The Arctic I.Cc.E. Project

The Future Is Now

A new study on the future the Arctic and the tundra was released this week, published in the Journal of Climate and sponsored by none other than the U.S. Energy Department.

The research predicts that the Arctic tundra will be "all but wiped out by 2100." They also predict that by the end of this century, the Arctic will be 25 degrees Fahrenheit warmer than it is now.  And they base these predictions on climate simulations that assume an annual rise in atmospheric CO2 concentrations that are lower than the current .50 percent.

What confuses me about this report, which is authored by Dr. Kenneth Caldiera with the Carnegie Institute for Global Ecology and Dr.  Bala Govindasamy of the DOE's Livermore Labs, is that they say it could be 30 years before "the climate and landscape change caused by human inaction is emissions is evident."

Huh?  Perhaps we need to define what we mean by the word "evident".

The dramatic increase of glacial melt in Greenland, the loss of summer sea ice around the Arctic, the shift of many fish and animal species several hundred miles north of their traditional spawning and feeding zones, the shorter winters, shifts in currents and ice patterns, melting permafrost, damage to homes, islands and villages... What is that if not evidence of climate change?  And you'll notice I didn't even mention the steady increase of Category 4 and 5 hurricanes over the past 25 years. I'm still giving that trend the benefit of the climate change doubt.

But of the Arctic, there is no doubt.  As I've noted in this blog repeatedly, I'm no scientist. My views are based entirely on what I've seen and experienced in person, as well as on what the Inuit are saying.  That leads me to agree that the tunrda will be gone by the time my step-daughter is a grandmother, maybe even sooner.  It also leads me to believe that we've already passed the point of no return, that the progressing damage is irreversible. 

I'd like to humbly suggest (well, maybe humbly is an overstatement) to the authors of this otherwise great study, that they reconsider their conclusion about when we'll start to see evidence. It won't be 30 years from now. We're already surrounded by it today.

Thanks to the WWF

It's been almost a month since my last entry.  One reason I've been delinquent about writing is that I've been in Tokyo speaking at a World Wildlife Fund climate change "witness" conference.  Instead of scientists, policy experts and officials, the WWF's climate change witness program relies on the observations of every day folk for information about how warming is affecting lives and environments.

The conference was a truly humbling experience.  And I'm not easily humbled.  I was one of three speakers.  The other two were from Nepal and Fiji. For me, the impact of climate change is sporadic. I feel and see it when I'm in the Arctic. But Norbu and Penina, the witnesses from Nepal and Fiji, live with it every day and they are even seeing people die from it.

Norbu Sherpa lives in the high elevation region of Nepal.  He was a Buddist monk before an environmental disaster forced him to relinquish the priesthood and become a climbing guide.  Climate change is melting the Himalayan glaciers at an alarming rate.  In fact, they are melting so fast that as they retreat, the melt water is captured as lakes, held back by fragile moraines of gravel and rock. A few years ago one of those moraines burst. The village and valley in which Norbu and his family lived was flooded and several of his family members were killed. He became a mountain guide to support the survivors.

Several thousand miles away, Penina Moce struggles with equally heart-rending consequences from climate change.  She is one of 500 people living on a remote Fijian island. What little electricity they have for light bulbs comes from a generator.  They just got telephone last year.  (Note that I said "telephone", not "telephones".) And their only source of fresh water -- for drinking, bathing and subsistance gardening -- comes from the rain.  Unfortunately, there isn't much of that these days.  The climate in Penina's part of the south Pacific is drying up.  The coral that used to protect it from typhoons is bleaching and dying. There isn't enough water to irrigate the meager vegetables that, along with fish, sustain the islanders.   Fiji is a poor country and can't afford to provide the residents with a desalination plant that would allow them to survive on what used to be an island paradise. Penina's ancestors have lived on the island as far back as their oral history goes. It's unclear how much longer Penina and her family can continue to live on the island. But when they do leave, hundreds of years of family history will come to an end.

