The World in 2050: Four Forces Shaping Civilization's Northern Future

Kamchatka), May 12, 2009, RAIPON, http://www.raipon.org/RAIPON/News/tabid/523/mid/1560/newsid1560/3924/Option-letter-by-the-delegates-of- the-VI-Congress-of-indigenous-small-numbered-peoples-of-the-North-Siberia-and-the-Far-East-of-the-Russian- Federation/Default.aspx (accessed September 15, 2009). See also G. Fondahl, A. Sirina, “Rights and Risks: Evenki Concerns Regarding the Proposed Eastern Siberia-Pacific Ocean Pipeline,” Sibirica 5, no. 2 (2006): 115-138.

482 On September 7, 1995, Aleksandr Pika and eight others disappeared after setting out from the town of Sireniki, Chukotka, by boat. Five days later the overturned boat and five bodies were found, with Pika’s among the unrecovered. Quote is from p. 16, Aleksander Pika, ed., Neotraditionalism in the Russian North (Edmonton: Canadian Circumpolar Institute Press, and Seattle: University of Washington Press, 1999), 214 pp.

483 Russian Federal Law 82-F3, April 30, 1999, O garantiyakh prav korennykh malochislennykh narodov Rossiyskoy Federatsii (“On guarantees of the rights of the indigenous numerically small peoples of the Russian Federation”); Russian Federal Law 104-F3, July 20, 2000, Ob obshchikh printsipakh organizatsii obshchin korennykh malochislennykh narodov Severa, Sibiri i Dal’nego Vostoka Rossiyskoy Federatsii (“On general principles for organization of obshchinas of the indigenous numerically small peoples of the north, Siberia, and the Far East of the Russian Federation”); Russian Federal Law 104-F3, July 20, 2000, O territoriyakh traditsionnogo prirodopol’-zovaniya korennykh malochislennykh narodov Severa, Sibiri i Dal’nego Vostoka Rossiyskoy Federatsii (“On territories of traditional nature use of the indigenous numerically small peoples of the north, Siberia, and the Far East of the Russian Federation”). Translations by G. Fondahl and G. Poelzer, “Aboriginal Land Rights in Russia at the Beginning of the Twenty-first Century,” Polar Record 39, no. 209 (2003): 111-122.

484 P. 50, Arctic Human Development Report (Akureyri: Stefansson Arctic Institute, 2004), 242 pp.

485 Unlike other NORC countries, Canada currently has no university in the far north, but there is growing pressure to found one. In general, the fights in North America and Greenland will move on from issues of property title and political governance to other problems of education, public health, and the devolution of natural resource revenues, which are beyond the scope of this chapter.

486 E.g., conservation of mass and energy, gas laws, radiative transfer and cloud physics, fundamental geography like the positions and elevations of the continents and size and rotation rate of the planet, proper parameterizations for subgrid processes, and aerosols.

487 R. B. Alley, The Two-Mile Time Machine: Ice Cores, Abrupt Climate Change, and Our Future (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2000), 229 pp.

488 K. C. Taylor et al., “The ‘Flickering Switch’ of Late Pleistocene Climate Change,” Nature 361 (1993): 432-436, DOI:10.1038/361432a0; R. B. Alley et al., “Abrupt Increase in Greenland Snow Accumulation at the End of the Younger Dryas Event,” Nature 362 (1993): 527-529, DOI:10.1038/362527a0.

489 B. L. Isacks et al., “Seismology and the New Global Tectonics,” Journal of Geophysical Research 73, no. 18 (1968): 5855-5899.

490 The project ended up with some interesting results after all, thanks in part to Richard Alley. It found that a mathematical technique called wavelet analysis is useful for detecting hidden climate signals in river flow data. L. C. Smith, D. L. Turcotte, B. L. Isacks, “Streamflow Characterization and Feature Detection Using a Discrete Wavelet Transform,” Hydrological Processes 12 (1998): 233-249.

491 Greenland Ice Sheet Project 2, drilled between 1989 and 1993 near the center of Greenland.

492 R. B. Alley et al., “Abrupt Increase in Greenland Snow Accumulation at the End of the Younger Dryas Event,” Nature 362 (1993): 527-529, DOI:10.1038/362527a0.

493 The new CIA climate-change center will assess “the national security impact of phenomena such as desertification, rising sea levels, population shifts, and heightened competition for natural resources.” CIA Press Release, “CIA Opens Center on Climate Change and National Security,” September 25, 2009, www.cia.gov/news- information/press-releases-statements/center-on-climate-change-and-national-security.html (accessed November 26, 2009). See also J. M. Broder, “Climate Change Seen as Threat to U.S. Security,” The New York Times, August 8, 2009.

