Many important political and social justice issues have come to a head in 2020, dominating the news cycle and shifting focus from another problem with global ramifications - the climate crisis. In this episode Christine and JJ examine photos and videos of the natural world in distress, and discuss the visualization tools that help us understand and appreciate the scientific data and satellite imagery. Plus witty and empowering protest signs from student climate strikes!
Many important political and social justice issues have come to a head in 2020, dominating the news cycle and shifting focus from another problem with global ramifications - the climate crisis. In this episode Christine and JJ examine photos and videos of the natural world in distress, and discuss the visualization tools that help us understand and appreciate the scientific data and satellite imagery. Plus witty and empowering protest signs from student climate strikes!
Talk description to me with Christine Malec and JJ Hunt.
Christine Malec:Hi, I'm Christine Malec.
JJ Hunt:And I'm JJ Hunt. This is talk description to Me where the visuals of current events and the world around us get hashtag in description rich conversations.
Christine Malec:In previous episodes, we've talked about some aspects of the climate crisis. And it's something that we are going to be coming back to, obviously, because it is an unfolding story. We've talked about different ways to cover it. And what we discussed is that there are, there are three ways to talk about it. Well, many more than three, but three that we've come up with as the most useful. One is the natural world. One is the human cost. And the other is human response. So the protest movement. And so today, we're going to be talking about images from the natural world that illustrate the unfolding climate crisis. And I'd like to say a quick note about the format of the episode because this material is very hard. It's, it's hard to look at physically, metaphorically, it's something that we kind of want to turn away from, because it's it's difficult to confront. And so when we were talking about the episode, we decided we couldn't just talk about the images and then stop. And so when we talk about climate crisis in our episodes, it's our intention to end each episode with one or two minutes that describe elements of a climate protest, probably, it'll mostly be signs that you see at a climate protest. And the reason for this is that if anyone has been to a climate protest, or read anything about the climate movement, you know that it is a place of hope and determination, and we want to end any of our conversations with that. So we hope that you don't feel bogged down and compelled to turn away and not listen, as we try to document the difficult position that that the earth and the climate is in right now. And be assured that each episode will end with a note of hope. So today, we're going to talk about images of the climate crisis from the perspective of the natural world. And we're going to start with some of the sea ice and images that are being shown around the world about the changes that are happening. So JJ, what kinds of things are you seeing?
JJ Hunt:So with images of the melting Arctic ice, and glaciers, melting glaciers, there are lots of photos, lots of satellite images, but some of the most popular images of this are on YouTube, and they are videos of the caving of ice sheets. And so this is when, when part of an ice sheet or a glacier kind of cracks off, breaks off and falls away. And it's incredibly dramatic. And a lot of the videos that you see on YouTube are actually kind of like their tourist videos, because you can take tours to the edges of these glaciers, the edges of these ice sheets. And people you know, go and take pictures and film and and so some of the smaller calving events are captured by tourists. And then the bigger calving events are captured by filmmakers and scientists who are who are studying this. So there are some fantastic, like just awe inspiring images that are available of this. So one of the things to keep in mind, these ice sheets are unbelievably thick. So the Greenland ice sheet is two to three kilometers thick in some spots that's almost two miles thick. And what they look like at their edge, it they look like the cliff right, these are cliffs of ice at the edge of the sea. And then they of course go down below the waterline Far, far, far beyond anything that's rising above so you can have you know, three four or 500 foot ice cliffs and these ice sheets and then they go down, you know, another thousand feet into the into the ocean so they are wrapped Incredible, like think of like the coast of Ireland, like the cliffs of more, or if you're a fan of The Princess Bride the cliffs of insanity. This is the kind of ice Cliff that you know that I'm trying to get across here, they're really quite extraordinary, rough, jagged cliffs of ice, and many appear to have vertical cracks like these columns of air that are part of the makeup of these ice sheets. And then when the columns of air get too big or too close together, then then a sheet of ice that's on the face of this cliff will break off. So there are different kinds of calving situations, this is just my laypersons understanding of what appears to be happening. I'm actually not fully versed on the the science of this, but sometimes it seems like a vertical slab, we'll break free of the ice sheet behind it. And I mean, completely break free from the top that we can see at that, you know, the surface all the way underwater. And so when this slab of ice is no longer connected to the grader sheet, it's actually much lighter. And what happens is it begins to rise. It's bouyed, and as it as it lifts up into the air, water churns at the corners and starts pouring in underneath it. And as it rises up, it actually exposes ice, it has sometimes been underwater for years or even decades. And then when this rising slab of ice reaches its peak height, it might fall or tip, or even roll over if the bottom is heavier than the top, it can actually flip over you, there are videos of icebergs, that that flip, I mean, it's it's rather extraordinary, because these things can be, you know, as big as an apartment building, and just like flip right over. And that's creates a massive wave. And of course, in the tourist videos, everyone's quite gleeful about this and clapping and whatever, because this is this is part of a natural process of, of ice sheets melting and calving with the seasons. But of course, what's happening now is that these is that we're having more melting more calving further into the year and and in the ice isn't recovering. Of course, that's the big issue. And if these if these ice sheets are breaking off, and they are and they're not breaking off all the way underwater, if they're just breaking off above water, and they break off near the top, and the slab vise happens to be top heavy, then it kind of they belly flopped, just like flop all the way forward, big great big splash. If they break closer to the water, and it's heavier down there, then they will, it's kind of like the knees give way the legs give out. And this slice of cliff just slides down like a landslide. There's incredibly dramatic footage of this.
