Dahr Jamail | Alaskans Witness Collapsing Mountains, Shattered Lives
Dahr Jamail | Alaskans Witness Collapsing Mountains, Shattered Lives
Monday, 01 August 2016 00:00
By Dahr Jamail, Truthout | News Analysis
Helicopters ferry water to drop on a wildfire just south of Anchorage, Alaska. (Photo: Dahr Jamail)
The impacts of anthropogenic climate disruption (ACD) across Alaska are devastating to witness.
In late June, due to glaciers melting at unprecedented rates, the side of a mountain nearly a mile high in Alaska's Glacier Bay National Park, which had formerly been supported by glacial ice, collapsed completely. The landslide released over 100 million tons of rock, sending debris miles across a glacier beneath what was left of the mountain.
This is something that has been happening more often in recent years in the northernmost US state. While Alaska's local conservative media often tend to feign ignorance of the cause of such phenomena, what's causing it is all too clear. The state has been hitting and surpassing record temperatures over the last year, and the same can be said for the globe. It's plainly obvious why ice is melting at record rates.
Mountains that have been largely covered by glaciers for eons are losing their ice cover and the soggy, unstable land underneath is giving way. The landslides are usually large enough to cause seismic tremors and sometimes, when close enough to the ocean, tsunamis.
More:
http://www.truth-out.org/news/item/37042-the-front-lines-of-climate-disruption-alaskans-witness-collapsing-mountains-shattered-lives
= new reply since forum marked as read
