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More Than Half of Amazon Will Be Lost By 2030, Report Warns

The Guardian reports:

Climate change could speed up the large-scale destruction of the Amazon rainforest and bring the "point of no return" much closer than previously thought, conservationists warned today.

Almost 60% of the region's forests could be wiped out or severely damaged by 2030, as a result of climate change and deforestation, according to a report published today by WWF.

The damage could release somewhere between 55.5bn-96.9bn tons of carbon dioxide into the atmosphere from the Amazon's forests and speed up global warming, according to the report, Amazon's Vicious Cycles: Drought and Fire.

June 1989, Brazil: The forest burns. The Amazon is the largest rainforest in the world and is home to 15% of the world’s known land-based plant species, and nearly 10% of the world’s mammals. It has as many as 300 species of tree in a single hectare. Photograph: Sipa Press/Rex Features

Trends in agriculture and livestock expansion, fire, drought and logging could severely damage 55% of the Amazon rainforest by 2030, the report says. And, in turn, climate change could speed up the process of destruction by reducing rainfall by as much as 10% by 2030, damaging an extra 4% of the forests during that time.

By the end of the century, global warming is likely to reduce rainfall by 20% in eastern Amazonia, pushing up temperatures by more than 2C and causing forest fires, the report said.

September 1988, Rondonia State, Brazil: Newly cleared land. Soya farming is one of the primary drivers of deforestation in the Amazon.
Photograph: Stephen Ferry/Liaison/Getty Images

Destroying almost 60% of tropical rainforest by 2030 would do away with one of the key stabilisers of the global climate system, it warned.

Such damage could have a knock-on effect on rainfall in places such as central America and India, and would also destroy livelihoods for indigenous people and some 80% of habitats for animal species in the region.

The "point of no return", in which extensive degradation of the rainforest occurs and conservation prospects are greatly reduced, is just 15-25 years away - much sooner than some models suggest, the report warns.

Releasing the report at the UN conference in Bali, which aims to begin negotiations on a new international climate change deal, the WWF called for a strategy to reduce emissions from forests and stop deforestation.

Beatrix Richards, the head of forests at WWF-UK, said: "The Amazon is on a knife-edge due to the dual threats of deforestation and climate change.

"Developed countries have a key role to play in throwing a lifeline to forest around the world. At the international negotiations currently underway in Bali governments must agree a process which results in ambitious global emission reduction targets beyond the current phase of Kyoto which ends in 2012.

"Crucially this must include a strategy to reduce emissions from forests and help break the cycle of deforestation."

The report's author, Dan Nepstead, senior scientist at the Woods Hole research centre in Massachusetts, said: "The importance of the Amazon forest for the globe's climate cannot be underplayed.

"It's not only essential for cooling the world's temperature but such a large source of freshwater that it may be enough to influence some of the great ocean currents, and on top of that it's a massive store of carbon."

October 2002, Lower Amazon, Brazil: A raft of logs

September 1988, Rondonia State, Brazil: The rainforest burns as a result of fires started by farmers and ranchers Photograph: Stephen Ferry/Liaison/Getty Images

June 1989, Brazil: Housing owned by a mining company which has been built on rainforest land Photograph: Sipa Press/Rex Features

November 2003, Para State, Brazil: After the loggers have harvested the trees, huge areas are burnt by cattle ranchers and soya producers who move onto the deforested land. Picture shows deforestation near Porto de Moz, where 80% of all timber produced is illegal Photograph: Tom Stoddart/Getty Images

November 2003, Para State, Brazil: Deforestation near Porto de Moz, where 80% of all timber produced is illegal Photograph: Tom Stoddart/Getty Images

April 2004, Rondonia State, Brazil: Smouldering pastureland cleared for cattle Photograph: Michael Nichols/National Geographic/Getty Images

September 2004, Novo Progreso, Brazil: An aerial view of deforestation caused by soybean farmers Photograph: Alberto Cesar/Greenpeace/AP

December 2004, Coari, Brazil: The Urucu oilfield, of state-owned Petrobras compan. Petrobras announced in 2004, that it will begin the construction of a 383 km long oil pipeline between the cities of Coari and Manaus. It took nearly two years, mainly for the opposition of environmental grups, to obtain the planning permission for the construcion of the stretch that will allow the oil to be taken from Urucu to Manaus, and that will require the deforestation of a 50m-wide strip along the way Photograph: Evaristo Sa/AFP/Getty Images

