A fascinating article about how climate change is having really huge impacts on native Eskimo communities highlights how one village is moving location some nine miles to an island where the melting permafrost will not have quite the same effect that it is having on their current village's location.
Some fascinating insights into subsistence living in one of the planet's harshest, and, it seems, rapidly changing, environments. Well worth a read.
n.b. Just love the quote about Sarah Palin - "Alaska's new lipstick-wearing pitbull megastar, Sarah Palin, is intellectually challenged when it comes to global warming. [Ouch!!] Soon after she was thrown into the spotlight as John McCain's presidential running mate she said: 'A changing environment will affect Alaska more than any other state, because of our location. I'm not one, though, who would attribute it to being man-made.' A few days later she tried to retract her statement, but her sentiments as a global-warming denier were crystal clear."
4 comments:
I tend to keep the politics over on El Burro Hotay now.
A very long article there.
I guess if it is about global war... climate change and the Eskimos of Alaska, in the Observer, it would be hard not to refer to Mrs. Palin.
Whatever my personal feelings about the lady and her abilities, simply from what is quoted here in isolation I do note a few things:
'A changing environment will affect Alaska more than any other state, because of our location.'
With which I cannot disagree.
I'm not one, though, who would attribute it to being man-made.'
Seems a fair, if possibly yet to be proven misguided view. As it happens, I guess I'd be erring on her side in this, as I always apend 'Probably man-worsened negative...' to any CC reference I get lured into as I am unprepared to concede, yet, that ALL this is down to 'man'.
A few days later she tried to retract her statement,
If true, in those terms, I think less of her for that. But, ah, politics, eh?
...but her sentiments as a global-warming denier were crystal clear."
If it is on what I read above I guess that makes me one, too. So I am afraid this all comes across as the very worse 'if you are not with us to the nth degree, you are against us, and must be villified at every opportunity because you are wrong and we are right.'
So, sorry, that does not get me too onside. At least in those terms.
As does today's latest polar bear 'story' on the BBC where now it is not just CC that is doing for them, but noise. And they'll rush around in helos, dart 'em and stick 'em in a small cage to prove it. With a queue of 'concerned' journos flying up there to 'share'.
Beyond her lipstick comment, Mrs. Palin's record on oil and other GH gas-producing activities and how her country will use its energy and create its waste vs. the others (there are three other guys, right?) are of more relevance.
I was more amused by the author's description of her as a 'lipstick wearing pitbull megastar'. I should have left the politics (the rest of the quote) out, as, in retrospect, it is pretty obvious that it would raise your hackles somewhat.
I still found the overall article, ignoring the few obvious political stones and arrows, a really interesting read.
Didn't see the piece on polar bears this morning, so am unable to comment. I guess it took the usual BBC slant?
More like a depressing read, truth be told.
And, if left dispassionate, by being factual serves its possible agenda well.
Unlike the BBC story. They even started off with 'Not only are they dying out due to Global Warming, but now..'
I actually have no clue if they are or are not 'dying out', such is the level of mis-information flaying about, but using the term ''Global Warming'and stating it as a fact in this way does tend to agitate the blogosphere. And lord help the message if it turns out they are not and/or because it isn't (by whatever selected timeframe all 'sides' leap on), Lord help any trying to take things step by step.
Link to polar bear story:
Polar bear hearing affected to due global warming?
http://wattsupwiththat.com/2008/09/30/bs-alert-polar-bear-hearing-affected-to-due-global-warming/
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