Far North Science

Syun-Ichi Akasofu

Al Gore’s climate film “An Inconvenient Truth” is “science fiction.”

Polar bears can live on land and eat grass.

The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change has gone way past the data about the role of greenhouse gases while ignoring natural factors.

And some scientists, perhaps the “silent” majority, need to be careful. Or they could be “assassinated.”

These are some of the startling if not bizarre comments attributed to Alaska geophysicist Syun-Ichi Akasofu in an interview published this week by the Executive Intelligence Review, an on-line journal founded by right-wing political leader and conspiracy theorist Lyndon LaRouche.

Arctic Climate Expert: Gore’s Film Is ‘Science Fiction’ contains what appears to be a conversational Q&A between Akasofu and LaRouche Youth Movement member Ian Overton.

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National Climate Data Center

Have you been hearing commentators and politicians declare that most scientists still don’t agree on global warming? (Completely untrue.)

Or that a little thicker blanket of carbon dioxide blanket will simply tickle the corn higher and trees greener? (As if.) Or that these reports calling global warming “unequivocal” are based on “junk science”? (Thank Alaska Republican legislators for that one.)

Or maybe you’ve caught snatches of more technical illuminations that seem to prove Al Gore has taken an anti-American economy plunge into raving hysteria. Things like — the Greenland ice cap has been expanding not shrinking. The Arctic melt has actually stopped (since it was so cold in Alaska in February.) Most warming took place before 1948. Most warming stopped in 1998. It was way warmer during the Medieval Upper Permian Fern Dry Spell and that proves, of course, that there’s nothing to worry about.

And you think it’s emissions from people? What a hoot. It’s the Sun, Stupid!

Well, there’s a new antidote to such conservative disinformation.

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Bering Strait from Space
Credit: NOAA

An AP story detailing the discussion in Moscow over the latest Alaskan Mega Dream — the $65 billion railroad tunnel under the Bering Strait — contained another one of those atlas-impaired goofs that appear so often in stories about the Far North.

First, we’ll set aside a few issues for later — like the wisdom of spending more than twice the cost of the Apollo moon shot (OK, that was in 1969 dollars, so sue me), or the impact of traversing one of Alaska’s most ecologically sensitive regions with thousands of workers and machines and ships. Or the question of where you might dispose of all the gunk dredged up from ocean floor.

In many ways, the story by Alex Nicholson about the conference “Megaprojects of Russia’s East” begins promisingly enough.

For more than a century, entrepreneurs and engineers have dreamed of building a tunnel connecting the eastern and western hemispheres under the Bering Strait — only to be brought up short by war, revolution and politics.

Now die-hard supporters are renewing their push for the audacious plan — a $65 billion highway project that would link two of the world’s most inhospitable regions by burrowing under a stretch of water connecting the Pacific and Arctic oceans.

But later, when the story described the conditions at the Bering Strait, we find an unlikely bit of data.

The proposed 68-mile tunnel would be the longest in the world. It would also be the linchpin for a 3,700-mile railroad line stretching from Yakutsk – the capital of a gold- and mineral-rich Siberian region roughly the size of India – through extreme northeastern Russia and waters up to 180 feet deep and into the western coast of Alaska. Winter temperatures there have hit minus 94.

Minus 94?

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A ratty-looking black bear

A retired school teacher has been feeding brown and black bears at a remote cabin site northwest of Anchorage. The bruins line up at dinner time and even permit people to pet them. Sows apparently allow the cubs to play with humans. Bears paw visitors with the friendliness of gigantic labradors.

Craig Medred’s story on the front page of the Anchorage Daily News — accompanied by a gallery of photos so bizarre that you might assume they were photo-shopped — describes the world of Charlie Vandergaw and the discomfort his behavior causes local wildlife managers.

Medred writes:

What goes on each summer at Vandergaw’s remote homestead is so far from the ordinary as to be almost unbelievable. Visitors tell of him petting black and brown bears, playing with grizzly cubs while sows stand by, sitting on bears and teaching them tricks. His own photographs show even more. They capture him easing to within feet of breeding grizzlies and nursing an injured brown bear.

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Polar bears may lose their ice habitat,
but how about that new shipping lane?
USFWS Photo

Newsweek has hit the streets with a special report on Learning to Live with Global Warming, with many stories taking an optimistic tone and focusing on action by officials and entrepreneurs. It’s got a carbon footprint calculator and a lead piece on California Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger’s “Crusade.”

Worth checking out, but there’s something disconcerting here, of the “how did you like the play, Mrs. Lincoln?” variety. A few outtakes are downright smug.

In the short term there will be winners and losers from climate change. Fairly or not, the tilt is destined to favor the countries of the rich North, to the detriment of the poorer South. Within a few decades or so, a balmy Greenland may again deserve its name.

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Did diplomats and government officials soften the hard truths within the most recent report from the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change?

Many scientists involved in the process have gone public with complaints that language was tweaked and the message was spun under pressure from the United States, China, Saudi Arabia and others. Some scientists have said they will never participate in another IPCC process as a result.

The “official” 23-page summary of Climate Change Impacts, Adaptation and Vulnerability — was presented to world media in Brussels on April 6. It is the second part of Climate Change 2007, the fourth assessment by the IPCC on the science and impact of global warming.

But another version of the report — what the scientists actually wrote — exists.

The people at ClimateScienceWatch.Org have posted online what they identify as this original, uncut version.

The site also tracks the emerging debate:

During a lengthy and contentious session, with interventions by government representatives from the United States, China, Saudi Arabia, and other countries, numerous edits were made to the scientists’ draft prior to final joint approval by scientists and diplomats. Numerous changes appear clearly to have the effect of “toning down” the scientists’ own draft language on likely damaging impacts of climate change.

Hurricane Katrina
Credit: NOAANEWS

Do killer hurricanes have nothing to do with the greenhouse-gas warming that (some say) steams the tropical Atlantic like scalded milk bubbling up a latte?

Is protecting polar bears in the face of fast-shrinking sea ice some wonky blunder that will throw people out of work and take down Alaska’s economy?

When hundreds of scientists produce a report that blames global warming largely on human greenhouse emissions, should they be whapped upside the head with their pocket protectors for overreaching the data?

Just ask climate-warming skeptic William Gray, a top hurricane forecaster.

Or perhaps you could consult that august (if not soggy) body of climate experts from rainy Juneau — the Alaska Legislature. It has recently passed resolutions urging the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service that polar bears are doing fine and don’t need coddling by the federal government.

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A raggedy mound of dirty sidewalk snow outside my Anchorage house began to melt for the first time today, marking the first official afternoon to rise above 32 degrees in 52 days.

Over the weekend, four of us skied 20 miles through the Chugach Mountains in malodorous polypro. The snow bridges held, and the sun blazed down, and my clothes grew wet with sweat. But I still stuffed a hat in my crotch to block the wind in the pass.

These are signs. We’ve reached the cusp of spring here in Southern Alaska, probably only a week or two from true breakup and ankle-deep mud. But we don’t need melt and long days to signal the changing season.

The spring outdoor gear catalogs are arriving by the pound.

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