Climate Change Is Hell on Alaska's Formerly Frozen Highways
bloomberg.com
bloomberg.com
Yes: because failing to be optimistic about it will become a self-fulfilling prophecy.
Also, you never know what will make people come around. In any process of winning hearts and minds there is always a time before which things seem hopeless. Look at the Sanders and Trump campaigns: when they started, no one believed they could succeed. Bernie came very close, and Trump actually won. (Not that I want to hold up Trump as a model of how to proceed, but just as a data point to show that the unexpected can happen.) Maybe if we get enough "thousand year floods" like just happened in Maryland -- say a dozen of those events in a year or in a month -- people will suddenly wake up and realize the gravity of the situation and find their sense of duty and planetary patriotism.
You also never know what's coming down the technology pipe. This, for example, looks promising: http://phys.org/news/2016-07-breakthrough-solar-cell-capture...
We can still fix this. Don't lose hope.
I think it's beyond our capabilities to "fix" in any meaningful amount of time. However we can still survive. If we remain optimistic and plan to adapt to the coming changes.
We don't know if or how we can deal with the problems coming up. But giving up will surely make things worse.
Further, we have to choose to not give in to excessive alarmism. I am typing as someone who struggles with this every day, since I've been watching climate change closely for quite a few years now. Things are objectively accelerating, so it's easy to give in to panic.
But that might be even worse than giving up.
We have to approach this with focus, an iron will and with an even temperament.
Every scary climate related news item should be practically drowned in data, as hard and objective as we can get it.
Because, these days, nothing puts people 'to sleep' the way unfounded alarmism does. Because people are numb to all of the alarm handles being pulled, all over the place.
It's unclear who exactly they consider fragile states in their report, but I'd certainly put North Korea, India and Pakistan in there as states that have a potential for climate change based conflict. If China feels any real stress they will stop providing rice to North Korea and we could see nukes flying from there.
I personally don't see large scale nuclear war (above 5 nukes flying) happening unless it's Russia or the US that are feeling the pressure. Russia seems to be in the camp of countries that will gain aritable land and the US has a huge amount of resources and plenty of ways to cut back on consumption before it feels the pressure.
If you are suggesting a donimno effect of refugees then the answer is very different: I don't think a large influx of refugees would cause a state to go to war, more likely they would turn them away at the border and we'd see a horrible increase in a humanitarian problems, racism and xenophobia, but then again we seem to have already seen that with the end results of the Arab Spring.
It was successful: http://news.nationalgeographic.com/2016/06/antarctic-ozone-h...
Global warming is a similar problem. More difficult, sure, but essential characteristics are similar. We can do it, because we have solved similar problems in the past.
From what I understand we're on track for an unavoidable > 2C increase in global average temperatures this century. It's also quite likely that we'll be passing the extinction threshold if we don't take extreme measures to avoid it.
It's quite likely another Syria-like crisis could happen anywhere affected by climate change. I'm disconcerted that these issues are not the most pressing issues of our time. There are many valid socio-political issues to consider but extinction seems to be the most important one to me.
Maybe it's because the predictions are far enough into the future that we cannot fathom a solution right now... sort of like how smokers don't make the decision to quit today because it's not going to kill them right now.
[0] https://news.vice.com/article/canadas-ice-roads-are-melting-...
The NOAA has more detailed datasets but it's a bit more work to extract meaningful information.
Also I'm sick of hearing that people believe (or don't) in climate change when it's just factual data.
[1] http://climate.gi.alaska.edu/sites/default/files/ClimateTren...
[2] http://climate.gi.alaska.edu/ClimTrends/Change/TempChange.ht...
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Arctic_methane_emissions
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Methane_clathrate
Depending on how fast we'll see arable land being lost, food supply for 9 billion people in 2040 could be quite problematic
It was a magical, difficult, inspiring and sorrowful experience.
I had never seen a black spruce before (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Picea_mariana), but they were enormous, pristine forests of them.
But a lot of them were NOT pristine. For dozens of miles at a time, most all of the trees would be at an odd sideways angle. (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Drunken_trees) The permafrost they relied on for stability was melting.
More than two years later, I suspect that the countless trees I saw leaning steeply to one side are mostly dead.
On the Dalton highway, once past the Brooks range (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brooks_Range), there were enormously quantities of heavy rain. I didn't realize, at the time, how unusual that was. It turns out that the Alaskan tundra is typically extremely dry, and while I was up there, more than a years worth of (not very cold) rain fell, turning the road into a morass.
