'The treeline is out of control': how the climate crisis is turning the Arctic green

[turbinetree]

by Ben Rawlence
Thu 20 Jan 2022 01.00 EST

In northern Norway, trees are rapidly taking over the tundra and threatening an ancient way of life that depends on snow and ice

Altafjord is a wide expanse of black water on the edge of the Barents Sea, ringed with mountains. Alta is a relatively large town in the Finnmark province, the crown of the horse’s mane that forms Norway’s jagged coastline and Europe’s northern shore. Here at sea level the most northerly trees in Europe are moving upslope, gobbling up the tundra as they go. The people and animals that live here are trying to make sense of the rapid changes with a mixture of confusion, denial and panic.

Dawn at 70 degrees north during winter lasts nearly the whole day. The sun never rises, the day is permanently on the verge of breaking. It is disorienting. On the way to city hall from the guesthouse, I spied few pedestrians. Alta is a town built along American principles – that is to say a town built for a world in which petrol is cheap and cars are taken for granted. It is a landscape of shopping malls, gas stations and spaced-out residential suburbs. Normally at this time of year it isn’t safe to be outside for long without wearing animal skins, but on the day of my visit it was only -1C.

All along the road to the city centre were rows of young Scots pines, their orangey bark contrasting with the fresh dusting of snow. Intermingled with the pines were shorter, ragged-looking trees with lumpy trunks, wizened branches and fine twigs like gnarled fingers: Betula pubescens, downy birch. It is these trees that had brought me here, to the office of Hallgeir Strifeldt, the director of planning for the municipality of Alta, at 9am on a Monday in the middle of winter.

https://www.theguardian.com/news/2022/jan/20/norway-arctic-circle-trees-sami-reindeer-global-heating

[littlemissmartypants]

1. Very good read. Thank you. ❤

[SunSeeker]

2. Interesting but depressing.

[progree]

3. As the greenery replaces previously snow-covered tundra, less sunlight is reflected back to space

As the planet warms, the Arctic treeline is accelerating towards the pole, turning the white landscape to green. The trees used to creep forward a few centimetres every year; now they are leaping north at a rate of 40 to 50 metres a year. In the European Arctic, the birch is the leader of the pack.

.... reindeer herders posting photos of a snowless tundra on Facebook.

... On the face of it, more trees might sound like a good thing. The problem is that the greening of the tundra further accelerates the warming process, as the birch improves the soil and warms it with microbial activity, melting the permafrost and releasing methane ... ((and reflecting less sunlight back to space -Progree))

[Kaleva]

4. Polar bears adapting to climate change

"Film of polar bear eating reindeer seen as evidence of climate change"

[Martin Eden]

5. It would be great if the polar bear diet included ...

... corporate fat cats who get rich from spewing greenhouse gases.

[Hortensis]

6. Wouldn't 50 car-driving consumer/employees who purchase corporate products,

including huge amounts of corporate energy and drive their corporate cars from their corporate homes to their corporate jobs, stores, and play be a lot better than a bear ridding the environment of one top manager? U.S. residents, of course, since we're such huge consumers/emitters. Wonder how many people one polar bear could consume a year?

Or more to the point right now, what thermostats are set at in the many extravagantly separate homes of those visiting DU today.

(Uhoh, what do those add to MY footprint?)

[Martin Eden]

8. Those with their hands on the levers of power

Don't care what happens to the peasantry.

They only care about themselves and their greed, but they might be persuaded to pull environmentally responsible levers if the alternative is becoming food for polar bears.

But yeah, I get your point. It's up to each and every one of us to make environmentally responsible choices in our daily lives.

[HAB911]

7. DON'T LOOK UP!