Climate change: On the edge and nowhere to go
By: Joaqlin Estus (Indian Country Today)
S E E D E D C O N T E N T
Several Alaska Native villages face imminent destruction Author: Joaqlin Estus
People walk past a building collapsing into the shoreline in Shishmaref, Alaska, on June 2, 2006. The village, an Inupiat village of about 575 people located on Sarichef Island in the Chukchi Sea, is among several Alaska Native villages facing devastation from climate change. (Photo courtesy of the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers)
Several Alaska Native villages face imminent destruction
Joaqlin Estus
Indian Country Today
ANCHORAGE, Alaska — Grinding anxiety turns into fear for many Alaska Natives when storms hit.
In dozens of villages, the ground is threatening to erode away from under homes, fuel tanks, water and sewer systems, buildings, bridges, roads and runways.
And no one knows the threat of climate change more than residents of Newtok, a village in western Alaska that already is trying to relocate to higher ground. Water has been eroding the shore there at the rate of 125 to 150 feet per year, and the school now sits just 120 feet from the water.
"There's some really big needs for this relocation and some really scary moments right now with lack of funding for a school and housing," Newtok Relocation Project Manager Patrick Lemay, of Lemay Engineering and Consulting, told Indian Country Today.
"We're looking at possibly water being at the front door of the school within the next 12 months with no funding for a new school in the new location," he said.
Read more:
—Climate change puts Indigenous homelands in peril
—Washington tribes feel the heat of climate change
—Tribal guide to climate change
Newtok is one of several Alaska Native communities facing immediate risk of becoming uninhabitable in the next five years because of coastal erosion and flooding, according to studies by the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers and Government Accountability Office.
The Arctic is warming at twice the rate as the rest of the planet. Sea ice that once extended miles from the shore and protected the coast from fall and winter storms now freezes later in the year and melts earlier. Permafrost, or permanently frozen ground, is thawing, making it more vulnerable to erosion.
The Newtok residents are among tens of thousands of tribal citizens across Indian Country forced to choose between staying in their ancestral lands or moving away to protect themselves from the devastation of climate change, according to an informal survey by Indian Country Today.
In Alaska, Washington, Louisiana, Florida and other coastal states, Indigenous people are facing floods, rising sea levels, coastal erosion and extreme storms. The Southwest and Plains have been hit with drought, wildfires, heat, lowered water tables and depleted waterways. And they're all facing loss of habitat and a reduction in traditional food sources for people, livestock and wildlife.
Tale of two cities
Lack of funding to complete the relocation has left Newtok split between two sites.
The Yup'ik village in western Alaska began working to move in the 1990s, cobbling together funding from state, federal and private sources, and assistance from military training and other programs.
It built a barge landing in Mertarvik at a site nine miles east of Newtok so building supplies could be brought in. Then came a community facility, which serves as a temporary school, and homes - enough so that Newtok residents began moving to Mertarvik in 2019.
By 2020, 120 people, about a third of Newtok's 354 residents, were living at the new village site.
Water encroaches onto a home in Newtok, Alaska, on Sept. 22, 2005. About 120 people had relocated to a new location nine miles away by 2021, but lack of funding has slowed the move. (Photo courtesy of U.S. Army Corps of Engineers)
Funding and construction of a new school is still years away, however. More houses are under construction, although building has slowed due to the pandemic.
"Either we move the people and not have a place to have the kids go to school in the new location. Or we don't get funding for the housing, they stay in Newtok, and the school (there) gets to a point where it's not usable," Lemay said.
"The community is really at a breaking point as far as the school goes and even housing," he said.
Further from a solution
Newtok is far ahead of other Alaskan villages facing destruction.
Another village threatened by erosion is Shishmaref, an Inupiat village of about 575 people located on Sarichef Island in the Chukchi Sea, five miles from the mainland.
Shishmaref residents voted in 2016 to relocate, but for now, they remain in place while officials work to find money for the move.
