Alaskan's brains are melting along with the snow and ice

[donsu]

http://www.nrdc.org/onearth/05sum/alaska1.asp


Alaska's Meltdown
If folks above the 49th Parallel are scared about global warming, they're sure not letting on. Now that's scary.


High-temperature records are being broken so often that the local newspapers barely make note anymore. Last summer, 6.5 million acres of Alaska burned, an area the size of Massachusetts, breaking a 50-year-old record. Smoke hung over a broad swath of the state, and tourists took shelter. Even when the smoke cleared, the forests and cities didn't smell right: They smelled hot, like the Lower 48, not like Alaska. Sea ice withdrawing, catastrophic erosion, glaciers shrinking, melting permafrost, winters warming and shortening: Alaskans are not only losing economically, they are losing their ways of life.

So why aren't they doing anything about it?

Alaska's top political leaders have (at most) called for more study -- while appropriating money to address fires, sunken roads, and storm-damaged villages. A team of 300 scientists completed a four-year Arctic Climate Impact Assessment last November documenting the changes, which, they concluded, were driven largely by carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gas emissions caused by humans. Alaska's sole representative to Congress, Republican Don Young, immediately dismissed the report. "I don't believe it is our fault," Young said, adding that his opinion is "as sound as any scientist's."

-snip-

For those hoping that a global response to climate change will rise up from the grass roots, the Alaska paradox may be disquieting. Climate change is hitting here first and hardest -- no one denies that something extreme is happening -- but the collective will to act has yet to develop. Instead of running in panic like extras in a disaster movie, Alaskans remain inert before the threat -- either misinformed, politically paralyzed, or in a state of denial.
-snip-
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shall we sharply nag Alaskans awake and into action?

[Kagemusha]

1. Go ahead and nag if you want...

Personally, I'm opposed to running around in panic like extras in a disaster movie on general principle.

[donsu]

4. wow, you took a large leap in assumption

nt

[RaleighNCDUer]

5. Well, running around in a panic can be fun

and it does get attention.

And it is probably as effective a response as anything with this administration in office.

[Bridget Burke]

12. Doing absolutely nothing is not the only alternative....

to "running around in a panic."

Discussing reality can be quite useful.

[Oversea Visitor]

2. Your President is a nutcase

He refuse to budge on this issue. Dont bother nagging Alaskans drag the CHIMP to see for himself.

[Dr.Phool]

6. The nutcase is in Arizona

Just ask Grover Norquist.

[Oversea Visitor]

8. He was too busy with the girls

from Maine to answer me
So is your president a nutcase

[ck4829]

3. Hey! The Jury is still out on Global Warming!

[tanyev]

7. Hey, it's an economic opportunity!

Now they can start growing Alaskan tomatoes.

[donsu]

9. it's sad DUers see this as a joke

nt

[RaleighNCDUer]

11. Sometimes, humor is the only rational response.

All we can do today is try to mitigate the disaster -- the time to have prevented it was 20 years ago. Then Reagan and his flat-earthers got into the white house, where many of them remain to this day, and de-regulated us into oblivion.

I laugh to keep from crying.

[shockra]

10. I've been plenty scared for years.

And I've posted about it here before.

Can't say that I know of anyone else outside of my family who is though. I hear comments about "loving the hot weather" all the time. :eyes:

Summer temperatures are getting up near 90 degrees, where for most of my life, a warm summer day was in the low 70's.