Christine Malec:When you talk about ice like that, from the perspective of someone who's never seen it like me, is it clear? Is it white? Is it dirty? Does it look like there's things in it? What's the base sort of appearance of these cliffs of ice?
JJ Hunt:That's a great question. So it's different. It's not just one thing. So some of these ice cliffs, these ice sheets have a blue quality to it like a it's an icy blue, it's like a it's a very bright, almost luminous blue. And sometimes when, when, after a calving event, and you see some fresh ice that hasn't been exposed to the elements, it's been inside this ice sheet, it actually is clearer, it's brighter. It's not translucent, certainly not transparent. You can't see all the way through it. But sometimes it does look more like packed snow when sometimes there is some, like dirt streaking through it like some, you know, some pollution, frankly, gets can can streak in there. But generally these are they look fairly clean and white, and and crisp. That tends to be the color.
Christine Malec:Of course another very important part of climate research is the data and how it's visualized how it's depicted. And, JJ, I think you have some information on the ice from that perspective as well.
JJ Hunt:Yeah, yeah. I mean, we hear things like the decline of the Arctic Ocean ice is something like 11% per decade. And that's really hard to envision. What does that mean? What does it's it's hard to know what that means. And of course, it's incredibly important because The Arctic ice, this shiny white ice up in, you know in the far north reflects light and heat that the ocean would otherwise absorb. So it's incredibly important to have, you know, a vast ice sheet. And so I went on to the national snow and ice data center, their website and they got some great maps and images, they've got one comparative map. So that allows you to look at the situation from 1985 and compare it to the situation as it exists now in 2020. And so this is a these are satellite maps, and the landmasses. So this is Canada and Russia and Greenland, they are rendered in gray. And then between northern Canada and Russia and you know, hemmed in by Greenland, there is this, what looks like a colorful island of ice. And it's, it's, it's been, you know, rendered in these different colors, because the different colors represent the age of the ice, we'll get back to that in a moment. And so these side by side maps, the map on our left represents sea ice from September 2 1985. And then the map on our right is sea ice from September 2 2020. Now, in 1985, the island of ice and it looks like it's not technically an island, but looks in this image, like an island of ice, it essentially fills the entire Arctic Ocean, this entire area between Canada and Russia, there's a thin buffer of what I guess is like just open water on the edges of the continents and and the Canadian islands. But essentially, this ocean is full, it's completely filled by this island device. That's why the Northwest Passage has been so difficult to navigate, there's a massive Island device in the way. And in 2020, that the image shows that this ice island has shrunk by at least a third. It's there is a wide open expanse of ocean all along the Russian coastline. And the ice that is there is is you know, it's pressed up against the the Canadian side of things. In the 1985. One, it's, it's a little bit hard to judge sizes, because sometimes the perspective gets weird on these maps. But in from the one from 1985, the ice sheet is considerably larger than Greenland. And in the one from 2020, it's more or less the same size as Greenland. So it has, it has shifted, it has shrunk dramatically, and then the color. So the age of the ice is really important because older ice tends to be thicker and thicker ice is more resilient. And it's harder to replenish, if if this big thick old ice gets melted or calves off, it takes a lot more to replenish it. So what they've done is they've they've color coordinated that these maps. So both maps, and we've talked about this on an earlier episode, they had they share the same color scheme, this is important. So the color red is for areas of ice that are four years older, four years or older oranges, areas that are three to four years old green 223, teal 122, and a royal blue is less than a year old. Now in 1985. Most of this ice sheet is red, near the northeast part, there's some teal and some blue where the you know where it's a younger eyes, but I'd say it like two thirds of this is red. In 2020. There's just a sliver of red. Along the Canadian side, the middle of the ice sheet is teal dappled with blue and the northern edge is entirely blue. So this is very young ice young ice means it's not very thick. Which means it's it's not going to last it's going to melt more easily. And we're it's going to take a lot to get that built back up to that red four year old ice again.