Already, the sea is within 10 feet of the runway, the village's link to the outside world. Three flights a day bring passengers and cargo, a lot of it food, into the community, said Tribal Coordinator Holly Iyatuntuk, Inupiaq.
The Army Corps of Engineers constructed a barrier to help protect the shore, but erosion continues despite efforts by local crews to shore it up.
"The sea wall is holding up," Iyatuntuk said, "but there's a couple, some parts, that are not protected by rock revetment…and it's getting eroded every year."
A couple of hundred miles to the south, the Native Village of Shaktoolik becomes an island during heavy storms.
The village of about 250 predominantly Inupiat people is situated on a gravel and sand spit, 125 miles southeast of Nome. On one side is the coast of Norton Sound; on the other are the Shaktoolik and Tagoomenik rivers, which converge and empty into the sound.
A resident from Kivalina, Alaska, stands in front of a home that is eroding into the water on March 25, 2005. The community is among several Alaska Native villages that are facing imminent devastation from climate change. (Photo courtesy of U.S. Army Corps of Engineers)
During storms, water surrounds the village, with no evacuation route.
Tribal coordinator Sophia Katchatag, Inupiaq, said the village was hard hit by fall and winter storms in 2013, 2014 and 2019. A particularly severe storm in 2013 brought mounds of logs and driftwood ashore.
"That 2013 storm…pushed a lot of wood right behind some of the homes on the ocean side," Katchatag said.
Village officials decided to build their own berm in 2014, using local laborers and gravel, in an effort to protect in place.
"That berm alone lasted five years," Katchatag said. "And in August of 2019, we had a fall storm and it eroded a good portion of that berm."
The community won some grants for equipment to rebuild and maintain the berm. It recently was awarded $1.25 million in grants to bolster protection. The village plans to vote in coming months on whether to begin the years-long process of getting money to relocate.
"We have just been protecting in place because it costs millions to relocate a village and it takes years to plan and try to get all this money," Katchatag said.
For now, the sea ice is frozen for the winter, but a bad storm could push it away from shore.
"It does put a lot of fear into everyone's minds when we hear of a storm coming," Katchatag said. "Because we don't know what's going to happen. I mean, especially those big storms that they're facing right now, out there (in the midwestern United States)… If we get that, our village will be wiped out."
Road to hope
A fourth village threatened by coastal erosion, the Inupiat village of Kivalina, has taken its first steps to relocation. It's located on a barrier island on the Chukchi Sea, 80 miles northwest of the regional hub community of Kotzebue and within the Arctic Circle.
In 2007, more than half of Kivalina's 688 residents were evacuated when the island was flooded by debris-laden waves.
In order to have a safe haven, the state of Alaska has completed a 7.7-mile road to higher ground and a staging pad for construction of a school/community center. The state and Northwest Arctic Borough have pulled together the $60 million needed to build the school, which villagers hope will be just the first building at the new village site.
Due to an emergency, Kivalina's tribal administration was not available to talk with Indian Country Today about climate migration. The power was out with temperatures hovering around zero degrees Fahrenheit, which is about average for late December and cold enough to freeze sea water.
A few days later, the National Weather Service issued a winter storm warning for the area.
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The tip of the iceberg so to speak.
It would take a lot of money to move that runway further inland. I don't know how much a more sturdier sea wall would cost, but it needs to be thicker and higher. No, I am not an engineer I just work with them
I believe that a bigger seawall may help for a bit in this village, but long term it really doesn't seem that it will.
Started watching that last night......................
I've seen it on Netflix now I have to give it a look see. Thanks, JBB
''Don't Look Up''
A metaphor for climate change.
It certainly is a metaphor for science deniers and those who dismiss observable evidence that goes against rghtwing political orthodoxy.
Excellent satire.
I feel so sorry for these various villages. Climate change is affecting everyone, but it is mostly seen in these small coastal villages, where it is literally on their doorstep.
