Despite What's Right In Front Of The Eyes Of Residents, AK Politicians Talk "Controversy" Of Climate

[hatrack]

EDIT

Alaska's leaders are also realising the costs of a warming Arctic. The state spends $10m a year to repair roads that buckle with melting permafrost, said Larry Hartig, who heads Alaska's Department of Environment. But recognition of the opportunities – and costs – does not quite translate into explicit recognition of climate change and its impacts in real-time, or even on a human time scale.

Alaska's lieutenant governor, Mead Treadwell, likes to talk about climate change over a period of 10,000 years. Larry Hartig, who oversaw the work of the climate change sub-cabinet established by Palin, now dismisses the original reasons for the body's existence.

"I don't look at climate change as a subject in and of itself," he said. "Coastal erosion and flooding, well, we would have them even if we didn't worry about climate change." He went on to explain that he would prefer to deal directly with the impacts, rather than be drawn into that "other debate".

EDIT

There are other changes on John's calendar: shorter, warmer winters, earlier springs, and the floods and rising waters that, within the next decade, could make Newtok disappear entirely beneath the Ninglick river. The river has been clawing away at the land, reducing Newtok into a small, and shrinking, island. The villagers are desperately trying to move to a new site, nine miles to the south, before the entire village is engulfed. The Army Corps of Engineers estimates that the highest point in the village – the school – could be under water by 2017.

EDIT

http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/interactive/2013/may/14/alaska-politics-climate-change-sarah-palin

[pscot]

1. Larry and Mead don't sound too bright