February 2005, Amapu, Brazil: An aerial picture of piles of wood at a sawmill Photograph: Antonio Scorza/AFP

August 2005, Mato Grosso State, Brazil: A fallen tree inside the word 'Crime' as a Greenpeace protest against deforestation Photograph: Daniel Beltra/Greenpeace/AP

A Better Argument Than "197 Scientists Can't Be Wrong"

Maha writes:

Global Idiots

Will someone please explain to these scientifically illiterate twits that the phenomenon of global warming doesn’t mean the planet is getting warmer in a uniform way. My understanding is that climate changes are causing shifts in long-established patterns of air circulation around the planet as well as disrupting ocean current patterns like the Gulf Stream. These changes are causing some places to get colder because air is moving more directly from the poles to those places that it used to. But it’s the warming of the oceans, among other things, that is causing the changes in wind and current patterns. Hence, global warming is causing some parts of the planet to be cooler. Some scientists argue that we ought to be talking about “global climate change” rather than “global warming” to avoid confusion.

Every time I see some dimbulb rightie hoot because there’s a cold snap in his neighborhood (hence, global warming is a myth) I feel embarrassed for our species.

We might want to begin by figuring out what it is that we're trying to achieve.

If we're looking for allies to help light a fire under our elected representatives in government, I think we might have better success if, no matter how frustrating, we resist condescending and insulting them, calling them names. It only makes them defensive, they dig in their heels, which makes convincing them of the urgency of taking their heads out of their anuses all the more difficult.

If we really believe that global warming is the single greatest threat to "our way of life" (I do), as well as it being the single greatest threat to civilization continuing on the planet (I do), and that drastic measures are necessary (I do), and that even waiting for Bush-Cheney to leave office is too long if we're to try to mitigate the devastation ahead (I do), then we're going to have to rethink how we've been going about this problem. Shouting didn't make Annie Sullivan any more understandable to Helen Keller.

Are Al Gore and the Global Warming Crisis Inextricably Linked?

Al Gore has been doing all of the heavy lifting. While I admire his efforts, his dedication, and how he teaches, Gore and global warming have become synonymous. This issue is more than Al Gore, the 2000 election, Bush stealing elections, and with him as the poster boy for this climate changing catastrophe, they both become too easy to dismiss.

It's really a tragedy what has been done to that man, but done, he is. He's beyond having 'baggage': He is a lightning rod chained to steamer trunks stuffed with IEDS. If, when you hear some celebrity's name and a punchline pops into your head, even if you cringe and don't think it's funny but you know everyone else in the room is having the same thought, then that celebrity's public life is over.

That's the problem with "An Inconvenient Truth," despite the fact that it's "Global Warming for Dummies" made into a movie. It preaches to the choir, to people who already liked Al Gore, probably voted for him in 2000, and were already on board with understanding the danger that global warming posed to civilization on the planet. The people who need to see it, become convinced, and understand that changing human behavior is the solution won't go see it. They probably wouldn't have gone to see it in any case, but they certainly aren't about to put their entertainment dollars into any project that Gore or activists on the left derive profit from.

The war on global warming needs to be uncoupled with Gore. You shouldn't have to like Gore before you can sign on to believing there is a crisis and committing to doing something about it, but that's the way conservatives are. These are people who have and will cut off their noses to spite their faces. Even if they came to like or respect Gore, they'd sooner die than admit they were might have been wrong.

We need to develop better teaching models, audio-visual aids like those that appear in "An Inconvenient Truth," because explaining it through our blogs, electronic and print media, is one area where we might make the difference. If we, who write for a living (or past-time/passion), become frustrated and can't explain why what's happening isn't "part of a natural cycle," or explain why it's not useless to try to change it (or why 37 inches of rain in one day in Mumbai isn't "typical"), who can? The debate in the blogosphere has been reduced to "Our side has 197 of the world's scientists, while your side has 2."

That's an argument for mob rule, not sound reason.

Perpetual Drought In U.S. Southwest & California Has First Claim To Colorado River Water

Sediment deposits and low water levels in the Colorado River at Hite Overlook near Hite, Utah.

The Pak Tribune reports:

Global warming will permanently change the climate of the American Southwest, making it so much hotter and drier that Dust Bowl-scale droughts will become common, a new climate report concludes.

While much of the nation west of the Mississippi River is likely to get drier because of the buildup of greenhouse gases in the atmosphere, the greatest effect will be felt in the already-arid areas on both sides of the US-Mexico border. By the end of the century, the climate researchers predict, rainfall in that region will have declined by a worrisome 10 percent to 20 percent annually.

