The World in 2050: Four Forces Shaping Civilization's Northern Future (43 page)

299
Arctic-wide average net primary productivity is forecast to rise from 2.8 to 4.9 Pg C/year by the 2080s under the “optimistic” IPCC B2 scenario, Table 7.13, ACIA (2005).

300
This paragraph and others drawn from personal interviews and anecdotes collected 2006/2007 throughout Canada, Alaska, and Finland, including Fort Chipewyan, Fort McMurray, Cumberland House, Whitehorse, High Level, Hay River, Yellowknife, Churchill, Fairbanks, and Barrow. Also G. Beaugrand et al., “Reorganization of North Atlantic Marine Copepod Biodiversity and Climate,”
Science
296 (2002): 1692-1694; A. L. Perry et al., “Climate Change and Distribution Shifts in Marine Fishes,”
Science
308 (2005): 1912-1915; N. S. Morozov, “Changes in the Timing of Migration and Winter Records of the Common Buzzard
(Buteo buteo)
in the Central Part of European Russia: The Effect of Global Warming?”
Zoologichesky Zhurnal
86, no. 11 (2007): 1336-1355; G. Jansson, A. Pehrson, “The Recent Expansion of the Brown Hare
(Lepus europaeus)
in Sweden with Possible Implications to the Mountain Hare
(L. timidus),
”
European Journal of Wildlife Research
53 (2007): 125-130; N. H. Ogden, “Climate Change and the Potential for Range Expansion of the Lyme Disease Vector
Ixodes scapularis
in Canada,”
International Journal for Parasitology
36, no. 1 (2006): 63-70; S. Sharma et al., “Will Northern Fish Populations Be in Hot Water Because of Climate Change?”
Global Change Biology
13 (2007): 2052-2064; S. Jarema et al., “Variation in Abundance across a Species’ Range Predicts Climate Change Responses in the Range Interior Will Exceed Those at the Edge: A Case Study with North American Beaver,”
Global Change Biology
15 (2009): 508-522.

301
Cartoons and children’s books that show penguins and polar bears coexisting together perpetuate a widespread myth about their geographic distribution. Polar bears are found only in the far northern hemisphere. Penguins are found only in the southern hemisphere. Unlike the Arctic, with its bears, foxes, and humans, there are no land-based predators in Antarctica. This is why penguins and elephant seals are fearless of humans whereas ringed seals are not.

302
These events happened in 2004. S. C. Amstrup et al., “Recent Observations of Intraspecific Predation and Cannibalism among Polar Bears in the Southern Beaufort Sea,”
Polar Biology
29 (2006): 997-1002. Increasing polar bear interaction with human settlements is described by I. Stirling, Parkinson, “Possible Effects of Climate Warming on Selected Populations of Polar Bears
(Ursus maritimus)
in the Canadian Arctic,”
Arctic
59, no. 3 (2006): 261-275; also E. V. Regehr et al., “Effects of Earlier Sea Ice Breakup on Survival and Population Size of Polar Bears in Western Hudson Bay,”
Journal of Wildlife Management
71 (2007): 2673-2683. For more on projected future declines in polar bear sea-ice habitat, see G. M. Durner et al., “Predicting 21st-Century Polar Bear Habitat Distribution from Global Climate Models,”
Ecological Monographs
79, no. 1 (2009): 25-58.

303
S. C. Amstrup et al.,
Forecasting the Range-wide Status of Polar Bears at Selected Times in the 21st Century: Administrative Report to Support U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service Polar Bear Listing Decision
(Reston, Va.: U.S. Department of the Interior/U.S. Geological Survey, 2007), 126 pp.

304
C. D. Thomas et al., “Extinction Risk from Climate Change,”
Nature
427 (2004): 145-148. The
IPCC AR4
similarly estimates a 20%-30% species extinction for a global temperature rise of 1.5°-2.5°C.

305
For example, since the early twentieth century the western United States has suffered a 73% loss in the coverage area of alpine tundra. H. F. Diaz et al., “Disappearing ‘Alpine Tundra’ Koppen Climatic Type in the Western United States,”
Geophysical Research Letters
34, no. 18 (2007): L18707. Under the high-end A2 emissions scenario, 12%-39% and 10%-48% of the Earth’s terrestrial surface is projected to experience novel and disappearing climates by 2100 A.D.; corresponding projections for the low-end B1 scenario are 4%-20% and 4%-20%. J. W. Williams et al., “Projected Distributions of Novel and Disappearing Climates by 2100 A.D.,”
Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences
104, no. 14 (2007): 5738-5742.

