My friend owned a condo in the brown building, and I know the school teacher that lived in the house that is in the river. I lived in that city for six years. That event, know as a jøkulhlaup, happened a few times in the short six years I lived there. Some years bigger than others. This phenomenon is not unique to Juneau, and happens all over the glaciated world. The Mendenhall has been in retreat since the 1700s, and now is at a point that it is more prone to these events.
You should have listened when I said to be skeptical about the ambient superconductivity. This does not look like a state of the art lab.
https://www.bloomberg.com/news/artic...fice#xj4y7vzkg
Yes, here's the rate of decline since the 1700s..
https://www.researchgate.net/publica...lacier_run-off
Go that way really REALLY fast. If something gets in your way, TURN!
Yeah, I agree with this sentiment, Trackhead. The media likes to portray everything that happens in the natural world right now as a product of climate change, and the reality is significantly more nuanced. Climate change is a very really threat, but it's not doing anyone any favors to overhype it. That's just more potential ammo for the deniers.
It always blows my mind that people somehow think we can engineer our way out of this. Even if we discovered a magic tech now, it could not be scaled up in time to avoid the worst impacts. Climate change has momentum and feed back loops that cannot be reversed quickly (think permafrost carbon sequestration and likely release). Maybe if humans somehow decide climate change is a priority then maybe we could see some reversal in a few generations. By that time I would expect to see significant collapses of many of the earth's key ecosystems, a significant drop in bio-diversity as well as mass human migration to avoid famine, war, drought, and adverse heat impacts (just starting to happen now).
I believe that the only real way to have a significant impact within my life time, say 30 years, is for a huge sudden change in the 1 st world's standard of living, mobility, and diet as well as total governmental and corporate buy in. None of those is likely to happen until it is too late. Hell, 1/2 of America still thinks the orange, fascist, buffoon would be a good leader, we're fucking doomed. Enjoy it now (burgers, big trucks, exotic surf safaris, and European vacations) for we will be one of last generations to enjoy it for a while.
No doubt the glacier is in rapid retreat. In the short time we lived there it was obvious year over year, alarming and sad. But, these events occur all over Alaska and elsewhere. Right now the conditions on the Mendenhall are more prone to it due to the retreat of an adjacent smaller glacier creating a pooling effect.
But yeah, every natural "disaster" these days is always attributable to global warming events, even when some are not. Watch someone predictably put words in my mouth.........
This almost deserves its own thread. I was just reading last week about 1816
The year without a summer they call it.
reports are of frost in New England and Europe in June. Massive crop loss etc.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Year_Without_a_Summer
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/1257_Samalas_eruption
I’m too old not to have known about this.
Sooooo. Let’s get some volcanic action to get the skiing going. It’s too hot this summer.
Yeah, I still see people stating things like:
“this summer is the coldest in _____ city, what the hell is the media talking about? Hottest July on record?’ It’s all fear mongering and all a big nothing.”
“They’ve been saying that for years. Back in the 2000s, they said we’d be burned up by now”
Fucking mind boggling how small people’s world view is. We are so fucked and it’s so depressing.
Or, maybe it's both the media jumping on the alarmist hype.. AND things are getting worse faster than most of us realistically expected and we're FUCKED. It could be both..
Go that way really REALLY fast. If something gets in your way, TURN!
Well as you stated there’s zero chance of people regressing in their wants. And those not in the 1st world are also looking to improve their lot. So advancing tech is pretty much our only way out. Wind and solar are the cheapest form of electricity currently on the market, but utilities feel they need to continue to use their current generation methods to pay them off. We went from the wright brothers to super sonic flight in 50 years. How? Massive government investment. The climate change issue is largely political and has been since scientists started to alert the world,to the issue. Livermore just repeated it’s fusion test and the output was greater than before. Of course it was minimal energy output, but remember the Wright brothers flew a few hundred yards. There’s way to many people out there throwing up there hands because the solutions aren’t perfect. It’s going to take everything on the table to solve the issue (renewables, nuclear, lifestyle changes, and new technologies) but the key is we need to invest on a governmental scale. Private business is too short sighted to pull the load. And if we could just get the boomers out of the way of progress. A generation handed the golden ticket that has continuously voted to fuck everything up.
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These people would sacrifice the future of their children for the pleasure of owning the libs.
https://wapo.st/3rZA1iW
Maybe they'd prefer oil rigs? In any case, opposition will soon wash away, along with the beach and the houses.
That flood disaster in Juneau. Development was probably allowed because it was outside the boundaries of the FEMA-established floodplain. I don’t know if the borough has regs in-place for protecting those developed properties from erosion due to that kind of event.
I guess that's "The Situation" for renewables..
Go that way really REALLY fast. If something gets in your way, TURN!
Yeah. I’ve read/seen there’s a mild ox bow configuration to the river there. Good point about whether it’s homeowner responsibility or municipal code. Big riprap ain’t cheap. Sucks to lose part of your property or your home. It’d be interesting to understand what that river would do in absence of home and back protections in that area. The videos of the larger trees falling into the river is interesting. Curious of their age, 50-70 years?
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