A similar drying out of the subtropical belt above and below the equator will hit the Mediterranean region and parts of Africa, South America, and South Asia, the report says, as the overall warming of the oceans and surface air transforms basic wind and precipitation patterns around the earth.

The prediction of a drier Southwest was made by 16 of 19 climate computer models assembled by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, the international scientific effort to assess the impact of global warming, which is releasing a new report today. The drought results were analyzed separately in a paper published on line yesterday by the journal Science, which also predicted that regions outside the drying belt will get more rain.

"It's a situation of the poor getting poorer and the rich getting richer when it comes to rainfall," said Yochanan Kushnir of the Lamont-Doherty Earth Observatory of Columbia University, one of the paper's authors.

He said the authors of the new paper had a very high level of confidence that the droughts will develop and that they will be the result of increases in atmospheric greenhouse gases created through burning fossil fuels and other human activities.

The researchers said future droughts in the affected regions will be different from those in the past, which were caused by local weather conditions and the effects of El Niqo and La Niqa ocean temperature variations. The Southwest has seen significantly below-average rainfall since 1999, and there is some preliminary information to suggest that global warming is already playing a role .

As the planet warms, the researchers said, basic climate dynamics will change. Currently, hot air from the equatorial tropics rises about 8 to 12 miles until it hits the stratosphere and is blocked, then spreads to the north and south and remains aloft until it passes 10 to 30 degrees latitude before cooling and descending again. The computer models show that with more carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gases making the planet hotter, the area where the hot air remains aloft -- and suppresses rainfall -- will widen. Dry areas will become drier, and arid areas will expand.

The prospect of a drier Southwest is particularly troublesome because the region has some of the nation's fastest growing cities, including Las Vegas and Phoenix.

Richard Seager, also from Lamont-Doherty and a lead author of the paper, said the region will have to rethink how it uses water. Governments "need to plan for this right now, coming up with new, well-informed, and fair deals for allocation of declining water resources," he said.

The climate models generally assumed a gradually increasing amount of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere until 2050, at which point they assume that the nations of world will have found ways to replace fossil fuels as the main source of energy. Because climate responds steadily but slowly to the buildup, however, the full effect on precipitation changes would not be felt until 2100.

The changes are already in progress and will not be stopped for decades even by dramatic reductions in greenhouse gas emissions, the researchers said.

The current drought that has affected much of the Southwest since 1999 may already be the result of global warming as much as regional weather patterns, they said. For example, Kushnir said, the drought continued last year even though there was a significant El Niño effect -- which normally produces increased rainfall in the area.

Scientists have debated whether the increased dryness projected is a function of greater evaporation as a result of hotter temperatures or of decreases in rainfall. The broad consensus from the 19 new climate models blames decreased rainfall, Kushnir said.

A Peek Into Tomorrow, Coming Sooner Than You May Think

These refugees in Chad are escaping violence in Darfur. But the displaced of the future may be running from the climate.

Der Spiegel reports:

The picture painted by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change is one of blighted nations and millions of desperate immigrants fleeing climate disaster. But experts disagree about whether the bleak vision will ever come true.

These refugees in Chad are escaping violence in Darfur. But the displaced of the future may be running from the climate.

Once upon a time, a warming climate tempted the Romans into northern Europe -- as far as northern Germany and even into Britain. Hundreds of years later cooling weather drove Germanic tribes from Scandinavia into the south. Vikings settled Greenland after it warmed up, only to leave when it froze again.

Climate, in short, has long triggered mass migration. And the UN's Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) warns that more may be on the horizon. The second part of its extensive report on global warming, released on Friday, warns that coming climate-related disasters may kick off a worldwide exodus of Biblical proportions. Indeed, according to the International Red Cross, 25 million people have already started to shift from places blighted by environmental problems -- a figure that would top the current number of war refugees across the globe.

Rich industrial nations, after decades of pouring more greenhouse gases into the atmosphere than poor countries, can adjust to the changes if they invest enough money; but the poorest parts of Central America, Asia and Africa will suffer harshly from flooding and drought. This conventional wisdom in the climate controversy has opened a human-rights debate: Now it's not just globalization, closed markets, or the consequences of colonialism that have robbed the poor of their opportunities -- it's also greenhouse gases. Will coming decades see millions of "climate refugees" flowing north from the floodplains and deserts of Africa or Latin America?

