Alaska the 'poster state' for climate concerns

By Elizabeth Weise, USA TODAY
FAIRBANKS, Alaska — To the untrained eye, Bonanza Creek forest is breathtaking, a vibrant place alive with butterflies and birds, with evidence of moose and bear at every turn.
But look through forest ecologist Glenn Juday's eyes, and you see a dying landscape.

Since the 1970s, climate change has doubled the growing season in some places and raised state temperatures 6 degrees in the winter and 3.5 on average annually since 1950, says Juday, a professor at the University of Alaska-Fairbanks. Drought is stressing and killing spruce, aspen and birch trees.

Alaska has emerged as the poster state for global warming, the climate effect attributed to higher concentrations of "greenhouse" gases — mostly carbon dioxide created by burning fossil fuels — that capture the sun's heat in the atmosphere.

Global warming is a hot topic, especially now. Hurricane season begins Thursday, and climate researchers warn that rising ocean temperatures may bring more intense storms.

Former vice president Al Gore is back in the news with the release of his acclaimed documentary on warming, An Inconvenient Truth. And President Bush — who has been criticized by environmental groups that say he has been slow to acknowledge the dangers posed by warming — said last week that "people in our country are rightly concerned about greenhouse gases and the environment."

Alaska is important in measuring the effect of global warming on the USA because what happens here soon will be felt in the Lower 48 states, say experts such as Robert Corell, a senior fellow at the American Meteorological Society.

The spruce budworm, aspen leaf miner and the spruce bark beetle, pests once kept in check by winter cold, are flourishing here. Statewide, insect outbreaks have killed more than 4 million acres of forest in a decade and a half, says John Morton, a biologist at the Kenai National Wildlife Refuge in Soldotna.

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