If you’ve ever met an Alaskan, you know talking about disappeared sea ice and dead polar bears might get yawns or a semi-concerned shrugs. A few degrees one way or the other has never been a significant impact to their lives.
However, 2014 was one of the warmest years on record for America’s wintriest state. It was also the warmest for the Bering Sea and Anchorage’s warmest since 1926. In fact, for the first time in recorded history, the temperature never dropped below zero in Anchorage for a whole calendar year.
This is a big deal as it resulted in a green Christmas - seriously Anchorage did not have any snow on the ground on Christmas Day and no one remembers that ever happening in the past.
At a certain point, even the most die-hard Climate Change deniers will have to pay attention to these new normals. In the southern states, there are projections of 135F within the coming decades. Crops don’t grow, gasoline powered cars simply do not run well and the energy to cool people down is not available to support the ever growing population. It is logical to believe that people will begin to migrate north so Alaska will likely become quite crowded over the coming decades.