Wednesday, September 2, 2015

President Obama is visiting Arctic Alaska, so shut up already

Posted on Twitter by Kate Zuray
President Obama spends a happy moment on the beach at Dillingham.

Read this, then pause and reflect on it for a moment.

For the first time in history, a sitting United States president is visiting Arctic Alaska.

Now, to top that off, he is here at least in part to examine first hand and also to highlight the effects of climate change in Alaska which is the front line where changes due to global warming are most obvious.

Yesterday he visited a glacier.

Then he was criticized by a supposedly intelligent Alaska writer who said melting glaciers aren't necessarily indicative of changes in global climate. That may or may not be. However it is not the only indication and in part is why President Obama is visiting the Arctic. Incidentally that writer who has been a controversial outdoors reporter over the years, with this visit sounds like he is auditioning for Fox News, as he nit picks anything he can find to criticize about the president's trip.

Here are just a few climate changes recalled off hand without looking anything up:

Thinning and retreating levels of polar ice to perhaps unrecoverable levels.

Melting of permafrost which has the added result of releasing methane into the air to add to the greenhouse gases that lead to warming.

Shoreline erosion along the western and northern coasts of Alaska caused in part by a lack of ice which in the past dampened the intensity of waves attacking the shore.

Northern advance of species never before seen in Alaska including one of those huge sunfish picked up in the Gulf of Alaska this summer.

Northward advance of the tree line.

Record or near record temperatures across most of Alaska over the past several years.

Invasive plant species spreading farther and farther north, both aquatic and on land.

These few are just the surface I can recall reading about. A serious look into the science being done these days would probably yield a hundred more.

But this it not about warming it is about a president making a historic trip, the purpose of which at least partly is to highlight the dangers.

Today somebody complained on Twitter about how much all the presidential airplanes and other vehicles contributed to pollution during the trip. Well if a US president making a trip to the Arctic highlights the problem worldwide and more people become aware of it and more people realize the seriousness of the issue and then more people act on it, and it brings about serious engagement, the tradeoff is well worth it.

The same poster earlier had spoken with envy that a coworker had been joined by the president during her morning workout.

It has been typical of Barack Obama's presidency that no matter what he does, he receives massive criticism, even vitriolic. It's a wonder he can show up for work every day smiling and moving forward, a testament to the man. It's been a kick looking at other pictures of his trip. We have a US senator whose name escapes me, elected on the promise to "stand up to Obama" and end Obamacare, who, once elected, disappeared from sight. He's been observed in a couple of pictures near the president grinning like a kid who just received the exact birthday present he wanted.

The point is, at least for Alaskans, lay off. No matter what your issue, he is an intelligent man, he can tell his feet are getting wet while he stands on the outskirts of Shishmaref. (I know he's not supposed to go there – it's an analogy silly). He will hear from folks who live where Shell is drilling.  He will hear about the lack of ice and the stronger storms and the plight of walrus and polar bears who can't find haulouts except on land where they are more vulnerable.

Think of it, this single man like none other, has the weight of the world on his shoulders, but he is taking the time to come to Alaska to see first hand what the shouting is all about and he is also intelligent enough to process what he sees and hears and one hopes lead the way toward finding an acceptable solution. And like it or not, the world is watching. Nothing he does this publicly goes unnoticed. And, the world also watches how we as a people treat our own president. It's not pretty.

In the meantime, nothing said here is going to stop the sniping. That's one failure of the Internet, it has given the critics, haters and snipers (yes, even me) a broader audience.  It's kind of interesting there doesn't seem to be a lot of criticism coming from his usual political opponents.  It is perhaps the continuation of his rope-a-dope method where he takes an action, then ducks and dodges and while the opposition is all fired up yelling about that, he swings again. And BTW today while he was in Alaska, he got the deciding vote in Congress to save his deal with Iran. They are going to be reeling off the ropes for weeks.