Sadly I only see this getting worse
I think that you're correct. It has been happening for a number of years and is unrelenting.
Yes it is unrelenting, it started at the end of the last ice age and will continue into the beginning of the next ice age.
Yes, it will, bc.
Yep a natural process if you believe the archeological record, the earth has had several ice ages over the millenia... and it didn't matter one iota what was living on the planet at the time, or what they were doing...
It has happened before, it will happen again..
Do you believe that we should drop all efforts to migrate to clean energy and reduce greenhouse gases because anthropogenic global warming has no significant impact on the climate?
It will but it's being enhanced by man.
This isn't an ice age, it's a warming period. During the proceeding ice ages and warming periods what was the human population of the world? Did they create greenhouse gasses?
The human element in the current warming is significant.
Did I say that? I think I said that the global warming process is a normal earth process that we as minute passengers of this earth will have no effect on changing in the long or short term... The geologic history, (if correct) shows several periods of time in the history of the planet that were on average 5-7 degrees hotter than they are today, and a resulting opposite set of lows at least 8-10 average degrees colder...
With several occurrences of those various highs and lows... Migration to clean energy? no sweat I'm all for improving tech and the quality of the human existence.. It's the insistence that it HAS to be anthropogenic in nature...
If it is please explain how the earth had several of those average temperature swings when humans were nothing but a gleam in the cosmic ethers eye?
Can you rationally explain that? that is the biggest hole in the whole anthropogenic argument that most avoid... Or the accepted geological history of the earth is dead wrong...
I intentionally asked you a question. Here is my entire post — a single question:
I intentionally did not presume but rather asked a question.
Okay, then unless you have a strange way to express your thoughts you just stated that anthropogenic global warming has no effect on the climate.
Is that correct? Is that what you wish to communicate as your position?
Prior to human beings existing our planet underwent profound changes, climate and otherwise. Absolutely true. And apparently you think that because these planetary changes have occurred in our 4.5 billion year history that this MEANS that AGW is having no effect. Is that what you believe?
You've got that backwards, the warming period that started and existed during the beginning of the ice age and the cooling period that ended the ice age.
As the sea levels rise from most of the land based ice melt, especially from Greenland, and the cascading effect of that, the oceans are warmer and larger and currents move less hindered into the north and especially the Arctic ocean. The contrast between the Arctic cold winter and the warm oceans cause more precipitation then what the next Arctic summer can melt and the increased summer precipitation then freezes on the ice sheet the next winter.
It is a simple process and can't be stopped and comes to an end when the oceans are depleted of enough water which shuts down the warm currents into the north and the Arctic summer starts melting more ice then what can form causing the sea levels to rise then...., well you get the picture.
Yes, I do get the picture and I tend to believe that while climate changes naturally we, as humans do add to the negative side. We have poisoned our lakes, rivers, oceans, forests for centuries. It is difficult to believe what we have not added to the climate change senario.
And that is an opinion, not a scientific fact.... anthropogenic global warming is an opinion... an unproveable opinion at that..
Of course, it's an opinion and one that many scientists seem to have the same opinion on.
Of course we have an effect on climate, but to blame humanity entirely and then taking steps to eliminate the "human"effect is, IMO, misplaced and the steps we're taking may just exasperate the problem.
I don't believe that I blamed the human race entirely for the change. I was quite clear that we do add to it and that it is a naturally occurring event.
I don't have a problem with opinions in science.. My problem is when politicians take such opinions and use them to make permanent governmental policies... Especially taxing policies and using that money to expound the opinion and exclude and squelch opposing opinion....
That's not science...
That is far too dismissive. AGW is most definitely happening and the data shows it. The debate is over the degree, not that it is happening.
