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How global warming will hit British Columbia (series)
Chris Wood, The Tyee
We are proud today to present the first fruits of your generous donations to The Tyee’s Fellowship Funds for Investigative and Solutions-oriented Reporting.
Read Chris Wood’s two articles revealing B.C. communities at serious risk: Fraser River Will Surge over Dikes and The Coming Catastrophe.
Also in the Rough Weather Ahead series
- Fraser River Will Surge over Dikes, Experts Find
- The Coming Catastrophe
- about the Rough Weather Ahead series
Wood’s proposal for a series on how global warming will affect us and what we can do about it was among the four selected by the independent panel of judges to award the fellowships.
(10 Aug 2006)
Greenland’s Ice Cap is Melting at a Frighteningly Fast Rate
David Perlman, San Francisco Chronicle
The vast ice cap that covers Greenland nearly three miles thick is melting faster than ever before on record, and the pace is speeding year by year, according to global climate watchers gathering data from twin satellites that probe the effects of warming on the huge northern island.
The consequence is already evident in a small but ominous rise in sea levels around the world, a pace that is also accelerating, the scientists say.
According to the scientists’ data, Greenland’s ice is melting at a rate three times faster than it was only five years ago. The estimate of the melting trend that has been observed for nearly a decade comes from a University of Texas team monitoring a satellite mission that measures changes in the Earth’s gravity over the entire Greenland ice cap as the ice melts and the water flows down into the Arctic ocean.
“We have only been watching the ice cap melt during a relatively short period,” physicist Jianli Chen said Thursday, “but we are seeing the strongest evidence of it yet, and in the near future the pace of melting will accelerate even more.”
(11 Aug 2006)
In warmer world, even Inuit buy air conditioners
Alister Doyle, Reuters
OSLO – With signs that the world is warming, even Inuit peoples of the far north are ordering air conditioning.
Better known for building igloos during hunts on the polar ice, Inuit in the village of Kuujjuaq in Quebec, Canada, are installing 10 air conditioners for about 25 office workers.
“These are the times when the far north has to have air conditioners now to function,” said Sheila Watt-Cloutier, a leading campaigner for the rights of 155,000 Inuit in Canada, Alaska, Russia and Greenland.
“Our Arctic homes are made to be airtight for the cold and do not ‘breathe’ well in the heat with this warming trend,” she said. Temperatures in Kuujjuaq, home to 2,000 people, hit 88 Fahrenheit in late July.
If the Inuit are feeling the heat, chances are that people further south are sweltering too.
Billion-dollar shifts in lifestyles in rich nations are likely as people adapt to what most scientists say is a warming stoked by use of fossil fuels — affecting demand for everything from soft drinks or foods to architecture and tourism.
(9 Aug 2006)
The original article covers changes in nations around the world.
