Alaskan Arctic villages hit hard by climate change - The Washington Post
POINT HOPE, Alaska — Fermented whale’s tail doesn’t taste the same when the ice cellars flood.
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But climate change, with its more intense storms, melting permafrost and soil erosion, is causing the ice cellars to disintegrate. Many have washed out to sea in recent decades. The remaining ones regularly flood in the spring, which can spoil the meat and blubber, and release scents that attract [non-existent?] polar bears.
...This spring, residents had to take some meat and blubber out and make room for it in their freezers at home.
“When you store it in a freezer, it tastes different,” Oomittuk said.
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The importance of catching their own food is evident in the aisles of the Alaska Commercial Co., a supermarket on Bison Street in Kotzebue. Milk costs $9.99 a gallon, and a jumbo pack of drumsticks is $21.77. [Anybody think that if Alaska had the climate of Iowa, food would be a whole lot cheaper there?]
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This summer, the town of Kotzebue [population 3,201] put the finishing touches on a $34 million sea wall — primarily funded by the federal government — to protect its beach from powerful fall storms and erosion.
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