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Qaanaaq residents should be able to heat their homes without sacrificing their culture, Oshima said. But that will require them to cast off the culprit behind their dual challenges of climate change and energy security: fossil fuels. Dartmouth College engineer Mary Albert, the U.S. co-leader for the project, sees it as a potential model for sustainability efforts the world over. “It’s cogeneration of knowledge,” she said, “so they can continue to live where they want to live and how they want to live.”
Yet there is a unique spirit in Qaanaaq, Oshima said: “We have ocean views, we have mountains. We never feel like someone is pushing you down.” Strong winds and rough waves increasingly fracture the sea ice that hunters need to operate. The too-warm ocean stays unfrozen until weeks after the long polar night sets in, creating conditions too dark and dangerous for them to work.
The consequences of this shift will extend beyond Qaanaaq, Alataq said. Almost nowhere else in Greenland - or in the entire Arctic - do people still hunt by kayak and fall asleep to the ancient chorus of sled dogs yipping and howling through the long polar night. If those traditions cannot survive here, he worries, they might vanish from the Earth.
A few months later, Albert made the arduous and expensive multiday journey from Vermont to Qaanaaq. As she went from home to home, she heard residents describe how reliance on fossil fuels left them vulnerable to supply chain disruptions and dependent on government subsidies that might not always be there.
Oshima offered a cautionary tale from Qeqertat, a nearby village where Greenland’s state-owned energy company, Nukissiorfiit, tried installing solar panels. The system was designed just like those in more temperate locations, relying on inverters to change the panels’ direct current electricity into alternating current power that could flow into people’s homes. But when the fragile inverters failed after a few years, residents didn’t have the money or the equipment to replace them.
پاکستان تازہ ترین خبریں, پاکستان عنوانات
Similar News:آپ اس سے ملتی جلتی خبریں بھی پڑھ سکتے ہیں جو ہم نے دوسرے خبروں کے ذرائع سے جمع کی ہیں۔
ذریعہ: CNBC - 🏆 12. / 72 مزید پڑھ »
ذریعہ: SciTechDaily1 - 🏆 84. / 68 مزید پڑھ »