Early Warming: Crisis and Response in the Climate-Changed North,
Nancy Lord
Introduction
1. What are some of the climate changes that Lord has observed in Alaska?
2. What are the climate impacts on the arctic and how does this affect the rest of the planet?
3. How have communities pulled together to mitigate some of the climate change effects?
4. What does Lord say her book is and isn’t about?
5. What are other types of environmental changes not directly related to climate change?
6. How is the resiliency of the indigenous population highlighted?
7. What are governmental impediments to acting more holistically concerning climate change?
8. John Holdren says, “We basically have three choices: mitigation, adaptation, and suffering.” What is he getting at?
9. What are some of the politics around the concept of “adaptation”?
10. What can we learn from early adapters?
Part 1: My Salmon Home: Kenai Peninsula
1. What does the title suggest about Lord’s passion for the wildlife she researches?
2. How is salmon integral to the Kenai Peninsula?
3. What kinds of water quality issues does the Cook Inlet keeper measure and track?
4. What do warmer water temperatures means for the salmon and other marine life dependent on the salmon?
5. What are some of the factors that affect stream temperatures?
6. Why is it important not to attribute every fluctuation in temperature to climate change? How are scientists careful about the claims they make?
7. Can you describe the relationship between warming streams and warming air?
8. What recommendations did Sue Mauger make to the Alaska Climate Impact Assessment Commission?
9. Why was she surprised at the amount of resistance directed at her research and data?
10. What is the unique history of the Ninilchik peoples?
11. What efforts were put into place to try to restore California’s Sacramento Chinook run when it collapsed?
12. What does Michael Healy’s research of the effects of climate change on salmon demonstrate?
13. What management options does Healy suggest, and how might this be a model for adaptive thinking in related scenarios?
14. Temperature stressed salmon often get diseases, such as Ichthyophonus. What does this parasite do to the salmon?
15. In additional to global warming, how do lower stream flows, floods, sedimentation, and changes in the timing of freeze and thaw cycles affect salmon?
16. What is turbidity and how does sedimentation affect marine life?
17. Turning toward the shade trees necessary for healthy salmon streams, how do warmer temperatures invite parasitic hosts, such as the spruce bark beetle?
18. What is the relationship between a changing eco-system and the threat of invading species?
19. What kind of information can Mauger’s pioneering work provide for scientists and environmentalists studying climate change?
20. How might this information be used by fisheries managers as one example?
21. Historically, we know salmon are adaptable, but what is different about the nature of change in our contemporary moment?
22. What are kettle lakes and why are they useful for measuring climate change?
23. How are berms or ice-shoved ramparts a useful geological record? How do they form?
24. What is the concept of backcast and how can it help with future climate predictions?
25. What is the “stranger story” that Reger and Berg uncover from radiocarbon dating wood from the berm?
26. Why does Lord take the time to include details about all the wildlife she observes on site? What effect does this have on you, the reader?
27. At the end of Part One, Lord explains the scientific process and suggest it’s incompatible with crises. Why?
28. What is significant about the rise in carbon dioxide in the last 800,000 years?
29. How does Berg and Reger’s data help climate modelers?
30. Meteorological records show a 60% decline in available water in the Kenai lowlands between 1968-2009. What are the reasons?
31. What role do wetlands play in the cycling of carbon dioxide and methane?
32. On the last page of Part One, Lord describes the enormous flock of sand hill cranes that she observes. Why does she include this detail?
Part Two: Boreal Forest: At the Arctic Circle
1. What is the boreal forest?
2. Why does Lord take the time to describe the adventure she embarks on to paddle down the Nahanni River to the wild Mackenzie River? What does this ad to the Early Warming narrative?
3. Lord shares different perspectives of the river, including the experience paddling on it, locating it as a think line on a map, and observing it from high above the boreal slopes that flank it. How does each view vary? What does she include them all?
