Despite being acutely exposed to changing climate, many Greenlanders do not blame human influences

Greenland scene

But…climate models show…blah blah. How dare they?!
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A new survey shows that the largely Indigenous population of Greenland is highly aware that the climate is changing, and far more likely than people in other Arctic nations to say they are personally affected, says Phys.org.

Yet, many do not blame human influences—especially those living traditional subsistence lifestyles most directly hit by the impacts of rapidly wasting ice and radical changes in weather.

The study appears this week in the journal Nature Climate Change.

“Greenland is off the charts when it comes to the proportion of people who are seeing and personally experiencing the effects of climate change. But there is a big mismatch between climate science and local awareness of human-caused climate change,” said lead author Kelton Minor, a postdoctoral researcher at Columbia University’s Data Science Institute and the Columbia Climate School. The researchers suggest that educational and cultural factors play a role.

Arctic regions are warming as much as four times faster than the world average, and Greenlanders, who rely on frigid seasonal conditions for hunting, fishing and travel, are on the front lines.

Snow and sea ice, once predictable platforms for getting from place to place and making a living, are declining; rain storms are increasing, even in winter; permafrost is melting; and the mighty central ice sheet is rapidly losing mass. These changes are contributing to creeping sea-level rise on faraway shores, but for Greenlanders the effects are immediate.

The authors of the study surveyed some 1,600 people, some 4% of Greenland’s adult population. They found that 89% believe climate change is happening—similar to other nations with at least some Arctic territory, including Sweden, Canada, Russia and Iceland. (The exception: the United States, at only 68%.)

That said, the proportion of Greenlanders saying they are personally experiencing the effects is more than twice that of other Arctic nations—nearly 80%. Among fishers, hunters and people living in small, rural villages, the proportion is close to 85%.

Yet, when asked whether humans are causing the changes, only about 50% made this connection, and in rural areas it was only 40%.

The researchers say the study suggests that education plays a strong role, noting that many people in rural areas do not have a secondary education.

“Villages don’t have the same access to formal education, particularly past elementary school, and that may explain a lot of it,” said Minor.

He points out that climate researchers from around the world have been converging on Greenland for decades, and that much of the evidence pinning climate change on humans has emerged from their work.

“One of the core insights of modern climate science, derived in part from the Greenland ice sheet, may not be widely available to Greenland’s public,” he said.
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Cultural historian Manumina Lund-Jensen, of Ilisimatusarfik Greenland University and a co-author of the study, suggests a further dimension to beliefs about humans and the environment.

“In Greenland, most people interact with Sila, [the] Greenlandic spirit of the air, the weather, [which] also describes our consciousness, and connection to the universe,” she said. “Knowledge about Sila has been transmitted through generations by oral traditions and observations, and can make the difference of survival for oneself and others.”

This view may “increase the psychological distance to the anthropogenic signal in the climate system,” she writes in the study. “Humans may not be viewed as powerful in relation to Sila.”

Full article here.