"Horror-movie scenarios"

This question is still wide open among scientists. Experts can't agree if climate refugees even exist. Oxford-based ecologist Norman Myers argues they do, and says the number could soar to as high as 200 million within 50 years. "These people see no alternative to seeking asylum elsewhere, as hazardous as the attempt (to get there) might be," he says.

His colleague Stephen Castles, at Oxford's International Migration Institute, contradicts these horror-movie scenarios. "Myers and others simply take the climate predictions at face value and look at how many people live in the areas that will be flooded," says the author of "The Age of Migration," a now-standard text. This method, says Castles, leads to exaggerated refugee estimates.

He says it's more accurate to research how people actually respond in a given area to environmental disaster, war, or widespread poverty. "What we see is something else -- immigration is generally not the main strategy." When living conditions do get unbearable, people also tend to move within their own countries -- only rarely do they cross national borders.

Immigration experts in countries like Bangladesh tend to agree. Along with low-lying islands like the Maldives, Bangladesh is an early indicator of climate-change prophecies, and even there, sea levels aren't rising all at once. Parts of the country can be protected with dikes; other parts may have to be abandoned, but the people can be resettled. "Only a few will really flee to India," says Castles.

The crucial issue is how well governments react to disasters. After the 1995 earthquake in Kobe, Japan, most of the 300,000 displaced residents returned a few months later. After the Pinatubo volcano erupted in the Philippines, though, a large-scale return took years. But the capacity of a nation to respond isn't just a matter of money, as the US government's desultory response to Hurricane Katrina showed in 2005. "It has more to do with decisiveness and organization, and with the struggle against corruption and mismanagement" within a government, says Castles. Overly dramatic predictions of mass migration, he says, mainly serve to aggravate xenophobia: "Right now a tide of refugees is already lapping against the EU's shores," he points out.

Land reform against the apocalypse?

Thomas Faist, a sociologist at the University of Bielefeld, also resists the shrill language his colleagues have started to use. "I don't want to deny the problem," the professor says. "But we can't lose sight of the fact that there are other far more decisive reasons for people to leave home." Floods and desertification are happening now; at the same time people are going hungry and trying to flee. But Faist argues that their ultimate reasons for leaving boil down to ethnic conflict, or economic as well as political mismanagement. He thinks climate change is just an exacerbating factor. Anyone who wants to stop a stream of immigrants has to address its underlying cause, and he doubts the climate can be cited as a root cause for all conflicts raging through all the poor parts of the world.

Faist therefore believes that pots of emergency-fund or "just in case" money for the countries most affected by climate change will be useless. "What they need from us is technological help, drought-resistant seeds, and political support to help the governments react," he says. "Climate change should not be exploited as a cause, to relieve developing nations of their own responsibilities."

The difference between good and bad political management can be seen in Turkey. In the west, where land reform has been underway for decades, the farming sector has flourished; people can support themselves and export their products. In eastern Turkey, where most farmland still belongs to a handful of huge landlords, productivity is low, poverty is high, and many people are leaving for the cities.

"Western Turkey," says Faist, "is in better shape to deal with climate change."

The Graphic Evidence of Global Warming

"Report confirms climate change is a fact.

This graph shows the increase in the concentration of carbon dioxide in the earth's atmosphere over the last 10,000 years (panel inset shows the increase since 1750) based on the study of ice cores. Different colors represent different studies. Radiative forcing indicates the influence a factor has on the amount of energy entering or leaving the earth's atmosphere and is an index of how important the factor is as a climate change mechanism. The higher it is, the more important it is.

Der Spiegel reports:

The United Nations on Friday issued its most dramatic warning yet about the potentially catastrophic effects of climate change on the planet. European political leaders say we must cut greenhouse gas emissions and adapt to a climate change process that is already underway.

Climate change in the coming century may lead to disasters ranging from famine in Africa to the thinning of Himalayan glaciers, according to the long-awaited second part of an extensive United Nations report on global warming. More than 100 countries represented in the UN's panel on climate change spent a tense Thursday night in Brussels trying to agree unanimously on the language of a final draft.

The report, prepared by more than 2,500 scientists for the UN Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), provides the first confirmation from the entire international scientific community that the burning of fossil fuels by humans is one of the main culprits of global warming.

Scientists "have finally established at the global level that there is an anthropogenic, there is a man made climate signal coming through on plants, animals, water and ice," said Martin Parry, co-chair of the IPCC working group the assembled report. "This is the first time this signal has been confirmed at the international level."

