High temperatures break records in Alaska for 4th of July

Anchorage, Alaska experienced the hottest fourth of July in its recorded history yesterday. What is known as America’s “coolest city” hit 90 degrees Fahrenheit.

Record heat at Anchorage, Alaska, for the fourth of July.

The heat caused the city of Anchorage to cancel their firework show saying it is too much of a fire danger. With 650,000 acres burned last year in the state, this precaution is understandable. 

Read story from the Nation of Change by Marlee Kokotovic - “High temperatures break records in Alaska for 4th of July.”

Conservationists losing fight to save Alaska wildlife refuge from drilling

Washington: Carl Portman remembers watching, heartbroken, from Anchorage in 2005 as a US Senate effort to allow drilling in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge lost by two votes.

Alaska senator Lisa Murkowski has supported drilling
 in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge throughout her
political career. Her vote may be decisive. 

Now, 12 years later, another effort to open up the reserve to oil and gas drilling is working its way through Congress. And this time, the political winds have shifted.

Portman, now a top official of a pro-drilling group, has seen oil revenue improve the schools, roads and hospitals in Alaska, his home state. He said he was cautiously optimistic about the drilling measure, which is included in a sweeping bill to overhaul the tax code. Environmental activists and their allies in Congress, on the other hand, are on the cusp of forever losing the decades-long political battle over the refuge.

Read Lisa Friedman’s story in today’s Melbourne Age - “Conservationists losing fight to save Alaska wildlife refuge from drilling.”

Warming oceans blamed for seabird deaths

Warming oceans thought to be killing
seabirds in their thousands.

AT THE end of the highway, 200 miles from Anchorage, sits a small fishing and tourism town where, in early January, thousands of dead common murres, or guillemots, were washed ashore.

These penguin-like seabirds littered the tidal wracks so densely that beach walkers had to be careful where they stepped. And beyond Homer, tens—probably hundreds—of thousands of these birds have drifted in dead along Alaska’s vast coastline or have been found far inland half-dead in the snow.

Alaska is home to about 3m common murres, which spend most of their lives on the open ocean but come to shore to nest in dense colonies on coastal cliffs. The female lays a pear-shaped egg so pointed at one end that it will roll in a circle, helping to keep the egg from plummeting off the bird’s narrow nest. Murres are renowned divers, using their wings to “fly” down 600 feet (183 metres) under water in search of a meal.

Read The Economist story - “Murre mystery.”