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Almost no one in America has heard of the Alaskan village of Kivalina. It clings to a narrow spit of sand on the edge of the Bering Sea, far too small to feature on maps of Alaska, never mind the United States.

Which is perhaps just as well, because within a decade Kivalina is likely to be under water. Gone, forever. Remembered - if at all - as the birthplace of America's first climate change refugees.

Four hundred indigenous Inuit people currently live in Kivalina's collection of single-storey cabins. Their livelihoods depend on hunting and fishing.

The sea has sustained them for countless generations but in the last two decades the dramatic retreat of the Arctic ice has left them desperately vulnerable to coastal erosion. No longer does thick ice protect their shoreline from the destructive power of autumn and winter storms. Kivalina's spit of sand has been dramatically narrowed.

The US Army Corps of Engineers built a defensive wall along the beach in 2008, but it was never more than a stop-gap measure.

A ferocious storm two years ago forced residents into an emergency evacuation. Now the engineers predict Kivalina will be uninhabitable by 2025.

Kivalina's story is not unique. Temperature records show the Arctic region of Alaska is warming twice as fast as the rest of the United States.

Retreating ice, slowly rising sea levels and increased coastal erosion have left three Inuit settlements facing imminent destruction, and at least eight more at serious risk.

The problem comes with a significant price tag. The US Government believes it could cost up to $400m (£265m) to relocate Kivalina's inhabitants to higher ground - building a road, houses, and a school does not come cheap in such an inaccessible place. And there is no sign the money will be forthcoming from public funds.

Kivalina council leader, Colleen Swan, says Alaska's indigenous tribes are paying the price for a problem they did nothing to create.

North of Kivalina there are no roads, just the vast expanse of Alaska's Arctic tundra. And at the most northerly tip of US territory lies the town of Barrow - much closer to the North Pole than to Washington DC. America's very own climate change frontline.

Barrow's residents are predominantly from the Inupiat tribe - they hunt bowhead whale and seal. But this year has been fraught with problems.

The sea ice started to melt and break up as early as March. Then it refroze, but it was so thin and unstable the whale and seal hunters were unable to pull their boats across it. Their hunting season was ruined.

For the first time in decades not a single bowhead whale was caught from Barrow. One of the town's most experienced whaling captains, Herman Ahsoak, says the ice used to be 3m (9ft) thick in winter, now it is little more than a metre.

Barrow is known as the Arctic's "science city". In summer it hosts dozens of international researchers monitoring the shrinking of the Arctic ice and - no less important - the rapid thawing of the tundra's permafrost layer.

But it is the anecdotes that are as striking as the columns of data. I join a team of scientists taking samples of the ice off Barrow Point.

We motor across the offshore ice on all terrain vehicles, but we are not alone. "You'll be escorted by armed bear guards," my local guide, Brower Frantz, says before we set out.

"The ice is too thin for the polar bears to hunt on so they're stuck onshore searching for food. You don't want to be on your own when you meet a hungry bear," he adds.

Alaska's role in the climate story is about cause as well as effect. As America's Arctic territory warms it continues to be a vital source of the carbon-based fossil fuels seen by most scientists as a key driver of climate change.

Alaska's North Slope is the US's biggest oil field and the Trans Alaska pipeline is a key feature of America's drive for energy security. As production from the existing field tails off there is enormous pressure to tap untouched Alaskan reserves.

Shell has launched an ambitious bid to begin offshore Arctic drilling despite a chorus of disapproval from environmental groups. Concerns intensified when a rig ran aground off the Alaskan coast at the beginning of this year. Operations are currently suspended, but the prize is too valuable to ignore.

Within a generation the Arctic ocean may be ice free during the summer. The rate of warming in the far north is unmatched anywhere else on the planet. More at http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/magazine-23346370]

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Originally posted by Niki2:
Which is perhaps just as well, because within a decade Kivalina is likely to be under water. Gone, forever. Remembered - if at all - as the birthplace of America's first climate change refugees.

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Originally posted by BYTEMITE:
Yes, the mainland is right there but they LACK MATERIALS WITH WHICH TO BUILD. I did not say the mainland was hundreds of miles away, I said that TREES were hundreds of miles away.

