Reading Comments for Science of Sustainability Week 4

Taken from The New Yorker, "The Climate of Man I," by Elizabeth Kolbert is a very well-written narrative of a small Inupiat village in Alaska, Shishmaref, which is victim to climate change and global warming. Due to its precarious position/location on the Island of Sarichef off the Seward Peninsula, this village is being reduced in land size and safety. Villagers began to notice these changes in the mid-1990s when examining the snow patterns and seasonality in concert with their ability to hunt. They have now voted to relocate their village to the mainland in the summer of 2002. With this move they will have to give up some of the heritage and water pursuits that they once relied on for sustenance. It is estimated to cost the government $180 million in order to accomplish this relocation. What I found interesting was the desire to mitigate the circumstances once they were literally at their doorsteps, but not really so much before the changes were upon them having anecdotally shrugged them off as science from foreigners. I think this is a fault we see in many human cultures, a disbelief in change or a hubris founded on the assumption that man is the controlling factor in many earthly scenarios.

The villagers are concerned for what will be left for their children and future generations, but then have the presence of mind to correct themselves to note, not just for their children but all members of future generations quickly incorporating their own. I felt Kolbert ended this installment perfectly by climbing back up to see a rock/boulder she had been instructed she may never be able to see again. I personally find myself doing this sort of thing and really want to attempt to not be too much of a "eco-tourist" in foreign settings or to fall into the trap of putting my own existence above that of natural phenomena, but it is often really hard to be in the presence of such greatness to not at least look or look twice. The end reminded me of the classic Roy Batty dialogue in Blade Runner (When do you ever get to use that reference in classwork?), "All those moments will be lost in time....like tears in rain..."

It was increasingly difficult not to be frustrated while reading "The Scientific Consensus on Climate Change" by Naomi Oreskas. It is convenient to blame the media for a false sense of certainty on topical matter as frankly they are a bullhorn for the lobbying of corporate forces on a whole. They do give what the people demand for the most part, especially science which is deemed so erudite by average people who are (in my opinion) just too lazy to be bothered to grasp scientific concepts and would rather believe as cardinal law whatever thing has been boiled down conveniently for them by said media. It is like a vicious cycle. I was learning about the atmosphere in second grade science and did a third grade science project on the role of ozone in the atmosphere and I was just a bored little child in rural Ohio (I then moved on to seismic impacts on bridge foundations which was wicked cool in fourth grade). Then in undergrad (1999) in Environmental Chemistry we were certain the atmosphere was being destroyed by greenhouse gases: CFCs, ozone, freon; the lot of them, although I recall being less focused on the evil carbon dioxide.

Why are people still questioning this effect? Is it really that hard a concept for the average human to grasp? It is nice that Oreskas can find 928 scientific papers forming a consensus on the state of climate change, really, but does that really matter if it is not widely accepted by the humans creating the activity making the climate change? And the last two paragraphs seem almost pandering, kind of back-pedaling from the rest of the point of the paper. Apologies, but I am glad this reading was only one page, because it just really bothered me. I feel like I need to go yell at some bothersome kids to get off my lawn now.

Then lastly, "Defusing the Global Warming Time Bomb," by James Hansen, covers how greenhouse gases have been in study on climate warming as early as 1976, which begs the question, why are laypeople just starting to really learn about it thirty years later with a sense of urgency? Also, I like how the article using teaching blocks to focus on different parts of the global warming phenomena, however, this article being four and a half years old, I wonder how much more exponentially warmed the earth has gotten since the publishing date. Environmental Science on a whole has become frustrating in this fashion of what is out of date, what data can stand, how quickly changes are occurring at this point. I would like to focus a little more on a question Hansen asks in one of the opening paragraphs concerning what will be the practical consequences of this warming, which is something I am interested in from a measurable standpoint, or is this even possible, and if so, how? I also really enjoyed the box at the end that gave stereotypical quotes and straightforward answers that contradict and correct them. I feel like I am going to get a lot of use out of those.