Desertification and water shortages

The report claims that global warming will lead to desertification, droughts and rising seas and that those living in the tropics will be the worst hit -- from sub-Saharan Africa to the Pacific islands. Billions could face water shortages, and ocean levels might rise for centuries to come. It could lead to a sharp drop in crop yields in Africa and bring heatwaves to Europe and North America. Europe's Alpine glaciers will disappear and much of the coral that comprises Australia's Great Barrier Reef will die from bleaching.

The scientific conclusions -- based on 29,000 sets of data -- also said that up to 30 percent of the Earth's species faced a higher risk of vanishing if global temperatures rise 2 degrees Celsius (3.6 degrees Fahrenheit) above the average in the 1980s and '90s.

"The urgency of this report prepared by the world's top scientists should be matched by an equally urgent response from governments," said Hans Verolme, director of the global climate change program at the conservation organization WWF. "Doing nothing is not an option."

Merkel to address issue at G-8 summit

The contents of the report, most of which had already been leaked to the media in recent weeks, prompted political leaders to call for action, including German Chancellor Angela Merkel. "The report confirms that climate change is a fact," Merkel told the Munich daily Süddeutsche Zeitung. "That's why we need quick and determined action to limit the rise in temperatures worldwide and reduce emissions of carbon dioxide. I will also address the issue at the G-8 summit. My aim is, insofar as possible, to involve all states in taking responsibility for climate protection. "

Merkel said she hoped recent European Union actions might help to push China and the United States -- the world's two largest sources of greenhouse gases -- to do more to reduce emissions. In March the EU's 27 member states agreed cut greenhouse gas emission by at least 20 percent from 1990 levels over the next 13 years. In addition, it agreed that at least one-fifth of all of the EU's energy would come from renewable sources by 2020.

Speaking on Friday, EU Commissioner for the Environment, Stavros Dimas warned that the report "further underlines both how urgent it is to reach global agreement on reducing greenhouse gas emissions and how important it is for us all to adapt to the climate change that is already under way."

"Scientific vandalism"

Originally, the report was to be released on Friday morning at 10 a.m., but the presentation was delayed for hours as heated discussions continued as countries like China, Russia and the US continued to lobby for the removal of parts of the report.

US delegates also opposed a passage warning of the prospects of "severe economic damage" to parts of North America. But the main tension in Brussels between some authors of the report and some political representatives was not over the scientific findings, but over a 21-page summary that would be shown to policymakers.

Earlier this week, the summary said scientists had "very high confidence" that natural systems around the world "are being affected by regional climate changes, particularly temperature increases."

"Very high confidence," in the language used by the report, translates to a 90 percent certainty. Delegates from China and Saudi Arabia lobbied for "high confidence" instead, or 80 percent certainty -- and after a dramatic hours-long protest by three scientists on Thursday night, the milder language went in.

"The authors lost," said one of the scientists. "A lot of authors are not going to engage in the IPCC (International Panel on Climate Change) process anymore. I have had it with them," he told the Associated Press on condition of anonymity.

Though Washington and Beijing ultimately succeeded in changing very little of the text, the political tug o' war drew sharp criticism in Germany. "We are happy that we were able to prevent this kind of scientific vandalism in the end," Environment Minister Sigmar Gabriel told Reuters TV. "The people have a right to find out about the consequences that threaten them if we are unable to stop climate change."

Still, the final version is the clearest and most comprehensive scientific statement to date on the impact of global warming. "Certain passages were lost for time or for lack of agreement," Parry said, "But I don't think in any respect that the message was lost."

In the first part of the study -- released in February in Paris -- the IPCC concluded with 90 percent certainty that humans were the main cause of global warming since 1950. That alone was an unprecedented statement by a global body; but this section of the report details how species, water supplies, ice sheets and regional climate conditions were already being affected.

Friday's report was the second of four to be released by the IPCC this year. The findings of those reports are expected to serve as a guide for negotiations over extending the Kyoto Protocol, the main UN plan for capping greenhouse gas emissions beyond 2012.

This graph shows the increase in the concentration of methane in the earth's atmosphere over the last 10,000 years (panel inset shows the increase since 1750) based on the study of ice cores. Different colors represent different studies. Radiative forcing indicates the influence a factor has on the amount of energy entering or leaving the earth's atmosphere and is an index of how important the factor is as a climate change mechanism. The higher it is, the more important it is.

