Sure people talk about the problems with Global Warming but how many people are willing to sue over it? Alaskans are.

A tiny Alaska village eroding into the Arctic Ocean sued two dozen oil, power and coal companies Tuesday, claiming that the large amounts of greenhouse gases they emit contribute to global warming that threatens the community's existence.

The city of Kivalina and a federally recognized tribe, the Alaska Native village of Kivalina, sued ExxonMobil, eight other oil companies, 14 power companies and one coal company in a lawsuit filed in federal court in San Francisco.

Kivalina is a traditional Inupiat Eskimo village of about 390 people about 625 miles northwest of Anchorage. It is built on an 8-mile barrier reef between the Chukchi Sea and Kivalina River.

Sea ice traditionally protected the community, whose economy is based in part on salmon fishing plus subsistence hunting of whale, seal, walrus, and caribou. But sea ice that forms later and melts sooner because of higher temperatures has left the community unprotected from fall and winter storm waves and surges that lash coastal communities.

You know for the record I have known about Global Warming since the seventies. Not because I am smart, though I am, but because it has been affecting Alaska for many decades.

The native population, which has close ties to both the sea and wildlife, has been having to make lifestyle choices to survive since at least the mid sixties.

It is hard to ignore something that forces you to pick up your entire village and move it off of an island that your people have lived on for over a thousand years. That sort of thing leaves an impression.