Slow Drip

Andrew Revkin, NY Times Science Writer, spoke yesterday at the Ohio State University " The Daily Planet: A Journalists Search for Sustainability from the Amazon to the Arctic". Revkin, who has written climate change stories for decades, declared, "global warming is not new to the media". Climate skeptics and new climate studies receive much more media attention. Revkin acknowledged we've known for many years that fossil fuel burning elevates carbon dioxide and creates temperature rise. Revkin said this is a "slow drip story". Greenland's eventual melt within the next century is unstoppable if we continue business as usual. The damage will be painfully huge with 7 meters of sea level rise. Slow climate change is no news compared to wars, oil prices, the stock market, job security.

The real story is that although many of us understand the consequences of a warming earth, we are still doing very little to change our future. This morning, I got in my car and went though the coffee drive-thru. The educated may be driving hybrids now, but they're still driving like everybody else. Even those of us who are aware are not taking charge or our futures. At what point will we?

(photo from Erin Pettit GOI 2006)

Road Salt and Crayon Factories

Today, the kids made hills. They stuffed garbage bags briming with newspaper and stretched out their lovely landscapes...perfectly ready for imaginary settlement and eventual industrialization...

I gave them a list of ingredients--- asking them, what role, or job, each ingredient should represent in our town. The ingredients and responses are below.

Coffee- Starbucks! Landscaping! Farming! (A holler came "do you even know what landscaping is?")
Soap- Houses. Hotels. (They both wash lots of towels!!)
Oil- Oil Refineries!!! (yes, this was yelled--- I must talk about oil a bit much)
Salt- Food for animals in farms... Road Salt!! (I'm so proud of the kid who said road salt, my eyes get a little misty--- in most states people have completely altered stream chemistry with road salt.
Powerade- A crayon factory (I went with it...)

The kids put these ingredients spread out on their landscape... And then it rained... and all of the ingredients merged into one lake in the middle of the mountain range. A few well placed factories were spared... but, most of the kids were living in the runoff of a crayon factory?

We're all in one big lake together. Sometimes the blue gets mixed in with the red... All of us a little bit more colorful for the experience...
(photo: http://www.worldvillage.com/wv/school/html/reviews/crayonf.htm)

Awake in the time of the bobbleheads

By 2050 the UN predicts global populations will reach 8.9 billion; a staggering increase of 2.1 billion people from today’s population. In the meantime, oil production in the Middle East is projected to more than half (Simmons & Company). Non OPEC supplies will not keep pace, our ability to discover new oil is outpaced by growing global demands. It is no wonder our President and Congress have called for energy “independence” by 2020. This will require more than a few new green communities and some work to develop hydrogen fuel cell. Our budgeted 2007 federal science and technology plus energy spending equal 26.1 billion or less than 1% of national spending. What do our political candidates propose to solve this? Or is the goal of energy independence as ambiguous as the advertisements?

Mentos in Lake Vostok

Ah Ha! Science thrills again! Today the fourth graders flung themselves at me with full-force for wowing them will Mentos and Diet Coke. After 2 spectacular eruptions- two kids erupted their own homemade volcanoes using standard volcano fare- vinegar and baking soda... I thought it would be a shame if they got sprayed with Diet Coke. Diet Coke carbonation is a great analogy for carbon dioxide release by real volcanoes...

All the Mentos and Coke got me thinking about my favorite lake... LAKE VOSTOK. A lake as large as Lake Michigan covered by two miles of ice!!!! What's in that pesky Lake--- much pressurized gas from dissolved rocks---That's a lot of carbon dioxide.... think about dropping many truckloads of Mentos into the lake.... and Wazammm!!! We won't have to resolve how to keep from contaminating the Lake anymore--- it will spray the entire continent...

Make your own glacier

When I first moved to Ohio my officemate, Jim, dubbed me "Ice". "Hey, Ice what are you up to later? "Ice, do you have lab today?" "Ice, are you going out this weekend?" After a few months, my name was officially Ice...at least to my officemates...