My goal was to put my feet into the arctic ocean, and the only way to do that is to first get to Dead Horse, Alaska (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Deadhorse,_Alaska). The 'town limits' are several miles from the ocean, and it's rigorously patrolled private land in between, controlled by various oil companies.
They typically offer tours, but I arrived a bit too early, so I was thinking about hiking a few miles up the Sag River (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sagavanirktok_River). Fortunately, I happened to talk to an oil worker guy at the gas station, and he said I would not likely survive such a hike. Polar bears, he said, had been getting extremely aggressive over the past few years. They were starving.
At that moment, I felt a unique feeling, that few people experience these days. In my four decades living, I've been in a couple of life or death circumstances. But it wasn't quite like that.
The idea that I had nearly found myself in a situation where I might have been hunted by an enormous, hungry animal. A creature who rightly considered me food, and little else. It was a curious feeling!
Fortunately, the tours started the next day, and I took a bus through the vast oil infrastructure, to a specific spot where tourists got to interact with the arctic ocean.
It was cold, gray and sleeting. The ocean almost seemed like a very large lake, with pretty small waves. The ice had melted early that year, again, and so was not visible from shore.
Delicious, delicious externalized cost. It's time for a carbon tax.
But go over to Bloomberg news, and they're wondering why the Japanese won't make the tough cultural sacrifices needed to increase immigration, to stave off stagnant GDP caused by declining population and the accompanying demographics. (I get the workers to non-workers issues in play. Even with that, I believe it is telling, which solutions are put forth. Increase immigration. Not, decrease consumption.)
Seriously, our roads are sinking. Record temperatures. Record droughts. Record greenhouse gasses. But how many times were "jobs" talked about at the DNC and RNC? "Global warming"?
We, are so, f-cked.
Either way, it would be far cheaper to switch our energy production to renewables, then to geo-engineer on a planet scale. We aren't doing that in any meaningful way.
Instead we pat ourselves on the back for reducing US coal energy generation to 37%. Never mind that this entire reduction comes from burning natural gas...
It's still a huge improvement, cutting CO2 output by half and eliminating other byproducts.
Yes, there has been GDP growth since then, which is great... But the atmosphere doesn't care about GDP. What it needs are reductions.
Homes aren't the only thing destroyed by rising sealevels. Arable land that is under saltwater is a lot less arable.
A very large share of arable land is at a low elevation above sea level along waterways; land distance from the coast doesn't control the effect of sea-level rise.
> If you flood, say, all of China's, America's, and Europe's coastlines, nobody will have to go hungry.
Well, except that its impossible geographically to do that without also flooding inland arable areas. Flooding America's coastline also means flooding (among other prime agricultural areas) much of California's Central Valley.
A good chunk of arable land and aquifers will be affected by rising sea levels as well.
Really, our only hope is somehow all that land that is too cold to farm now...becomes more practical to farm. :/
www.rollingstone.com/politics/news/james-lovelock-the-prophet-20071101
On the Japan question. No, I think and hope they continue to be uniquely stubborn. Why? Because we are all going to be there (we would have been there if we'd be as strict as Latin American countries are about their own immigration). Japan can lead the way for us and for others on how to deal with this issue (population decline).
Japan is in fact dealing with their issue head on by not importing workers. By not importing workers they are not defraying the issue. They are doing the opposite of dealing with consequences later.
Its only a short-term answer (sure, natural population contraction and population aging means your workforce to total supported population ratio is shrinking, which can delay the need to address the retooling society to deal with lower labor-hours:population requirements, but it only delays the need, and eventually creates other problems.)
People are still clamorimg to get into the US, and fighting tooth and nail to stay here.
You are the first person I've read that considers not importing workers a solution, rather than a symptom of cultural insularity that threatens to bring down their economy through the burden of an aging population.
Japan facing this issue we will all face is good for them and for us as their solutions will pave the way for other countries which will follow (much of western Europe and east Asia).
That's a popular idea, but it's false: http://www.politifact.com/virginia/statements/2016/apr/18/do...
But that's exactly my question. Why is importing workers "defraying the issue" when that same tactic works for the US?
Why isn't immigration a valid solution to population decline? This seems like a classic paean to the old white country to me.
Immigration in Latin America is actually not very restrictive. Organized crime (from anywhere in the world) can come and go as it pleases in the region. Whatever you may have read on right-wing media, illegal immigration is rampant in Latin America.
