Climate Change Is Harming Alaska in Ways You Wouldn’t Expect

My apologies to the assembled in the shebeen. Last Friday, in the Out on the Weekend post, I paid tribute to former Red Sox outfielder Mike Greenwell. In that post, I said that Greenwell’s career is not far off the standards set by Red Sox Hall of Fame left fielders Ted Williams and Jim Rice.

Holy Long Island potatoes, I forgot Yaz! Carl Michael Yastrzemski and his 3,419 hits, 452 home runs, seven Gold Gloves, and magnificent 1967, still one of the greatest single-season performances in MLB history. I forgot all of that, even his bread. For my penance, I will share with you the late Jess Cain’s tribute to the man.

Onward!

I note for the company here present that a big piece of Alaska is going out to sea. From CNN:

Rescuers in western Alaska are working to find missing residents and help the more than 1,000 people displaced after ferocious, hurricane-force wind gusts from what once was Typhoon Halong tore through remote, coastal communities, unleashed record-breaking storm surge and shoved homes completely off their foundations. At least one person, an adult woman, was found dead in the village of Kwigillingok Monday, the Alaska Division of Homeland Security and Emergency Management said in a statement. Officials are working to notify the woman’s family before releasing her name.

Two people were still unaccounted for in Kwigillingok as of Monday, officials said. At least 51 people and two dogs have been rescued in Kwigillingok and the nearby village of Kipnuk since the weekend, and about 1,400 others were displaced to shelters, a local tribal health agency and state officials said. Authorities said Monday evening there were no missing people in Kipnuk after previously saying they were working to confirm reports of additional missing individuals.

I spent a week on the west coast of Alaska in similar villages losing to the power of the ocean. The scientists working there explained to me what changed. You no doubt will be shocked that it’s the climate crisis. This long has been where typhoons go to die. They tear up north until they hit the winter sea ice. There, they would beat themselves to death on the ice, and the deep permafrost would hold fast against erosion. Now, however, the ice forms later in the year, and it doesn’t freeze as thoroughly as it used to. The permafrost is almost a memory, so the storms now have nothing to stop them. They hit the mainland like actual hurricanes. Houses, thereupon, fall into the ocean, which doesn’t give a damn which side wins a vote.