My remarks were about the impact of climate change in the Arctic, about the muskox and reindeer that died of starvation this spring in the Thule region of Greenland, about the grizzly bears being seen for the first time in memory in Sachs Harbor, Canada (400 miles north of the Arctic Circle).  I talked about the village of Shishmaref in Alaska that, because of permafrost melt and storm erosion, is being moved to the mainland at a cost of $180 million.  And I told the audience about the thinning ice, the shifting migration patterns of fish and wildlife, the shortened hunting seasons, the thin, wandering polar bear and homes buckling from melting permafrost, the thawing tundra and the positive feedback mechanisms that appear to be accelerating it all.

The conference confirmed what I already knew: For the most vulnerable people on earth, those who still manage to live by subsistence, climate change isn't a theory, debate or discussion. It's a reality.  A living, breathing, dying reality.

US Bush versus Arctic Shrub

Several years ago I took a picture of a mature alder tree in central Greenland. It was six inches tall.

That's normal.  Here's what's not.  A just-released American Geophysical Union (AGU) study shows that more species of plant life are growing in the Arctic and all the plants, new and native, are growing bigger.

If polar palm trees sound like a good idea to you, you might want to reconsider a career in ecology.  Or any other branch of science.  Many of the new plants not only crowd out the old plants, they also contribute to albedo.

No, albedo is not a botanical sex drive.  It's a heat feedback loop.  It works like this.  Snow and ice reflect light and heat.  When snow and ice melt, soil and plants are exposed. Exposed soil and plants absorb heat.  And the more they absorb, the more they grow. And so on and so forth.  Albedo is one of the reasons scientists believe climate change may actually be accelerating in the Arctic. The AGU research reinforces that fear.

Their study examined a variety of terrain, from forests to tundra.  It found that snow and ice in places where shrubs were exposed began melting several weeks earlier than completely snow-covered areas.  They predict that if this trend continues, winter heating in tundra areas could increase up to 70 percent by the middle of this century.

Which brings me to some news of another type of bush... George. A number of prominent scientists, including Kerry Emanuel of MIT, have issued research over the past few months, building on the already overwhelming body of evidence showing that climate change exists and is leading to countless consequences, including more destructive hurricanes.  The head of President Bush's Office of Science and Technology Policy, John Marburger was asked whether the Administration would reconsider it's climate UN-changed views as a result of this new information.  His response: "I don't think it requires any particular change in the policy respects of this administration."

In fact, Marburger seemed rather proud of his boss's determination not to let scientific evidence affect his thinking.  "The various advocates for different ways of responding to climate change sieze on every new scientific paper to bolster their point of view," Marburger said. "We try to avoid that right here."

I seem to recall the tobacco industry following a similar strategy back in the 60's and 70's.

Too Much of A Good Thing

When the IPCC issued its landmark climate change report last year, it listed a few benefits that might result from arise from global warming.  It suggested that the Northwest Passage could become navigable year-round and that plants -- those hungry absorbers of carbon dioxide -- would flourish if there were more of the gas to consume.

Now comes a new study that debunks that speculation. Dr. Inez Fung of UC-Berkley, one of the world's leading climate scientists, says her work shows that there is a limit to the amount of CO2 plants can handle.  As drought and heat rise, the ability of plants to absorb carbon dioxide declines until they reach saturation and stop absorbing it at all.  Oceans -- the other major CO2 sink -- can also apparently reach a point of no return. Fung's work suggests that like gluttons at a Thanksgiving dinner, even the voracious oceans can reach a point where they simply cannot eat another bite.

"We're saying 'hold on a second- plants may not be happier in a warmer and drier world,'" Fung told Scotland's Sunday Herald newspaper.  Her model indicates that within 45 years the planet could reach a point where it can no longer keep up with the amount of CO2 being produced and at a minimum planetary temperatures will increase 1.4 degrees. That's Celsius.

"The earth is entering a climate space we've never seen before," Fung says.  "We don't know what the threshold is.  You might think that a one or two degree increase is not all that much, but if we're on the threshold, it could make a big difference."