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Ultimately they probably will have to leave and go to various other villages along the north coast. Which does technically make them refugees.

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How'd they build the town they have now ? I suspect most of it was all shipped in.

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Originally posted by Magonsdaughter:
You show a lot of empathy for people, Byte, even if you deny it.

Rap's kind of all over the place. It depends on the cause whether he displays any empathy. Christians suffering at the hands of Muslims anywhere bring on the crocodile tears (surely they could see the writing on the wall and move too, according to Raplogic) but not those who are set to lose their house or their lives due to climate change.

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It's not so easy for communities to up and leave their homes. Hell, I shouldn't be living where I do. It's one of the worst rated bushfire risk areas in the world. And I'm still in a position to sell this place.

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Originally posted by AURaptor:

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Originally posted by Magonsdaughter:
You show a lot of empathy for people, Byte, even if you deny it.

Rap's kind of all over the place. It depends on the cause whether he displays any empathy. Christians suffering at the hands of Muslims anywhere bring on the crocodile tears (surely they could see the writing on the wall and move too, according to Raplogic) but not those who are set to lose their house or their lives due to climate change.

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PEOPLE are the cause of so much suffering in the world. In your example, MUSLIM people. That's hardly equivalent to the natural forces ( erosion ) occurring in Alaska.

Real logic fail on YOUR part there.

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It's not so easy for communities to up and leave their homes. Hell, I shouldn't be living where I do. It's one of the worst rated bushfire risk areas in the world. And I'm still in a position to sell this place.

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If a slow burning fire was "set" to over take you home in 10 years, would you get out and sell now ? Or wait until the flames were at your front door ?

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Originally posted by Magonsdaughter:

Who would buy a house if it was in the path of a looming catastrophe, and more to the point, how would you be even allowed to sell that house to another vendor?

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Originally posted by Niki2:
Almost no one in America has heard of the Alaskan village of Kivalina. It clings to a narrow spit of sand on the edge of the Bering Sea, far too small to feature on maps of Alaska, never mind the United States.

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Which is perhaps just as well, because within a decade Kivalina is likely to be under water. Gone, forever. Remembered - if at all - as the birthplace of America's first climate change refugees.

Four hundred indigenous Inuit people currently live in Kivalina's collection of single-storey cabins. Their livelihoods depend on hunting and fishing.

The sea has sustained them for countless generations but in the last two decades the dramatic retreat of the Arctic ice has left them desperately vulnerable to coastal erosion. No longer does thick ice protect their shoreline from the destructive power of autumn and winter storms. Kivalina's spit of sand has been dramatically narrowed.

The US Army Corps of Engineers built a defensive wall along the beach in 2008, but it was never more than a stop-gap measure.

A ferocious storm two years ago forced residents into an emergency evacuation. Now the engineers predict Kivalina will be uninhabitable by 2025.

Kivalina's story is not unique. Temperature records show the Arctic region of Alaska is warming twice as fast as the rest of the United States.

Retreating ice, slowly rising sea levels and increased coastal erosion have left three Inuit settlements facing imminent destruction, and at least eight more at serious risk.

The problem comes with a significant price tag. The US Government believes it could cost up to $400m (£265m) to relocate Kivalina's inhabitants to higher ground - building a road, houses, and a school does not come cheap in such an inaccessible place. And there is no sign the money will be forthcoming from public funds.

Kivalina council leader, Colleen Swan, says Alaska's indigenous tribes are paying the price for a problem they did nothing to create.

North of Kivalina there are no roads, just the vast expanse of Alaska's Arctic tundra. And at the most northerly tip of US territory lies the town of Barrow - much closer to the North Pole than to Washington DC. America's very own climate change frontline.

Barrow's residents are predominantly from the Inupiat tribe - they hunt bowhead whale and seal. But this year has been fraught with problems.

The sea ice started to melt and break up as early as March. Then it refroze, but it was so thin and unstable the whale and seal hunters were unable to pull their boats across it. Their hunting season was ruined.

For the first time in decades not a single bowhead whale was caught from Barrow. One of the town's most experienced whaling captains, Herman Ahsoak, says the ice used to be 3m (9ft) thick in winter, now it is little more than a metre.

