Inuit Have Increasing Difficulty Gauging Ice, Snow As Arctic Warms Rapidly - SMH

[hatrack]

EDIT

For Inuit communities, ice and snow are intrinsic to physical and cultural survival, Watt-Cloutier said after the hearing. Even the building of igloos is under threat. "You can just imagine the brilliance and the genius and the ingenuity of building a home out of snow, warm enough to have your baby sleep in," she said. "And now all of that is starting to leave because snow conditions are so changed."

Many Inuit live in more conventional buildings, which are constructed mainly to keep the cold out. Unfortunately, with longer and warmer summers with 24-hour-a-day sunlight, this has turned many into ovens, Watt-Cloutier said.

For the first time, air conditioners are in use in the Arctic.

Seasoned Inuit hunters used to be able to tell where the ice was safe, but because warmer seas have started to melt sea ice from its underside, even the most experienced hunters find it hard to gauge, and some fall through, she said. "The glaciers are melting so quickly that where our hunters used to be able to cross safely, now it's so unsafe that it's become torrent rivers ... and we've had a drowning as a result of that as well," she said.

EDIT/END

http://www.smh.com.au/news/World/Inuit-in-Arctic-running-out-of-snow/2007/03/05/1172943333595.html

[nannah]

1. environment and energy informaation is so important.

i encourage du'ers who are interested in these issues to recommend them for the greatest page so more people will become familiar with how climate change is already happenng, the same is true for stories related to oil supplies. i think it is helpful to offer this information to people as often as possible. IMHO this information is very relevant to our here and now, and a grasp of resource and climate reality will enhance our decision making in 2008.

[kestrel91316]

2. K&R

[redqueen]

3. air conditioners in the arctic...

*sigh*

[kitkatrose]

6. Let me echo that sentiment.

*bigfuckingsigh* I mean, that's one phrase I did not EVER expect to read.

[Canuckistanian]

4. The Inuit are seeing lots of strange things

Like robins. The birds are extending their range northwards so far now, that Inuit are starting to see them regularly.

The Inuit language has no word for "robin".

And lightning.

Never before have some Inuit even seen lightning and they have no record of it in their oral history, which stretches back hundreds of years

[flying rabbit]

5. I guess that saying about selling

refrigerators to eskimos takes on a whole new meaning...