Global Warming: Ready For Your Carbon Close-Up?

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Vanishing Ground

Around the world, as ice melts and sea levels rise, indigenous peoples are facing loss of their livelihoods and homelands. For Australia's Torres Strait Islanders, waters rising on their low-lying archipelago may force their relocation and undermine their culture, according to a November 2006 government report. A similar tragedy confronts the island nation of Tuvalu. In the not-so-frozen North, where an Inupiat Eskimo village of Shishmaref clings to melting permafrost on its Alaskan island, violent storms have eaten away as much as 125 feet of shoreline in two days. "Over the past 10 to 15 years, there have been people moving away from the community due to erosion problems and lack of land for development," says Tony Weyiouanna, village transportation planner.

Russian and Scandinavian reindeer herders are facing crisis, too, as a shifting climate's warming and freezing traps lichen, the staple reindeer food, beneath layers of ice. And, as the permafrost melts, "reindeer sink into the ground more, while wolves [which prey on them] can run across the top," says Nancy Maynard, Ph.D., senior research scientist at NASA.

Floods, Fisheries and Power Loss

Almost all of the 300 large glaciers worldwide are shrinking, according to a study published in the October 2006 issue of Geophysical Research Letters. As they melt, flooding increases, but once they are gone, so too will be a critical source of water for the animals and herdsman around Mt. Kenya, farmers on India's Gangetic plain beneath the Himalayas and others who rely on ice melt for water. But that's not all. "The Himalayan glacier melt is increasing the sediment load in the run-off rivers and damaging the hydroelectric power station. Loss of power will have knock-on effects on local human wellbeing, health and safety," such as outages at clinics, notes Lancet study author Tony McMichael, Ph.D.

In the U.S., glaciers in the northern Cascade mountains of Washington state have shrunk by 40 percent, and as this continues floods, like those that took place in Seattle and Skagit valley in November 2006, are expected to increase. Pacific Northwest salmon fisheries may suffer, says Richard Palmer, Ph.D., professor of civil engineering at the University of Washington. "High rainfalls create higher peak flows and wash out eggs left behind by fish. In the late spring and summer the rivers tend to be warmer and dryer than normal, which is bad for fish," Palmer explains. Robert Reich, a lawyer for the Muckleshoot Indian Tribe near Seattle, agrees that "there are substantial concerns about loss of snowpack that will effect the stream flows necessary for fish."

We may think the problems of indigenous peoples living traditional lifestyles are distant from our own, but it's worth bearing in mind, as Eugene Linden shows in The Winds of Change, that long-term changes in the weather have brought down more than one mighty civilization.

Shifting Species, Spreading Diseases

Worldwide, floods directly kill between 3,500 and 7,000 people per year and cause a surge in water- and food-borne illnesses, from cholera to cryptosporidium. Red tides, which lead to seafood poisonings, also appear to be on the rise, as warmer waters favor the growth of phytoplankton, according to a review in the July-September 2006 Annals of Tropical Medicine & Parasitology.

As temperatures shift, animals, insects and plants invade territory inhabited by other species. Chinese mitten crabs have moved north up the warming Pacific Coast, "displacing existing food species, such as snow crab, probably Dungeness, both high-dollar fisheries," says Jesse Dizard, statewide research director in the division of subsistence at Alaska's Department of Fish and Game.

Disease, too, is migrating. Ticks bearing Lyme disease and viral encephalitis have extended their range north in Sweden and are found at higher altitudes in the Czech Republic. As mosquitoes move north and to higher elevations, they bring malaria, dengue fever, yellow fever and West Nile virus. In Kenya, 20 million people are at risk from malaria due to climate change, according to Solomon Nzioka of Kenya's Ministry of Health, quoted in the November 24, 2006, Science. Other diseases whose range will be increased include bilharzia from water snails, leishmaniasis (which attacks the skin and internal organs) from sand flies in South America and the Mediterranean coast, and West African river blindness carried by black flies, according to the Lancet review.

Breathing Hazards

More carbon dioxide may be great for plant growth, but it also means more ragweed and tree pollen—not so great if you suffer from allergies or asthma. Increased small-particulate air pollution from burning fossil fuels, linked to respiratory and cardiovascular disease, may also help allergens penetrate more deeply into the lungs, according to the September 2006 EHP.