Alaska

Alaska Senator defends young constituent against Limbaugh’s attacks

Those of you who don’t read the comments under our posts may have missed this. Two days ago Nathan Wyeth brought news that talk radio gasbag Rush Limbaugh has been mocking a young Yup’ik Eskimo from Alaska who came to testify to Congress about the accelerating loss of her people’s traditional way of life due […]

Eh …

… who needs sea ice and polar bears anyway.

Alaskan senator invents new theory of global warming

Ted Stevens, the Republican senator whose vacation home was recently raided by the FBI, and who made over $800,000 from a shady real estate deal last year, has come up with a brand-new theory of global warming. He told a NBC reporter in Alaska:

We're at the end of a long, long term of warming, 700 to 900 years of increased temperature, a very slow increase. We think we're close to the end of that. If we're close to the end of that, that means that we'll start getting cooler gradually, not very rapidly, but cooler once again and stability might come to this region for a period of another 900 years.

This was Stevens' way of telling the villagers of Shishmaref, which is being washed away by rising waters despite the Army Corps of Engineers' construction of massive sea walls, that they're on their own.

It'll be interesting to see if the denialists at Planet Gore, so quick to attack anyone who dares make an issue of global warming, will leap to the defense of Stevens' claim, which as far as scientists can tell, appears to be a personal fantasy.

Gathering data in the U.S.’ largest temperate rainforest a heroic and necessary task

Hiking part of the Tongass National Forest in southeastern Alaska a few summers ago, I was utterly wowed, but knowing that it accounts for nearly one-third of the old-growth temperate rain forest left in the world seemed incredibly incongruent with the fact that my government was working so hard to wreck it (thanks to some truly absurd subsidies).

An excellent story in the new National Geographic retells the tale and shines light on new efforts aimed at allowing the Tongass to continue its majestic reign, including a heroic grassroots effort of the Sitka Conservation Society to "ground-truth" those parts of the nearly impenetrable Tongass scheduled for the saw. Without SCS and others, this jewel would look mightily different, and they deserve our support and our thanks.

Built to scale

Small and medium size wind generators of about 100 KW each are playing an important role in the power supplied by the Alaska Village Electric Cooperative (AVEC) -- a non-profit customer-owned electric co-op serving 52 villages throughout interior and western Alaska.

Wind power on this scale, and in these conditions, is not cheap. Unlike megawatt scale wind turbines which cost around $1,600 per KW of installed capacity, these smaller generators run around $10,000 per installed KW. Part of that cost is simply a matter of buying on a smaller scale. But according to Brent Petrie, Key Accounts Manager for AVEC, the harsh Alaska conditions are responsible for much of this cost. Building in permafrost has always been tough, especially when that permafrost undergoes seasonal melts that turns it to mush and marsh. As an environmentally sensitive utility, AVEC is careful to minimize damage during installation. Overall, electricity costs from such small scale generation are estimated by Petrie to run around 15 cents per kWh -- three to four times the price of larger scale wind farms in milder conditions.

But the same conditions that drive the price of wind electricity for the AVEC customers drive up conventional sources even more. Fuel is shipped by barge to the small isolated communities, or even flows in, meaning that electricity is supplied by diesel generators run on the most expensive of fossil fuels. Since transporting large amount of fuel is an expensive prospect, normally fuel is delivered only once a year.

According to Petrie, AVEC tries to make sure that as a cushion each village has storage capacity for 13 months of fuel. Building a diesel storage facility on permafrost is an expensive prospect too. Combined fuel purchase, shipping, and storage for diesel in these villages runs between 13 cents and 25 cents per kWh -- even before purchase and maintenance of generators is considered. Overall, electricity to these villages averages 45 cents per kWh; so the 15 cents per kWh for wind electricity represents a real savings.

Not so perma, not so frosty

Thanks to global warming, the permafrost is no longer very perma, nor very frosty. I've noted before about how the ultimate release of huge amounts of greenhouse gases formerly trapped in the tundra could create a "self-perpetuating climate time bomb." But we shouldn't ignore the severe local impacts.

Drilling for oil is good for climate change — see how!

Alaska Sen. Lisa Murkowski (R) explains why drilling in the Arctic Refuge will help us fight climate change: Won’t drilling for more oil make global warming worse? What some might perceive as the contradiction in further drilling, when we take into account the mean estimate of what we take from ANWR, it will be the […]

Tunnels everywhere!

First a train tunnel between Africa and Europe, now the Russians want to build the long-dreamt-of tunnel between Russia and Alaska. The tunnel would theoretically carry natural gas, oil, electricity, and fiber-optic wires.

The more and better tunnels we have for rail, the more competitive rail will be with less efficient transport systems like air travel. This is better for energy efficiency and therefore the environment.

This project still has a lot of problems -- it's not like there's a lot of spare rail up above the Arctic Circle, necessitating lots of construction -- but I'm sure Ted Stevens is already salivating.

Sarah James, Gwich’in activist and environmental prizewinner, answers questions

Sarah James. What work do you do? I am the board chairperson for the Gwich’in Steering Committee. I work as I live the life. And I am open to opportunities to tell my story in order to protect the calving and nursery grounds of the Porcupine caribou herd. What does your organization do? The Gwich’in […]