Arctic Obsession

by Alexis S. Troubetzkoy

  Commercial hunting is but one threat to whales. The World Wildlife Federation (WWF) lists a series of other potentially lethal hazards, foremost of which is underwater pollution. The same toxic pollutants that sully the air find their way underwater, and, distributed by currents, they are as harmful to sea life as atmospheric pollution is to land life. Expansion of oil-related activity — construction, extraction, and transport to markets — is a conspicuous threat not only to whales, but to the overall health of the Arctic. The 1989 Exxon Valdez accident off the Alaskan coast and the 2010 sinking of the BP drilling rig in the Gulf of Mexico illustrate dramatically the destructive effect escaping oil has not only on animal life, but on human habitation. To contemplate a Valdez or Gulf of Mexico situation unfolding in the Arctic is mind-boggling.

  But oil pollution is not the only concern — another, less dramatic, factor endangering whales is noise pollution. The whale’s survival over the ages is largely attributable to its highly developed sense of hearing. In murky or pitch-black waters the search for food is directed by sound — a built-in sonarlike arrangement within the whale’s ears permits it “to see” its prey, be it swarms of krill or something more substantial. Sensitive ears pick up the din of large ships’ propellers as far as a mile away, and, if great enough, the animal risks disorientation sufficient to strand itself unwittingly on a shoreline and possibly to die. Injurious sound emanates not only from tankers and cargo ships, but from a variety of other sources: scouting submarines, low-frequency waves used in underwater exploration, seismic surveys by oil companies, underwater security detection systems, acoustic weapon testing, and the like. Incidences of beached whales with ear damage are becoming more frequent. Seismic surveys of offshore oil and gas carried out off Russia’s Pacific coast near Sakhalin have excluded gray whales from their primary feeding habitat. Noise pollution should not be disregarded as a factor in endangerment of whales.

  * * *

  Let us return now to the Greenland glacial melt and the effect it has on ocean waters. The possibility of inundations through the melt is disturbing enough, but there is another aspect to the melt, a supplementary source of climate change to a localized region of the globe. The relatively temperate climates of Ireland, the British islands, and Western Europe are delivered by the Gulf Stream, the powerful current circling the Atlantic. It picks up the warm, saline surface waters of the Caribbean and pushes them north, then veers east and hugs the European coasts. There it is given a push by cold dense Nordic waters flowing south, which propels the stream along the Atlantic’s east side, eventually to complete its cyclical passage off the western hemisphere — a conveyer belt, as it were. It is the Gulf Stream that allows strawberries to grow in Norway and palm trees in parts of Britain. (And consider that Oslo is nearly at the same latitude as Churchill, Manitoba, and London, the same as Irkutsk, Siberia, where the average January temperature is -59°F).

  The concerning news is that the Greenland glacial melt is pouring vast quantities of fresh water into the saline ocean and this is beginning to have a disruptive effect on the Gulf Stream’s natural progress. The stream’s movement is largely propelled by the natural interaction of cold, salty water with warmer, less saline water. Scientists have long been concerned that a freshening of the salt water would disrupt that interaction and shut down the conveyer belt, and this is what is beginning to happen. The developing flow of fresh glacial water is pouring into the Norwegian and Greenland Seas and mixing with the Gulf Stream.

  British scientists monitoring Gulf Stream waters over the years reported in 2004 that less warm water was flowing north from the Caribbean and less cold water was flowing south from the Arctic, a phenomenon that puts into jeopardy the force of the conveyor belt. Although a United Nations study finds it highly unlikely that the conveyor belt will slow down in our century, longer-term prospects are questionable. If the Gulf Stream weakens sufficiently, the relatively temperate climate of Western Europe stands to be affected and an overall cooling will take place. It is possible that someday in the future a family on the Cornwall coast will wake up to find that the palm trees growing in the front yard have been displaced by a grove of birches.

