As delegates from nearly 200 countries gathered for the recent international conference on climate change, U.N. Secretary-General Antonio Guterres decried the “utterly inadequate” global response to the crisis so far. He warned that the “point of no return is no longer over the horizon” but that “It is in sight and hurtling toward us.” Nowhere are the consequences more visibly “hurtling,” and landing, than in Alaska. And in the northern state’s national parks and preserves, that means growing pressures on the very resources the National Park Service is charged with protecting.

You still can find some climate change information on the vast nps.gov domain, but there isn't much that's terribly recent. That's a troubling development when if you believe the National Parks Conservation Association's contention that climate change was a significant concern for 80 percent of all national park units.

A wall of water, perhaps 9 feet high that was spawned by Hurricane Dorian, swept across the northern end of Cape Lookout National Seashore on North Carolina's Outer Banks, swamping historic Portsmouth Village and, overall, slicing up the seashore's barrier islands into islets.

I remember when my very first Tempestry arrived in the mail. Pulling out the list of instructions, I held the bright, tightly wound balls of yarn in my palm, contemplating the data they would eventually reveal to me. A science and fiber project, each row of each Tempestry represents the high temperature of a single day.