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During
my recent bus travel to Alaska, I walked on a slippery
glacier and hiked on permafrost grounds.
The
excitement of this experience was overshadowed by the
reality that all the glaciers we saw in Montana, Canada,
and Alaska have receded as much as one mile in the last
few decades. The thawing permafrost has caused the ground
to subside more than 15 feet in some parts of Alaska!
The
statistics are staggering. For example, of the 150 glaciers
existing when President Taft created Glacier National
Park in 1910, fewer than 30 remain today. Most of those
remaining have shrunk in area by two-thirds and most if
not all would be gone in 30 years according to a recent
National Geographic report.
Technical
and popular literatures have illustrated cases telling
us that the Earth's atmosphere is heating up, the glaciers
are melting, the permafrost is thawing, and the ice on
the poles is thinning. These are hard phenomena to believe,
but easy to see especially if you are standing on grounds
left bare by a retreating glacier.
I
hiked over a mile of rugged uphill terrain to get to the
leading edge of the Columbia Glacier and Ice Field in
Alberta, Canada. After a slippery walk on the glacier,
I hiked back with a piece of glacier ice in my hand that
completely melted by the time I reached the parking lot.
On the way out of the parking area, I saw a sign that
marks the edge of the glacier in 1890. Columbia Glacier
has receded more than a mile since then. This same story
of glacier recession is repeated with redundancy at the
Portage Glacier in the Portage Valley, Mendenhall Glacier
in Juneau, and Worthington Glacier to name a few.
Everywhere
on Earth where there is ice, there is meltdown. From the
snows of Kilimanjaro that have already melted more than
80 per cent in the last nine decades to the glaciers of
the Himalayas which could virtually disappear within the
next three decades.
I was in Indonesia a few years ago when scientists observed
that the ice cap of Mt. Puncak in Irian Jaya, the only
snow-capped peak located on the equator, had thinned and
would completely melt away within 50 years.
In
Antarctica I saw the cove on Elephant Island where in
1916 crewmen of the ill-fated ship ENDURANCE were marooned
awaiting rescue by their leader, polar explorer Sir Ernest
Shackleton. The ice cover on that spit of land had retreated
more than 100 feet since Shackleton's time.
It
was during this expedition to the Antarctic Continent
when I heard from our ship's on-board naturalists the
details about the collapse of a humongous chunk of iceberg,
some 1,250 square miles in size and bigger than the size
of the state of Rhode Island, from the Larsen Ice Shelf
in early 2002. Some 3,000 square miles of coastal ice
shelves had disintegrated in Antarctica's coastline causing
glaciers to move faster towards the shore and ultimately
contributing to the rising sea level.
I
learned during my trip to the Arctic in August of 2003
that the Arctic sea ice is decreasing at a rapid rate
and has thinned by 15 to 40 per cent in the last 30 years.
I
like to think that the reason our ship was able to penetrate
the Arctic Ocean way up north within the 80 degrees latitude
was the Arctic ice sheet breaking more than usual. The
annual breakup of ice off the coast of the Alaskan arctic
is now occurring weeks earlier than it used to be. In
the last 3 decades, the area of perennial Arctic Ocean
ice has decreased by 9 percent per decade.
Scientists
predict that the Arctic ice could disappear in the summer
within this century. It's hard to conceive of an Arctic
Ocean devoid of ice during the summer months. Laws of
physics are rigid. When temperature warms ice melts.
Global
temperature has risen indeed since the recording of it
began in the 1860s, and, is rising in an accelerated fashion
since the 1960s. The Earth is heating up and the consequent
changes are most noticeable in the poles. The average
temperature on the Antarctic Peninsula had increased by
4 degrees F enough to extend the summer season some 30
days longer. On the opposite pole such as in Alaska, the
average temperature had increased by also 4 degrees F
in Barrow, more than 3 degrees F in Juneau, and by 2 degrees
F in Anchorage.
Climate
scientists are not absolutely certain if the warming temperature
is a natural long-term change. But they are pretty sure
that the human combustion of wood, coal, and oil has accelerated
the change. The equation is straightforward - burning
fossil fuel by cars and factories emits carbon dioxide
and other gases that behave like a glass pane on a greenhouse
that prevents heat from escaping the Earth's atmosphere.
The
consequences of human's oil-based technological development
that include, among others, higher temperatures, more
drought, and more intense rainfall and hurricanes are
telling and eventually catastrophic. Higher global temperatures
fuel extremes in weather such as hurricanes and monsoon
rains, forest fires of which I saw many in northern British
Columbia and southern Alaska, drought that are rampant
in Africa, and expansion of ocean waters.
Media
reports alluding to more frequent and severe hurricanes
and increased volcanic activity being due to the changing
climate is hard to connect and rather daunting to comprehend.
But these episodic phenomena are noticeable. Human suffering
is an obvious consequence of global warming as the Inupiaq
Eskimo of Shishmaref, Alaska are now experiencing. Unlike
the hurricane refugees of Florida, the Inupiaqs have no
place to go as their island melts away into the ocean
because of thawing permafrost, thinning sea ice, and diminishing
coastline.
Global
warming is here to stay and the consequent sea level rise
is certain but then, that is another story.
Editor's
note: Starkville Daily News environmental columnist Dr.
Armando A. de la Cruz is a professor emeritus of Biological
Sciences at Mississippi State University and a certified
senior ecologist.
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Starkville
Daily -
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