Monday, October 30, 2017
By Dahr Jamail, Truthout | Report
A dirt berm is maintained along the coast of Utqiaġvik, the northernmost city in Alaska, in an effort to slow seawater intrusion from increasingly severe Arctic storms. (Photo: Dahr Jamail)
As the summer Arctic sea ice melts and continues to recede further, the fragile coastline resting atop thawing permafrost is made more vulnerable to the warming waters of the Arctic Ocean, and the waves are given room to grow larger by the vanishing ice.
This past August, every time I walked to the shore in Utqiaġvik, the northernmost point in the US and only 1,300 miles from the North Pole, a large bulldozer was busy maintaining a large dirt barrier that perilously separated the northern edges of the village against the steadily encroaching, increasingly turbulent seas. It is a full-time job, because, as I would soon learn from the president of the Ukpeaġvik Iñupiat Corporation that owns and runs a large portion of the village, the berm requires rebuilding from storms past, ongoing maintenance, and then building back up in preparation for coming storms.
One evening I walked to the coast as large sets of waves, sent from a windstorm out at sea, rolled onto and up the beach. Many of them were large enough to crash against the flanks of the 25-foot berm. As they did, the water jetted up into the air, colored dark brown from the fresh soil that had just been dumped onto the berm. As the waves pulled back into the ocean, they carried with them large clumps of fresh dirt that rolled down the beach into the shallow waters of the Chuchki Sea.
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Only rows of the very top portions of older canvas bags filled with soil remained atop portions of the beach, remnants of previous attempts to stop the sea’s relentless march towards the village. Soil from the newest iteration, the large berm, actively covered and rendered impotent the old barrier. In another place on the beach were the top corners of large metal tanks, rusting as they lay side by side in a row, protruding above the sand … for now.
Where I stood, the sea was already washing directly against the manmade barrier. The first row of houses in the village was barely 15 meters from the back of the berm. Not far behind them stood government buildings, the police station, tribal offices. One hundred meters south of me along the coast, larger homes stood atop a bluff that was about five meters tall. A dirt road separated the homes from the edge of the bluff. Waves were already splashing against the bottom of the bluff, as they rolled over the tops of mostly buried sandbags.
The motor of the front-loader rumbled as it scooped up shovelfuls of dark soil from a large pile that had been carried from a gravel pit a half a kilometer inland. Black exhaust smoke billowed from the top of the front-loader as it quickly carried another load of soil to the berm where it slowed and allowed its blade to tip down. Out tumbled another load of future seabed. Underneath it, unseen, methane was already bubbling up to further heat the atmosphere and render these efforts laughable.
More: http://www.truth-out.org/news/item/42413-scientists-warn-of-ecological-armageddon-amid-waves-of-heat-and-climate-refugees
Exposing the Big Game 
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