Proof of climate change? Visit our parks
By JOEL CONNELLY
P-I COLUMNIST
COOKE CITY, Mont. -- Old mine junk litters the alpine valley, and its waters remain acidic, but Fisher Creek is still a wild symbol of triumph over a project that threatened nearby Yellowstone National Park.
A decade ago, hounded by lawsuits and public protests, a Canadian mining company took a $64 million buyout from the Clinton administration. It gave up plans to build a mine, ore-processing mill, waste rock storage site, 106-acre tailing pond, worker housing and transmission lines.
Curiously, the New World Mine site has lately become a spot to study and record a new disturbance to Yellowstone, and to all national parks in the West.
"We're looking at the fabric of the high mountains being endangered on multiple fronts," said Jesse Logan, retired U.S. Forest Service entomologist and expert in what bugs our forests.
Our group puffed up a hillside at nearly 10,000 feet bound for a line of whitebark pine trees infested by the mountain pine beetle. Logan cut off a chunk of bark from one, and, in a favorite phrase, remarked, "This tree is dead but doesn't know it yet."
Evidence of climate change -- and man's role in causing it -- has attained a weight that has set off alarm bells in the world's leading scientific bodies.
Alas, it has yet to crush the leaden sarcasm of global warming deniers, or put sense into some politicians' heads. Rep. Don Young, R-Alaska, pooh-poohs rapid changes to his state's environment: He recently referred to the Kyoto Protocol on global warming as the "Coyote Treaty."
Scientists at the Mauna Loa Observatory in Hawaii have recorded an increase from 318 to 380 parts per million of carbon dioxide in the Earth's atmosphere in less than 50 years.
At Race Rocks, west of Victoria on Vancouver Island, the water temperature has risen from 48 degrees to just under 50 degrees over the past 30 years. The oceans, covering three-quarters of the Earth's surface, have the capacity to drive climate change.
What is this doing to the West, and to places we call America's crown jewels?
Its glaciers, vital generators of downstream irrigation and power, are fast shrinking. Glacier National Park had 38 glaciers in 1968; today it has just 26 -- with the remainder likely to vanish in the next 30 years.
The winter snowpack, source of most annual stream flow, melts earlier. A snow cover reflects back about 60 percent of solar energy it receives; bare earth reflects only 20 percent.
A "huge bubble of warming" occurred in March, said University of Montana ecology professor Steven Running. "Our stream discharge peaks are on the order of a month earlier than 50 years ago."
In Yellowstone Park this year, hundreds of dead and dying fish have been found, their deaths blamed on a heat wave and decreased stream flows. Montana officials have restricted fishing on seven rivers because of high temperatures and low flows.
The absence of water leads to an increase in fire. The length of the active fire season in the western United States has increased by 78 days -- and the average burn duration of large fires is up from 7.5 to 37.1 days -- according to a study published last August in Science magazine.
The glories of the Absaroka Range loom all around the entrance to Fisher Creek. Alpenglow lights up 11,708-foot Pilot Peak and nearby 11,313-foot Index Peak, used as direction finders by explorer Jim Bridger.
At ground level, however, Diana Tomback inspects seedlings in a research plot set amid one of Yellowstone's great 1988 burns. "This is a spruce: It will soon overtake the whitebark pine," explained Tomback, a professor of biology at the University of Colorado.
Whitebark pine is found at timberline, mainly where other trees can't grow. In the mid-1990s, the battle over New World Mine drew a president here. Bill Clinton is fondly remembered in Cooke City for devouring an entire apple pie at one sitting.
Deniers of global warming should drop in. They could hear from rangers who've found dead trout in the aptly named Firehole River. They could look up Logan and Tomback for a lesson in what kills forests. They could chat with Ken Sinay of Yellowstone Safari Co. about a visitor- economy anchored by grizzly bears and natural beauty.
It's one thing to sit far away, and scoff and sneer. It's a different experience to come and see.
P-I columnist Joel Connelly can be reached at 206-448-8160 or joelconnelly@seattlepi.com. Follow his political blog at blog.seattlepi.com/seattlepolitics.
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