  The lead organization monitoring global climate change is the International Panel of Climate Change (IPCC), established by the United Nations in 1988. Over the years it has issued four in-depth assessments of the situation, the most recent one in 2007, which was authored by six hundred scientific researchers from forty countries. Before being made public, 620 experts studied the findings, followed by representatives from 113 countries reviewing the final text. It’s as credible a document as one might find despite the flurry of excitement caused in early 2010 by the discovery of certain errors that crept into it, which concerned the rate of melt of the Himalayan glacier — “glaciergate,” climate skeptics called it. But just as the organization in this instance was criticized for poorly worded or poorly sourced claims, so it is criticized for being too conservative inasmuch as it reflects a consensus view of a diversity of contributors and nations.

  It would be well to reflect on some sobering points raised in the organization’s 2007 assessment report. Cold days, cold nights, and frost events have become less frequent, while hot days, hot nights, and heat waves have become more frequent. In the period spanning 1995 to 2006, eleven of the twelve years were the warmest since 1850 when instrumental record began. In the six-year period of 2001 to 2007, there has been a 2.5°F increase in the average global temperature of the past hundred years, and “average Arctic temperatures increased at almost twice the global average rate.” As for sea levels, in the forty-two year period of 1961 to 2003, the average annual rate of rise was .07 inches, with the last ten years of those years being .5 inches (The report does caution that “it is unclear whether this as a long-term trend or a variability.”)

  The assessment report concludes with the following: “Most of the increase of global temperature since the mid-20th century is very likely due to the observed increase of anthropogenic gas contributors … warming of the climate system is unequivocal.” Since Arctic amplification accelerates the process, developments in the Arctic may be viewed as a possible preview of things to come.

  Notes

  1. Scott G. Borgerson, “The Arctic Meltdown: the Economic and Security Implications of Global Warming,” Foreign Affairs (March/April, 2008), 77.

  2. Whalebone is in fact baleen — that hair-like material within the mouth — which in pre-plastic days found use as corset stays and parasol ribs. Ambergris, a substance from the intestine of sperm whales, at one time or another was used in the mixing of perfumes, incense and medication, and in the Middle Ages was worn around the neck in the conviction that it wards off Black Death.

  11

  People and Politics

  IN 1294, THE INTREPID Marco Polo journeyed into the far reaches of the sprawling Mongol Empire where he spent time in the court of Kublai Khan. In his account of that visit, he wrote: “… beyond the most distant part of the territory of those Tartars … there is another region which extends to the utmost bounds of the north, and it is called the Region of Darkness, because during most part of winter months the sun is invisible …”1

  Polo goes on to tell of the people living in that polar region, as described by his hosts: “The men of this country are well made and tall, but of pallid complexion. They are not united under the government of a king or prince, and they live without any established laws or usages, in the manner of brute creatures. Their intellects also are dull, and they have an air of stupidity.” We are told, however, that the Mongols were impressed by the hunting skills of these seemingly backward polar natives, who “catch vast multitudes of ermines, martens, foxes and other creatures of that kind, the furs of which are more delicate, and consequently more valuable than found in those districts inhabited by the tartars.” (And which the Tartars took every occasion to steal or barter for worthless trinkets.) Polo’s report is one of the earliest European accounts of encounters with
natives of Arctic regions.

  What of these people today? Who are they and how are they dispersed over the vast northern expanses? It is estimated that approximately 404,000 indigenous peoples live above the Artic Circle — two-thirds in the western half and one-third in the eastern. The population numbers in the United States, Canada, and Greenland are clearly defined with the respective figures at 130,000, 65,000, and 46,200. The Eurasian numbers are more difficult to come by because of the high degree of assimilation, but the approximate figures for Russia, Norway, and Sweden-Finland are 79,200, 57,000 and 27,000. If one were to add the non-native European inhabitants, the figure would rise by 97 percent for a grand total of Arctic population of 3.4 million, with two-thirds living in Russia.

