Yesterday the earth was trembling with news about the latest dire news from the artic, noting that the permafrost wasn’t so perma anymore and the precipitation that was falling was rain not snow because of the rising temperatures. And the beavers with their great gnashing of teeth and wicked ponding ways were building dams all over the place changing the tundra, which was changing where the salmon were which was changing where the things that came to eat the salmon were and Please GOD make it stop!!!
Imagine a thousand panicked headlines like this one.
US study: Record highs, rain and beaver damage in Arctic
The Arctic continues to deteriorate from global warming, not setting as many records this year as in the past, but still changing so rapidly that federal scientists call it alarming in their annual Arctic report card.
The 16th straight health check for the northern polar region spotlighted the first ever rainfall at Greenland summit station, record warm temperatures between October and December 2020, and the new problem of expansion of beavers in the Arctic.
he 2020-2021 polar year—scientists study the Arctic on a yearly basis from October to September—was only the 7th warmest on record. However, October to December in 2020 set a record for the warmest autumn.
This report card comes out as the Arctic warms two to three times faster than the rest of the planet. The region’s melting ice opens the door to more pressures, including the potential for more oil and gas drilling and more mining and more tensions between countries wanting to exploit the area. For the people who live there, it means having to adapt to a ground that is getting softer as permafrost melts and changes to traditional hunting and fishing.
Now you don’t have to close your eyes and imagine very hard at all to see that if all this was happening and triggering cataclysmic reactions around the globe in response they’d be pretty happy to find a scapegoat to point to. One without a lot of investors. I’m guessing a massive cull will be required next, It’s about the only thing we have the will to do to slow climate change.
Another weird situation was the expansion of beavers into western Alaska, something Moon called “stunning.” There are more than 12,000 dams there, double the amount from two decades ago.
Beavers are a problem because they dam an area causing more water to pool on the surface, which enhances permafrost thaw, making roads, airports, pipelines and structures less stable, Moon said. It’s changed where fish and even beluga whales live, Erickson said.
“It’s a real transformation or disruption of the existing ecosystem,” Moon said.
Those dam beavers and their climate changing ways! Now they’re ruining the PIPELINES too! And forcing out beluga whales…how exactly? NOAA says they live in artic and subartic waters, and are now an endangered species.
Beluga whales are vulnerable to many stressors and threats, including pollution, habitat degradation, harassment, interactions with commercial and recreational fisheries, oil and gas exploration, disease, predation from killer whales, and other types of human disturbance.
And BEAVERS, Don’t forget the beavers. Because if there’s one thing beavers can’t stand, I mean besides the noise of melting ice and fiber optic cables, it’s Belugas!
Beavers are either a threat to our very existence or the solution to it. Looks like their fire contribution just mad the kiddie science circuit, and now will be available as a STEM unit for school children. Funny how they can be so good and so bad on the exact same day.
Would beavers make good firefighters?
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