Scientists, who should know, would like to report after years of exhaustive study that all of the ice is fine and there’s no need for you to come see for yourself. Don’t come to where the ice is. Don’t come to where the north ice is, don’t come to where the south ice is. You can trust us. We’ll tell you where the ice is: the same place it’s always been, just like normal. What’s the ice doing right now? Being ice, mostly, at the same levels it’s been ice for thousands of years, so you don’t have to overthink it. Just know that the ice is here and you are safe at home and nothing about that needs to change.
Remember all the ice that used to be in Antarctica? Great news: it’s still there, just like how it was before, and there’s plenty of it to go around. All the animals are the same here, too, so no need to ask about them again. Penguins still live here and they walk very normally. All of the bears still have their faces and skin in the usual places and they very much enjoy all the ice that’s here for them to live on. Normal, normal ice.
Nothing’s different about the ice. Nothing has recently changed about the ice. We don’t have any pictures of the ice, so stop asking. Icebergs are the same as before and they’re not moving and there’s not any more of them that there used to be, so you can stop writing articles about the icebergs now, okay? Thank you, great.
Were you worried about the ice? Don’t be. Stop worrying, right now, and don’t ask us any more questions about the ice. We’re very busy and we don’t think that you should ask us any more questions about the ice, since there’s so much of it and it’s so normal.
We tested the ice. All of it. Tests showed the ice was good. Real good. Not going anywhere, not doing anything ice shouldn’t do, just normal ice that stays in an ice shape. You don’t believe us? Come up and see the ice.
No. Wait. Don’t come up. We don’t…there’s no room for you up here. Too much ice for you to come visit. We wouldn’t have anyplace for you to sleep, with all this ice around. Tell you what: you stay where you are, right now, and the ice will stay where it is — which is the normal places, Antarctica and so on — doing what it does, quietly being ice. Freezing the top and also the bottom of the world, which it needs to because that’s normal, and that’s what the ice left up here is: so normal.
Tags: everything is normal and good, ice, plenty of ice, science, scientists, studies
NOTHING TO SEE HERE FOLKS MOVE RIGHT ALONG.
literally my first thought upon reading was “this is a great opportunity for snark from icebergmama”
We are all going to die.
Check your mortal privilege.
It would really suck to be the family from Tuck Everlasting and have to just watch the planet crumble and melt around you.
Yes, we are, but that was going to happen anyway.
What I cry about every day, and I don’t care how that sounds, is all the stuff that didn’t have to happen, the disappearances that are pending. Fish, bugs, underwater weirdos, bacteria, birds, salamanders, trees, mosses, weeds — all that interdependency.
Maybe that’s who you meant by “we”. But that isn’t what a lot of people mean when they talk about the damage that climate change will do — at least in the kinds of public discussions that get the most attention. I know I’m going to die, and that everyone I love is going to die. Some of us might even die as a result of climate change. But what’s making me cry right now, as I type this, is that so much of what I think of as “the world” may leave me before I leave it.
True. Could also say we are all killing everything. We are drastically altering the ecosystem. I would say negatively, but that is bias. I guess one thing to be optimistic about is the idea that after we humans are done destroying as much as we can, another climate age will begin for entirely new flora and fauna to evolve. I wouldn’t compare it to a controlled burn of a forest to help it thrive, but seeing it as a reboot of life is slightly more comforting than obsolescence of life globally. I mean isn’t the Earth going to be at relatively the same distance from the sun for a while, or are we throwing the Earth of its axis and then off course into the saddest catastrophic event I can imagine? :'(
In the absolute worst-case climate scenario, the warming oceans/tundra release so much methane that warming spirals out of control and that, combined with a warming-driven increase in the atmosphere’s water vapor content basically turns us into Venus. Unlikely, but not entirely implausible.
That said, even if it did go that far, I would love to come back in a million or ten years to see what the tubeworms and extremeophilic bacteria have made of the world.