306
Note that I said least disturbed, not undisturbed. The myth of a pristine North is exposed in Chapter 7.

307
More precisely, up to 44% of all species of vascular plants and 35% of all species in four vertebrate groups. N. Myers et al., “Biodiversity Hotspots for Conservation Priorities,”
Nature
403 (2000): 853-858, DOI:10.1038/35002501. Seven million is a conservative estimate and refers to eukaryotes, meaning species generally recognized as plants or animals but excluding things like bacteria.

308
Owing to increased forest disturbance from insect pests and wildfires, e.g., Gillett et al., “Detecting the Effect of Climate Change on Canadian Forest Fires,”
Geophysical Research Letters
31 (2004): L18211; E. S. Kasischke, M. R. Turetsky, “Recent Changes in the Fire Regime across the North American Boreal Region—Spatial and Temporal Patterns of Burning across Canada and Alaska,”
Geophysical Research Letters
33 (2006): L09703.

309
From personal interviews with Ron Brower of Barrow, Alaska, August 9, 2006; Mayor E. Sheutiapik of Iqualuit, Nunavut, August 5, 2007; Mayor E. Kavo and J. Meeko of Sanikiluaq, Nunavut, August 7, 2007.

310
Personal interview with Ron Brower, Barrow, Alaska, August 9, 2006.

311
Drawn from J. Painter, “Greenland Sees Bright Side of Warming,” BBC News, September 14, 2007; C. Woodward, “Global Warming Is a Boon for Farmers and Fishermen but a Hardship for Ice-Dependent Inuit,”
Christian Science Monitor,
October 1, 2007; and “Greenlandic Super Potatoes,”
The Copenhagen Post,
May 18, 2009.

312
Workshop on Conservation of Crop Genetic Resources in the Face of Climate Change, Bellagio, Italy, September 3-6, 2007.

313
More specifically South Asia wheat, Southeast Asia rice, and southern Africa corn. The editors of
Science
must have also been impressed, as the research appeared there five months later. D. B. Lobell, M. B. Burke et al., “Prioritizing Climate Change Adaptation Needs for Food Security in 2030,”
Science
319 (2008): 607-610.

314
W. Schlenker, D. B. Lobell, “Robust negative impacts of climate change on African agriculture,”
Environmental Research Letters
5 (2009), DOI:10.1088/1748-9326/5/1/014010.

315
D. S. Battisti, R. L. Naylor, “Historical Warnings of Future Food Insecurity with Unprecedented Seasonal Heat,”
Science
323 (2009): 240-244.

316
The experiment assumed a doubling of atmospheric CO
₂
. R. M. Adams et al., “Global Climate Change and U.S. Agriculture,”
Nature
345 (1990): 219-224.

317
E.g., J. E. Olesen, M. Bindi, “Consequences of Climate Change for European Agricultural Productivity, Land Use and Policy,”
European Journal of Agronomy
16 (2002): 239-262. G. Maracchi, O. Sirotenko, and M. Bindi, “Impacts of Present and Future Climate Variability on Agriculture and Forestry in the Temperate Regions: Europe,”
Climatic Change
70 (2005): 117-135; N. Dronin, A. Kirilenko, “Climate Change and Food Stress in Russia: What If the Market Transforms as It Did during the Past Century?”
Climatic Change
86 (2008): 123-150.

318
There’s more to it than just temperature and rain. A key issue is the so-called CO
₂
fertilization effect. Plants like CO
₂
, so having more of it in the air tends to increase crop yields. Most agro-climate models build in a hefty benefit for this, based on early greenhouse experiments using enclosed chambers. This enables the models to offset a large share of the damages of summer heat and drought, owing to the anticipated fertilizing benefit from elevated CO
₂
levels. However, more realistic experiments staged outdoors, using blowers over actual farm fields, show a much lower fertilization benefit. This suggests that the models may be seriously underestimating the negative impacts of climate change to world food production. S. P. Long et al., “Food for Thought: Lower-than-Expected Crop Yield Stimulation with Rising CO
₂
Concentrations,”
Science
312 (2006): 1918-1921.