The irony of some Americans complaining about Latinos now is rich. You didn't care much about them when the US govt was promoting dictators and doing everything it could to undermine the democratic will in the region (predominantly left wing in response to the incredible levels of legacy inequality) and why would you? It made many of your companies super rich which in turn provided you with nice, cushy jobs managing your "banana republic" natural resources. The local population though was saddled with no voice and (usually) murderous psychopaths as their "leaders". As a result they migrated in droves to the US, the richest nation on earth that also happened to be the closest. And now you complain. It would be funny if it wasn't racist too.
But anyway, the response is more about Japan. The long term answer is not the importation of workers, but finding a solution to having a viable economy with a declining population and aging population. It's in our interest that they find real solutions to a problem we will all face, rather than stave off the issue a bit with labor imports.
United Fruit != Many companies. They were in a few counties. They had bad influence, but it was one limited industry making a family rich... The main problem wasn't US companies but rather a very backward uneducated population. Those that put effort into education, Chile, Costa Rica, Panama. Uruguey are doing well. Americans on the other hand did not muck around in Mexico as they did Chile or Guatemala, and see where they are with their nationalism. Who is more racist, the Mexican government and how they dont provide resources for their majority mestizos or Americans, I bet Mexicans get a better deal from the US than they do their own gov't, else they'd enjoy what "Mexico es para Mexicanos" has to offer them rather than emigrate to a foreign land apparently full of racists.
The US isn't full of racists but you clearly are racist. Can't say I'm surprised since I could smell it in your first comment.
It may surprise you but Latin America had its share of intellectual leaders, many of which had to flee their own countries because of the brutal dictatorships propped up by the US govt. The ones who didn't were simply "disappeared". It's very convenient that you only think of United Fruit as the only beneficiary of subservient local dictatorships, it betrays a lack of knowledge about how neocolonialism (or even neoliberalism) works. Either that or you just did a quick "banana republic" google search and completely ignore that the term can be used independently of the United Fruit case. Which, again, betrays an ignorance about the whole subject.
You forget most of their intellectuals come from their elite families, it's not like the average person there has much of a chance in the elite circles.
Pointing out the poor educational infrastructure as well as a culture which does not make it a priority is not being racist.
Third world aid has a similar problem. The more wealthy people become, the more they eat meat and pollute.
Cases like Sweden where more than 90% of third world immigrants stay unemployed are likely the worst of all.
Do you have a source to back this claim?
After one year, more than 99% are unemployed http://www.svt.se/nyheter/inrikes/162-000-kom-till-sverige-5...
More than half of the unemployed in Sweden are immigrants http://www.svt.se/nyheter/inrikes/nu-ar-fler-an-halften-av-d...
I'm honestly baffled at the endless optimism and belief of others in our ability to innovate and disrupt out of this crisis, whether it be technological advances or some market solution.
Some people even go so far as to suggest that we'll be moving beyond this planet in the next 100 years and all resource problems will be solved. It's hard to reply to them without sounding snarky, but I can't help but wonder in what circumstances those people were raised with that line of thinking. They just sound completely ignorant of both history and basic physics when they make those statements.
At least there won't be an ice age, which, according to the timeline, should happen soonish (on geological timescales). An ice age would be very problematic too, and we've averted that easily.
There is growing agreement that what we are facing is going to happen very quickly, even by human standards.
The studies I found all used lake sediments in Irish lakes, so it's somewhat local and not conclusive yet imho. Still, it seems to be a surprisingly fast change in the data. (I was surprised; I didn't know.)
Do you have a source for your point? It looks like a more extensive literature review is needed to answer this question since the answer is not on the surface. Or my google-fu is just weak today.
On the other hand I also found research stating that the next glacial period might be a few 10,000 years off, so there's that.
[1] https://www.newscientist.com/article/mg20427344-800-mini-ice...
Be the change you want to see in the world. If you're worried about climate change and you're not vegan, you need to realize you're contributing to one of the largest causes of biodiversity loss and greenhouse gas emissions on the planet. Consider adopting pets or children instead of breeding them into this world. If you're an activist, fight for local political change to bring sound environmental policy to your community and work to expand to surrounding regions. If you're an engineer or scientist, don't forget that you have the key to making this world a better place (and no global warming denier can take that from you). Finally, I believe Tesla sets a good precedent for manifesting these sorts of ambitious ideas within a system of free market capitalism.
You say we are so fucked, but I'm not so quick to agree. I'm not going to say I'm a total optimist, but I think the potential exists, within our lifetime, for weird and exciting technologies that could allow us to solve these problems in ways we could have never imagined. As long as CERN doesn't destroy all life as we know it, I think we're good.
