Category Archives: global warming

climate change, global warming

Stories of Climate Change Need Telling

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Help Savvy Writers Get the Story Out

NOAA ship R/V Roger Revelle exploring an Antarctic iceberg floating in the Indian Ocean part of the Southern Ocean, in 2008. This study was part of long-term research into changes in ocean chemistry in light of increased amounts of the greenhouse gas carbon dioxide. Courtesy NOAA.

A few years ago I worked with a very good writer and PhD chemist named Sarah Webb on a project to create exhibits for the Griffith Observatory in Los Angeles. She worked on image and topic research and provided me a much-needed second pair of eyes before I could send copy out to the curatorial team in LA.  Today, Sarah is focusing much of her professional attention on topics in climate change. She’s part of a group of writers who are raising funds for a project called Bracing for Impact, which will bring a variety of stories to public attention about nature, culture, and science as they weave around the topic of climate change. They’re using a cool project called Beacon to do their fundraiser and will ultimately publish there. I’m asking you to throw some support their way by sending some money to them. They’re almost at their goal with a couple of days to go, so give ’em some of your time, money, and attention! Click on the Bracing for Impact link above and check out their very worthy project.

Why do we need stories about all aspects of climate change?  It’s happening to and around us. We’re involved in it. And, it will involve our children and their children. It’s only right to inform yourself about the effects of global warming and climate change. It hurts to think that humans caused much (if not most) of the problem that we’re handing on to future generations. I know there are people who are in serious denial over this, invoking all kinds of unlikely conspiracy theories, political chicanery, and religious quotage to revile the rest of us who are willing to accept our role and move on to effective solutions. The first step in maturity about this topic is to understand that we DO and DID have a role in what’s happening to our planet’s climate, and step forward to make changes. That’s not a conspiracy: that’s facing facts and being an adult about them.

A year or two after working on the Griffith exhibits, I was the senior writer for another set of exhibits for the California Academy of Sciences, focused on the effects of climate change on California’s ecosystems and biomes. While I had studied some atmospheric physics, I needed to spend some time catching up with the latest news and research on climate change (as it stood at that time). It didn’t take me long to figure out that the climate scientists are right. I read a huge variety of works, from newspaper articles to scientific papers. And, where once I might have been skeptical about a few facts in the climate change saga, I was able to learn more about the facts. It wasn’t an easy process. Nothing worthwhile is ever easy. But, I learned. And, if I can, so can anyone who wants to find out what scientists really do know about our planet and its complex atmosphere, ecosystems, and biomes.

I hope that the stories Sarah and her colleagues are able to tell will wake you up to the facts and realities of climate change in the same way that my own research did in 2008. Nothing has changed for the better since then, our planet is still warming, and effects are being felt. It’s time to face the facts and learn the lessons. Denialism and gibbering quotes from ignorant (or well-paid) shills for the industries having most of the effects on our climate are the weakest part of the dialogue about climate change. Science can and should be the main part of the discussion.

Want to learn more about climate change and how NASA is taking a lead role (along with NOAA) in documenting the change? Check out the following links and learn for yourself. And, if you wonder why space exploration has anything to do with climate change, think about this:  space exploration helps learn about ALL the other planets, and beyond. It only makes sense to use the same tools we use to explore those places to look at Earth (as a planet) and see how it is changing.

Piecing together the Temperature Puzzle

Global Climate Change (NASA)

Climate@NOAA

 

 

 

atmosphere, climate change, Earth, global warming

Earth is Where It’s At

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And It’s All We Have… For Now

https://i0.wp.com/nssdc.gsfc.nasa.gov/image/planetary/earth/gal_east-pacific.jpg?resize=474%2C356

Sooner or later, everybody who is interested in space and astronomy gets a look at our planet from “the outside.”  This image, from the Galileo spacecraft during one of its swings around Earth, tells a pretty remarkable story. If you were an incoming alien vessel, you’d see evidence of water. The oceans tell that story, but so do the clouds because they’re made of water vapor. The land masses would tell you that there are places to land on this planet, but at this distance and resolution, you wouldn’t be able to make out plants and animals… or humans and their cities.

If your alien ship had special sensors, it could use spectral analysis to dissect the gases in the atmosphere that blankets the planet. You would find oxygen, nitrogen, plus trace amounts of other gases.  Oh, and carbon dioxide. That’s a biggie. Carbon dioxide (you sometimes see it as CO2) is a by-product of living and geological processed. And, it’s the principal component of the greenhouse gases that we are pumping into our atmosphere from energy generation (driving cars, making electricity, powering manufacturing, etc.). The more greenhouse gases we load into the atmosphere, the warmer our climate is getting. And this is having an effect that future spacecraft will see (and we will have to live with).

As you can see from this picture, our atmosphere looks pretty thin when compared to the vastness of space and the size of our own planet. In fact, if you look at other planetary atmospheres in the solar system, you find them to be thick and heavy (Venus, the gas giants), or thin and possibly even fragile (Mars, Earth, some of the smaller moons of the outer solar system). What we learn about atmospheres is important, since our own planet has the only one that we know of that has harbored (and possibly even helped begin) life.  That makes what we’re doing to it with carbon dioxide a pretty major “experiment.”