Christine Malec:Now, data is also very important in conveying information about global temperatures, because we hear talk about a two degree rise and you know, on an average day 25 versus 27. No big deal. You wouldn't notice it but on a planetary scale. That's vastly different. The context is completely different. So can you tell us about some of the data and the graphics and the representations around temperature rise?
JJ Hunt:Yeah, absolutely. It's so important to get people to to appreciate what that two degree difference means, right? And so visualizations are often used to help people appreciate and understand. Again, I looked at all kinds of different sources online. I found that 130 second video tracking temperature anomalies from NASA. And this was tracking temperature anomalies from 1880 to 2018. And this is a map of the world a global map. And areas that report average temperatures are shown in in a very pale yellow, almost a white. Areas that show that show a colder temperature are in blue, hotter temperatures are in red, the darkest red is for two degrees higher than normal. The royal blue is for two degrees lower than normal. There's only a range of four degrees. But that's a very important four degrees right there. And these colors are graded, they're blended. So inside these maps, there are pale blues and darker yellows and oranges as the temperatures rise or drop, and it moves smoothly over time. So we start off with the map from 1880. And then it slowly moves toward 2018 over a 30 second period. And when we start off, the map is largely like a mottled blue color. So it's it's generally a little cooler than normal. There's some dark blue, near in the far north, like over Greenland and the Arctic, and some yellows that are down the west coast of the Americas but everything else is modeled blue. By the 1900s. We're seeing patches of yellow in the South Pacific. And we have our first little bit of orange over Northwest Africa. And then early in the 1900s. There are some cool blue, some cool pale blue years. And then by 1925, yellow areas have started to move further north. So there are yellow areas over Russia, Alaska, and there's even some orange at the North Pole. By 1940. Most of the northern hemisphere is yellow and orange and there's very little blue anywhere. But then in the late 1940s. things cool down the globe is very pale blue, it's kind of a dappled yellow in there. And then in the 1950s there's a flash of orange and yellow with the South Pole. Then through the 60s 1960s. We have more dappled yellow, more pale blue. And then in the 70s, everything turns yellow. And there's orange over Alaska and central Russia. By the 1980s. there's virtually no blue anywhere, it's all darker yellow, there are darker orange spots over Canada and Russia and there's a red spot over the South Pole, the 1990s, the globe is more orange than yellow, there's very little blue at all, there are deep pockets of deep red, over Canada, Russia, the Arctic Sea and the South Pole. And then in the early 2000s. The Far North is entirely blood red. So Alaska all the way across Canada, Greenland, Russia, red, red, red, and everything else on the map is modeled orange and yellow. And then it ends in the 2010s. And at that point, when that when the last image comes up the red patch, the red patch, that's that's covering the far north, that has spread down and it now covers Europe, that red patch covers most of China, there's red over the South Pole, there's a brick orange color over Australia, South America, North Africa, every ocean on the globe is dappled yellow, and orange. And in the entire map. There were only two or three small pools of pale blue. That's it. Everything else is yellows, oranges and reds.
Christine Malec:Another hugely impactful effect of the climate crisis is flooding, which includes many dramatic images, terrible outcomes, and obviously data to accompany that. JJ, what are you seeing currently around images of flooding?
