Gem of nature, moral hazard, or attractive nuisance?Gem of nature, moral hazard, or attractive nuisance?It's hard to miss the inherent tension in Welling & Abegg's Following the ice: adaptation processes of glacier tour operators in Southeast Iceland:
The growing recognition that global climatic change is a pressing reality and that its impacts on humans and ecological systems are inevitable makes adaptation a core topic in climate change research and policymaking. The glacier tourism sector that is highly sensitive towards changing climatic conditions is among the most relevant in this respect. This study aims to examine empirically how adaptation to climate change impacts is practiced by small- and middle-scale glacier tour operators. Data was collected by means of a set of semi-structured interviews with the managers or owners of nine small- or middle-scale tour companies operating in the Vatnajökull National Park in Southeast Iceland and observations of glacier sites where the respondents’ companies are operating. The results indicate that all entrepreneurs consider climate change to be a real phenomenon that affects their present daily operations, but they perceive these implications not as significant threats to their business. The interaction of operator’s attributes of agency such as firsthand experiences, risk perceptions, and abilities to self-organize, with structural elements of the glacier destination system such as economic rationales and hazard reduction institutions, has shaped and consolidated operators’ adaptation processes in the form of a wait-and-see strategy combined with ad hoc reactive adaptation measures and postponed or prevented proactive long-term adaptation strategies.
Emphasis ours. We may safely assume that the vast majority of visitors to these glaciers are arriving on Iceland via aircraft. Enough said.
Observations of global warming and effects
A reversal in global terrestrial stilling and its implications for wind energy production
Tibetan Plateau's lake level and volume changes from NASA's ICESat/ICESat?2 and Landsat missions
Missing Hydrological Contribution to Sea Level Rise
The dynamic response of sea ice to warming in the Canadian Arctic Archipelago
Northern Hemisphere greening in association with warming permafrost
Ice Sheet Elevation Change in West Antarctica from Ka?band Satellite Radar Altimetry
Substantial meltwater contribution to the Brahmaputra revealed by satellite gravimetry (open access)
Quantifying fire trends in boreal forests with Landsat time series and self-organized criticality
Distinguishing changes in the Hadley circulation edge
Modeling global warming & global warming effects
Does ENSO regularity increase in a warming climate? (open access)
The Future of Midlatitude Cyclones (open access)
Predicting future climate at high spatial and temporal resolution
Humans dealing with our global warming
The development of partisan polarization over the Green New Deal
Climate change adaptation among poultry farmers: evidence from Nigeria (open access)
Simulating Behavioral Influences on Community Flood Risk under Future Climate Scenarios
Following the ice: adaptation processes of glacier tour operators in Southeast Iceland
Embodied emissions in rail infrastructure: a critical literature review (open access)
Adapting scenarios for climate adaptation: Practitioners’ perspectives on a popular planning method
“Pollution Pods”: The merging of art and psychology to engage the public in climate change
Evaluating the efficiency of carbon emissions policies in a large emitting developing country
CO2 capture and mineralization using carbide slag doped fly ash
Biology and global warming
Agency plans are inadequate to conserve US endangered species under climate change
A meta-analysis of global fungal distribution reveals climate-driven patterns (open access)
Natural history collections document biological responses to climate change
GHG sources and sinks, flux
Acceleration of global N2O emissions seen from two decades of atmospheric inversion
N2O increasing faster than expected
Road crossings increase methane emissions from adjacent peatland
Nano-modified CO2 for enhanced deep saline CO2 sequestration: A review and perspective study
Where old meets new: An ecosystem study of methanogenesis in a reflooded agricultural peatland
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Posted by Doug Bostrom on Tuesday, 19 November, 2019
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