4. Lord pays attention to the visual elements in her environment, but she’s also attentive to sound. What are sounds that she pays attention to? Why?
5. Comment on Lord’s observation of the boreal wilderness: “I thought how frightening it is that, even in places with so little human occupancy, we can alter the conditions of life.”
6. What does Lord reveal with her comment, “ . . . the proposed Mackenzie Gas Project, an eight-hundred-mile-long pipeline designed to carry natural gas along the river’s same route—only in reverse—from Arctic gas fields to Alberta, threatened (or promised, depending on one’s point of view) to open up the country in major new ways.”
7. Explain how the Dene First Nation Peoples fought for a commitment to “Conservation First” in the development of a gas pipeline and mining.
8. What are some of the difficulties First Nation Peoples face in balancing strong environmental rights with economic pressures?
9. What role can the boreal forests play in moderating the effects of global warming?
10. What kinds of arguments are made about the necessity of the boreal forest in mitigating climate change?
11. Comment on Lord’s observation: “The irony could not be lost on anyone. On the one hand, a pipeline project that would result in more fossil fuel burning—especially if, as many suspected, all that natural gas would be burned to extract oil from tar sands in Alberta—and worsen greenhouse gas emissions and climate change. On the other, a landscape that holds carbon in its plants and soil. To save the latter, would we need to suffer the former?”
12. What are the advantages to using both indigenous and scientific knowledge in land use planning?
13. What does David Livingstone mean when he says finding a balance between environmental protection and economic development primarily concerns “managing human activity.”
14. Lord states, “The world’s economy needs mineral and energy resources, but the world’s health needs some large places where entire ecosystems might be left in their wild condition. Is it possible to negotiate changes with both interests in mind?
15. How is the boreal forest key to the Mountain River and North Territories’ ecological importance?
16. What is deforestation and what are its impacts?
17. Which countries are the largest emitters of greenhouse gases in the world?
18. What are some of the complex factors involved in carbon flux research on forests?
19. What is the surprising research about old growth forests and their rate of taking up carbon?
20. How are carbon budget models being used in research? What can they do?
21. What role does the cold play in carbon release?
22. What is likely to happen if forests continue to warm?
23. What does it mean to move from being a carbon sink to a carbon source?
24. What are some of the forest dynamics that are raising alarms?
25. How are some of these same dynamics impacting permafrost?
26. What has carbon flux research revealed about methane, the gas that forms from the decomposition of organic matter in the absence of oxygen?
27. We don’t normally think of lakes as being a major source of greenhouse gas emissions source. But, what is happening with Siberia’s lakes, for example?
28. What is the purpose of The Boreal Songbird Initiative?
29. What are some results of birds that leave one area and food source and end up competing with other species for new habitats and food sources?
30. What makes it particularly difficult for conservationists to sell wilderness values to the general public?
31. Why are northern bird species particularly at risk?
32. What are Audubon recommendations for regarding bird habitats?
33. What is the status of natural gas as compared to oil and coal? How does that change when it’s being used to produce oil from tar sands?
34. Why do many indigenous leaders see a connection between land conservation and cultural preservation when leaders in developed countries tend to downplay that connection?
35. How do many aboriginal people rely on the land for subsistence as well as spiritual sustenance? Does this change their relationship to the land?
36. What are some of the specific struggles that aboriginal peoples in the North face?
37. How does the article on “Extreme Warming” and the accompanying map in the airport lead Lord to contemplate the role of the North in experiencing climate-related change first?
38. How have top Canadian leaders worked to ensure conservation of some of Canada’s expansive wilderness areas?
39. What does Lord assert are the three claims to fame of Fort Yukon in Alaska’s interior?
40. How is Fort Yukon, Alaska, similar to and different from, Fort Good Hope, Canada?
41. What are some reactions to Doyon, Limited, the Native regional corporation, intended to develop oil and gas preserves, in exchange for other Native-owned lands?
