Alaska's D.C. reps refuse to see causes of climate change

The Louisiana floods have prompted the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) to state that there have been eight "500 year" floods in the United States in the last 12 months. Dozens of people have died and thousands of homes have been destroyed.

The rapid warming experienced across Alaska is altering ecosystems and threatening the traditional livelihoods of Native and rural Alaskans. Extensive permafrost thaw is expected by the end of this century, increasing the risk of infrastructure damage. Arctic sea ice is projected to continue to decline, with nearly ice-free periods possible by mid-century. Changes are expected in the extent, location and productivity of critical marine and terrestrial habitat for fish and wildlife. Alaska Natives are expected to experience declining availability of traditional foods and reduced access to sea ice hunting grounds. Melting glaciers are adding to coastal flood concerns around the world, and the economic and public finance costs to Alaska and the other 49 states will dwarf the costs of war.

According to Lloyd's of London in its 2014 publication "Catastrophe Modelling and Climate Change": "Scientific research points conclusively to the existence of climate change driven by human activity . . . climate models continue to project impacts on extreme weather in the coming decades . . ."

The U.S. Department of Defense in the 2016 directive "Climate Change Adaptation and Resilience" stated, "The DoD must be able to adapt current and future operations to address the impacts of climate change in order to maintain an effective and efficient U.S. military."

And the headline in Alaska Dispatch News on Aug. 19 brings it all home: "Shishmaref votes to relocate from eroding Barrier Island to mainland."

[Yes, you should listen to Bill Nye instead of Sarah Palin on climate change]

Yet Alaska's congressional delegation continue to beat their denier's drum.

Rep. Don Young: "I think this is the biggest scam since the Teapot Dome."

Sen. Dan Sullivan: "With 7 billion humans on Earth, there is likely some impact on nature. The last few years clearly show, though, that there is no concrete scientific consensus on the extent to which humans contribute to climate change."

Sen. Lisa Murkowski told National Public Radio that Alaskans are experiencing warmer temperatures and thinner ice, and said, "This is something that we must address." However, as further reported by NPR, Murkowski is "apparently not so sure what the cause is — or whether mankind is to blame." She spoke about a volcano in Iceland: "The emissions that are being put in the air by that volcano are a thousand years' worth of emissions that would come from all of the vehicles, all of the manufacturing in Europe."

The problem is that Murkowski's position stands in direct conflict with the opinions of the world's leading climate scientists. Princeton professor Michael Oppenheimer, a leading expert on climate change, responded: "It's simply untrue. I don't know where she gets that number from." Oppenheimer called Murkowski's statement "untrue," "wrong" and "highly deceptive."

According to Oppenheimer, it's actually the other way around. Annual emissions from Europe are 10 times bigger than the annual emissions of all volcanoes put together. And he says the argument misses a bigger point: Humans are adding carbon dioxide to what was previously a balanced system.

"So not only is the number wrong but the context is highly deceptive," he said.

"So no matter how you slice it," he concluded, Murkowski's comments were "nonsense." (Mother Jones, December 2014)

[Exxon Mobil's climate change smoke screen]

Unfortunately, the current leadership of the Republican Party would rather attack the messenger than deal with the message.  The 2016 Republican Party platform calls for abolishing the Environmental Protection Agency and demands an end to public subsidies for clean energy development.

Americans, including Alaskans, can have a bright future ahead of them with the development of alternative clean energy sources that can mitigate climate change. To fail to admit the problem is the worst folly, and to pretend that climate change is insignificant places the nation and Alaska in the path of economic disaster.

Margaret Stock is a 30-year Alaska resident and a retired Army Reserve officer who has taught constitutional and national security law at the U.S. Military Academy at West Point. A graduate of the Harvard Kennedy School, the Harvard Law School and the U.S. Army War College, she is running as an Independent for U.S. Senate in the 2016 general election.

The views expressed here are the writer's and are not necessarily endorsed by Alaska Dispatch News, which welcomes a broad range of viewpoints. To submit a piece for consideration, email commentary@alaskadispatch.com. Send submissions shorter than 200 words to letters@alaskadispatch.com or click here to submit via any web browser.