Today, although I have reclaimed my birthname, I feel a bit like "Ice". My nose dripping like summer melt... and more importantly, my freezer is growing a glacier. This is no broken defrost...this is an intentional glacier. Yesterday, I carefully scooped sand from our backyard (Trey is laying some pavers, so I had to be sneaky)... I was cautious not to scoop any worms, as this causes many young fourth and fifth graders to squirm. (Even if they would be tame and rigid). I spread sand in a cake pan, shallowly carpeting the entire bottom. Then, I poured in some water and carefully balance this concoction on the top rack of the freezer at a 30 degree angle--- propped strategically on an Eggo box. The water swooshed to the lowered end of the pan.... with any luck it will be well frozen today...Soon I will be tipping the pan in the opposite direction to see if the lovely beast will slide down the sand on its wet bed. Just in case, I'm bringing a hair blower to speed the process up...

However, this glacier is likely to be outtrumphed in the students eyes by the more gooey glacier idling in my refridgerator...(unless of course, I did miss a poor worm).... its amazing how glue, borax and water congeal into a wonderful example of glacier internal deformation....

This glacier was a pain to scrape from underneath my fingernails and out of my wedding ring... but it will impress the kids. And today, they will love science.

Slime: My new day job

This week I'm living under the pulsing neon of the windowless analytical lab(finishing up the Antarctic samples from last winter). Meanwhile I am washing bottles in three acid baths... each soak 1 week, then triple bagging them in ziplocks for Becki and Joel to take with them to Antarctica...these are cleannnnn bottles.

Why no ice this winter? A new endeavour--- I am a National Science Foundation GK-12 fellow (the simple explanation- I make bacterial gardens (above) and bring in dirt for kids to learn science from) I've got two classes from two Columbus Public schools. The kids are amazing--- they largely design their own experiments to study everything from erosion to food webs...

For this weeks activities, my rock loving husband is digging in the basement through his crates of rocks--- searching for trilobites... I am dividing brownie and cake mix into batches for the kids to make their own desert soil and muddy lake bottoms.... found some swedish fish for them to make into little sugary fossils.... a few of them experienced predation at the stake of my mouth...

Its really rewarding to do this work, a nice follow-up to Girls on Ice... and the kids are fun, inquisitive and sweet.

And I love our noxious gardens!!!! It reminds me of the primative begginings of our own planet and the strange brew of microbes living in anoxic conditions....

A little lab work never hurt, just need some more sun--- heading out to get some!

A goat in the mist

It’s cold, so cold the girl huddle close to the whisperlite stove, willing the water to boil. We are back at camp, after a long day in the field. It is Lucia’s turn to warm us up, the sixteen year-old has traveled to Mount Baker, Washington from Spain. We clap our hands together mimicking any movement that Lucia makes. As the laughing starts, the water boils, and we are ready to begin our evening discussion drinking tea and cocoa. I reflect on the long days hike over the Easton Glacier, our failed attempt to look at the Deming Glaicer, covered in thick clouds. The 9 high school girls kept their attitudes positive and we had a good time looking down crevasses and tracing Gatorade as it flowed around the ice crystal boundaries. There is so much to see that is immediately under our feet. The girls smile at each other and trade candy bars back and forth keeping warm in the near freezing mist.

We have been thinking about the connection between science, religion, and art, a discussion that started as we lunched and waited for clouds to lift at the Deming overlook. This is a staple question asked by Girls on Ice inventor Erin Pettit. For Erin, the world is an amazing place to explore, and unknown journey. It is nice for analytical me, to be reminded by Erin, CeCe, and the (brilliant) girls of how much we don’t know.

Lately, I have been strategizing ways to communicate science, especially global warming findings to the public. In doing this, I try not to deal too much with the unknown, and offer as many facts as I can to any ear that will listen. It is nice to shift focus for a while and think about how many things there really are left to understand, and how we are only just beginning to find out answers to some of the mysteries of the universe.

Over hot drinks, the girls share their insights on what defines a wilderness experience. The fog lifts slightly, and we are able to see the next moraine over. A mountain goat stands staring down at us. Quiet, and strong, and then back into the mist the goat disappears.

