On the eve of President Obama's trip to Alaska to discuss global warming, the Secretary of the Interior Department used her authority to go ahead and resolve a decades-long dispute over the name of Mount McKinley. It's now officially "Denali," the name Alaskan native tribes prefer.

The White House proudly announced Sunday that Interior Sec. Sally Jewell had decided that the controversy surrounding Mt. McKinley for four decades was finally over. The name will be Denali, an Athabaskan name used by Native Alaskans for centuries.

"Generally believed to be central to the Athabaskan creation story, Denali is a site of significant cultural importance to many Alaska natives," the White House's announcement explained.

As The Wall Street Journal underscores, the timing couldn't have been better for the administration, as the president is visiting the state this week to discuss climate change. WSJ provides some background on the controversy surrounding the name:

Denali, an Athabaskan word meaning "the high one," has been the name used by Native Alaskans for centuries, and Mt. McKinley has long been a politically controversial replacement. A prospector exploring the area named the 20,320-foot-high peak after William McKinley after his nomination for president in 1896. In 1901, after Mr. McKinley was assassinated, the U.S. Board on Geographic Names "hurriedly" endorsed it despite the fact that the president had no connection to the mountain, according to the 1995 cartography book "Drawing the Lines—Tales of Maps and Cartocontroversy" by Mark S. Monmonier. [...]

In 1975, Alaska petitioned for the name to be changed. Since then, the mountain has been caught between the state where it sits and Ohio, home to Mr. McKinley. The request had been pending with the Interior Department until Friday, when Ms. Jewell granted it. Ms. Jewell said she had the legal authority to act if the geographic names board doesn't respond to such requests "within a reasonable time."

At least one Republican is happy about the decision. Alaska Republican Sen. Lisa Murkowski thanked Obama for the name change she's "long advocated for."

In honor of Obama's global warming trip to Alaska, climatologist Dr. Roy Spencer provides some background on Alaska's climate, which he offers as a perfect illustration of the "dirty little secret" "global warming climate change" alarmists do everything in their power to ignore: "the climate is always changing." Some highlights:

When President Obama visits Alaska this week to campaign for a new international agreement to fight global warming climate change, Alaska will be experiencing colder than normal weather and forecast summer snows [...]

Besides this latest example of the Gore Effect, the dirty little secret is that the climate is always changing, and what better place to illustrate the role of Mother Nature (not humans) than in Alaska?

Extreme Weather
Alaska weather matches its geography – extreme. Temperatures there have ranged from 100 deg F (in 1915) to 80 below zero F (in 1971). Summer days are so long that they can grow pumpkins weighing over 1,000 lbs. Nevertheless, yearly average temperatures are actually below freezing — even in the warmest years.

Glaciers were Already Retreating Before 1900
The supposed poster child glacier for global warming in Alaska is Mendenhall Glacier…except that it had already retreated one mile by the early 1900s, long before human greenhouse gas emissions could be blamed.

Furthermore, its retreat is uncovering large tree stumps approximately 1,000 years old, coincidentally coinciding with the (naturally-caused) Medieval Warm Period, back when the Vikings were able to farm in Greenland.

Which begs the question: How could it have been warm enough to grow giant trees 1,000 years ago in an area now covered in ice? We don’t know why it was so warm 1,000 years ago—climate scientists don’t like to talk about it because they can’t explain it — but for some reason they are sure that your SUV is causing current warmth.

Read Dr. Spencer's complete article here.