Weather Too Warm For Ice Roads - Canadian Native Towns Cut Off - Reuters

[hatrack]

WINNIPEG, Manitoba (Reuters) - A group of Canadian aboriginal leaders said on Friday their northern communities are in a state of emergency because abnormally mild temperatures have hindered construction of vital winter roads. "We were told all along that global warming is going to affect our roads and now we see that today," said David Harper, chief of the Garden Hill First Nation. "Without the winter roads, all essential goods have to be flown into the region."

About 10,000 people live on four Indian reserves in the Island Lake region of Manitoba, some 450 kilometres northeast of Winnipeg. There are no roads leading to the remote region and goods are normally brought in by air. But during the coldest months of the year, winter roads are built on frozen lakes and rivers to cut transportation costs. "It is a looming crisis and something that needs to be addressed," said Dennis Meeches, acting grand chief of the Assembly of Manitoba Chiefs.

The roads can only be built on ice that is at least 71 centimetres (28 inches) thick. It is still only 20 cm (8 inches) thick in some areas, Harper said. The road's completion date has been pushed back from January 16 to February 1, and Harper said it may not open at all.

He estimated that a four-litre jug of milk that currently costs around C$16.40 ($14.14) will soon soar to C$20 ($17.24) because of the increased cost of flying goods in throughout the winter. Fuel supplies are also dwindling and may be rationed, the chiefs said. Major capital projects including housing, and water and sewer, will also be in jeopardy, he said.

EDIT

http://today.reuters.co.uk/news/newsArticle.aspx?type=scienceNews&storyID=2006-01-14T103149Z_01_N13126013_RTRIDST_0_SCIENCE-ENVIRONMENT-CANADA-DC.XML&archived=False

[belpejic]

1. Welcome to the future (nt)

[applegrove]

2. Not to mention all the jobs that are lost because the roads cannot

be used.

[gulfcoastliberal]

3. I saw a program about the Ice Road trucking industry on the History ch

And thought to myself, they won't be in business much longer.

[applegrove]

4. Meanwhile - fashionable kids all over the world have bought

Muck-luks to wear. Culture will survive somehow. But only when it makes someone money. And if you are not making money... who cares!

The Tory party of Canada has people who talk about taking the rights away from traditional people in Canada. Just as their neck of the woods begins to become valuable... if not as a hydro dam, diamond mine, etc... than as a deposit for shooting down missiles aimed at the USA.

Things will not get better up north. It is a desert (by rainfall) - perhaps that has changed. But the fastest way around the world will be over the artic. And when fuel gets more expensive - that is the way planes will go.

So as the place looses its ice and environment - and when women test high for all chemicals known to man in their breast milk - it will become strategically important..as never before. But will the Tory government in Ottawa allow them to even exist in such parts? Is their oil there too? What is up with suddenly wanting their rights to land nobody ever cared about - to be taken away?

Don't know. Sure it will be revealed to us Canadians. Around the same time we are told what "missile defence" is about. we apparently will be told only long after we have signed on - and not before