Barrow is known as the Arctic's "science city". In summer it hosts dozens of international researchers monitoring the shrinking of the Arctic ice and - no less important - the rapid thawing of the tundra's permafrost layer.

But it is the anecdotes that are as striking as the columns of data. I join a team of scientists taking samples of the ice off Barrow Point.

We motor across the offshore ice on all terrain vehicles, but we are not alone. "You'll be escorted by armed bear guards," my local guide, Brower Frantz, says before we set out.

"The ice is too thin for the polar bears to hunt on so they're stuck onshore searching for food. You don't want to be on your own when you meet a hungry bear," he adds.

Alaska's role in the climate story is about cause as well as effect. As America's Arctic territory warms it continues to be a vital source of the carbon-based fossil fuels seen by most scientists as a key driver of climate change.

Alaska's North Slope is the US's biggest oil field and the Trans Alaska pipeline is a key feature of America's drive for energy security. As production from the existing field tails off there is enormous pressure to tap untouched Alaskan reserves.

Shell has launched an ambitious bid to begin offshore Arctic drilling despite a chorus of disapproval from environmental groups. Concerns intensified when a rig ran aground off the Alaskan coast at the beginning of this year. Operations are currently suspended, but the prize is too valuable to ignore.

Within a generation the Arctic ocean may be ice free during the summer. The rate of warming in the far north is unmatched anywhere else on the planet. More at http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/magazine-23346370

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Originally posted by Niki2:
Magons, you're trying to communicate with RAPTOR, remember? On the subject of the suffering that will ensue from GLOBAL WARMING, remember? Which he doesn't even acknowledge EXISTS--notice he's posting about "erosion in Alaska"--"erosion", which has absolutely nothing to do with anything in the story. Surely you know better than this by now, surely?

Rap is literally INCAPABLE of conceding a single point when it comes to even the remote possibility global warming might exist, so think how much further a stretch it would be for him to admit that anyone might SUFFER from it, or that he might feel compassion for such suffering.

It's Rap. It's Global Warming. Does not compute. Don't waste your time--responses are WHY he posts in these threads, to keep arguing, remember?

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Originally posted by Geezer:

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Originally posted by Niki2:
Which is perhaps just as well, because within a decade Kivalina is likely to be under water. Gone, forever. Remembered - if at all - as the birthplace of America's first climate change refugees.

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Not really.

10,000 years or so ago, people lived along the banks of Lake Toiyabe and Lake Tonopah in central Nevada. They left carvings at what is now the Hickison Petroglyph Recreation Area. The climate changed, the lakes dried up, and they left. I've been there. It's a beautiful, eerie, place.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hickison_Petroglyph_Recreation_Area

"When your heart breaks, you choose what to fill the cracks with. Love or hate. But hate won't ever heal. Only love can do that."

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Originally posted by Niki2:

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And you're also getting defensive for some reason

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(Note: I quoted that and posted this before you revised your post)

Byte, you're missing the fact that any and all references to problems which will occur because of global warming immediately gets under Rap's skin and he's forced to diss anyone who might suffer, deny any problems that might be caused, and keep repeating that there IS no global warming caused by man. It's as big an obsession with him as "Islamist extremists", surely you've noticed that by now. Has he ever, even once, let any news about global warming pass or refrained from IMMEDIATELY posting some kind of snark...ever? Not to my knowledge. He is the only person here who is absolutely, positively guaranteed to react that way to any and every post which might even mention global warming.

So any effort to simply clarify, much less discuss, something like this goes "in one ear and out the other"--he will REACT, always negatively, no matter what you try to say or how you try to explain. Always has and always will. He cannot and will not ever express empathy or sympathy for anyone who suffers in any way from the effects of global warming; it is, I believe, actually impossible for him to do so. Hope that helps you understand.

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Originally posted by JAYNEZTOWN:
The world is warning, seas are rising but maybe not at the rate the Doomsday types predicted

Ten years Later...they say another 10 Years!

Sea Level Rise Will Impact Cities
https://menafn.com/1106441053/Sea-Level-Rise-Will-Impact-Cities
Currently, the village of Kivalina Alaska is threatened by rising waters, and it is projected to disappear within ten years

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