McCain, Clinton probe melting
Arctic
The Anchorage Daily News
By LIZ RUSKIN
Published: August 18, 2005
Last Modified: August 18, 2005 at 02:25 AM
Sens. John McCain and Hillary Clinton, touring Alaska this week to view
melting permafrost and shrinking glaciers, said the evidence is mounting that
global warming is real and human activity is significantly to blame.
"The question is how much damage will be done before we start taking
concrete action," McCain, R-Ariz., told reporters at the Hotel Captain Cook
Wednesday morning. "Go up to places like we just came from. It's a little
scary."
Clinton, D-N.Y., said the scientists and Native people she's spoken to on
this trip to Alaska and Canada's Yukon Territory make the case with convincing
and moving particulars.
"So I don't think there's any doubt left for anybody who actually looks at
the science," she said. "There are still some holdouts, but they're fighting a
losing battle. The science is overwhelming."
Among those holdouts, though, is Alaska's entire delegation to Congress --
Sens. Ted Stevens and Lisa Murkowski and Congressman Don Young -- who did not
accompany the senators on their tour.
The Alaskans have opposed mandatory limits on the emission of carbon dioxide
and other greenhouse gases, saying they're not convinced that humans are
largely to blame.
That would put them outside the scientific mainstream.
The National Academy of Sciences and the academies of 10 other nations
issued a statement this summer saying there is strong evidence that significant
global warming is under way and that "it is likely that most of the warming in
recent decades can be attributed to human activities."
Whatever the cause, almost everyone agrees the Arctic is warming faster than
the rest of the world, and the effects in the North can seem dramatic, which is
why Clinton, McCain and two other Lower 48 senators came. Sen. Susan Collins,
R-Maine, said the Arctic is the canary in the mine shaft of global warming,
"crying out to us to pay attention to the impact."
The group flew over Canada's Yukon territory and saw forests decimated by
spruce bark beetles -- believed to grow profusely because of warm weather.
"It's just heartbreaking to see the devastation," Clinton said.
She was struck by the account of a 93-year-old woman she met at a fish camp
they helicoptered to from Whitehorse, Yukon. The woman told her she'd been
fishing there her whole life but that lately the fish have strange bumps on
them, growths Clinton said sounded like some sort of tumor.
They also went to Barrow, the northernmost city in the United States, and
met with scientists and Inupiaq Eskimo residents concerned about rising sea
levels and other changes. The senators headed to Seward Wednesday to see
shrinking glaciers in Kenai Fjords National Park.
Murkowski doesn't dispute Earth is warming or that emissions play a role,
only the size of that role, her spokeswoman, Kristin Pugh, said Wednesday.
Murkowski welcomed the senators with a dinner she hosted Tuesday night at the
Turnagain home of former Gov. Bill Sheffield. After dinner, Clinton and
Murkowski walked back to the Captain Cook along the city's Coastal Trail, Pugh
said.
Last year, the Alaska delegation disputed an international report by more
than 300 scientists that said "human influences ... have now become the
dominant factor" in global warming.
Young dismissed the "so-called study" as ammunition for fear mongers.
"I don't believe it is our fault. That's an opinion," Young said in
November. "It's as sound as any scientist's."
In an interview with KTUU-Channel 2 News this week, Young said the globe is
going to change no matter what humans do.
"But to have people come down and talk about we gotta do this, we gotta
change that, we don't use Freon anymore, you don't use underarm deodorant, you
can't do these kinds of things -- you know, that is pure nonsense," Young
said.
Murkowski said she got her most definitive answer to date at a Senate
hearing last month, when a climate expert told her that "nearly all" the
warming in recent decades is due to human activity. She said the degree of
human causation is a matter of debate, however, and she wanted more evidence
before she could support something like mandatory emission limits, which could
slow the economy.
McCain and Sen. Joe Lieberman, D-Conn., have sponsored the "Climate
Stewardship and Innovation Act," which would require electric utilities and
other companies to keep greenhouse gas emissions to what they were in the year
2000.
Stevens, who opposes mandatory limits, has said any such legislation would
have to go through him because he chairs the Senate Commerce Committee.
Sen. Lindsey Graham, R-S.C., the fourth senator at the Anchorage press
conference Wednesday, said he is on the fence about global warming legislation
but said he was moved by what he heard on the trip.
"Climate change is different when you come here, because you see the faces
of people experiencing it in Alaska," he said. "If you can go to the Native
people and listen to their stories and walk away with any doubt that
something's going on, I just think you're not listening."
As for Rep. Young's dismissive comments about the issue, "All of us who know
Don know that he's just being Don," said Graham.
One of the climate-related questions Alaska's senators are facing is what to
do for villages like Shishmaref, which are suffering coastal erosion. Moving
them is projected to cost hundreds of millions of dollars.
McCain, a constant critic of congressional spending, said he thinks American
taxpayers will be generous to such villagers, as they are to hurricane victims
in Florida.
But, he said, people asking for money to fix a problem should be willing to
address the root cause.
"So far, some of my colleagues are not eager to do so," he said.
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