ak in the news: the arctic and the desert

Ned Rozell has this report on a talk by Matthew Sturm, a big name in snow research up here, about Sturm's 2,200-mile snowmachine trek across the Canadian arctic.

"They know that the climate is warming, and that mineral and oil gas exploration is booming," [Sturm said]. "They also know that all the old problems due to remoteness, cold, isolation, and darkness still exist in some form. They know the changes have brought new problems like meth and out-migration. . . . As I traveled, I was struck by a palpable sense of change in the wind. It isn’t that there is climate change and technological change, there is just change — a holistic thing, difficult to predict."

There's also this, from the Canadian magazine the Walrus, which I've not read all of -- "Climate change as the Inuit see it: 'From the inside out.'"
I did get a chance to read the NY Times story from last weekend on climate-related drought in the US West and efforts to deal with it. Not about Alaska, but a good story all the same.