494 M.B. Burke et al., “Warming Increases the Risk of Civil War in Africa,” PNAS 106, no. 49 (2009): 20670-20674, www.pnas.org/cgi/DOI/10.1073/pnas.0907998106.

495 The most famous and dramatic reversal is the so-called “Younger Dryas” event, an abrupt return to nearly ice-age conditions that began suddenly about 12,700 years ago, then persisted nearly 1,300 years before resumption of warming. Its cause and also the cause of the 8.2 ka event is thought to be a shutdown in ocean thermohaline circulation owing to freshening of the North Atlantic, as will be described shortly. For reviews of the 8.2 ka event, see R. B. Alley, A. M. Agustsdottir, “The 8k Event: Cause and Consequences of a Major Holocene Abrupt Climate Change,” Quaternary Science Reviews 24 (2005): 1123-1149; and E. R. Thomas et al., “The 8.2 ka Event from Greenland Ice Cores,” Quaternary Science Reviews 26 (2007): 70-81.

496 Peter Schwartz, Doug Randall, “An Abrupt Climate Change Scenario and Its Implications for United States National Security” (October 2003), 22 pp., www.accc.gv.at/pdf/pentagon_climate_change.pdf (accessed September 27, 2009).

497 The flood path for the smaller 8.2 ka event was probably through the Hudson Strait. D. C. Barber et al., “Forcing of the Cold Event of 8,200 Years Ago by Catastrophic Drainage of Laurentide Lakes,” Nature 400 (July 22, 1999): 344-348, DOI:10.1038/22504. It is also hypothesized that the Younger Dryas event was triggered by a flood draining ancient Lake Agassiz through the St. Lawrence Seaway, or possibly a longer route through the Mackenzie River and Arctic Ocean to the North Atlantic. L. Tarasov, W. R. Peltier, “Arctic Freshwater Forcing of the Younger Dryas Cold Reversal, Nature 435 (June 2, 2005): 662-665, DOI:10.1038/nature03617.

498 The story begins with W. S. Broecker, D. M. Peteet, D. Rind, “Does the Ocean-Atmosphere System Have More than One Stable Mode of Operation?” Nature 315 (1985): 21-26. A recent development is Z. Liu et al., “Transient Simulation of Last Deglaciation with a New Mechanism for Bolling-Allerod Warming,” Science 325 (2009): 310-314.

499 A. K. Rennermalm et al., “Relative Sensitivity of the Atlantic Meridional Overturning Circulation to River Discharge into Hudson Bay and the Arctic Ocean,” Journal of Geophysical Research 112 (2007), G04S48, DOI:10.1029/2006JG000330. The IPCC AR4 (2007) gave >90% chance the thermohaline conveyor will remain functioning for the next century.

500 Even at the lowest carbon dioxide scenarios, with stabilization at 450 ppm, this critical threshold is eventually crossed in thirty-four out of thirty-five stabilization scenarios. J. M. Gregory et al., “Climatology: Threatened Loss of the Greenland Ice-Sheet,” Nature 428 (April 8, 2004): 616, DOI:10.1038/428616a.

501 Table 1, G. A. Milne et al., “Identifying the Causes of Sea-Level Change,” Nature Geoscience 2 (June 14, 2009): 471-478, DOI:10.1038/ngeo544. However, keep in mind the Earth had 70% more ice then than it does today, so a four-meters-per-century sea-level rise is not likely to be repeated.

502 Ibid., 496.

503 Ice sheets help to preserve their own existence by creating an elevated surface at high, cold altitudes and by reflecting back much of the sun’s energy. If Greenland’s ice sheet were removed, temperatures over its low, dark bedrock surface would be much warmer than today and the ice sheet unlikely to form again.

504 Especially Shanghai, Osaka-Kobe, Lagos, and Manila. Also affected will be Buenos Aires, Chennai, Dhaka, Guangzhou, Istanbul, Jakarta, Karachi, Kolkata, Los Angeles, Mumbai, New York, Rio de Janeiro, Shenzhen, and Tokyo.

505 Geological data suggests the WAIS collapsed 400,000 years ago, and perhaps even 14,500 years ago. P. U. Clark et al., “The Last Glacial Maximum,” Science 325, no. 5941 (August 7, 2009): 710 -714, DOI:10.1126/science.1172873. It is also clear the WAIS is currently losing mass, and there is evidence this has been happening for the past 15,000 years in response to rising sea levels initiated by deglaciation in the northern hemisphere. Thus, even limiting greenhouse warming may not lead to the desired stabilization of the ice