This time the day before he arrived the administration announced the official name of North America's tallest mountain would be changed from McKinley to Denali, the traditionally accepted Native name for it, and one a majority of Alaskans have favored since Statehood. While all the Republicans started yelling about it, (after they had checked Google and found out McKinley was a Republican) the president moves on to an Arctic conference and a tour of Alaska to see it all for himself still carrying the weight of the world, smiling with couple of women fishing for salmon in Dillingham dancing with some kids in the Dillingham school and letting the criticism roll off his back, something he apparently does so well.

Perhaps we should all take a lesson from the gracious way the president has been greeted by Alaskans in Dillingham and Kotzebue. And too, from the comment a friend of mine made on another post, "I've never seen pictures of the president smiling so much."

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The best way to know you are having an adventure is when you wish you were home talking about it." — a mechanic on the Alaska State Ferry System. Or as in my own case planning how I will be writing it on this blog.

"You can't promote principled anti-corruption without pissing off corrupt people." — George Kent

"If only the British had held on to the airports, the whole thing might have gone differently for us." — Mick Jagger

"You can do anything as long as you don't scare the horses." — a mother's favorite saying recalled by a friend

A poem is an egg with a horse inside” — anonymous fourth grader

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“Always do sober what you said you'd do drunk. That will teach you to keep your mouth shut.” — Ernest Hemingway

When I write, I feel like an armless, legless man with a crayon in his mouth. Kurt Vonnegut

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The thing about ignorance is, you don't have to remain ignorant. — me again"

"It was like the aftermath of an orgasm with the wrong partner." – David Lagercrants “The Girl in the Spider’s Web.”

Why worry about dying, you aren't going to live to regret it.

Never debate with someone who gets ink by the barrel" — George Hayes, former Alaska Attorney General who died recently

My dear Mr. Frost: two roads never diverge in a yellow wood. Three roads meet there. — @Shakespeare on Twitter

Normal is how somebody else thinks you should act.

"The mark of a great shiphandler is never getting into situations that require great shiphandling," Adm. Ernest King, USN

Me: Does the restaurant have cute waitresses?

My friend Gail: All waitresses are cute when you're hungry.

I'm not a writer, but sometimes I push around words to see what happens. – Scott Berry

I realized today how many of my stories start out "years ago." What's next? Once upon a time?"

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A non-writing writer is a monster courting insanity. – Franz Kafka

We are all immortal until the one day we are not. – me again

If the muse is late, start without her – Peter S. Beagle

Substitute ‘damn’ every time you’re inclined to write ‘very;’ your editor will delete it and the writing will be just as it should be. ~Mark Twain Actually you could do the same thing with the word "really" as in "really cold."

If you are looking for an experience that will temper your vanity, this is it. There's no one to impress when you're alone on the trap line. – Michael Carey quoting his father's journal

Either write something worth reading or do something worth writing. – Benjamin Franklin

It’s nervous work. The state you need to write in is the state that others are paying large sums of money to get rid of. – Shirley Hazzard

So far as I can remember, there is not one word in the Gospels in praise of intelligence -- Bertrand Russell

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If you attack the arguer instead of the argument, you lose both

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I used to think getting old was about vanity—but actually it’s about losing people you love. Getting wrinkles is trivial. – Eugene O’Neill

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Swiss General: “Well, I suppose every one of my soldiers would need to fire twice.”

Writing is the only thing that when I do it, I don’t feel I should be doing something else.—Gloria Steinem

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One thing I do know, if you keep at it, you usually wind up getting something done.—Patricia Monaghan

Do you want to know what kind of person makes the best reporter? I’ll tell you. A borderline sociopath. Someone smart, inquisitive, stubborn, disorganized, chaotic, and in a perpetual state of simmering rage at the failings of the world.—Brett Arends

It is a very simple mind that only knows how to spell a word one way.—Andrew Jackson

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Hunting is a “critical element for the long-term conservation of wood bison.”—a state department of Fish and Game official explaining why the state would not go along with a federal plan to reintroduce wood bison in Alaska because the agreement did not specifically allow hunting

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