Scary information for the day

Two days ago I received a package from my father. It contained a letter in his typical form letter style and a book, The Weather Makers. My father is not a trendy man, nor one to get worked up over much. Yet, he wants me and everyone I know to read this book and to take global warming seriously. Eight years ago, when he began building his house out on Shelter Island, he began exploring alternative forms of energy. After all, Shelter Island is far away from standard amenities. One needs a generator, a water catchment system, etc. My dad rigged up a rainwater catchment system and installed a wind powered generator to take advantage of the strong winds blowing in off the channel. Once he began building in Australia, he set up a solar power system for the house there. It's all pretty neat and progressive. Now that he has become informed, he is especially concerned with global warming.

I called home to say I had received the book and my mother mentioned that the Mendenhall Glacier retreated 295 feet last year. I was shocked! While the glacier has been retreating for a long time (200 years?), its average retreat when I was growing up was 25-30 ft a year. In order to fact check this, I emailed Larry Musarra, director at the Mendhenall Glacier Visitor's Center. Here's his response:

"In 2004, the Mendenhall Glacier receded over 700 ft.

Here's the info from 2005 in meters:

Here is the update on this past year's retreat at Mendenhall Glacier.
Time span is from 8/25/04 to 8/23/05. Average retreat was 52 m
averaged across the width of the terminus. Greatest retreat occurred on
west side this year, 82 m.

Yes it is going fast."

Holy shit.

Oh Juneau, how you break my heart

Starbucks is officially opening next January in Juneau. And Wal-mart. And nearly half the population support a road out. A road to where one might reasonably ask. But still, a longer road for more driving! Just like down south! If everyone wants down south so much with it's infuriating traffic, chain store clusters, and cheap plastic crap, why don't they just move there/here? Must innovation and economic progress suck so much?

I feel like one of those old fogey traditionalists. "In my day, it snowed 6 feet in December and we had three day power outages and online shopping involved the Montgomery Ward catalog. And we had to chop our wood and hike six miles uphill to and from school."