Fung's research, which points to cummulative planetary damage over the past 30-40 years, was echoed by a separate piece of science published in Nature magazine last week.  A US-led team of geologists say that the collapse of the Larsen B iceshelf in Antarctica in 2002 is unprecedented in the past 11,000 years and was probably triggered by climate disruption. 

The scientists says that the Larsen B - aka the LIS-B - has been intact since the begining of the Holocene, the period which began at the end of the last ice age 11,000 years ago.   Although it has thinned gradually over the millennia, it was the dramatic warming that has occured over the past 30-40 years that caused it to calve off the continent.  The 3,250 square km shelf, which was 220 meters thick, has since broken into smaller icebergs.

The Antarctic Penninsula, like the Arctic, is considered a global warming hot spot where temperatures have climbed by about 2 degrees Celsius over the past century. In the past few years alone, the frozen continent has lost ice shelves totalling more than 12,500 square kilometers -- roughly four times the area of Luxembourg. Most of the planet's fresh water is locked up in Antarctica.

You Name It

Earlier this week the Sunday Times of London ran an article titled, "Britain Faces Big Chill as Ocean Current Slows".  The gist of the story is that scientists have found evidence that the Gulf Stream is slowing, apparently the result of global warming.  If the trend continues and that massive Atlantic current stops circulating warm water, Europe could cool down.  So much so that the English phrase "stiff upper lip" could take on a whole new meaning. Great Britain is, after all, on the same latitude as Siberia.

The irony is that global warming could result in some cooling. 

And there's the rub-a-dub-dub.  In my less-than-humble opinion, the name of the problem -- global warming -- is part of the problem. (I should have a little credibility in this area.  I've never passed myself off as a scientist.  But I am an executive with an international communications firm.  Words are what I do.) Most people aren't experiencing the phenomenon as warming.  In temperate regions -- like my home of Washington, D.C. -- they aren't experiencing the phenomenon at all. We stared out our windows last winter and the weather looked pretty much like it did when Bing Crosby first crooned "White Christmas" over 50 years ago. 

The point is that the term global warming begs the question "Where's the heat?" Global warming was coined by scientists in the early 80s when the first observed patterns involved rising temperatures.  Now that scientists are discovering a widening mosaic of evidence, the moniker is inadequate. 

It's also misleading.  It's like glancing about frantically for an ferocious Rottweiller after reading a "Beware of Dog" yard sign, oblivious to the crazy homeowner sitting on a front porch rocker, focusing the crosshairs of his loaded shotgun on your forehead. It has directed the attention of millions to something they can't see, feel or perceive.  Worse, it has led millions of Americans to look around and shrug, assuming that "global warming" is another in a continuing series of environmental the-sky-is-falling scare fests.  They file it under "Alar".

So here's what I propose: Let's give the problem a new name. Climate change.  Climate mutation. Weather distortion.  Atmospheric disruption. I don't care, as long as it turns heads away from thermometers and towards a more immediate, observable -- believable -- truth.

And You Wondered Why Dollar Bills Are Green

Time was when folks on Wall Street thought "Greenhouse Gases" was the name of a heavy metal band.  Fortunately, times change. Believe it or not, the financial sector is starting to warm to the subject of climate change.  Chief Operating Officers are learning that CO2 is not an acronym for their title and stock analysts are taking stock of emissions. Their motives may not be altruistic, but what the hell.  The results are the same.

The reason behind this burgeoning ecological interest among bean-counters is a growing realization that, thanks to new laws and public policies, damage to the environment translates into damage to profits and earnings.

Exhibit #1.  Financial professionals from around the world will gather in London on May 25th for a conference on the relationship between balance sheets and the balance of nature. Investor Relations (IR) Magazine, says it is sponsoring the event "in response to the growing momentum building within the investment community in favor of taking a dollar and cents approach to key environmental issues."  The gathering, titled "Climate of Change: Companies, Carbon and the Bottom Line," is one of the first conferences ever held in which investors, investment fund managers, analysts and corporations are brought together from around the world to learn about chilling effect global warming can have on corporate earnings.

