The Arctic is changing
Ann Diskin just sent me a link to a great article by Donella Meadows – Polar Bears and Three-Year-Olds on Thin Ice. It was written nearly five years ago, but I hadn't seen it before, and in a week when the Inuit Circumpolar Conference sued the US government, saying its climate change policies violate human rights, it's more pertinent than ever.
In 1997 and 1998 [Russian biologist] Melnikov returned to the Beaufort Sea and found most of the plankton species, many named by him (and for him), were gone. The ice was nearly gone. Creatures dependent on the plankton (like the cod), or on the ice for dens (seals) or for travel (bears) were gone too.
Many had just moved north, following the ice, but that means moving farther from land, with widening stretches of open water between. Creatures like the black guillemot, a bird that depends on land for shelter and the ice floe for food, can no longer bridge the gap.
The Arctic is changing faster than scientists can document.
— Filed under Miscellany