because they’re too wet, now [in] the areas where lakes used to be, all
the plants are dried.”
To Melanie Duchin, Alaska representative of the environmental
organization Greenpeace, which recorded these testimonies and pub-
lished them in a 1998 report, the comments of the Yupik and Inupiat
demonstrate that “climate change is not just a theory, it is a reality. It is
happening now, and it is having a very tangible effect on people today.”
Such bravura statements might elicit derisive snorts—or, at the very
least, raised eyebrows—from skeptics. It is not only that Greenpeace
would be expected to make that kind of claim, but also because many
researchers have traditionally dismissed the reliability of anecdotal obser-
vations such as these. But almost without exception, the evidence pre-
sented to Greenpeace and others by Alaska Natives correlates perfectly
with the observations and predictions of scientific researchers.
For one thing, the Arctic region is indeed, as Native testimonies
claim, warming: compared to the rest of the world, significantly and
rapidly. Global temperatures have increased on average by 1°F over the
past 100 years, but in the Arctic, according to the Intergovernmental
Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), “The magnitude of warming is about
5 oC [9°F] per century.” Growth rings in Siberian larch from western
Siberia show that the twentieth century was the warmest in more than
1,000 years, and that the region has experienced a steady temperature
increase for 150 years. A 2002 paper in the journal Science concluded
that the average Arctic surface air temperature in the twentieth century
“was exceptionally high compared with the previous 300 years.”
On the basis of such measurements, the IPCC predicts a range of
climate effects in the Arctic, from ecosystem changes to diminishing
sea ice. Such images are largely couched by the IPCC in hypothetical
terms, predicting what models suggest may yet come to pass. Those
who deny global warming’s reality question such assumptions, citing
alternative models and more optimistic interpretations. But as the peo-
ple of Little Diomede are all too well aware, the changes brought about
by rising temperatures in the western Arctic are far from theoretical.
And some of the most striking images of the very real changes that are
taking place in the region can be found within the boundaries of
Alaska’s largest city.
98 Kieran Mulvaney