Yet another sad sign of the times...
Citing a warming climate
and sprawling development, officials with the Iditarod Trail Sled Dog
Race said they were implementing permanent logistical changes that in
recent years have become the norm for the March event.
The ceremonial start for the race in Anchorage, Alaska will go only
11 miles-- seven miles shorter than it usually is--and according to the
Los Angeles Times, will be done on trucked in snow.
The trucking in of the snow is kinda funny if you think about it.
Using a dwindling precious resource to truck in another dwindling
resource, the cause of which is the dwindling resource used to truck in
the dwindling resource.
The race has traditionally started in the city of Willow. "This is
where the race started," said Jon Brautigan, a recreational musher in
an interview Alaskan TV station KTUU. "The Iditarod kind of put this place back on the map. Moving it to Willow kind of takes it back off that map."
Because of lack of snow, the competitive launch—called the
restart—has not taken place in Wasilla since 2002. The following year,
conditions were so dismal along some stretches of the race trail north
of Willow that managers made the unprecedented decision to hold the
restart in Fairbanks, more than 200 miles (320 kilometers) away.
Urban development is the other reason the race's route has being changed.
Wasilla, on the other hand, has seen tremendous development and
growth over the years. Now houses and businesses line the Knik-Goose
Bay Road parallel to the Wasilla race route leading to the checkpoint
in the community of Knik, home of the late Joe Redington Sr., father of
the Iditarod.
<snip>
"No matter what the weather conditions would be, there's a lot of
asphalt and other things that don't mix well with competitive racing,"
he said. "To be around that is stressful for the dogs."
Of course the Iditarod is just a the tip of the iceberg in terms how climate change is affecting Alaska.
Alaska is no longer a frigid land and CBS News said no place says
"baked Alaska" as the Eskimo village of Shishmaref on the state's western coast.
Deborah Williams of Alaska Conservation Solutions told CBS: "I used to bring people to this spot to see the glacier. Now I bring people here to not see the glacier."
The town has been the winter home of Alaska's Inupiat people for
4,000 years, but melting sea ice is raising water levels and destroying
homes and eroding the shoreline by about 10 feet a year.
The village of 600 residents must move or face destruction within 15
years, officials said. But scientists say there are nearly 200 more
villages that must be moved or be destroyed -- and that price tag would
run into the billions of dollars.
Deborah Williams, executive director of the Alaska Conservation Foundation, had this to say about the effect of climate change on Alaska's native populations:
The evidence of global warming in the ''last frontier'' is
widespread. The Yukon River's temperature has recently increased more
than 10 degrees, resulting in diseased salmon: which negatively affects
Alaska Natives throughout the drainage. Spruce and other trees
throughout Alaska are dying at historically high rates due to global
warming-induced insect infestations. Glaciers are melting at
unprecedented rates.
Virtually every aspect of traditional Alaska Native life is impacted. As noted in the recently released Arctic Climate Impact Assessment,
indigenous people report that not only is sea ice declining, its
quality and timing are changing, with important negative repercussions
for marine hunters. Others report that berries are reduced in quality
and quantity. There is widespread concern about caribou habitat
diminishing as larger vegetation moves northward....
Scientists agree that Alaska has warmed more than any other place on
Earth - over four times the global average. This significant,
on-the-ground temperature increase is consistent with previous
climactic predictions. For years, scientists have determined that
global warming would initially be most evident at high latitudes and
increasingly substantial in the mid-latitudes. In essence, Alaska is
the tip of the melting iceberg, or the canary in the coal mine with an
impending heat stroke.
Alaska Natives are the people who rely most on Alaska's ice, seas,
marine mammals and traditional lifestyles, and therefore experience
global warming's adverse impacts most acutely. The polar ice cap's
retreat due to global warming threatens a vast, circumpolar ecosystem
and its polar bears, walruses, seals and whales, while northern Alaska
communities are left increasingly vulnerable to unprecedented
storm-wave erosion. Roads, buildings and other structures are
collapsing as ice-rich permafrost soils liquefy....
Most Americans - including most decision makers - do not understand
the astounding scope, ecological significance, and economic and social
costs being experienced, especially by First Nation people on American
soil, in Alaska, right now due to global warming.
This is not only an ecological issue: it is a human rights issue of tremendous proportions.