This graph shows the increase in the concentration of nitrous oxide in the earth's atmosphere over the last 10,000 years (panel inset shows the increase since 1750) based on the study of ice cores. Different colors represent different studies. Radiative forcing indicates the influence a factor has on the amount of energy entering or leaving the earth's atmosphere and is an index of how important the factor is as a climate change mechanism. The higher it is, the more important it is.

Changes in a) global average surface temperature; b) global average sea level rise; and c) snow coverage in the Northern Hemisphere from March to April. All changes are relative to corresponding averages for the period 1961 to 1990. Smoothed curves represent decadal averaged values while circles show yearly values.

A comparison of continental and global surface temperature rises. The black lines show decade-by-decade rises relative to the average from 1901 to 1950. The blue lines shows natural forces contributing to global warming. The pink lines show natural forces combined with human activity.

What next? The middle column shows projections for temperature increases based on three separate models. The middle column shows 2020-2029 and the right hand column shows 2090 to 2099. The color-coded scale corresponds to Celsius degree rises. The three scenarios B1, A1B and A2 are based on different assumptions about economic growth, population development and fuel usage.

This graph shows expected relative changes in winter precipitation (in percent) for the period 2090 to 2099 relative to the period 1980 to 1999 using the A1B model. White areas show where less than 66 percent of the models agree on the change. Dotted areas show where more than 90 percent of the models agree.

This graph shows expected relative changes in summer precipitation (in percent) for the period 2090 to 2099 relative to the period 1980 to 1999 using the A1B model. White areas show where less than 66 percent of the models agree on the change. Dotted areas show where more than 90 percent of the models agree.

How hot is it going to get? The black line at the left shows the 20th century. The colored solid lines show where the temperature might go using different models -- shading indicates error ranges. Bars at the right show best estimates (solid lines) with the gray showing the likely range.

New Plan Afoot To Bypass Congress's Ban & Drill Oil In ANWR

If it's not the Bush administration's ceaseless efforts to grab power over the other two co-equal branches of government, it's Republicans in those other branches assisting in their own demise.

Not for nothing, though.

ANWR
Subhankar Banerjee, physicist at Los Alamos

Anchorage Daily News reports:

U.S. Sen. Ted Stevens on Monday tossed out a new approach for opening up the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge: Make it part of the nation's emergency stockpile of oil.

The idea came up during a nearly hour-long briefing for news reporters in Anchorage. Alaska's senior senator also talked about the war in Iraq, the Alaska gas pipeline and the interim U.S. attorney.

Stevens, wearing a casual brown shirt and no tie, said he was struck by a Sunday column in The Washington Post that analyzed President Bush's call to expand the Strategic Petroleum Reserve.

The stockpile consists of about 700 million barrels of federal-government-owned crude stored for a national emergency in huge salt caverns in Louisiana and Texas. The president can release it if commercial oil supplies are disrupted, and it also can be drawn down for other nonemergency reasons.

Stevens said his staff and Sen. Lisa Murkowski's have been reviewing the president's proposal, publicized last month in his State of the Union speech, to buy more oil for the reserve.

"We came up with the thought 'Why not ask that they add ANWR to the petroleum reserve?' And now this op-ed piece says the same thing," Stevens said.

The refuge lies in the northeast corner of Alaska. Its coastal plain is considered the nation's best onshore prospect for a major oil discovery. It also is an area prized by environmentalists nationally. Efforts in Congress to open the coastal plain to oil development have failed repeatedly over the past three decades.

In his column, Gal Luft, head of the energy security think tank Institute for the Analysis of Global Security, said "reframing the issue to cast the refuge as an emergency stockpile rather than a source of production might well change the politics."

Congress could compensate Alaskans by leasing the oil for a set amount of time, after which the state could sell it, Luft said in the column, under the headline "An Oil Reserve Right at Hand."

Alaskans who have tried to open ANWR to drilling said they haven't heard of this new twist but noted that execution would be very complex.

"I don't understand the concept," was the immediate reaction of Roger Herrera, an oil and gas consultant in Anchorage who has been working on ANWR nearly 30 years.

After giving the idea some quick thought, he said that additional exploration likely would be required to confirm the amount of oil in ANWR, and that equipment would need to be in place so that it could be extracted when needed.

Stevens told reporters he thinks the reserve idea may solve the ANWR issue.

"It is in the national interest to produce from ANWR and certainly by the time we could get it ready to produce it would be a ready reserve," Stevens said.

At a time when we need to be developing alternative energy resources.