My job is in the environmental/sustainability field, and there has been a shift toward climate change adaptation instead of mitigation. In other words, doom is upon us, and some (a lot of) experts think we should start talking about how we’re going to cope with all the changes, because it’s too late to stop them. 🙁
Can you point me in the direction of some literature or web sites that explain the expected changes in a layperson-friendly manner? I’m super interested in this, but don’t know where to look. Maybe a good topic for an article on the Toast?
The EPA actually has a pretty informative website that is very layperson-friendly/non jargon-y. http://www.epa.gov/climatechange/impacts-adaptati…
You can look at expected impacts by region of the USA or by different industry (unfortunately it is USA-centric).
Annnd even though the UN’s climate change negotiations have not resulted in any real action, their website on adaptation also has some good info: http://www.unep.org/climatechange/adaptation/ Though a little more technical than the EPA’s site.
I too would love to see a climate science article on the Toast! (I do more with behavior change/policy so while I can understand the science I’m not great at the technicals.)
Hope that those links help a little! There a ton of info out there, and some of it conflicting – which makes some sense, we can’t really know what climate change is going to do in the future. But the UN and EPA have material that is reliable, easy to understand, and not crazy fringe-y.
Edit to include Grist! http://grist.org/ A good news blog for environmental issues that covers a lot of territory. Not just science but the economic and social aspects as well.
What kinds of things are you working on? I just finished a Master of Environmental Studies degree with a focus on policy (particularly local policy), and while I’m in an unrelated job right now, I’m looking to shift over into something policy/consulting related (that is, when I’m not curled in a fetal position rocking slowly back and forth because seriously, that was not the most uplifting degree I could have gotten)
I work at a college so a mix of education/outreach programming for students, different outreach for staff/faculty, the school’s policies, and occasionally working with local/municipal government on their policies (although this last one is more me witnessing what others do than doing it personally!) If you have any interest in working for a college/university, depending on the school, there is often a LOT going on with sustainability plus all the research centers etc, some of which work more closely with their cities or states on policy issues, and there are a lot of nice things about working on a campus. But I studied environmental policy too and I agree with you that it can get depressing… I think that type of work would burn me out really fast, so kudos to you for keeping on with it!! Good luck finding something you like more 🙂
If you’re in DC, the Stimson Center has a job opening right now for a research assistant in their Environmental Security program: http://stimson.iapplicants.com/ViewJob-510899.htm…
My people! I work in environmental advocacy, and I have to force myself not to read the Google Alerts for my main issues that come in right before bed, because otherwise I have nightmares or can’t sleep.
I also took a course called International Environmental Negotiation in college, and at the end of the (excellent) class, taught by someone in the field, one student asked sincerely, “So…Is there any point to all of these negotiations? Because all we’ve really learned is about all the ways they’ve failed.”
I did a presentation on international climate policy for one of my classes, and at the end someone asked, “so how do these international policies get enforced?” and I was like, “…they don’t?” I mean, it’s more complicated than that, but it was hard for them (non-policy background) to wrap their heads around the fact that all of these massively important polities are essentially voluntary.
Oh man, that same question got asked in several of my college classes.
I will totally write climate science articles!! I study ice!! And previously did some journalism!
Anyway. The super interesting conversation happening right now about the Antarctic ice sheets is about how stable they’ve been in the past and what, exactly, the role of the surrounding oceans is. The West Antarctic ice sheet in particular is really sensitive to very small temperature changes in coastal waters, and what??? SURPRISE WHAT IS HAPPENING OH JESUS THIS IS HAPPENING HUH. huh. huh. etc. But also, there’s a lot of short-term variability in the system that is currently swinging us back away from imminent doom.
Anyway, the Antarctic ice sheets are a fascinating system, and it’s completely stunning how little we actually know about them. Aaaand no one will be down there this year to do their research, because of the government shutdown.
I’m also interested in whether there’s a reason that we can’t do some of both. Whatever we need to adapt to is going to require more adaptation if we don’t try to mitigate it, right?
I’m not trying to be flip — this is your field and I would really like to know what people in it are saying.
Oh, definitely still both! Should have phrased that better. I just meant that some agencies/institutions are now putting more of an emphasis on adaptation where previously it had been mostly about how to reduce and mitigate. I agree with you, we need to try to stop what we can but also address the impacts that can’t be avoided.