(the girls had to record their experiences for one day-so I thought I might too). The pictures don't match the day.

Getting Harder to Drive On Glaciers

EOS (a weekly science periodical produced for and by scientists) published an article with growing evidences that global warming has likely been underestimated.

The eight reasons-

1) There are two types of aerosols (molecules that reside in our atmosphere)
-those that cool the atmosphere
-those that warm the atmosphere
(whether an aerosol cools or warms largely depends on how much the aerosol absorbs or reflects solar radiation)

The article suggest that future global warming models underestimate warming because the aerosols that warm stay in the atmosphere longer than those that cool.

2)Permafrost is melting fast and furiously. When permafrost (frozen ground) melts the land surface becomes less reflective and more solar radiation is absorbed--- making more permafrost melt.

3)Plants are not breathing/removing as much carbon dioxide as we thought. Plants of many types and at many latitudes have now been monitored--- also our land use practices are favoring draining swamps and burning lands resulting in increased atmospheric carbon dioxide.

4)Arctic sea ice is melting and retreating rapidly--- less ice means less sun is reflected and more heat absorbed by the dark ocean surface... causing more melting (a good analogy is to compare standing on dark asphalt to standing on a light-colored concrete on a sunny day)

5)Atmospheric circulation is intensifying. This is thought to more effectively spread the heat...and create more dramatic weather changes around the world (from droughts to floods)

6)Rapid ice shelf break-up in the Antarctic Penninsula and the increased melt of the Greenland Ice Sheet and acceleration of its outlet glaciers. The melting now going on in Greenland is huge!!! Weather stations that have existed for decades on the snowy and icy edges of Greenland are now surrounded by huge lakes...or completely submerged once again the dark water is absorbing more heat and causing additional melt...

7) Record hurricanes--- high sea surface temperatures (especially in the shallower regions nearshore) promote more hurricanes--- we had the first recorded South Atlantic Hurricane

8) Ocean circulation is changing fast. The North Atlantic has slowed down much faster than originally predicted- this may be due to precipitation changes,and/or increased ice melt.

These eight evidences are well supported by highly recognized science journals... but not often talked about in the news (excepting maybe hurricanes...) Those of us studying these dramatic changes are talking, but are we talking loud enough and to the right people. What is the best way to do this? I think of this often, and try to keep my lights on a little dimmer and look for ways to conserve energy. There are those that think natural geologic forcings are stronger than anything people will do to alter this planet. Because volcanoes, rock weathering and plants naturally alter the carbon cycle and the amount of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere our little bit of carbon burning won't matter. This is much like saying that because most rain is naturally acidic so we might as well burn more coal because more acidic rain is not a big deal...(tell that to an angler in the NE US where fish kills grew rapidly before the clean air act).

Another thing--- that little bit of carbon dioxide people have added to the atmosphere by burning carbon that was once buried in the earth (fossil fuels) is enough to raise temperatures a few degrees above natural levels...Enough to completely melt Greenland possibly in my lifetime.

(Pictured is the Athabasca Glacier, a glacier I helped Dr. Melinda Brugman put a weather station on in Alberta Canada in 1997--- Trey and I went there for our honeymoon in 2003 and the tourist bus that rode onto the glacier only operated because people shoveled snow and ice into the increasingly larger crevasses that were melting out more aggressively each summer...it is likely the snow coach will have to become more creative as melt continues to accelerate)

Ice Axes of Evil

I am seventeen and blowing up a glacier. I love glaciers so much that I destroy them. Now, rather than blow them up, I get into my car driving in circles to push as much carbon into the atmosphere as I physically can. A mathmetician said to me, variance. There is just too much variance to know whether humans are responsible for the warming we are witnessing in our present environment. How about another math word- correlation. Carbon dioxide versus temperature change, 650,000 years and never have we had such high carbon dioxide as we do now- oh, and Greenland is melting fast...15 feet of sea level rise in my lifetime predicted

When checking luggage, especially mountaineering equipment, it is best not to refer to ones ice axes of evil. To avoid intense scrutiny, I've named them silly picks. My new glistening ice ax much lighter than its lumbering 10 year older counterpart. Still neither are exactly soft looking. (A contrast to the serenity of the ptarmigans gaurding our camp.)