319
For example, crop declines from a doubling of extreme weather events by the 2020s. J. Alcamo et al., “A New Assessment of Climate Change Impacts on Food Production Shortfalls and Water Availability in Russia,”
Global Environmental Change
17 (2007): 429-444.

320
For example, Russia’s West Siberian, East Siberian, Northwestern, Northern, and Far East regions are all forecast to experience increased cereal and potato productivity by the 2020s, but its Central, Central Chernozem, North Caucasian, Volga-Vyatka, and Volga regions are projected to decline. A. P. Kirilenko et al., “Modeling the Impact of Climate Changes on Agriculture in Russia,”
Doklady Earth Sciences
397, no. 5 (2004): 682-685 (translated from Russian).

321
T. Parfitt, “Russia’s Polar Hero,”
Science
324, no. 5933 (2009): 1382-1384. See also “Artur Chilingarov: Russia’s Arctic Explorer,”
The Moscow News,
July 17, 2008.

322
Tom Casey, a U.S. State Department spokesman, said, “I’m not sure whether they put a metal flag, a rubber flag, or a bedsheet on the ocean floor. Either way, it doesn’t have any legal standing.” “Russian Subs Seek Glory at North Pole,”
USA Today,
August 2, 2007. See also “Russia Plants Flag on North Pole Seabed,”
The Guardian
UK; “Russia Plants Flag under N Pole,” BBC News; “Russia Plants Underwater Flag at North Pole,”
The New York Times
; “Russia to Claim Energy Wealth beneath Arctic Ocean,”
Pravda
; and many others (all August 2, 2007).

323
ArcticNet is a Canadian government-funded research consortium that coordinates big projects in the Arctic, including the CCGS
Amundsen
expedition,
http://www.arcticnet.ulaval.ca/
.

324
The 2007-09 International Polar Year (IPY,
www.ipy.org
) was an international science program focused on the Arctic and Antarctic that lasted from March 2007 to March 2009. More than two hundred projects, sixty countries, and thousands of scientists participated in IPY. It was actually the fourth such Polar Year, following earlier ones in 1882-83, 1932-33, and 1957-58.

325
2007 was the astonishing record year in which nearly 40% of the Arctic’s late-summer Arctic sea disappeared. See Chapter 5.

326
“A Mad Scramble for the Shrinking Arctic,”
The New York Times,
September 10, 2008.

327
In 2008 a test shipment of this very pure ore was delivered to Europe from the Baffinland Mine in Mary River. P. 77,
Arctic Marine Shipping Assessment 2009 Report,
Arctic Council, April 2009, 190 pp.

328
“Circum-Arctic Resource Appraisal: Estimates of Undiscovered Oil and Gas North of the Arctic Circle,” digital data and USGS Fact Sheet 2008-3049, 2008; D. L. Gautier et al., “Assessment of Undiscovered Oil and Gas in the Arctic,”
Science
324 (2009): 1175-1179.

329
S. G. Borgerson, “Arctic Meltdown: The Economic and Security Implications of Global Warming,”
Foreign Affairs
, March/April 2008.

330
S. G. Borgerson, “The Great Game Moves North,”
Foreign Affairs,
March 25, 2009. See also T. Halpin, “Russia Warns of War within a Decade over Arctic Oil and Gas Riches,”
The Times,
May 14, 2009; A. Doyle, “Arctic Nations Say No Cold War; Military Stirs,” Reuters, June 21, 2009.

331
M. Galeotti, “Cold Calling—Competition Heats Up for Arctic Resources,”
Jane’s Intelligence Review,
September 23, 2008.

332
R. Huebert, “In the Grip of Climate Change: The Circumpolar Dimension,” Session Paper no. 1, 2030 NORTH National Planning Conference, Ottawa, June 1-4, 2009.

333
Canada asserts that the “Northwest Passage” (it actually contains several possible routes) constitutes a domestic waterway, whereas the United States, Russia, and European Union maintain it is an international strait. At present the tacit policy between the United States and Canada is to agree to disagree on this issue.

334
Russia’s aircraft approached but did not enter Canadian airspace. B. Smith-Windsor, “The Perils of Sexing Up Arctic Security,”
Toronto Star,
June 26, 2009. See also “Two Russian Bombers Fly over Icelandic Airspace,”
http://www.icenews.is/index.php/2009/08/10/two-russian-bombers-fly-over-icelandic-airspace/
;
IceNews,
August 10, 2009; and others.