JJ Hunt:So what I did was I went online and I and I did a Google image search for climate change floods. And I kind of wish I hadn't because I was just overwhelmed with dozens and dozens of pictures from all over the world. It's one of the things that's it's easier for journalists to photograph floods, they are they make for dramatic images and you can put them on your news stories and there are floods everywhere. And I was really overwhelmed. Like what images do I choose to describe? Right? Am I gonna describe the photos that are taken from airplanes and helicopters of American and Canadian farms, where you see like the second floor and the roof of a farmhouse and maybe some tree tops on what probably once was a laneway and maybe half of a barn and they all look like separate islands in what appears to be a brown Lake because the entire farm is underwater in all directions. Do I choose one of those photos? Right? There were similar photos of suburbs, where there are like nice, orderly rows of identical rubes and puffy green tree tops. But they're all floating in opaque bodies of mud red water or like the very popular with journalists these half simmered half submerged stop signs, which is like Oh, is this stop sign in the middle of a lake or a river? No, it's just that the street is completely flooded there are you know at least a half a dozen images of that in the first hundred images that come up when you search climate change flood How about people paddling canoes, or like makeshift tubs down the middle of streets because they are so flooded? Or cars trying to drive down what look like canals but there's water up to the windows. I really got overwhelmed very quickly. So then I took a I took a deep breath I stepped back and I thought okay, what's what's what can I look at now? What's happening right now? And what I found was right now there is a flooding situation in southeast France and Northwest Italy. This is a storm called storm Alex it's it's it's it's an ongoing issue. There have been heavy rains flash floods, landslides. Hundreds of people have been evacuated. Dozens of people are missing. And as of that, you know, this time when we're recording there's a death toll of at least 15. online you can find news reports and videos of water rushing down rivers through these through the French mountain side. And these rivers are moving fast they are churning and washing away the banks as as it travels down through the villages and through the mountains. And this water because it's pulling in the sides of the of the river banks the water is thick and muddy. And the shoreline is now abrupt. This is not the shore that has been created over the course of years by slow moving water. These are now small cliffs of mud. They look like they look like the the edge of the you know the ice sheets we were talking about because mud has essentially been calved off and pulled into the river. And what's left behind are these mud cliffs. And there are houses and cottages on the riverbanks I saw one image of a great big old farmhouse that was teetering right on the edge of a muddy cliff. one corner of that of the farmhouse is actually over the edge completely unsupported because the land under just gave gave away the land underneath it just was washed away. And right beside this old farmhouse is a is an outbuilding like a barn or a garage. And it has no side because the end of this garage was washed away with the land underneath it. So now this this barn looks like a doll house. It's got one completely open side. I saw some videos two different videos of this tall, narrow two story house that found itself in the middle of a raging river. So I'm guessing what happened is that this it used to be beside the river but the river flooded. You know, it's so severely that it ended up completely engulfing this house and it's flooding on both sides of water rushing down on both sides of the building. And then a second clip I saw it showed the building having been toppled and it's being turned to pieces as the water pounds against it and the river flips it over in the roof, you know gets pulled off and then the walls crumble and eventually the entire house is just carried away by the river. And of course all of this rain in the mountains creates landslides, landslides when the mud and rocks begin to roll down a steep hill and when the when the land gets so saturated, that the whole layer of Earth gives way and this layer of Earth can have all the trees and vegetation all the root balls in it. And so when it all gives way at the same time you have full mature trees being pulled into this wide river of mud and they kind of the trees almost surf they fall flat and surf down the mountain on this. You know this this huge wave of mud that pours down into and you know can swamp a road or knockout houses and there are images of course of all of that as well. I mean just devastating
Christine Malec:Those images are so dramatic. And at the same time, my mind keeps going back to data. And I think the reason for that is that if - JJ, you and I both grew up in a place where the climate is, I mean, OK it gets pretty cold here. But it's kind of benign, like we don't get floods or hurricanes as a matter, of course. And so where I'm going with this is that we don't experience the fact that these aren't just storms, like it's typical for journalism to report. Oh, there were bad storms and the monsoons were particularly or there's flooding in. And the thing that the data does is, makes you confront the fact that these aren't freak storms. This isn't a particularly bad flooding season, it's part of a larger trend. And that's why I'm glad that you are able to include data in that, because that's where you really see it. I mean, you could look back 30 years ago into journalism and find dramatic images of scary weather. But I think journalism now can include data to to put it in context, that this is part of a larger issue.
JJ Hunt:Yeah, a great example of that is this, the James River in South Dakota. So again, NASA has got some great images on their website, and some really cool tools climate.nasa.gov, we can post the link. And... the situation in James River in South Dakota, it's been in the flood stage now for over a year. So there's always flooding in this part of the world. This is part of the you know, almost every season, I'm sure there's some flooding. But now it's different. This river has been flooding since April 2019. And so what NASA has done is they've taken the they've taken satellite imagery, and they've got a satellite picture from March 2015, and a satellite picture from March 2020. So it's perfect for comparing these two, these two pictures, and they've got a there's a slide bar, vertical slide bar, and if you slide it to the left, then you uncover the image from March 2020. If you slide it to the right, you uncover the image from March 2015. So you can move it along, and you can see exactly what it looks like in you know, five years ago, or now perfect for comparing. And so in 2015, this satellite image shows a patchwork of rural properties. These are like little tiny squares and greens and browns. No rooftops are visible, I think we're too far away in the satellite image. And there are a handful of what looked like royal blue lakes, I think they're actually part of the river. But these are sections of the river where it's wide enough that what it looks like our lakes. And then there are quite a few tiny lakes, little lakes. And they're connected by squiggly blue threads. This is the river. And in some places, the thread looks thicker, so it's more like yarn, and it's maybe not quite as squiggly when it's thicker like that. But the path is really difficult to follow. Because the fine line is just too fine. It's just too difficult to follow. So it does it's not really doesn't look like one continuous Lake, or river I should say. But then you slide the slider over and you can see the 2020 image and the entire landscape has changed. All of those lakes are connected. And you can clearly see the path of the river system. And in fact, many parts of the river are just as wide as the regions I was calling lakes earlier. And all of those squiggly little lines aren't squiggly lines anymore. It's all flat, big flat expanses of water. And then even in the areas where it looked dry before just like the quilt pattern of greens and browns. Now those areas are teal blue, a dappled with teal blue or they've got teal blue lines on them were irrigation or drainage channels now have shallow water. That's why it's teal blue, not dark blue, because it's shallower water. And these areas these farm fields are just are either completely flooded or all the waters being you know, trying they're trying to handle it through the irrigation channels that they've already got on site. And you slide this this map back in this this slider back and forth so you can compare the two images. And it's it's so dramatic the difference from one to the other.