The first email in my in box upon returning to civilization was from my first female field science mentor- Sally McGill. She is kind enough to add my name to a publication on the Garlock fault including a map we worked on together in the summer of 1996 when I was 18. Sally inspires me in so many ways...

Also, upon returning home, Trey handed me a few rebuttles to a Dispatch editoria I wrote on the misinformation k-12 students are taught global warming and evolution. Most responded that global warming is a farce. Every temperate glacier I have ever stood on is retreating... fast. Berry left a note on my desk to a new Geophysical Research Letters publication by a Swiss crew noting the global disappearance of temperate glaciers approaching...''this will make you cry''. How true. I get my information and professors researching climate change- not popular press.

A question for the girls in the tents--- where are we heading? What is our responsibility as citizen scientists?

When does dinner begin?

It is 6 pm and I am still on Girls on Ice time... what does that mean?

Answer this: When does dinner begin?

The answer when hiking over around and underneath the Easton Glacier with a team of fabulous, talented girls is: when lunch ends... (a good food mantra from mountain veterans Erin and CeCe)

Now that I am warm and near a computer perhaps I don't need that third dinner... but, then again, I'm still in Washington and the Easton Glacier is just a few hours away...

Girls on Ice

Thanks to all the girls and women in Girls on Ice. Here are some of the photo highlights... text will be added soon. To the girls--your travels be they intellectual, physical, or artistic have only just begun- your futures are so bright they inspired me, Erin, and CeCe to keep our eyes wide in wonder as we explore.

The beautiful and shrinking North Klawatti Glacier-

Here are some pics (not in order yet---) from Erin Pettit and crew's (Rob, Seth, Matt and me) survey of N. Klawatti Glacier in the N Cascades--- we gained over a mile in elevation (going down and scrambling was the hardest for my Ohio legs--- The views were stunning and Erin's work will likely further illustrate the extent of glacier retreat in this region.It started me how little snow there was in the accumulation zone of the N. Klawatti considering the heavy sn0wfall this winter. It was on average just a few meters deep... except in one depth probe, I found the snow to be 5, 6, no infinite meters... oh, wait that was a crevasse...
Glaciers are beautiful ---their treachery augments their allure.... After a long first day of hiking up, we spent the next day confined to our tents as sleet, snow and rain socked us in (a whiteout hovered above us blending glacier snow and ice with sky in one continous plane) --- on the third day navigated four glaciers, including lowering our packs over an arete and belaying ourselves from rock to ice. (One glacier was aptly named Inspiration, likely from the size of its gaping crevasses that inspired us to focus on steady footing). The fourth day we surveyed full force- two heading down to the N Klawatti ablation zone (where the glacier ice is exposed and the snow has melted) and me, Erin and Seth heading up into the accumulation zone. We completed around 10 total transects across the glacier.
On the final day we hiked 13 hours out (I was slow going out on the final descent, practicing on the bike path isn't quite the same...) I learned some new advice including trying to land gingerly on my feet rather than plodding on the descent... much like the rest step helps with going uphill this saves the knees on the descents. Also, I'm heading out to get some Crocs before Girls on Ice... lightweight plastic clogs with air holes that leave heals free to dry out after a long hike... these clogs weigh about the same as a pair of flip flops...

Can't wait to help Erin and CeCe teach the girls about glaciers!!! One more tidbit---on the way down the trail we ran into a crew of Texan tourists who were very interested in global warming. The retreat of the glaciers in the N Cascades has accelerated in recent decades. 10 meters on average per year... (of terminus retreat)... that is over 30 feet.
We recommended seeing Al Gore's movie An Inconvenient Truth (or the book for that matter). Our actions on this planet have consequences- the fuels we burn, the land we till, the fertilizer we use.