42. What are the goals of CATG—the quasi-governmental organization comprised of ten area villages—with respect to protecting tribal lands while supporting economic development?
43. What is Lord’s view of such organizations?
44. What are some of the interesting details about gardening in the Arctic Circle?
45. How is the gardening project one attempt to deal with the “synergistic” effects of climate change and land use?
46. What are some of the ides behind the biofuel project in Fort Yukon?
47. The wood bison restoration project is another attempt at matching wildlife to available habitat in the Yukon Flat’s area in the face of a changing ecosystem. What is the thinking behind this project? What are some of the impediments to the project?
48. How do oil and gas development threaten wildlife preservation?
49. Why was the Yukon Flats National Wildlife Refuge created in 1980?
50. What are some of the contradictions villagers see in the Doyon native corporation?
51. Pam Miller, a longtime activist for the protection of arctic lands, states that “The magnitude of losing the boreal forest is as big as losing the sea ice—but it’s more subtle.” Why is this a concern?
52. How does Lord describe the conflict between the corporation set up by the Alaska Native Claims Settlement Act of 1971 and public process?
53. How does Ben Stevens account for why CATG’s work doesn’t consider climate change issues at present?
54. Respond to the flyer Lord picks up in Fairbanks, put out by the tribal government of Fort Yukon: “Doyon Land Swap is Bad Business. Why are we giving up our land so BP, Exxon, or another oil company can get rich and U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service can buy our Native lands?”
55. Why does Lord spend a paragraph describing a photo of a dead polar bear? What effect does the description have on you, the reader?
56. Lord discovers another kind of map at CATG headquarters, one that uses Geographic Information System (GIS) mapping technology to identify traditional land use around each of the villages. What kinds of information does Lord observe from these maps, and why is the information considered confidential? Why were these maps created in the first place, and who do they belong to?
57. How does Adlai Alexander, a former village chief, express pride in his people’s ability to “tolerate whatever Mother Nature dishes out” while contrasting that skill with newcomers who come to Alaska unprepared and end up dying because of the elements?
58. How does a fish wheel work?
59. What are some reasons given for low salmon runs in Fort Yukon? How are the fish noticeably absent from the landscape?
60. Lord claims that “for village Alaska, the “energy crisis,” not climate change, was the story, and the concern, of the summer.” How does the economic plight of many native Alaskans impact their day-to-day decision- making?
61. How do costs of food items in Fort Yukon compare to costs in Bellingham?
62. Lord writes movingly, “Fort Yukon people still get much of their food from the river and land, but if the salmon runs continue to decline and the moose disappear and the fire blackens the berry patches, food security will indeed be a big issue. One can argue that no one in bush Alaska needs to eat watermelon imported from California or fresh milk from Wisconsin cows, but if local foods become harder to find, or require farther travel to reach, something needs to fill the void.” What kinds of constraints impact your food purchases and consumption?
63. What does Lord refer to as the “bigger story of change” impacting traditional communities?
64. How might “place-based design solutions” and bottom-up decision- making help communities respond to their needs?
65. Recount Thomas’ story about the native woman who shot the slingshot at a storm cloud and stopped the rain. How does Lord extend respect to different cultural perspectives on what might have actually happened in that moment?
66. How do some native cultures question western scientific “progress,” such as landing on the moon?
67. How does access to healthy food become a political issue in difficult to access areas or in communities that are impoverished?
68. One woman tells Lord that the biggest effect of climate change is depression. Lord writes, “not being able to predict the weather, to know what was coming and to plan around that, and to face conditions of wind and snow different from what they’d known all their lives caused people to be restless and unsure. That change unsettled people in a way that could cause them to lose heart.” What effect does the weather or not being able to predict the weather have on you?
69. What are Lord’s thoughts on eco-tourism, or more recently, global warming tourism, in Alaska? What concerns does she raise? How is global warming bringing about changes that encourage different forms of tourism?