on the two

large mammals for food are likely to be devastated by the changes, particularly

the melting of sea ice throughout the Arctic.

 

" The major message is that climate change is here and now in the

Arctic, " Dr. Robert Corell, a U.S. oceanographer who directed the assessment,

told the Times.

 

Not all of these changes are due solely to changes in temperature;

also cited are a number of other human-caused factors, including overfishing,

growing human population, and rising levels of ultra-violet radiation from the

depleted ozone layer, as contributing to the change.

 

" The sum of these factors threatens to overwhelm the adaptive

capacity of some Arctic populations and ecosystems, " according to a section of

the report quoted by the Times.

 

But the consequences of what is happening to the Arctic are certain

to be global in scope, according to Gunnar Palsson, the chairman of the Arctic

Council, who told the Post the region should be seen as " sort of a bellweather "

for the rest of the planet. " In order to contain these problems, we cannot think

in terms of regional solutions. "

 

Indeed, the melting of Arctic ice, which is taking place at a

faster-than-anticipated pace, could have dire consequences on coastal areas as a

result of the resulting rise in sea levels.

 

The melting of the two-mile-high icepack on Greenland by itself will

send sea level as much as 25 feet higher, washing away low-lying islands in the

South Pacific, the Indian Ocean and the Caribbean and heavily populated coastal

areas from Bangladesh to New Orleans and the Mississippi delta.

 

Even if the U.S. joins the Kyoto Protocol - which will take legal

effect 90 days from Moscow's formal ratification -- the results will be too

little and too late to reverse the changes that are well underway in the Arctic

because carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gases have been built up in the

atmosphere for more than a century and cannot be dispersed or broken down. At

best, implementation of the treaty will slow the rate of change over the long

term.

 

The Protocol calls for a seven-percent reduction in total greenhouse

gas emissions by the world's industrialized countries below 1990 levels by the

year 2012 but does not yet require cuts in emissions by other major

greenhouse-gas producing nations, notably China and India. Washington's

adherence to the treaty is nonetheless considered critical, because the country

is the world's biggest greenhouse gas emitter by far, accounting for about 25

percent of annual global emissions.

 

Bush has opposed the treaty on the grounds that it will reduce

economic growth, an assertion challenged by many economists and scientists who

say it will make U.S. industry more globally competitive, particular as the rest

of the world develops new technologies to reduce emissions.

 

The new study's main conclusions were to some extent anticipated in

September in Senate hearings in which Sheila Watt-Cloutier, a representative of

the 155,000 Inuit who live in Greenland, Canada, Alaska, and Russia, testified

about the changes her people were enduring.

 

" We find ourselves at the very cusp of a defining event in the

history of this planet, " she told Sen. John McCain, who is co-sponsoring

legislation to require reductions in greenhouse emissions, and other senators.

" The Earth is literally melting. "

 

She pointed in particular to the growing unpredictability in the

weather, melting of permafrost and glaciers, the retreat of sea ice, and the

presence of previously unknown species, such as robins and mosquitoes and other

insects. " Protect the Arctic and you will save the planet, " she said. " Use us as

your early-warning system. "

 

The new study suggests that there may be some benefits to the

changes being wrought by warming, including the possibility of longer growing

seasons further north and even rebounds in dwindling fish stocks. In addition,

the retreat of sea ice may make off-shore drilling for oil and gas more feasible

and enhance trans-Arctic navigation.

 

Many scientists have argued that the warming trend could help

produce bigger plants that in turn will be able to take more carbon out of the

atmosphere and slow the warming rate accordingly.

 

But a study regarding a 20-year project to test that thesis

published in September by Britain's 'Nature' magazine found that warming could

actually release even more carbon dioxide into the atmosphere and thus

contribute to greater warming. It found that while tundra plants did indeed

become more productive at the surface, releases of carbon and nitrogen from

deep-soil tundra layers more than offset their ability to store more carbon.

 

2004, OneWorld.net