Scientific opinions are based on empirical data. The word 'opinion' does not mean some 'feeling' or 'intuition' but an interpretation of the data. Climate science is incredibly complex but there are certain very clear dimensions and one of them is the greenhouse effect and the anthropogenic contribution to same. We are most definitely contributing to an adverse concentration of greenhouse gases which are trapping radiation that would normally escape into space and thus warming the planet. The debate is the degree to which we are contributing and what we can do to address our contribution but not that it is happening. It is happening.
So sensible minds would not fight climate science and encourage people to think that this is all political bullshit. And on the flip side, sensible minds would not freak out and make half-cocked Al-Gore-ish predictions and/or engage in ill-conceived programs in a thrashing attempt to 'just do something' on the problem. The rational, sensible approach is to continually reduce our net greenhouse emissions through conservation and alternate technologies that end up with a net reduction in the critical greenhouse gases contributing to global warming.
But we seem to be unable to get past partisan politics to do sensible things. People cannot even talk like adults about such matters without hostility.
That of course is an opinion. I don't understand why there is this hostility towards trying to mitigate climate change.
Seems to be the same basic drive that causes people to call for Biden to resign because the pandemic continues due to variants and stupidly stubborn people who refuse to get vaccinated. Partisan thinking creates a distorted perception of reality. It is sad that so many cannot seem to view reality except through partisan lenses.
Look to oneself before casting the fingers in anothers direction...
No hostility to the act or even trying, hostility towards the how, absolutely...
Don't make things personal. My comment was about a general observable trend. And partisan thinking applies to both major parties.
That's obvious.
Not trying to but that is how everything seems to go around here...
Trends do not a reality make.... AGW according to some is settled science, problem is many do not see it that way and still want to discuss the foundations of the global warming issue BEFORE we get to the conclusion if we can do something about it or learn to live with it... Some are on the opposing side of that.. And, the opposing sides generally take a political bent... that thought leads us to...
Yes absolutely! and that partisan thinking usually centers not on the science but on how the AGW true believers get their funding and what they do with it... Which usually has nothing to do with the true investigation of the science... The real issue at this point is how do we separate the politics from the science, they are so interwoven that they have taken on a political life of their own... And it is an international political thing not readily separable from the national picture, which slants the discussion even more along political lines...
Someday we will be able to have such a discussion but I'm afraid the political has superseded the science on the issue of global warming...
Which makes any serious discussion on a forum such as this problematical at best...
Well it is the truth...
A trend is a reality. The trend of blind partisanship, of which I spoke, is a reality.
The data supports that. As I noted, the debate is NOT that AGW is in effect but rather the degree to which it affects our atmosphere and climate. There is simply no denying that anthropogenic factors are indeed at play with GW.
Don't conflate politics, business and corruption with a discussion of the science.
Well you should have noticed that my comments have focused on the science in my comment to you and that I criticized the extreme (political, business) views that underplay or overplay the science.
Discussions on AGW should focus on the science.
Unfortunately this isn't the case, there are a LOT of people that beg to differ, it is the True Believers contention that it IS settled science and now it is simply a how much calculation your second statement is perfectly aligned with the true believer position... One which I completely disagree with... Given the historical geological data.. The only way AGW can be a fact is if we ignore the already established scientific record of Archeological Geology... I will go so far as to say it is possible, but I have seen nothing concrete yet to say what we are experiencing is anything but the natural churning of the earths normal environmental extremes... The computer models that most of this is based upon do not accurately reflect anything longer than a year worth of prediction, yes they are getting better but even the bestest most accurate ones go farther and farther into error the longer they are played out...
To me the claim that it is proven based upon such "evidence" as a computer model simulation states directly that it isn't settled at all since they constantly have to update the model in both function and data... Computer science is an exacting science.... if the ideal of AGW was proven they wouldn't have to constantly update the model after applying the standards of computer science now would they?
That's not my only exception to AGW as accepted science but it is a very real one, and since the foundation of AGW is the computer models and their predictions... it is the first hurdle that needs to be surmounted...
Foundationally, AGW is flawed until they fix the foundation...
I cannot accept it as settled science...
