Alaskan village is falling into the sea

by Matthew Sparkes, London, UK on 05. 3.07
Travel & Nature

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ABC have a video story about a recent trip to the Arctic Circle, taken by Scott Shulman, cameraman with ABC News. Shulman was filming in Shishmaref, a very small town of 600 residents, which is falling into the sea because of climate change.
From the ABC article, "The village has become a living example of the impact climate change could one day have on other coastal communities. Temperatures in Alaska over the past 50 years have risen four times faster than the global average. And that's had dramatic consequences on a natural resource for the people of Shishmaref: ice."
WIth the climate that much warmer than previously, the ice surrounding the land is present for less of the year than it was before, which is allowing more erosion to take place. "In front of my mother's house we used to look out at the gentle slope," said Shishmaref resident, Sinnock, "In my life time we've probably lost about 400 feet." The change in ice patterns also means that certain animals, previously used as a food source, are now moving to more untouched locations. Because of these difficult circumstances, the residents voted to relocate the town 12 miles to the South. However, the prohibitive cost has mean that the move has yet to happen. :: ABC News via :: Boing Boing

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Comments (3)

Shishmaref is built on a sand island (Sarichef).. You can imagine the same effect if you built a town on one of the barrier islands off the coast of MS/LA or CA.

Google Earth will give a viewer a good idea of some of the issues.

jump to top donK says:

This town is featured in a BBC Panorama documentary on global warming coverup by Bush government.

It's available on YouTube and the part covering this town is right at the beginning...

Global Warming: Bush's Climate of Fear (Part 1)

Part 2 Part 3 Part 4

jump to top Manu Sharma [TypeKey Profile Page] says:

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