Change is Here: Climate Change Alaska Style

Exit Glacier, near Seward, Alaska provides a dramatic view of ice loss.

I grew up with Yupik elders warning about global warming. They were wise enough decades ago to see that something was amiss. They spoke of animal migrations and salmon spawns changing. The earth was warming and changing around them and they didn't need  a bunch of scientific studies to prove it. We should have listened back then. We probably wouldn't have stopped global warming, but we might have mitigated some of the effects by changing how we live or at least thought a bit more about how to prepare for more dramatic changes yet to come.
Now Alaska is seeing those changes in big ways. Not only are the glaciers that I once took our summer guest to visit nearly gone, but salmon aren't returning to our rivers and in some places where the ocean levels are rising, villages are preparing to relocate. (More on that in my forth-coming novel Moving Salmon Bay!)
If you're looking for a recent book on the changes happening here in Alaska check out Nancy Lord's new book Early Warming.  If you want to see for yourself, come visit and I'll point you towards a couple places where you can witness the disappearing glaciers first hand.

A photo I snapped back when you could get right up close to Exit Glacier, just outside of Seward, Alaska