Good grief:
Read on: it gets more specific.
I don't care how many "Organizations" you line up, ALL of those "Organizations" suck from the government tax teat... and ALL of them expel or censure members that don't go along with the party line... Any others they will destroy their reputations and ability to make a living...
NO groups of "Organizations" represent ALL of anyone... Christ, I'm surprised you even make that claim...
IT RIDICOULOUS!...
This is not an international conspiracy. Every nation in the world is saying the same thing. Even independent academics recognize this.
Furthermore, we have endless proof of people pushing issues like this down the pike in history, because it wasn't convenient at the time and all of them were proven to be dangerous
I have to leave this planet to my kids and their kids. I would rather be safe than sorry when it comes to human activity, and most of our activity is damaging the earth, be it air or water.
You offered a very verbose nuh'uh. It does not matter what you 'care' about. What matters are the facts and evidence.
Quote me claiming that these organization (even collectively) represent the 'ALL of anyone' (whatever that is supposed to mean). How about you not invent claims for me and just stick with the claims I actually do make?
The main problem with many of these Native Alaskan coastal villages is they built permanent homes where they used to only camp in the summer. Historically they lived a few miles inland most of the year where they had shelter from the wind and storms and if you look at the places these villages are located it's easy to see why, these areas have no defense against storms. They're located right on the open ocean without any of the coastal defenses you'd normally see in developed areas on the coast, of course the land is eroding that's what happens on unprotected coasts the only thing permanent is change. In a few hundred years a big storm will come and put it all back and the cycle will start all over again.
Not completely accurate the Aleut and Alutiiq people live in numerous coastal villages as well as a few inland villages located on rivers and lakes as have the Inuit people.
The Newtok village and its Yup'ik people have been near the Bering Sea for thousands of years and village is located on the Ninglick river.
Weather, not climate change, is causing this erosion.
Climate change across the billions of years is the cause of weather and not the other way around. Weather is something we measure for short periods of time. Climate is over the millennia.
When I empathize with those natives, when I imagine myself in their shoes, I get really scared, scared of the inevitable disaster and scared because I don't have the resources necessary to move elsewhere.
Lack of resources is what the natives are facing and at this point not a lot of support. IMO, this is only the start as the same thing is happening in the Pacific to some of the Island nations.
Since the article is about how climate change is affecting Alaska Native villages and they're trying to move in order to survive how should the US approach this problem since it is only the beginning and not some isolated incident.
If one wants to acknowledge that rising sea levels are a present-day problem in the lower 48 one only has to look at Miami FL and the tens of millions they have spent and are spending to mitigate the rising sea levels. It's projected that in the next 40/50 years Miami will be spending billions to hold back the sea.
That is the reality of the situation.
People have been making claims like this for decades...
Initially just a few years, to this one from 2009 saying possibly 100 years...
Does anyone have some facts rather than speculations?
I mean according to some of the predictions made 20-30 years ago NY should be under 10 ft of water now and The State of Florida not even exist!
In the comments section of that link I provided several peeps are talking about is the citizen won't get on the bandwagon, fear would be a good tactic to make them....
It's not like these realities haven't been expressed before, it's the dire consequences exclaimed by those expressions that haven't seen the light of day yet...
That's a real problem for a lot of people...
As far as the native villages falling into the sea?
Move them...
That is one of the oldest resolutions man has come up with, it predates most if not all governments and organized human activity on the planet..
Things change. In 2009, we have much more rainforest than we do now. That affects the world's CO2 and other greenhouse gasses as well as cools the earth.
You should make a trip to Miami and see firsthand the problems raising sea levels are causing and the amount of money being spent to try to mitigate this. Or read the reports by the city/state/feds of this with actual evidence.
This is what is happening in the Keys right now.
Army Corps of Engineers report on Miami rasing seas levels.
So yes, there is plenty of facts from cities and people on the front line experiencing the raising sea levels currently.