Climate change tops the agenda with President Obama's visit to Alaska this week.
Restoring Denali "officially" to its rightful name was just a lead in for President Obama's visit to Alaska this week. He outlines his intentions to address climate change here in this video.
https://www.youtube.com/...
Although the days ahead have yet to fully unfold, we are dealing here with a leader who sees the bigger picture and works within the realities of the world today to move forward the progressive agendas needed to sustain our planet, its economies, and all its people. With President Obama, the US leads the way in the world on climate change.
In advance of the President's visit, the Alaska Dispatch News has provided some excellent journalism.
Here is what climate change looks like in Alaska right now.
http://www.adn.com/...
The entire article is worth reading and bookmarking, but here is a significant except.
...Alaska’s glaciers pale in comparison to the Greenland ice sheet and Antarctica, but they have become major contributors to sea level rise, scientists say.
Mountain glaciers hold only 1 percent of the world’s glacial ice, but they are contributing 30 percent of the water that is increasing sea levels, said Shad O’Neel of the USGS. Alaska holds 11 percent of the world’s mountain glaciers but contributes about a quarter of the world’s mountain glacier meltwater, O’Neel said. “We’re the most disproportionate region,” he said.
In all, Alaska’s glaciers are losing 75 billion tons of ice a year, and almost all of that comes from the glaciers on land rather than those spilling into tidewater. The alpine glaciers in western Alaska’s Ahklun Mountains, already shrunken, are expected to disappear entirely by the end of the century.
Glacial melt affects more than sea levels. The increasing amount of fresh water pouring off them changes marine salinity and currents and, ultimately, circulation in the Arctic Ocean, O’Neel said...
Also featured by ADN this week is the impact of climate change on the village of Newtok, one of 24 communities currently in peril in Alaska, another in-depth story well worth an entire read.
NEWTOK – The only way to reach the village of Newtok from the airstrip is across an old wooden boardwalk so crooked and broken that a person on foot risks falling between gaps in planks into the marsh below.
The school principal hauls his own honey bucket. An aide at the health clinic lives with four others in a one-room home where duct tape patches cracks between walls. Homes tilt at crazy angles after years of sinking unevenly into thawing permafrost.
While new houses and modern water and sewer systems lift up lives in some rural communities, government agencies as of late see little reason to invest in eroding villages that everyone is preparing to leave behind...
The tension in Alaska is palpable. This is a red state that has been highly dependent on oil extraction to fund state government. The climate in Alaska is changing in more ways than actual climate. It's changing politically. Alaska's new governor Bill Walker is a big improvement over the previous governors of Sean Parnell and Sarah Palin. A former Republican, Walker ran on the "unity" ticket as an independent with Democrat and Native Leader Byron Mallott to successfully oust the old Republican regime in Alaska. However, Walker still wants more oil in the pipeline, and his big dream is a new pipeline for natural gas.
With President Obama and Governor Walker both being adults, Alaskans like myself, are hopeful there will be constructive dialogue that will benefit Alaskans and the nation and the planet..a tall order here. If anyone is up to the challenge, it's Barack Obama and we welcome his visit.
You can follow this trip at https://www.whitehouse.gov/...
Or by checking into Alaska Dispatch News regularly at http://www.adn.com/