Across Alaska, Warming Is Moving Fast And Everyone Is Being Forced To Deal With It

[hatrack]

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The ‘drunken forest,’ where trees lean and tilt when the permafrost under them thaws. National Park Service

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Thawing permafrost caused this buckling on the Alaska Highway. USDA/NRCS/Joe Moore

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The airstrip in Kivalina, an Alaska Native village, is in danger of being wiped out by erosion. US Climate Resilience Toolkit/ Millie Hawley,

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Our state includes not only Arctic tundra underlain by the permanently frozen ground called “permafrost,” but also vast stretches of spruce, birch, aspen, alder and willow trees: the boreal forest. To the west, the windy Aleutian islands stretch out into the Pacific, and to the southeast, Alaska hugs the coast of British Colombia and boasts dense and towering coastal rainforest.

Across the state, hundreds of small communities – primarily Alaska Native villages – are not connected to the road system. Accessible only by air, sea, river or winter trails, these communities maintain traditional subsistence lifestyles based on hunting, fishing and gathering food and other resources. Meanwhile, the state’s coffers are enriched by money from oil and gas extraction – which are both primary sources of climate change, an irony that has not gone unnoticed by those struggling to craft long-term plans for Alaska.

With 6,640 miles of coastline, Alaska is an ocean-dependent state. Due to loss of sea ice that protects soft soils from seasonal storms, huge stretches of this coastline are washing into the Bering Sea. For communities at risk of erosion, all other concerns pale in comparison. At stake are not only structures and money, but also traditions, a sense of place, and even lives.

In Shishmaref, an Inupiat village with about 500 residents, homes have slipped off cliff edges and a hunter fell through thin ice. Relocation is costly and a last-ditch option. On the coast of the Arctic Ocean, walruses, seals and polar bears are no longer finding the ice they need to rest, hunt, mate and breed. The shortening sea ice seasons are also threatening traditional hunting practices. Even for inland residents, the health of the ocean is crucial, because the salmon caught in Alaska’s rivers fatten in the open ocean. Should climate change render the ocean too acidic due to changing atmospheric carbon, the tiny sea snails on which the salmon feed would be at risk because they may no longer be able to form their shells.

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http://theconversation.com/in-alaska-everyones-grappling-with-climate-change-105032

[The_jackalope]

1. Move the capital of the USA to Fairbanks AK.

Frame it as a quid pro quo for moving the Israeli capital to Jerusalem.

Then watch James Inhofe implode.