As Politicians Look On, Alaska Slumps, Melts, Bakes & Burns - Guardian

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The four VIPs included an unlikely couple, both probable presidential candidates in 2008, both plausible winners, and from opposite ends of the political spectrum. One was John McCain, Vietnam veteran and republican senator from Arizona. The other was Hillary Rodham Clinton, White House veteran and New York senator. That they should choose to visit Alaska together in order to investigate climate change raised a few eyebrows. Rupert Murdoch's Fox News even hinted, in jest, that the two were having an affair.

But, despite the political barbs, the senators had a serious purpose. Soon the issue of climate change - often code for global warming - was back on the national political agenda. Mr McCain, who has sponsored a climate stewardship bill with the Democratic senator Joe Lieberman, said: "The question is how much damage will be done before we start taking concrete action. Go up to places like we just came from. It's a little scary."


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Melting glaciers is only one of Alaska's problems. As Kate Troll, an environmentalist writing in the Anchorage Daily News, put it earlier this month: "Besides retreating glaciers, insect infestations and more intense forest fires, Alaska is experiencing melting permafrost, flooded villages, warming oceans, coastal erosion, shifts in bird and wildlife populations, and shorter seasons for ice roads. And there is more to come, as Alaska is heating up at twice the rate of the rest of the world."

Last year was the warmest summer on record for much of Alaska. An Arctic Climate Impact Assessment report published in November 2004 said Alaska's average annual temperature rose 3.3C between 1949 and 2003. Some areas have risen twice that much. A further report published in March noted that the average temperature in the Arctic had risen by 0.4C a decade since the mid-1960s. The study reported that the last decade was the warmest since records began, and that the current warming in the Arctic was without precedent since the last ice age. All of which has prompted a mini tourist boom, a "catch-it-while-you-can" attitude among visitors eager to see the glaciers while they are still there. This year, Alaska is set to beat the 1.45 million tourists of 2004.

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http://www.guardian.co.uk/international/story/0,3604,1553673,00.html