  A tenuous commonality exists between the indigenous of the circumpolar north. The population falls within two definable categories, those that inhabit the taiga year-round or travel between taiga and tundra, and those living in coastal areas. Within each grouping are divisions and sub-divisions — in Russia alone anthropologists have identified nineteen ethnic groups, delineated principally by language. The major divisions, however, are the Sami (or Lapps) of Scandinavia, Finland, and extreme northwest Russia; the Nenets (or Samoyeds) and Yakuts of central Siberia; the Chukchi of northeastern Siberia; the Aleuts of Alaska and Bering Strait; and the so-called Eskimoan division, which sub-divides into two groups — the Yupik of western Alaska and the Inuit of Canada, Greenland, and north coastal Alaska.

  Initial contact with Europeans invariably proved disastrous for Arctic natives, just as it had for indigenous peoples in other parts of the globe. Encroachment above all brought new diseases which immune systems could not withstand and thousands died of smallpox, influenza, measles, diphtheria, or other sicknesses. Greenland in the Middle Ages, it will be recalled, suffered disastrously from the ravages wrought by disease-bearing Scandinavians. In Kamchatka of the seventeenth century and in other northeast parts of Siberia, the same story — in the Magadan region, for example, two-thirds of the inhabitants died of smallpox. In eastern Canada, early whalers from Britain and France infected the Inuit with smallpox and diphtheria and thousands perished. In the nineteenth century, American whalers wrought havoc along the Alaskan coastline by bringing in not only a raft of contagious diseases, but by introducing the natives to alcohol — losses of populations were as high as 50 percent in places. Following the arrival of Russian fur traders in the Bering Straits area, the Aleuts suffered population losses estimated to have been 80 percent.

  The tale of European encroachment into the Eurasian Arctic differs from that of the western Arctic for reasons of a head start, geography, and assimilation. At the time that Frobisher was making initial European contacts with the Inut, Slavs and Vikings had already been trading with the indigenous of Siberia and Scandinavia for over two hundred years. Early explorers and traders who pressed into those northern parts were favored by river networks that facilitated two-way exchanges. Segments of the Northeast Passage, furthermore, had been navigated long before any salt-water access into North America’s interior opened up. From the early eighteenth century, the northward flow of civilization within Siberia progressed spectacularly compared to that of the western Arctic, not only because Russians by then were more familiar with the Arctic, but because the departure points for the northward bound were closer and more developed. In Siberia, they started from northern towns founded by Cossacks in the seventeenth century — Turkhansk at 65°49' N, for example, established in 1607, or Irkutsk, Siberia’s capital city, founded in 1652. In Canada and Alaska, the early springboards for Arctic penetration were from European ports and later from isolated outposts of the three major fur concerns — Hudson’s Bay Company, North West Company, and Russian-American Company. Transportation facilities in Siberia, be they by water, land, or air, are and have always been more extensively developed than in North America.

  Russian settlement of Arctic regions predates movement into Siberia by a long shot. As early as 1429, the first monks arrived to Solovki Islands, an archipelago on the White Sea at 65°N, and here they established a monastery that grew spectacularly, eventually becoming considered by many as “the spiritual heart of Russia.” Hunters and traders quickly followed in the footsteps of “the holy ones,” and trading posts and tiny hamlets soon dotted parts of the White Sea region. As hunters and traders penetrated farther and farther into Siberia, others followed, electing freely to settle in those far reaches (in time to be joined by multitudes of prisoners and exiles). By the 1660s, thousands of schismatic sect called Old Believers quit European Russia and migrated into those distant parts to escape persecution, unwilling to accept decreed church reforms or to forego established rites. Many of these new arrivals found themselves not only living side by side with the natives, but intermarrying with them. Assimilation of local populations seemed natural and inevitable in the early Arctic development of Eurasia.