Exhibit #2.  According to Institutional Shareholder Services (ISS), the country's leading source of corporate governance information, environmentally-concerned shareholders offered a record number of pro-earth proposals in 2004 and that number is expected to increase during the 2005 proxy season that get under way this month.  In all, 34 energy and environment-related resolutions appeared on ballots last year, with nine firms asked to explain their response to rising legal, political and public pressure to reduce GHG emissions.  In several cases investors wanted executive compensation tied to performance on specific social issues.  And according to ISS, at a few companies, environmental "proponents crafted language to highlight the business case for a proactive approach to emissions and climate change."

Exhibit #3.  A 2004 study by Robert Monks, Anthony Miller and Jacqueline Cook, entitled "Shareholder Activism on Environmental Issues", found that "resolutions targeted at climate change are particularly well supported" by shareholders at Exxon Mobile, a firm that, until recently, thought that it "wouldn't be in the best interests of the company to implement certain policies prior to more research on the topic." (I seem to recall the tobacco industry making similar arguments in the 60's, 70's and 80's.) Anyway, footdraggers at the company were put on notice last year when shareholders handed management a resolution asking for an explanation of Exxon Mobile's approach to climate science.

But perhaps the most telling finding from the Monks, Miller and Cook study is that most of the environmental resolutions they researched "draw a connection between environmental risk and risk to shareholder value."  In other words, investors are starting to realize that protecting the environment is good business.  Or more accurately, pollution doesn't pay like it used to.

And finally, Exhibit #4.  While "environmental risk management" as it's called in the MBA text books, is still an emerging trend, it's likely to grow rapidly in the next few years.  For one thing, there's the new Kyoto Protocol.  It sets limitations on the emissions that signatory nations can produce and has given rise to the ETS, an emissions trading market in which polluting companies can buy credits from clean ones.  Then there are the two new financial disclosure rules, the Enhanced Analytics Initiative, which encourages greater disclosure of intangibles - that's environmental damage to us mere mortals - by institutions that sell securities and the Carbon Disclosure Project, which, according to IR Magazine, "brings together more than 140 major investment institutions to demand greater environmental disclosure from the world's largest companies."

The number of shareholders who recognize that it pays to care for the environment is small but growing. It's a trend you don't have to be an investor to profit from.

On Thin Ice

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.

Carbon Dioxide: What a Gas!

Wednesday, February 16 is a big day in the history of global warming.  That's when the 1997 Kyoto Protocol goes into effect, setting binding targets to cut greenhouse gas emissions (GHG)5.2 percent by 2012 ...seven short years from now. 

39 countries have shown moral leadership by signing on to the Protocol.  The U.S., which produces 25% of the world's GHG emissions, is not one of them.

So how do you force 39 bickering countries to comply with the emissions reduction goal?  The Kyoto Protocol will attempt that feat by using one big friggin' carrot and a little tiny stick.

The carrot comes in the form of emissions trading. The new Emissions Trading Scheme (ETS), was born on January 1st of this year.  The ETS deals in greenhouse gases, a noxious commodity that makes even pork bellies look appetizing. In spite of that, trading has been brisk. 5 million tonnes of carbon dioxide were bought and sold in the first month alone.

Here's how the ETS works.  Each participating country looks at its carbon dioxide output and sets a tough but achievable reduction target.  Countries reach their targets by limiting the allowable emissions produced by companies and other institutions within their borders.  So if, say, a German power plant wants to spew more than its limit, it will have to buy emission allowances to compensate for the offense. Conversely, companies or institutions that cut their emissions below the limit can sell spare carbon dioxide allowances. You know.  Make money.

The goal is to make emissions reduction financially attractive.  This is where the little Kyoto stick -- actually, it's more like a twig -- comes in. Starting in April of next year, any company that exceeds its emission limit will be fined.  If you call 40 Euros per tonne a fine. 

The new "carbon market" isn't perfect. In fact, some worry it could collapse under the weight of its imperfections.  The plan ignores 54% of carbon dioxide emissions in Europe, produced by homes, cars and other forms of transportation because so far, no one has figured out a workable, cost-effective way to include them.

