A Holiday Smorgasbord Part 1: Climate Change and Pacific Northwest Glaciers

[David MacLeod]

I’m giving thanks that there are so many good sources of information available on the current state of affairs regarding climate, energy, and the environment. Unfortunately most are not showing up in the mainstream media, so we have to search them out.

On a long Thanksgiving weekend, many of us tend to eat a lot, shop a lot, and then veg out in front of ball games or other distractions.

For the next few days I’ll be providing an alternative to how you spend some of your holiday weekend with a holiday smorgasbord of Recommended Reading, Listening, and Watching.  Curl up with a cup of tea or hot chocolate (see this story on peak chocolate), and partake of this information download.  I apologize in advance that this isn’t all good news, but please keep in mind Thomas Hardy’s adage: “If a path to the better there be, it begins with a full look at the worst.” On today’s menu…

What Climate Change Means for Mt. Baker and the Skagit River

Here’s a story from KUOW’s Ashley Ahearn that aired on NPR on how climate change is affecting the glaciers in Washington State – focused on the Easton glacier on Mt. Baker, and the Skagit River it drains into.  Since 1900 we’ve lost about 50 percent of our glacier area, and this makes the Northwest “uniquely vulnerable to the effects of climate change.”
Read the full story here: What Climate Change Means for a Land of Glaciers.
Listen to the NPR report here.

And here’s a short video companion to the story on The Melting Easton Glacier:

The above story is especially poignant, as it has been recently revealed that NPR has gutted its climate coverage and reduced environmental reporting to one part-time reporter.  The story broke on Inside Climate News, with further commentary by Joe Romm at Think Progress, who now puts NPR into the category of "part of the problem." Credo has a clicktivism campaign going on in response, in case you care to participate: Tell NPR: Don't reduce your coverage of climate change and other en....

Related: Climate Change Threatens to Strip the Identity of Glacier National ... from the New York Times.