Climigration? Population and climate change in Arctic Alaska

Residents of towns and villages in Arctic Alaska live on “the front line of climate change.” Some communities face immediate threats from erosion and flooding associated with thawing permafrost, increasing river flows, and reduced sea ice protection of shorelines. The term climigration, referring to migration caused by climate change, originally was coined for these places. Although initial applications emphasized the need for government relocation policies, it has elsewhere been applied more broadly to encompass unplanned migration as well. Some historical movements have been attributed to climate change, but closer study tends to find multiple causes, making it difficult to quantify the climate contribution. Clearer attribution might come from comparisons of migration rates among places that are similar in most respects, apart from known climatic impacts. We apply this approach using annual 1990–2014 time series on 43 Arctic Alaska towns and villages. Within-community time plots show no indication of enhanced out-migration from the most at-risk communities. More formally, there is no significant difference between net migration rates of at-risk and other places, testing several alternative classifications. Although climigration is not detectable to date, growing risks make either planned or unplanned movements unavoidable in the near future

Staying in place during times of change in Arctic Alaska: The implications of attachment,alternatives, and buffering

The relationship between stability and change in social-ecological systems has received considerable attention in recent years, including the expectation that significant environmental changes will drive observable consequences for individuals, communities, and populations. Migration, as one example of response to adverse economic or environmental changes, has been observed in many places, including parts of the Far North. In Arctic Alaska, a relative lack of demographic or migratory response to rapid environmental and other changes has been observed. To understand why Arctic Alaska appears different, we draw on the literature on environmentally driven migration, focusing on three mechanisms that could account for the lack of response: attachment, the desire to remain in place, or the inability to relocate successfully; alternatives, ways to achieve similar outcomes through different means; and buffering, the reliance on subsidies or use of reserves to delay impacts. Each explanation has different implications for research and policy, indicating a need to further explore the relative contribution that each makes to a given situation in order to develop more effective responses locally and regionally. Given that the Arctic is on the front lines of climate change, these explanations are likely relevant to the ways changes play out in other parts of the world. Our review also underscores the importance of further attention to the details of social dynamics in climate change impacts and responses

Microremains from El Mirón Cave human dental calculus suggest a mixed plant/animal subsistence economy during the Magdalenian in Northern Iberia

Despite more than a century of detailed investigation of the Magdalenian period in Northern Iberia, our understanding of the diets during this period is limited. Methodologies for the reconstruction of Late Glacial subsistence strategies have overwhelmingly targeted animal exploitation, thus revealing only a portion of the dietary spectrum. Retrieving food debris from calculus offers a means to provide missing information on other components of diet.We undertook analysis of human dental calculus samples from Magdalenian individuals (including the ¿Red Lady¿) at El Mir on Cave (Cantabria, Spain), as well as several control samples, to better understand the less visible dietary components. Dental calculus yielded a diverse assemblage of microremains from plant, fungal, animal and mineral sources that may provide data on diet and environment. The types of microremains show that the individuals at El Mir on consumed a variety of plants, including seeds and underground storage organs, as well as other foods, including possibly bolete mushrooms. These findings suggest that plant and plant-like foods were parts of her diet, supplementing staples derived from animal foods. As faunal evidence suggests that the Magdalenian Cantabrian diet included a large proportion of animal foods, we argue here for a mixed subsistence pattern

Arctic system on trajectory to new state

The Arctic system is moving toward a new state that falls outside the envelope of glacial-interglacial fluctuations that prevailed during recent Earth history. This future Arctic is likely to have dramatically less permanent ice than exists at present. At the present rate of change, a summer ice-free Arctic Ocean within a century is a real possibility, a state not witnessed for at least a million years. The change appears to be driven largely by feedback-enhanced global climate warming, and there seem to be few, if any processes or feedbacks within the Arctic system that are capable of altering the trajectory toward this “super interglacial” state

Brief of Corporate Law Professors as Amici Curie in Support of Respondents

The Supreme Court has looked to the rights of corporate shareholders in determining the rights of union members and non-members to control political spending, and vice versa. The Court sometimes assumes that if shareholders disapprove of corporate political expression, they can easily sell their shares or exercise control over corporate spending. This assumption is mistaken. Because of how capital is saved and invested, most individual shareholders cannot obtain full information about corporate political activities, even after the fact, nor can they prevent their savings from being used to speak in ways with which they disagree. Individual shareholders have no “opt out” rights or practical ability to avoid subsidizing corporate political expression with which they disagree. Nor do individuals have the practical option to refrain from putting their savings into equity investments, as doing so would impose damaging economic penalties and ignore conventional financial guidance for individual investors

A Pinacol Precursor to a Chiral Spiro Compound

The dimer of 1-indanolyl obtained from the UV photolysis of 1-indanone in 2-propanol is trans-α,α'-biindanyl-α,α'-diol, (C_9H_9O)_2. There are two almost identical molecules in the asymmetric unit linked by a hydrogen-bonding system that extends along the a axis. Bond distances and angles are as expected

A Pinacol Precursor to a Chiral Spiro Compound

The dimer of 1-indanolyl obtained from the UV photolysis of 1-indanone in 2-propanol is trans-α,α'-biindanyl-α,α'-diol, (C_9H_9O)_2. There are two almost identical molecules in the asymmetric unit linked by a hydrogen-bonding system that extends along the a axis. Bond distances and angles are as expected