Anchorage Daily News

Expect some big problems on the horizon, according to the final report issued Monday by the Alaska Climate Impact Assessment Commission - the state Legislature-led group that's spent two years examining possible effects of global warming in Alaska.

The panel's 124-page report foresees several costly outcomes, from the need to relocate coastal villages hammered by storms and erosion, to an increase in forest fires and smoky skies, to the collapse of roads and public buildings, to several serious threats to fish and wildlife.

While the bottom line is worrisome, says Rep. Ralph Samuels - the Anchorage Republican who chaired the commission - the report tries to be solution-oriented, focusing on how the state might adapt to global warming rather than argue over what might be causing it.

"What we said is, 'OK, the assumption is it's happening ... look at the ice packs," Samuels said. "So how are we going to design the roads differently? How are we going to manage fish and game differently?'"

Partially a product of testimony the commission received at six public hearings statewide, the climate change impact report also drew upon expertise from nearly all of the state's cabinet-level agencies.

"It was a bit overwhelming - I'll tell you the truth - to see how much material is out there," Samuels said.

Not all of it paints a grim picture. Portions identify a few silver linings to global warming, noting, for example, the potential for a brand-new shipping industry in a seasonally ice-free Arctic Ocean - and more than $300 million a year the state receives in federally-funded climate change research.

Longer and warmer summers might also help to increase the number of tourists visiting Alaska, the study says.

"The unusually warm summer weather that occurred in Southeast Alaska in 2004 had a definite and positive economic impact from the point of view of the cruise industry," the report says.

But that same year also saw forest fires ravage Alaska, burning a record 6.5 million acres, and 2007 resulted in the biggest tundra fire ever recorded on the North Slope. Smoky skies from fires like those not only detract from the tourist experience but pose a threat to public health, the report says.

Alaska environmental activist Deborah Williams, president of Alaska Conservation Solutions, said she would have preferred to see the commission consider ways to reduce carbon dioxide emissions in an effort to mitigate global warming locally.

But apart from that, Williams said, she thinks the commission members produced "an excellent report" with "a tremendous amount of research."

"You don't have to scratch very deep," she said. "This report makes it abundantly clear that the impacts from climate change are predominantly negative."

Some examples:

* Ocean acidification: Approximately 30 to 50 percent of human-caused carbon-dioxide emissions are absorbed by the ocean, which - when coupled with warming seas - could threaten the ability of crabs and mollusks to form shells, thereby creating dead zones with far-ranging effects on other sea life. (The report advises the state closely monitor ocean pH levels.)

* Thawing permafrost: Rising temperatures pose a special threat to the trans-Alaska pipeline, which was constructed over hundreds of miles of frozen ground. Damage to the pipeline's support structures, the report says, could cost up to $800 million to repair. Melting permafrost could also damage hundreds of miles of roads and the foundations and pipes of thousands of public facilities.

* Subsistence harvests: With temperatures rising faster than anywhere else in the nation, vegetation in Alaska has already begun to change - and several wildlife species are shifting to new terrain as a result. According to testimony received in northwest Alaska, caribou are drifting farther from villages that were originally located close to migration routes in order to harvest them.

But the most striking climate-change impact of all, the report says, may well be the need to relocate entire coastal villages - like Newtok, Shishmaref and Kivalina- due to dramatic reductions in shore-fast sea ice that used to protect them from violent autumn storms.

As many as 162 communities in all could be threatened by erosion and flooding, the report states.

"There is little doubt that Alaskans are feeling the effects of climate change more than anyone else in our nation," the report says, quoting remarks delivered last year by Alaska Sen. Ted Stevens.

In addition to the commission's four legislators (including Rep. Reggie Joule, D-Kotzebue, the vice-chair, Sen. Gary Stevens, R-Kodiak, Sen. Gene Therriault, R-Fairbanks, and Samuels - the panel also included seven public members with expertise in climatology, economics, wildlife, engineering, tourism, resource industries and affected communities.

In concluding remarks, the report proposes several steps the commission believes should be taken next, among them handing the job of future research over to the Palin administration's Sub-Cabinet on Climate Change, where professionals in the state's various agencies can address problems in greater detail.

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