I honestly thought I'd gotten away from all that when I stopped reading Slashdot. Now it seems to be infesting here too.
I await the inevitable downvotes.
Example:
>Winter frost is extremely hard on the roads. Do not be surprised to see deep fissures across the highway.
http://www.dangerousroads.org/north-america/canada/747-alask...
So when the author says:
>Scientists say they’re the crystal-clear manifestation that permafrost -- slabs of ice and sediment just beneath the Earth’s surface in colder climes -- is thawing as global temperatures keep rising.
I become extremely skeptical. This is the danger of lazy journalism and ultimately lazy readers confirmation bias.
But given an increase of that magnitude, I find it very hard to blame for the kinds of problems being described here. 1F to 2F is well within the normal range of variation, and so if the roadways are suffering from it, it must be that the roads weren't properly designed for the expected variations to begin with.
And the predictions are consistently outpaced by reality.
I can't revise or delete my comment on this device, or I would. My bad.
Meanwhile, in 2015, the world's governments have agreed to cap warming to 2.0 C by 2100... But won't take any action today. Why do I have the feeling that we will completely miss that target?
It's this kind of stuff that I'm arguing about. First, there's a wide range of predictions, and up until a decade ago, the measurements were middle of the road across them - far from "ALL predicitons".
Then came the "pause". For over a decade, the warming seemed to pause. Notice I emphasize "seemed". The observed atmospheric temperature barely moved at all, it was way below ALL predictions. [1]
I'm not denying, I'm not claiming that the "pause" disproves the theory. We know that there were other phenomena occurring, like oceans acting as a buffer. But the fact remains that observed temperatures deviated significantly below predictions for a protracted period of time.
When people come along and make claims like we are still outpacing all predictions, they make it easy for deniers to single out these exaggerations and pretend like their inaccuracy disproves the whole idea. By giving the deniers an easy strawman to argue against, you're creating an obstacle to real progress on the problem.
[1] "Scientists who study climate change and skeptics of human-caused global warming can agree on at least this: Global temperatures haven't risen nearly as much this century as model projections say they should have." -- https://www.wunderground.com/news/no-hiatus-pause-global-war...
Of course, if you read on, you'll find proposed explanations for the phenomenon. But as far as atmospheric measurements go, it's absolutely false that things have been worse than predicted, and downright absurd to claim that things have been worse than "all" (i.e., even the most pessimistic) predictions.
There are certainly apocalyptic models that have called for more warming then what we've seen. We aren't using them to set policy - we are using models that have been underestimating the impact of warming.
So yes, the road was not engineered with these conditions in mind, but building a road on a swamp is not easy to do, even if engineered correctly.
Barely mentioned in the article, the Trans-Alaska Pipeline was built with cooling pipes to keep the ground it is built on cold. [1][2]
1. http://dtic.mil/dtic/tr/fulltext/u2/a073597.pdf [pdf]
2. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Construction_of_the_Trans-Alas...
The Tok Cutoff is particularly bad these days
Imagine how much energy is needed to increase the temperature of a glass of water by just 1C. Then, a swimming pool. Finally, a planet.
Probably someone has an article that is a lot more exact and involves a lot more statistics...
This page has some graphs of ground temps the last 100 years:
http://www.pmel.noaa.gov/arctic-zone/detect/land-permafrost....
They are for areas north of the highway, but it shows temps in 1950 higher than they are today. The text also mentions that the ground has cooled slightly in the recent 20 years.
Others have pointed out that avg(Alaska, Summer) != avg(World, All Year)
Considering that the road has been there for seventy-years, I'd argue that it was designed just fine. I mean, yeesh, who am I going to pick for my SME on road construction, the anonymous dude/dudess on a forum devoted to work that will never involve a shovel or leave a callous on your finger, or the U. S. Army Corps of friggin' Engineers who have built roads in places you or I wouldn't survive more than a day or two?
But all appeals to authority aside, let's assume for the moment that the road was built to account for a variation in temps. Problem is, that variation window moved by a few degrees. You get that, right? That the average temp was (just making up #s) 28F +/- 2F and now it's 30F +/- 2F? With my made up numbers, the road never reached the freezing (EDIT: melting, actually) point even with variation. Now it does.
Now, the average temperature is just above freezing or close enough to it that the heating effect of the asphalt pushes the local average temperature above freezing. This means that deep layers are now thawing for the first time in thousands of years; they will stabilize eventually, but in the meantime they're going to be near impossible to build roads on. And the thaw line continues to march north, year by year.