  In the western Arctic, the record of assimilation was and is significantly different from the Eurasian experience. To understand the slower rate of assimilation in the Canadian Arctic, one must more completely appreciate the country’s peculiar geography and demography. Or rather, unique geography. Canada is the world’s second-largest country. It is the only country that fronts three oceans and its coastline is the longest of any nation. Its east–west stretch is virtually the same as the north–south distance — from St. John’s, Newfoundland, to Victoria, British Columbia, it’s 3,150 miles east–west; from Alert, Nunavut to Windsor, Ontario, it’s 2,815 miles. Above the country’s north mainland lies the Canadian Arctic Archipelago, an area of 550,000 square miles — more than twice the size of Texas — within which are scattered 36,563 islands, mostly uninhabited.

  Demographically, the spread of Canadian population can only be considered bizarre. It’s a country of just under 34 million — ranking thirty-ninth in the world — with three-quarters living within a narrow one-hundred-mile band above the United States. Its three northern territories, Yukon, Northwest Territories, and Nunavut, account for 40 percent of the country’s size, yet with 108,000 inhabitants they are home to a mere one-third of one percent of the population. Populated Canada may be likened to a horizontal Chile, but narrower and longer. Given the enormous distances and sparse population, plus difficulties of transportation and communication posed by harsh climate and topography, it’s understandable why European encroachment into Arctic reaches was long in coming.

  The first Europeans arriving in western Arctic in early seventeenth century were independent Russian and English fur traders. All too soon they were edged out by the dominating fur companies whose small trading posts throughout the region beckoned native hunters. Trade with “the white man” flourished, but the businesslike exchanges were void of social or cultural intercourse. Hunters and traders lived separate lives according to their ways with little or no assimilation, and thus it substantially continued into the mid-nineteenth century. In the second half of the century, an increased stream of Europeans flowed into various corners of the Arctic, triggering profound transformations to the societal structures of the Alaskan Yupik and Canadian and Greenland Inuit.

  As noted, it was the early whalers who were largely responsible for the introduction of disease and alcohol among native populations. With the American takeover of Alaska, the whaling industry burgeoned and local labour was required to help run operations. For their services, the natives received payment in guns, ammunition, manufactured items, southern foodstuffs, and liquor. While the Yupiks indiscriminately killed caribou with their newly acquired firearms to feed the whalers, the whalers combed the waters for bowheads, and hunters slaughtered the walrus. Enormous numbers of animals were killed — one estimate has it that by 1880, fourteen thousand bowheads had been taken and over one hundred thousand walruses slaughtered. By the turn of the century, stocks had become virtually exhausted and the hunters disappeared. The unemployed Yupik continued on their severely depleted hunting grounds, ravaged by disease and alco
hol and depending on “shopfood.” This lamentable sequence was substantially duplicated by the Canadian Inuit, particularly those living along Cumberland Sound, Hudson Bay, and the Mackenzie Delta.

  On the heels of departing whalers, missionaries arrived — Presbyterians and Evangelicals into Alaska, Catholics and Anglicans into the Canadian North, and Moravians into Greenland. The cause of these enthusiasts was held in common: to bring the word of God to the pathetically deprived people, to free them from the shackles of superstition and in the process to draw them into the civilized way of the home country. As one early Danish missionary postulated, “the poor Greenlander shall have learned to know the worship of God, as their Creator and Redeemer, then they shall likewise learn to acknowledge and honour a Christian Sovereign as their King and Ruler …”2 Although much good was achieved by the missionaries in the areas of education and health, the net impact of their efforts was ruinous for native ways. Priests and pastors displaced shamans, thereby depriving the communities of the influence of those eminent, generally wise and knowledgeable leaders. Christian Inuit found themselves being pulled away from their heathen brothers and sisters and gulfs opened between the propertied and less-propertied. The concepts of community ownership, of community action, and even of community were irrevocably shaken. Ancient customs such as polygamy, wife-exchange, taboos, and even hunting on Sundays faded away. Blood feuds were ended as was the dispatch of individuals for antisocial behavior.

  A radar instillation in northern Canada, one of a chain of such establishments in the Distant Early Warning system, established during the Cold War in defence of a surprise attack by the Soviet Union.

  Courtesy of United States Air Force. Photographer: Tech. Sgt. Donald L. Wetterman.