Saturday, May 27, 2006

Global warming melts igloos, forces tent living.

Climate change may be an abstract concept for you. It may be difficult to perceive as yet, but the Inuit, attuned to to living on the ice over thousands of years, experience it every day not as climate change, but climate disruption. Spring has been arriving at remote Arctic village of Puvirnituq, in Northern Quebec, just south of Baffin Island earlier and earlier for the past six years. In times gone past traditional Inuit could look out the window and tell what the weather would be like the next day, "now it could be anything". Where snow once covered the mountains overlooking the villiage of Ivujivik, and ice covered the bay, there is now bare rock and open water. In April they experience June temperatures. Canadian officials visited Puvirnituq to disscuss climate change and the unexpected heat melted their igloo forcing them to decamp to a tent. Polar bears are coming dangerously close to humans in search of prey. Source: :::[SMH]

"It isn't just that it is warmer," Mr Aubin said. "It's the unpredictable nature of the weather now. We can go out hunting or fishing inland in March and find it's too warm to build an igloo, so we put up a tent and then the temperature suddenly drops again and we could freeze to death."

Other posts on global warming and the Inuit
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