Village school children in Alaska make cute video about the lack of snow this year. Ends up becoming powerful statement on global warming.

The film was made by fourth graders at the Kuinerrarmiut Elitnaurviat school in Quinhagak and shot by their teacher James Barthelman.

It was actually not created to address climate change per se, but it immediately caught the attention of  climate scientists such as Mike MacCracken, chief scientist for the Climate Institute.

Who had this to say: 

While winter (or other seasonal) conditions typically vary from year to year, the first effect of climate change is to raise the baseline around which the variations occur. For regions that have winter conditions below normal, the increase in the baseline will more and more often lead to variations taking the temperature to above freezing. This is happening along the coast of Alaska, especially as the sea ice forms later and later each year, creating a situation where the waves from winter storms are no longer being held down by the sea ice, but not actively eroding the shoreline. 

The second aspect of climate change that is likely affecting Alaska more and more is the apparent tendency of warming in the Arctic and warmer sea surface temperatures in the Pacific to contribute to larger waves in the jet stream. The resulting larger waves, which also seem to persist for longer because they move more slowly west to east, tend to push warm air into the Arctic (e.g., over Alaska) later and later into the year, leading to very warm conditions and the later and later freezing of the land surface and later accumulation of snow. While this may initially seem beneficial, transportation and movement of wildlife across the tundra is made much easier when the land surface (and rivers) are frozen over. 

Such large variations of the climate likely won’t occur every year over the next few decades given the limited global warming to date, but it would seem likely such conditions will occur more and more frequently as global warming continues, disrupting both social systems and ecosystems.

Look I live in Alaska and the fact that global warming exists is simply no longer up for discussion. We fucking know it does! (We have so little snow right now that many of us simply refuse to call it winter.)

And in my opinion the debate over whether mankind is contributing to it or not is also over. We are.

So the only question remaining is what more has to happen before the politicians decide that the cost of doing nothing about it is too much for the donations to their campaign from big oil companies to cover?