Far North Science

IPCC

People must act fast to avoid world-wide climate catastrophe, but we still have time to make a difference, according to a new report released this week by a panel of 18 scientists working for the United Nations Foundation.

The report — “Confronting Climate Change: Avoiding the Unmanageable and Managing the Unavoidable” — argues that policy makers must marshal modern technology and get people to reduce emissions before temperature rise accelerates even more.

“To avoid a entering a regime of sharply rising danger of intolerable impacts on humans, policy makers should limit temperature increases from global warming to 2-2.5 ° C (3.5 to 4.5 °F)above the 1750 pre-industrial level. It is still possible to avoid unmanageable changes in the future, but the time for action is now.”

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The victim has been wounded. The gun still smokes. The assailant has all but admitted to squeezing off that first shot. But can he be forced to disarm?

2004 Storm eroding Shismaref
Shishmaref Relocation Committee

That’s one way to describe the issue at an extraordinary hearing on whether inaction over climate change has violated the human rights of the Inuit people of Alaska, Canada, Greenland and Russia.

The Inuit Circumpolar Conference filed a petition two years ago arguing that the United States should have its feet held to the fire over its contributions to global warming. The ICC will make its case before the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights in Washington, D.C., on March 1 — though the issue will no longer focus solely on the U.S. role.

“They are giving us an hour — myself, and my legal team, but they want to broaden the debate,” Shelia Watt-Cloutier, former ICC chair and a nomineee for the 2007 Nobel Peace Prize, said during CTV’s Question Period on Sunday. “They want to see how this relates to the real legal aspects for all people who are vulnerable and who are negatively impacted by global warming and climate change.”

Why blame the U.S.?

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Scott Schliebe / USFWS

Ice-loving mammals may be on the brink of tough times throughout the Arctic. But people are beginning to take action, with scientists launching studies.

A series of public meetings are underway to gather comments on the proposal to list polar bears as threatened under the Endangered Species Act. The first was held March 1 in Anchorage.

Update:More than 200 people traveled to the Anchorage library to listen to federal bioloigists describe the ESA listing process and what’s known about the status of polar bears. Something like 300,000 comments have already been received by the agency on the move to offer the bears protection under the act.

While many comments applauded the proposal as an essential first-step to make sure polar bears survive global warming, others told the agency that a threatened listing would do nothing to help the species and could cause unintended economic damage to the state of Alaska and to certain Canadian villages.

A contingent of Canadian Native hunters and subsistence villagers urged the agency to not list bears as threatened, arguing that existing treaties and programs offer the enough protection. A representative of Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin also expressed skepticism that scientific evidence has actually damned the bears to slow decline.

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A terrific collection of raven images by photographer Bob Hallinen graced the feature pages of the Anchorage Daily News on Sunday (Feb. 25). The accompanying story, by longtime writer Debra McKinney, will charm you.

Ravens converge on Anchorage each winter morning in a calculated invasion that is as shrewd as it is punctual. The big black birds perch on light poles and prance through parking lots. They call down to humans with melodic klooo-awks. What are they saying? No one knows.

At the end of the day, after feasting on fries and chicken bones and discarded buns and even a few dead things, the ravens take flight, winging toward the mountains in straight lines. They know what they’re doing. It’s uncanny.

Read more about Ravens in the City, and a study that tried to track them to their roosts.

Peter West / NSF

A ceremony kicking off the U.S. research juggernaut for the International Polar Year will be held Feb. 26 (Monday) and broadcast live over the web. Hosted by National Academies and the National Science Foundation, the three-hour event will include scientists, politicians and agency managers.

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The roiling, sulfurous ash blasting from Mount Augustine during last winter’s eruptions triggered “spectacular lightning,” offering Alaska volcanologists the most detailed glimpse ever of one of the Earth’s most elusive electrical phenomena.

Augustine volcano seen from north on January 12, 2006.
Game McGimsey / AVO-USGS

And watching for such a “dirty thunderstorm” over Alaska’s volcanoes may be one more trick to monitor eruptions and keep the lid on hazards that threaten aircraft and communities, according to University of Alaska Fairbanks researchers Steve McNutt, Guy Tytgat and Edward Clark.

An article describing the findings, “Electrical activity during the 2006 Mt. Augustine volcanic eruptions,” appeared Feb. 23 in the prestigious journal of Science.

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Here’s one for all you hardcore aquaphiles to wade into.

What genera of marine algae aren’t calcified?

A Caulerpa species off Hawaii
Image courtesy of Deep Water Macroalgal
Meadows 2004 Exploration, NOAA-OE

Stumped? Well Team 585 from Juneau-Douglas High School nailed the question in seconds, and went on to win the championship of the 10th annual Alaska Region Ocean Sciences Bowl. (Also called the Tsunami Bowl.)

It was caulerpa, of course, a widely distributed family that includes the invasive “killer algae” species infesting the Mediterranean Sea since the 1980s.

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A villager once called it “next door to heaven,” a rocky islet with stilt homes perched on its steep slope, amid the bountiful Bering Sea.

Ukivok Village in 1978
NOAA Photo Library

Now an Oregon-based research team has recovered evidence that a village flourished 800 to 900 years ago on King Island, suggesting that Inupiat walrus hunters inhabited the tiny island 40 miles off the coast of Alaska’s Seward Peninsula for at least a millennium.

The multi-disciplinary group of scientists, led by OSU anthropologist Deanna Kingston, confirmed the age of materials at the village site using carbon dating techniques.

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