Race to save Alaska's lost "melting villages"boosted by major research grant

[Rowdyboy]

http://archaeologynewsnetwork.blogspot.com/2014/01/race-to-save-alaskas-lost-melting.html#.UuG386_nYqQ

Dr Knecht added: “Since we started in 2009, the shoreline has retreated a full 10 metres. This is happening all around the arctic and because these were coastal people, the archaeological record is lost with it. But it’s not just an archaeological record – it’s one of the clearest records of the past that we know of anywhere in the north.”

Named ‘Nunalleq’ (meaning ‘the old village’) by village elders, discoveries at the site number tens of thousands and have included samples of human hair, ceremonial face masks and an ivory carving of a legendary river monster.

The dig has been carried out in full partnership with the local indigenous community. The pieces have been transported to the University of Aberdeen for preservation and archiving but remain the property of the people of Quinhagak and will be returned afterwards.

The site was inhabited between 1300 and 1650, during the Little Ice Age (shortly after 1400), which was a period of rapid global climate change. As well as providing a fascinating account of how the Yup’ik people lived hundreds of years ago, the project is also relevant to bigger issues concerning climate change in general.

[Amerincorporated]

1. Climate Change is terrifying

I don't understand how people can be so cavalier about climate change, they make up excuses and straw man arguments to stick their head in the sand about something that could wipe out humanity in their, or maybe their children's, lifetime. The most annoying arguments come from pseudo-intellectuals, who's arguments seem to stem from narcissism and an inflated ego, rather than any kind of honest beliefs. Libertarians who live completely in the realm of hypotheticals, yet whenever I ask them how long they've studied climate change they invariably pivot the argument to anecdotes about how the Earth's climate always changes, ignoring the facts about those changes. That the Earth has warmed and cooled, the GLARING difference being that it has never warmed this fast, and has NEVER been as warm as it's getting in all of human history. This is usually the point when they smile and change the subject. I don't understand normally intelligent people who refuse to believe the overwhelming opposition to their uninformed opinions. Like I said, I think it's a psychological issue with Libertarians-they're all extremely egotistical and hold their own opinions in high esteem over any contradictory facts.

[Rowdyboy]

2. Of course. How can there possibly be climate change with "polar vortexes" making it cold

in the winter?

They refuse to look deeper because they don't want to acknowledge the truth. That would require affirmative action and that goes against the grain for shallow, lazy people.