Inuit Say They Witness Global Warming Effects
W A S H I N G T O N, Nov. 16 -- While governments and scientists still debateclimate change, Inuit tribal members on Banks Island in the farnorthern Canadian Arctic are already convinced the world is gettingwarmer.
The evidence is in the land and ice that surrounds them, theysay: The permafrost is thawing, there are fewer seals and polarbears to hunt because of thinning sea-ice, and warmer weather hasbrought more mosquitoes that stay longer. In the fall, it’s freezingup later and later every year.
“We can’t read the weather like we used to,” said RosemarieKuptana, an activist among the 130 Inuit people who live in SachsHarbor, the only community on the island that covers 28,000 squaremiles in northwestern Canada.
It is a land where temperatures can occasionally plummet to 50degrees below zero on winter nights, but Kuptana and her neighbors— trappers, hunters and subsistence fishermen — are convinced awarming trend is changing their lives.
Warming Would Focus at Arctic
The Inuits’ experiences — recorded in interviews by researchersduring four visits to the island last year — are the focus of astudy being presented this week at a climate conference in theNetherlands.
There has been growing evidence of an Arctic thawing, fromreceding glaciers in Alaska to reports of an accelerated melting ofGreenland’s ice sheet. Computer models indicate that if the earthis warming, the amount of warming likely would be greatest in thehigher latitudes such as the Arctic region.
But scientists have yet to determine whether the changesobserved in the Arctic reflect the early stages of a permanentwarming due to manmade, heat-trapping pollution in the atmosphereor a natural, cyclical climate blip.
Still, the Inuit people who live along the southwestern coast ofBanks Island are convinced their climate is changing.
“It provides strong support for the conclusion that climatechange is not just a theory,” insisted Graham Ashford, who headedthe Inuit research project for the International Institute forSustainable Development.
Related Stories
ABC News Live