On the 11/23/06 broadcast of Democracy Now, Shelia Watt-Cloutier, former chair of the Inuit Circumpolar Council, discusses several effects global warming is currently having on the Inuit — and everyone else in Alaska, Greenland, Canada, and Russia. She describes:

…[S]everal communities already as we speak are so damaged by global warming and climate changes that relocation, at the cost of millions of dollars, is now the only option. … [J]ust to give you an example of the damages is to the roads and the runways that are already damaged the eroded landscape, the contaminated drinking water, the coastal losses because of erosion, the melting permafrost that is now causing beach slumping and increased snowfall in some areas, not enough snow in other areas, longer sea ice free seasons, new species of birds and fish, and insects have arrived in the arctic, which we don’t even have names for half the time, there’s unpredictable sea ice conditions, glaciers are melting, creating torrent rivers instead of streams, and now we have more drownings, and we have, as a result of the unpredictability and condition of the ice … where our hunters thought they could cross safely.

Best to take the word of an expert at snow and ice, an Inuit, on what is continuing to happen. As far as attempting to shift in the face of a shifting climate, the Inuit will likely be the trendsetters.

From the perverse consequences file: there’s a story in the November 24, 2006 episode of Living on Earth about the booming fossil fuel exploration industry in Hammerfest, Norway. Hammerfest is analogous to Nome, Alaska: it is on the northern coast, and is amidst an enormously changing ocean landscape. And, you guessed it: the oil industry is all over it. There no doubt are amazing opportunities in both fossil fuels and shipping (now that Arctic pathways are opening, due to runaway heating of polar water). To an entrepreneur, these two industries would be the very paradigm of growth.

Be on the lookout for new markets created by our pathetically idiotic non-stewardship of the earth. They may well make you pessimistic.