And then there's the bickering that goes on between many Kyoto members.  Several countries, like Poland and Greece, don't have approved emissions caps yet. Others have limits so weak that they are almost meaningless.  For most, placing blame is far easier than placing limits.

Time will tell whether these shortcomings are terminal or simply endemic to multi-national start-up organizations.  After all, it took the EU a few years to get it's act together. And there's nothing smooth about the way the U.N. works, even today.  I'd wager that the Kyoto members will gradually learn to minimize their collective negatives, especially if prominent companies start profiting from emissions reduction. A growing number of firms, like BP, are already building successful brand identities around environmental responsibility.  Now maybe they can build successful bottom lines as well.

I hope they do. It's the only way the Bush Administration would allow the U.S. to join the unruly Kyoto pack.  Even then George W. Bush isn't likely to accept being a carbon copy of the other Kyoto members. It doesn't take much imagination to picture him elbowing his way to the front of the emissions trading line, taking credit for the whole idea (in fact, carbon trading is largely an American invention) and demanding a privileged place on the trading floor.  Yep. Cause there's only one thing a Texas Republican respects more than oil. That'd be money.

Upcoming Climate Change News and Meetings

Depends on What You Mean by "Dangerous"

This coming week, the Hadley Centre for Climate Change in England, will host an international conference on the extent to which the climate has to change before it becomes dangerous.  The conference will explore the inability of trees to absorb any more carbon dioxide, the potential for release of vast amounts of methane from our oceans, alternations to the Gulf Stream, the melting of the Greenland Ice Sheet and so on.

According to the Centre, "Once a dangerous level of change - say in terms of global temperature rise - has been decided, we then have to estimate what this implies for the level at which we would need to stabilize greenhouse gas concentrations in the atmosphere, and - in turn - how this level would restrict allowable emissions from human activities."

Hard copies of a report on this subject will be available as of Monday, January 31; PDF copies are now available from the Hadley Centre.

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Going From Local to Global

Should the melting Arctic be too much for you, think about heading to Honolulu from February 8-11. That's when the Chapman Conference on Tropical-Extratropical Climatic Teleconnections will be held.  The multidisciplinary conference is designed to promote communication between "paleoclimatologists, paleooceanographers, and climate dynamicists on questions of climate change processes at different latitudes and time scales."  In other words, it will attempt to identify the atmospheric, oceanic and biogeochemical pathways that can translate local changes into global ones, how these processes explain rapid climate change and what the future is likely to bring.  For more information, you can contact the American Geophysical Union (AGU); 2000 Florida Avenue N.W. Washington , DC 20009-1277 USA ; tel: +1-202-462-6900 or 800-966-2481; fax: +1-202-328-0566; e-mail: meetinginfo@agu.org ; www.agu.org/meetings/cc05ecall.html

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Out of Africa

The United Nations is holding a Workshop on Climate Variability over Africa in Alexandria, Egypt from March 6-17th.  "The Workshop is intended to review recent progress in understanding climate variability and trends (of both natural and anthropogenic origin) over Africa, and their impact on the hydrological resources of the continent. It is open to young researchers and PhD students working in the areas of Atmospheric Physics and Dynamics, Climatology and Oceanography, from countries in Africa that are members of the United Nations, UNESCO, or IAEA." For more information contact Azhraf Zakey email: zakey@chem.gu.se; agenda.ictp.trieste.it/ agenda/current/fullAgenda.php?ida=a04222

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Go Fish

This is may be one of the most important meetings of the year.  It's a workshop on the "Economic Effects of Climate Change on Fisheries", being held in Bergen, Norway, June 20-21.  To anyone who thought global warming was just so much scientific hucksterism or that limiting the emission of greenhouse gases would damage the economy, this conference could be like a bucket of cold water (actually, thanks to temperature change, it'd probably be more like luke warm).  The point is that in the long run, the cost of preventing global warming may have been far smaller than the price of the damage.  Those who wish to attend, and to submit abstracts of papers, should contact Rögnvaldur Hannesson, rognvaldur.hannesson@nhh.no, before 1 May 2005. SNF, Breiviksveien 40, N-5045 Bergen. Tel: +47 55 95 95 00, Fax: +47 55 95 94 39, www.snf.no

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The Big Kahuna

Everybody who is any body in the study of global warming will participate in the 16th International Global Warming Conference in New York City between April 19th and the 21st .  This mother-of-all-global warming gatherings will visit just about every aspect of the topic, from climate change policy and ocean warming, to the impact on human health and clean energy technology.  For more information, you can contact Sinyan Shen at: gw16@globalwarming.net

Still Skeptical?

