Tuesday, August 02, 2016

Another reminder as to why Alaskans can never honestly deny the existence of man made climate change.

Courtesy of Truth Out:

In late June, due to glaciers melting at unprecedented rates, the side of a mountain nearly a mile high in Alaska's Glacier Bay National Park, which had formerly been supported by glacial ice, collapsed completely. The landslide released over 100 million tons of rock, sending debris miles across a glacier beneath what was left of the mountain. 

This is something that has been happening more often in recent years in the northernmost US state. While Alaska's local conservative media often tend to feign ignorance of the cause of such phenomena, what's causing it is all too clear. The state has been hitting and surpassing record temperatures over the last year, and the same can be said for the globe. It's plainly obvious why ice is melting at record rates. To see more stories like this, visit "Planet or Profit?" 

Mountains that have been largely covered by glaciers for eons are losing their ice cover and the soggy, unstable land underneath is giving way. The landslides are usually large enough to cause seismic tremors and sometimes, when close enough to the ocean, tsunamis. 

Also in June, Arctic sea ice had melted down to a record low, with 29,000 miles of it disappearing each day. By month's end, the sea ice was 100,000 square miles below the previous record for June -- set just six years ago -- and more than half-a-million square miles below the 1981-2010 long-term average, according to the National Snow and Ice Data Center. Excepting March, every single month of this year thus far has set a new record low for ice cover in the Arctic. 

To Alaskans, at least those who are not making a living off the oil industry that dominates the state's financial and political economies, the evidence before them is impossible to ignore.

That last sentence is key.

The first Alaskans to start making a stink about climate change up here, after the scientists of course, were the rural natives whose subsistence lifestyles were the first to feel the impact of melting ice, changing migration routes, and unpredictable weather patterns.

But these days the changes are so obvious that you would have to be an idiot on the level of a Palin not to recognize that stepping outside your house is akin to being transported thousands of miles away into an environment that is only minimally reminiscent of the place where those of us living here in the 1970's and 80's knew to be our home.

It is likely much too late do anything to significantly impact the changes that are only right now starting to come our way, but doing nothing means we have failed to recognize the fact that we have an obligation as residents of this planet to contribute to its survival.  

Sorry scratch that, the planet will be fine. It is OUR survival that we need to be concerned about.

Perhaps that is enough to kick start our desire for self preservation so we can start voting some of these Koch sucking Republicans out of office and replacing them with politicians who see the big picture and will vote for policies to dramatically reduce our dependency on fossil fuels and start spending some serious money on renewable energy sources.

At least one would hope.

17 comments:

  1. Anonymous4:03 AM

    It is too late.

    ReplyDelete
  2. Anonymous4:08 AM

    For all those folks who can't possibly taint their oh, so noble consciences by voting for Hillary and instead plan to vote for Jill Stein (i.e. a de facto vote for Trump), just stop and consider for a moment what 4 years of a Trump administration with its accompanying coal and tar sands oil boom, is going to do to the climate of this planet. After that, it may well be too late to save the only home we have.

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Anonymous7:55 AM

      it will make that stupid pipeline look like an outing of the Sierra Club

      Delete
  3. Anonymous4:26 AM

    Are you trying to say that the environment is more important than profits?

    ReplyDelete
  4. Anonymous5:16 AM

    Keep bitching, $arah.
    "There are none so blind as those who will not see."

    ReplyDelete
  5. Anonymous5:20 AM

    Real change happens when people stand up together and say, "Enough is Enough."

    ReplyDelete
  6. Anonymous5:35 AM

    ok, who broke the comment section? nothing is posting!

    ReplyDelete
  7. Anonymous5:42 AM

    Holy shit! 29,000 miles a day?

    What problem? Where problem? We don't have no stinkin' problem! It's those rotten libruls makin' shit up again, isn't it? /s

    ReplyDelete
  8. Anonymous6:08 AM

    Can we feed the entire Palin family to the starving polar bears?

    ReplyDelete
  9. Anonymous6:35 AM

    Nature at work.
    Simply amazing video.
    TURN ON FULL SCREEN AND SOUND...

    Be amazed at what these scientists recorded on video and sound.

    At the beginning there is a series of subtitles but unfortunately, if you do not have sound, you will miss out on the natural sounds of the glacier as it calves (moves).

    What is shown in this video may turn out to be one of the rarest sights we humans will ever see.

    "CHASING ICE" captures largest glacier calving ever filmed

    https://www.youtube.com/embed/hC3VTgIPoGU?rel=0

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Amazing & horrifying. Thanks for the link. All should see this.

      Delete
  10. Anonymous6:57 AM

    "...the rural natives whose subsistence lifestyles were the first to feel the impact.." Yet they continue to vote en masse for the science-free GOP, as does most of the state.

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Anonymous8:46 AM

      And they worked so hard to learn how to spell "Murkowski" so they could write her in and vote against their best interests.

      Don Young? To them he's just like those Bristol Bay commercials "the place that's always been", he's the "Representative that's always been".

      Delete
  11. Anonymous7:28 AM

    Leonardo DiCaprio: 'Vote for Leaders Who Understand the Science and Urgency of Climate Change'

    http://www.alternet.org/environment/leonardo-dicaprio-vote-leaders-who-understand-science-and-urgency-climate-change

    ReplyDelete
  12. Anonymous8:26 AM

    Humans are not ready to travel to other planets. Our time on this planet becomes shorter daily.

    The earth will survive, but not as we know it. Nature will reclaim what we have despoiled - for a glimpse of that watch The Radioactive Wolves of Chernobyl:
    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lSuR49ztL2A

    Vote out all climate change deniers, and lengthen the time we have left.

    ReplyDelete
  13. Anonymous10:08 AM

    Is there any chance that Sarah Palin's house on Lake Whatever could sink too?
    Beaglemom

    ReplyDelete
  14. Anita Winecooler4:52 PM

    The climate deniers are so much in denial, they're not even willing to look at the facts. Saw a show on the Italian Station, and the same phenomenon is happening there, there are mountains on the apenines that have lost their ice caps, ski businesses have had to move higher up, and the damage continues,,,, but put catalytic converters and other technologies on vehicles? Hell no, they're in the dark ages, leaded fuel and diesel.
    They just refinished and cleaned the sistine chapel after years of neglect and earthquake damage, and they've started restoring the paintings again.

    ReplyDelete

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