Alaska

 My family counselor said of my son that he didn't believe there was a flood until he felt the water. This could aptly describe the attitude of Alaskans toward climate change. Don't get me wrong, it is absolutely beautiful there, the people are wonderful, and I am sure there are many that are worried about the warming. What was surprising to me was that Alaska favored no taxes over renewable energy sources. They had no recycling except in government buildings. They make a good deal of money from tourists, who must go by plane, train, ship or car, all of which use fossil fuels. Alaska is still mostly wilderness, with only 300,000 people in its largest city. The state basically has two main roads, linking Fairbanks to Anchorage and Anchorage to Canada. Many citizens fly small planes to travel within the state. Although the snow is melting faster, glaciers are sliding down mountains, and the pine beetle has killed millions of pines along the base of the mountains, (1) global warming is a topic that is avoided with tourists (they may discuss it among themselves). At dinner one night, a gentleman who had moved there after years of visiting in the summer said that the mountains have 1/3 the snow they used to have. As someone who camped in the Rockies a half dozen times, I know what the glaciers there looked like 70 years ago. There are no glaciers in Rocky Mountain National Park today. The West, in general, has a denial system in place about global warming, in spite of the 20-year drought, savage forest fires, and heat waves that kill people. This denial system helps continue living in the world without changing the way we live. I include myself in that system, and I know how harmful denial can be, both as a relative of an alcoholic and as a teacher of children with disabilities. You can't solve the problems you don't see. I sure hope this changes soon.

(1) Popkin, Gabriel, Invasive Insects and Diseases Are Killing Our Forests, https://www.nytimes.com/2021/02/06/opinion/epidemic-invasive-species-trees.html

A Long, Hot Summer

I began writing this in the middle of May, after rotator-cuff surgery. I have to admit that I became overwhelmed with the amount of climate change information that comes into my life on  a daily basis. I decided the best attempt might be to list resources for those who are interested.  

I start with the most recent; a video made by PBS about Greta Thunberg, who is one of my heroes. She is demanding change now. Although this video was made in 2020, it was one of the first to show what progress is being made. Her question in a carbon-capture plant was very accurate. Why not just build wind or solar technology? Fortunately, the world has changed in one year. Our present government is beginning an aggressive plan to  change the way we do business. Will this change in the future? No one knows.

Greta Thunberg - Year to Change the World

https://www.pbs.org/show/greta-thunberg-year-change-world/

At the web site for the Institute for Governance and Sustainable Development (https://www.igsd.org/), a tweet from Helena Molin Valdes recommends a new video with David Attenborough on Netflix; "The future’s not determined, the future is in our hands.” Sir David Attenborough tells the story of one of the most important scientific discoveries of our time. "Breaking Boundaries: The Science of Our Planet", coming 4 June."

I had intended to put Climate Wednesdays down as a resource because I heard an interview on public radio with one of the members, but apparently they do not do every Wednesday. Still, if you are interested, there might be important information here:

Climate Wednesdays

Brooklyn Public Library

https://www.bklynlibrary.org/event-series/climate-wednesdays

Enjoy your summer. I’m hoping it’s not as hot as Chicago has been for the last month. 

Change

 I’m not a scientist. I didn’t even take a science class in college, unless you count psychology. My knowledge about science comes from a lifelong interest in scientific topics: in no specific order, plants, space, chemistry, ecology, technology and geology. I read Discover Magazine, thank you Wilda Morris for my free subscription, and listen to Science Friday religiously, pun intended. 

I love to write about nature. It gained an idyllic representation in the late 18th and early 19th century literature, but it can be quite ruthless. Ask anyone who has seen a cat play with a mouse or a flood wash away a car. Nature is not a person, has no emotions, no personality. When the temperature rises to a certain point, ice melts. When trees burn, they release carbon. When animals lose habitat, they move or die.

As a pioneer in Early Childhood Special Education Technology, I learned of the stages of change and the reactions of people to that change. Shawn Galloway(1) characterizes people according to their reactions: pioneers, yes people, crowd followers, skeptics and cave people. 

I’d like to think we have finally made it to the crowd follower stage of development. New books, news items, and even college studies are common, although our country is still divided in opinion. I have already written about Greta Thunberg. Bill Gates says we need to get to zero emissions to reverse the heating. Will anyone listen to him?

Galloway, Shawn, “Five Types of People in Organizational Change”, 1/1/2017, accessed 3/31/2021

https://ohsonline.com/articles/2017/01/01/five-types-of-people-in-organizational-change.aspx?admgarea=magazine&m=1

Climate Disasters: I Was So Certain

 Climate Change 2.0

If you weren’t paying attention this month, there was a catastrophic climate event. This was the third Polar Vortex in my lifetime of 73 years, and all three occurred in the last 10 years. The first time it happened, my mother was still alive. I drove to her house before the snow hit so that I could be there in an emergency. I didn’t try to figure out why it was happening, but with another in 2019 and 2020, it dawned on me that if we are experiencing polar weather, then it is not occurring where it is supposed to - at the pole. Sure enough, some scientists believe the air at the pole is displaced when the air at the pole is warm. 

“This warming is believed to be weakening and fragmenting the polar vortex, and distorting the polar jet stream, the ring of westerly winds that typically keeps the ultra-cold air mass contained to the Arctic Circle.”(1)

With polar temperatures warming twice as fast as the rest of the planet, I’m afraid I agree with Greta Thunberg, who says we have less than ten years to change the environmental history of the planet.

I talked about feedback loops last month, but I’d like to talk about the poles this month. Many years ago, I took a class online from a Canadian University. Sorry, I can’t remember which one, but it was a GREAT class. One thing I had never thought about was the salt content of the oceans. Salt drops to the floor of the ocean when the water freezes. Ocean currents pick it up and carry it all over the world. But what if less water freezes? 

Salinity levels are important for two reasons. First, along with temperature, they directly affect seawater density (salty water is denser than freshwater) and therefore the circulation of ocean currents from the tropics to the poles. These currents control how heat is carried within the oceans and ultimately regulate the world’s climate. Second, sea surface salinity is intimately linked to Earth’s overall water cycle and to how much freshwater leaves and enters the oceans through evaporation and precipitation. Measuring salinity is one way to probe the water cycle in greater detail. (2) For a detailed explanation of oceanic warming, this web site has colorful graphics to show you: https://www.iucn.org/resources/issues-briefs/ocean-warming#:~:text=Data%20from%20the%20US%20National,over%20the%20past%20100%20years. IUCN stands for the International Union for the Conservation of Nature. 

In the last month, two events have surfaced in my life. First, the Chicago Gifted Community Center is hosting a Kids’ Climate Summit on April 13th. For more information, look here: https://www.chicagogiftedcommunity.org/KCS-2021, then I got Bill Gates’ new book in the mail, and watched his interview with Trevor Noah. 

Today, after I wrote this, Science Friday interviewed a climate scientist who shot my theory down. Oh well.

 I have been an environmentalist since the 1960s but I am still learning. Hope you are, too.

1. https://www.chicagotribune.com/weather/ct-met-polar-vortex-climate-change-20190130-story.html, accessed 2/27/21.
2. https://insideclimatenews.org/news/14092020/ocean-saltwater-climate-change-extreme-weather/, accessed 2/27/21.