Taken individually, the changes wrought by global warming can be dismissed relatively easily.  Sure, things change, tundra is replaced with forests in a few areas, but life goes on.  To those of us living in a temperate zone, the change is unperceptible and insignificant, the stuff of back-page newspaper stories. 

But go north about 30 degrees latitude, piece the fragments of data together and what you get isn't evolution, it's revolution.  Maps of the Arctic are being transformed from white to green almost overnight. Just look at satellite images of the North Pole in 2002 and again in 2004.  Even a naked, untrained eye can see the difference in ice coverage. And that's just in two years.

But, hey, don't take it from me. Judge for yourself. 

Here are a just a few of the ways climate change is altering -- erradicating -- the Arctic.  These factoids were drawn from research conducted by the Arctic Council, a multi-national organization and just one of the many groups investigating global warming.  The following items represent a tiny fraction, a crumb off the vast pie of climate change data that currently exists.

• The three warmest years on record have all occurred since 1998; 19 of the warmest 20 since 1980.
• In 1970, winter travel was possible on the Alaskan tundra, over permafrost and hard-packed snow, 230 days-- seven to eight months -- a year.  By 2000, Alaskans could only travel over winter tundra for 100 days of the year.  That's just over three months.
• Arctic temperatures have shot up from an annual average of -.2 degrees Celcius in the 1960's to +.8 degrees today.  By the end of this century the annual average temperature will be +7.0 degrees Celcius.  That's around 45 degrees Fahrenheit.
• Aquaculture, the primary source of income in the Faroe Islands, is expected to plummet from a high of 55 thousand tons in 2003 to 10 thousand tons in next year, a nearly 75% drop in three years.
• Within 2-3 years the Northwest Passage will become navigable year-round and within five years, northern sea route navigation will increase by an estimated 70%.
• It's anticipated that the annual catch of shrimp will drop from 430 thousand tons to 110 thousand tons within the next 15 years.
• The farther north you go, the more pronounced the damage is from global warming.  While the temperature worldwide may only rise a degree or two, at the north Pole and in parts of Siberia it's expected to jump 12 degrees by the end of this century.  That's 12 degrees Celcius.
• Temperate forestation, which currently covers about 45 percent of eastern Siberia, will, within 85 years, cover 90 percent of that land mass.  The tundra will disappear entirely.  So dont' even think about doing a remake of Dr. Zhivago.
• The salinity of the north Atlantic has dropped dramatically since 1967.  This change may account for declines in cod, swordfish, pollock and other stocks.
• Diseases associated with temperate climates, like West Nile Virus in humans and Spruce Beetle in trees, are creeping northward. Spruce Bettle is now a problem on Alaska's Kenai Penninsula and West Nile is being reported throughout eastern Canada.

And then there's my personal favorite, the change in the dates of the Tanana River ice break up.  The Tanana River is in interior Alaska, about an hour south of Fairbanks. For years, residents of the Tanana River town of Nenana have placed a flag on the river ice in winter.  The flag is attached to a rope which is secured to a clock on the riverbank. Every spring, people from throughout Alaska (and these days throughout the world) bet on the exact day, hour and minute that the ice will break up, flip the flag and stop the clock. It's called the Nenana Ice Classic (http://www.nenanaakiceclassic.com/). The person or persons who come the closest win the ante.  Last year the take was $301,000.

For those of you inclined to bet in this year's Ice Classic, here's a clue. In 1964, the Tanana River broke up May 20th, the 140th day of the year. In 1998, the ice also broke on the 20th.  April 20th.  The earliest date on record.