News

NWF rep: Global Warming could change Minnesota

By Joe Albert, Staff Writer
Outdoor News
April 14, 2006, p. 6

St. Paul — Climate change, largely due to increased carbon dioxide emissions, could mean big changes for Minnesota and other states in the future.

There could be an increase in invasive species. Evaporation of wetlands in the Prairie Pothole Region. Changes in the composition of bird species that breed in the state. And the continued decline of species like moose, which are a cold-weather animal, among others.

That’s the forecast from Dr. Doug Inkley, senior science advisor with the National Wildlife Federation, who was in town last week to discuss global warming and its potential effects on wildlife. A variety of state legislators, as well as aides to state congressmen, attended.

“We’re very concerned that the wildlife and our habitat is going to adapt as quickly as (climate change) is occurring,” he said. “The question is no longer, ‘Is global warming happening?’ The real question is: ‘What are we going to do about it?’ ”

Climate change is closely related to carbon dioxide emissions, Inkley said. As carbon dioxide concentrations increase, so do temperatures. Carbon dioxide concentrations have been increasing for the past 400,000 years, but have jumped drastically since the Industrial Revolution, when the burning of fossil fuels like coal, oil, and natural gas began.

Carbon dioxide levels currently are as high as they’ve ever been, Inkley said.

“We are now literally off the charts compared to what this chart has been for the past 400,000 years,” he said. “It’s more than just increases in temperatures; we are talking climate change.”

Effects are likely to be seen in the form of warmer winters; temperatures that don’t get as low at night as they have in the past; fewer, but heavier, rain events; and increases in the heat index, Inkley said.

The National Wildlife Federation says the following effects of climate change in Minnesota are possible:

• Forests, like those in the Boundary Waters Canoe Area Wilderness, could change from a spruce and fir base to a hardwood forest, causing changes to the ecosystem there.
  “As you change the climate, you change the habitats and you change the wildlife,” Inkley said.
• As warmer weather causes increases in water temperatures, populations of cold-water fish such as lake trout, brook trout, and whitefish could decline.
  “Our cold-water species are very much dependent on having highly oxygenated, cold, clean water,” Inkley said.
• In the next 80 years, warmer weather could reduce wetlands in the Prairie Pothole Region by up to 91 percent, leading to a 9- to 69-percent decline in the number of breeding ducks in the region.
  “We’re going to have reduced soil moisture with increased temperatures, so a lot of the ponds will either be dry or dry up sooner in the springtime,” he said.
• Invasive species could move farther north as the ground doesn’t freeze as far south.
  “Invasive species really are good at going into disturbed habitats, and global warming is another form of disturbance,” Inkley said.

Minnesota legislators say not all of their colleagues are convinced that global warming is happening. In a committee hearing a couple of weeks ago, one member handed out a George Will column that said global warming is a theory.

“The debate is not over here,” said Rep. Rick Hansen, DFL-South St. Paul.

Rep. Frank Moe, DFL-Bemidji, said the pressure against fighting global warming is great, and that legislators hear from power utilities and companies about how legislation to fight it could send business out of the state, but they rarely hear from those who fear the consequences of global warming.

“We at the Legislature have done a terrible job of telling the story,” he said.

A federal plan, called the Climate Stewardship Act, has been introduced in the Senate by Arizona Republican John McCain and Connecticut Democrat Joseph Lieberman, and sets achievable goals for reducing global warming in the United States, according to the National Wildlife Federation.

“We need to set an example (for the rest of the world) by reducing our global warming pollution,” Inkley said.