Reeling from Effects of Climate Change, Alaskan Village Votes to Relocate | Hacker News Reader

Reeling from Effects of Climate Change, Alaskan Village Votes to Relocate

nytimes.com

76 pointsjackgavigan27 comments

They wanted to move the town for over 40 years, but now they're "reeling" from climate change?

Something doesn't add up there.

> "It has been grappling for decades with the loss of buildings and infrastructure caused by storm surges, and it has shrunk over the past 40 years — more than 200 feet of the shore has been eaten away since 1969"

Sounds like they're just tacking on "climate change" to garner more attention to a pre-existing issue.

Shoreline gets eaten away by more than climate change. In many places, the shoreline is constantly shifting. Waterfront property is risky!

Yeah, that's my point. They're not reeling from climate change, they're reeling from building a city in a really bad spot.

But when you live off the sea, you need to be next to the sea.

It seems like the spot was bad to begin with, and now climate change is accelerating the erosion.

The shoreline has probably changed a lot in the 400 years since that area was settled.

Also, the IPCC report contains a graph showing that temperatures have been increasing pretty steadily since the 1930s, so it's entirely possible that this is due to climate change.

The sad part is that people would rather beg the government for decades to pay for relocation instead of just taking matters in their own hands and move to another place.

Let us not allow facts to come between a good story that supports our agenda is more like it.

Climate changes helps secure funding, support and clickbaits.

more than 200 feet of the shore has been eaten away since 1969, ... Efforts to move the town in 1973 ...

Given those dates, it seems a stretch to lay this entirely at the feet of climate change. AIUI, that was before the effects of climate change were being felt (and even before, as deniers like to point out, people were worried about global cooling)

The article says

a barrier island that has been steadily disappearing because of erosion and flooding attributed to climate change.

But provides no explanation of this other than a generic link to articles on the topic of climate change in general.

Warming has actually been increasing since the Industrial Revolution, according to this link: http://www.bbc.com/news/science-environment-15874560

...largely because the industrial revolution happened to occur as the world was starting to come out of the "little ice age". And if anthropogenic climate change helped to bring the temperatures up the 1.5-2 C from that point, we're all profoundly grateful.

They need 180 million dollars to move 600 people ~5 miles? That seems a bit ridiculous.

I suspect "building a whole new town" is a large part of that cost.

Not to mention that that's only $300k per person. If you're building shelter for even half of the population that's going to account for a majority of the $180 million.

Right, remember that houses in this neck of the woods are typically prefab houses that are shipped to Alaska, then shipped to the middle of nowhere, then assembled.

It gets expensive really quickly.

There are no hardware stores with building materials already there, and no trees to make a cabin with. A locally sourced house would probably be a permafrost dirt hut, which would melt as global warming continues or maybe a discarded shipping container. They must bring in prefabs, just full stop.

Look at the pictures, they aren't living high on the hog, but I guarantee the buildings you see in the picture are comparable in price to the 300k/person.

If that is the case, moving the houses should be no problem (Maybe not no problem, but easier than getting brand new ones!)

Hard to say. It's entirely possible that there is no heavy equipment suitable for house moving and this is all just for cranes, dozers and telephone poles to roll houses on, not to mention barges and tugs. The ground is pretty soft, so moving big loads may be problematic, and they probably don't have a dock with a lot of house loading provisions, so maybe all that would need fixed to move houses.

Could also be that existing housing is too fragile to move, conditions are mighty rough out west.

But, it could also be a tiny bit of pork helping out some disadvantaged people in the boonies. Maybe a combination of all of them

I guess my main point is that things are surprisingly tricky in the arctic, far away from developed places

For only 600 people, they should probably just move them to an existing town.

Which is why they are fighting for this. The city has unique culture (dances, language) that would be hard to preserve in an existing city with majority outsiders.

For reference, that's $300,000/person. Alaska's annual state budget is $13.8 billion [0]. $180 million / $13.8 billion = ~0.94% of the annual budget spent on 600 people out of the ~740,000 who live in Alaska [1]. (I'm aware that Alaska is not footing the entire bill.). I'd be interested in how the town came up with that $180 million figure.

[0]: https://ballotpedia.org/Alaska_state_budget_and_finances [1]: https://www.google.com/?q=alaska%20population

So if it costs 1% of the budget to move .1% of the population in 1 year, it would cost 10% of the budget to move 10% of the population in 10 years. Clearly a major expenditure but totally doable.

It's not like you're moving into another apartment 5 miles down the road. They're going to be building an entirely new city (with infrastructure).

Everything in Alaska is expensive. It all comes from far away into a very spread out area with difficult terrain and weather conditions. Many places can be reached only by air (quick but expensive) or, in some reasons, barge or ice bridge. In the bigger cities (Anchorage, Fairbanks), things are pricey, but the smaller villages are eye-wateringly expensive. My brother and I paid $4.50 for a single warm can of Shasta Root Beer in a small village in Southwest Alaska. We saw a bag of Toastitos going for ~$15.

At these prices, even the boxes and packing tape are going to hurt a bit.

there's no reason for anybody in alaska to be selling warm soda!

Ridiculous? In a place where many towns are only accessible by seaplanes? Hardly.

> After so many years of debate and study, the question of moving remained an emotional topic

And it will always be an emotional topic. It's tough to let go in these situations.

This is very sad. Those poor people. It's a lot of money, but how would you feel if your town had to move? Resistant and mad, at the least.

There must be dozens or 100s of small villages like this in Alaska that will need to move. We can't afford to move every small village to another location. Yet we also owe them help. I don't know what to do.

Move them to existing towns? That's bound to cost less than the $300k/head they think they need to rebuild nearby.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com