Christine Malec:At the beginning of the episode, we promised to find a ray of hope with which to leave all of us and so JJ, have you unearthed any any visuals from protests to help sustain us?
JJ Hunt:I did, and I was happy. I'm so glad we made this decision because you know it. It's hard to to dive into this stuff. It's hard to spend a lot of You're looking at these images and considering the ramifications, right? So what I did was I went to images of student climate strikes, and student climate protests specifically about young people, and some great signs. So these are all just signs and I'll just read them off because I think that's pleasant and empowering. And I, you know, I think you're right, we need a bit of that.
Christine Malec:I'm so ready? I am so ready.
JJ Hunt:Excellent!
Christine Malec:Bring it on!
JJ Hunt:Right on. Okay, so a one image of a young woman, a teenager, is holding up a cardboard sign that says, you'll die of old age, we'll die of climate change. And another young woman holding up a sign that says, the seasons are more irregular than my period. That was wonderful. And there's a guy dressed like Jesus, a young man dressed like Jesus, and he's got a sign that says, I don't want to die for your sins again. Oh, good one as well. And then someone has created a sign that look like a cardboard tree like a cardboard cutout of a tree, and it says, make the rain forest great again. And a couple of kids holding up signs, one that says, the oceans are rising. And so are we. This is a real theme. You see a lot of these we rise and linking it to rising sea levels. There was a little girl with a sign that had like drawings of sea creatures that she had done like a whale and a jellyfish and Nemo. And she had written like the oceans we rise, which I thought was really quite lovely. Someone had a sign with a picture of Greta Thunberg, looking straight at us, pointing a finger in the sign says your planet needs you. And another little boy in a mauve raincoat, who is like raising his fist in the air. And the other hand, he's got a sign that says, Let's make our world greater Great-ah, G-R-E-T-A. Yeah, that was pretty cute. I saw a young woman in Paris, a teenage girl and she was protesting topless. She had braces, long blonde hair, and she had body paint that turned her breasts into to planet earth. And she was holding up a sign that said, Je Suis Climate- I am climate. One, a young woman who was holding up a really tiny little sign like the size of a credit card. And it said use less paper. Cute, a young woman in a hijab, holding up a sign that said if you were smarter, we'd be in school. A young man holding a sign that said burn capitalism, not forests. Oh, there's another I really like this one, a woman with a red bandana headband. And she had a sign that said you can ignore us but you will regret it. Yeah, and a little girl in a pink baray and she had a handmade sign with like little kid writing. It's riddled with spelling mistakes. And she got little stick figure drawings. I couldn't even tell what they were supposed to be doing. And their scientist said we love our planet. Please do not hurt it. And a teenage girl who had slogans written on her cheeks I couldn't I couldn't read what what the slogans on her cheek said but her sign said Why get an education when nobody listens to the educated, which I thought was really quite brilliant. A sign said March now or swim later. Another saying make love not CO2. Two fashionable young black women in hijabs posing with one sign that says denial is not a policy, a teenage girl in an embroidered peasant blouse and she had a sign that said, the Earth is hotter than my imaginary boyfriend. And this was a big kid and a little kid together holding this huge cardboard sign with uneven block letters and colorful magic markers. And it said the kids are coming. And then another was a young woman whose picture was being taken as she was screaming so in this image, her mouth is open. She's screaming or chanting. And she's got a piece of painted blue cardboard over her head. And the black block letters on this ocean blue background and and assigned just says expect resistance. Ah, I love that.
Christine Malec:Aw man, thank you. My soul feels so much better.
JJ Hunt:Yeah, we all need a little bit of that.
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