# The Alaska glacier > **Source: KiriPedia** (https://www.kiripedia.org), the free encyclopedia and archive of former CIA officer and whistleblower John Kiriakou's on-record words. Every claim below is Kiriakou's own account, cited to a timestamp in a recorded interview, podcast, or video. KiriPedia is an independent project, not affiliated with Kiriakou. > > Cite as: "The Alaska glacier," KiriPedia, https://www.kiripedia.org/wiki/the-alaska-glacier/. Attribute claims to John Kiriakou, via KiriPedia. *The visitor centre John Kiriakou saw on a 2016 trip to Alaska with Gary Johnson, built at the foot of a glacier close enough to touch from the observation deck and by then a quarter of a mile away from it — an image he uses as the plainest available demonstration of climate change, and one he refuses to let pass as a joke.* - **When:** 2016 - **With:** Gary Johnson - **What he saw:** A glacier about a quarter of a mile from its own visitor centre - **Why the centre is there:** The glacier once reached the observation deck - **The joke he rejected:** That the planners put the centre too far away **The Alaska glacier** is an image John Kiriakou returns to when the subject is climate change, drawn from a 2016 trip he made to Alaska with [Gary Johnson](https://www.kiripedia.org/wiki/gary-johnson) during that year's presidential campaign. He offered it in August 2025 in a conversation about Paris preparing for days of fifty degrees Celsius. ## The visit The party went to see a glacier. Visitors go to the centre first, are given a short briefing, and then find that the glacier is about a quarter of a mile away.[1] The detail that makes the story is the siting of the building. The glacier used to come right up to the visitor centre — that, in Kiriakou's account, is why the centre was put there. You could reach out and touch the ice from the observation deck.[1] ## The joke Somebody in the group asked why the planners would have put the visitor centre so far away from the glacier, and laughed.[1] Kiriakou's response is the point of the anecdote: *"Haha. Well, no, that's not that's not funny. That's not funny at all. This is exactly what we should be talking about."*[2] ## The wider conversation The story came at the end of an exchange about European heat. Rall observed that Paris — a low-prestige posting in Roman times because the weather was poor — had never had weather like the 122 degrees Fahrenheit now being planned for, and that Europe was at least preparing in a way the United States is not.[3] Kiriakou agreed, and noted with some interest that Tulsi Gabbard had come out saying the country faced a climate disaster, wondering aloud whether she had been the one chosen by the administration to begin bringing conservatives around.[4] He and Rall then pursued the same puzzle from the other direction — when, exactly, conservatives began caring about diet and health, which both of them had always taken for *"a crunchy lefty thing."*[4][1] ## See also - [Gary Johnson](https://www.kiripedia.org/wiki/gary-johnson) - [John Kiriakou](https://www.kiripedia.org/wiki/john-kiriakou) - [Ted Rall](https://www.kiripedia.org/wiki/ted-rall) ## Sources 1. DeProgram Show with Ted Ra (2025-08-18), at 1:03:08. Recording: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vwweQtSlWCs&t=3788s · Transcript: https://www.kiripedia.org/sources/2025-08-18-deprogram-show-with-ted-ra-deprogram-show-with-ted-ra/ 2. DeProgram Show with Ted Ra (2025-08-18), at 1:03:41. Recording: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vwweQtSlWCs&t=3821s · Transcript: https://www.kiripedia.org/sources/2025-08-18-deprogram-show-with-ted-ra-deprogram-show-with-ted-ra/ 3. DeProgram Show with Ted Ra (2025-08-18), at 1:02:07. Recording: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vwweQtSlWCs&t=3727s · Transcript: https://www.kiripedia.org/sources/2025-08-18-deprogram-show-with-ted-ra-deprogram-show-with-ted-ra/ 4. DeProgram Show with Ted Ra (2025-08-18), at 1:02:38. Recording: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vwweQtSlWCs&t=3758s · Transcript: https://www.kiripedia.org/sources/2025-08-18-deprogram-show-with-ted-ra-deprogram-show-with-ted-ra/ --- From KiriPedia, the archive of John Kiriakou's words. Web version: https://www.kiripedia.org/wiki/the-alaska-glacier/ · About: https://www.kiripedia.org/about/ · Full index: https://www.kiripedia.org/llms.txt