Here's a quick free-association test. I'll give you a word and without thinking, blurt out the first thing that comes to your mind. Ok? The word is:
Ice.
Here's what comes to my mind first: ice cubes. Those handy squares of frozen water manufactured by a machine that runs on electricity that, in most instances, is created by burning fossil fuels. (Stay with me here. I'm getting to the point.) Burning fossil fuels produces carbon dioxide, one of the key components of Greenhouse Gas (GHG) and one of the main culprits in global warming.
So the irony is that the ice we create in our freezers is contributing to the demise of natural ice on the planet.
Ok. Cleary the environmental impact of ice-cube making is negligable. I'm a writer, not a scientist and I think this metaphor helps make an important point - Earth's ice is melting and we're the cause.
"Ice Is In Decline Everywhere On the Planet"
The most recent proof of this meltdown was reported yesterday at the Annual Meeting of the American Academy for the Advancement of Science (AAAS). Ruth Curry of the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institute, found that melting ice is changing water cycles. These, in turn, impact ocean currents which, in turn, affect our climate.
According to Curry, "As the Earth warms, its water cycle is changing, being pushed out of kilter." As a result, Greenland's ice cap is starting to melt. Freshwater is already trickling down to the base, making it increasingly unstable. Curry says the potential exists for the ice cap, which is two miles thick in places, to collapse suddenly. As a point of reference,the Greenland ice cap contains enough water to raise the global sea level by 23 feet. That's the approximate height of the tsunami that hit Indonesia and a wide swath of the Indian Ocean on December 26, 2004.
Under the Sea
In fact, one of the world's foremost experts on oceanographic evidence of global warming, Tim Barnett of the Scripps Institute, told the AAAS that if you look to the sea rather than the atmosphere, there is no room for doubt that "the world is getting warmer, people are to blame, and the weather is going to suffer." (Reuters, 2/18/05)
Barnett characterized atmospheric models based on air temperature as "weak" compared to oceanic data. By studying millions of NOAA temperature readings, Barnetts team found that seas are steadily warming, unequivocal evidence of a change that cannot be explained by anything except man made factors. "The debate over whether or not there is a global warming signal is now over," Barnett said. "At least for rational people."
Native Intelligence
What's interesting about Barnett's findings is that they corroborate what Inuit hunters have been saying for years.
Most Inuit live within site of the sea and have learned to read ice better than most people read books. Legendary Barrow Mayor Eben Hopson explained it poetically in 1977 in his welcoming address to the first Inuit Circumpolar Conference. "Our language contains the intricate knowledge of the ice that we have seen no others demonstrate."
That knowledge of the ice has proven to be so accurate and prescient that scientists are increasingly incorporating it into their research. Craig George, of the North Slope Borough's Department of Wildlife Management in Barrow, Alaska, recently co-authored a paper on "Observations on Shorefast Ice in Arctic Alaska " that combines scientific studies with traditional Inuit knowledge to analyze the behavior of sea ice in the Arctic and Chukchi Seas and its impact on the Inupiat culture. The Arctic Climate Impact Assessment, the most comprehensive study of Arctic climate change to date, puts traditional knowledge on equal footing with science. Alaska Natives have created the Alaska Native Knowledge Network with an information-rich web site devoted to the subject ( www.ankn.uaf.edu/IEWW.html). The AAAS has published a document called the "Indigenous Knowledge Handbook" and UNESCO has a similar publication.
This makes a great deal of sense. After all, the first step of the Scientific Method is to observe and describe a phenomenon or group of phenomena. The observations of the Inuit and other Arctic peoples have been so detailed and accurate that they are helping scientists reach the second and third steps in the method, constructing and testing hypotheses.
Which is a long-winded way of saying that years before leading scientists reported it this week, the Inuit knew that the key to unlocking the global warming puzzle is in the sea, under the disappearing ice.