There’s also been an issue in the climate science community for a long time where people have argued that we shouldn’t spend time on adaptation because it takes resources/attention away from mitigation, which as you say is the real solution. Recently, though, people are recognizing that national/international processes are going way too slow, and even if we cut global emissions in half tomorrow, we’re committed to a certain amount of warming from what’s already in the atmosphere. There’s also increasing recognition that some activities can be both – for instance, creating small, decentralized renewable energy sources can both reduce emissions and increase local adaptability/flexibility in the face of future uncertainty.
Thank you both for your thoughtful and informed responses to my distressed query. I think a lot of people feel super, super helpless (raises hand covered with tears and snot from wiping face) and that gets mixed up with the fear and anger that is reasonable to have and could even be productive.
How and in what ways it could be productive — that is, what are things that those of us who are not actively engaged in research or in the development of active solutions can do as far as mitigation, or even just thoughts on how to talk about this thing that people really don’t want to talk/think about — would be something that I, for one, would be into seeing in a Toast Post from a Gal Scientist.
Also: racism is a thing of the past don’t worry about it, it’s a good idea to pass laws that limit women’s ability to make decisions about their own bodies–nothing wrong with that–men are allowed to control women outside of the law anyway duh, and the ever expanding economic divide between rich and poor is a wonderful result of the flawless free-market economy. Don’t even worry your pretty little head about that Fukushima plant that is yesterday’s news. What is nuclear radiation anyway? If you bring it up I will just call you a conspiracy theorist thus undermining anything else you have to say.
(I am angry about a lot of things.)
I’ve worked tourism at a glacier in the rockies of alberta for the past three summers, and it’s insane the difference you can see in the ice even in that short of time.
🙁 Do visitors and tourists notice or comment on the changes?
Yeah, definitely. People who were there when they were kids often can’t even believe it’s the same place. In the past few years it’s been collapsing at alarming rates, and tourists who’ve been there even in the past season definitely notice and talk to us about it. It’s pretty sad.
There’s a glacier on the mountain that hangs over the town I live in in BC, and a few more in areas where I work regularly. It really is crazy watching them recede so fast. There aren’t a lot of people who actually live in the north who have any doubts about global warming. You’d have to have some serious denial issues to not notice the changes.
STEP 1: Denial.
STEP 2: “Yeah, but it’s not caused by mankind and it’s going to be helpful! I hate winter!”
STEP 3: ???
STEP 4: Profit/Civilization Collapses
Not going to lie, I saw an exhibit on global warming at the museum that showed how crop patterns will change under climate models, and my first thought was “I will be able to grow tomatoes!! Yay!”
I found ‘Six Degrees’ by Mark Lynas very interesting on these specific sorts of questions. Though I recall you are some kind of scientist so maybe it would be nothing new to you.
I’m a biologist, but climate stuff is not really my field, so I don’t know that much about it. I will have to take a look at that one!
The only kind of “ice cap” that matters:
AHH SO BIG BUT NOT SORRY!
Do you know what goes great with ice? Diet soda. Have you had enough today? I don’t think you have. Have some more, just to be safe.
Elder Things still slumbering fine, no plan in motion to revert humanity to its role as their slaves starting with climate researchers.
I found 'Six Degrees' by Mark Lynas very interesting on these specific sorts of questions. Though I recall you are some kind of scientist so maybe it would be nothing new to you.
I work at a college so a mix of education/outreach programming for students, different outreach for staff/faculty, the school's policies, and occasionally working with local/municipal government on their policies (although this last one is more me witnessing what others do than doing it personally!) If you have any interest in working for a college/university, depending on the school, there is often a LOT going on with sustainability plus all the research centers etc, some of which work more closely with their cities or states on policy issues, and there are a lot of nice things about working on a campus. But I studied environmental policy too and I agree with you that it can get depressing… I think that type of work would burn me out really fast, so kudos to you for keeping on with it!! Good luck finding something you like more 🙂
Oh man, that same question got asked in several of my college classes.