climate change

Why is the sky so weird?

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You can download a pdf version of this graphic with clickable links from my itchio page.

Noticed something a little funky in the world around you and want to figure out what’s up? Especially if there might be something you ought to be doing about it? Not sure what information sources to trust these days? If you’re in the US, federal agencies like NOAA, USGS, EPA and more collect massive amounts of scientific data every day, much of which is publicly available online – if you know where to look.

Since the wildfire smoke has been hitting the east coast this summer, I’ve gotten a lot of comments when posting about the air quality impact that were variations on: “huh. I was wondering why the sky looked so funny.” With the state of the Internet, search engines, and social media today, it really isn’t intuitive where you can go to find reliable information on something so vague as “I noticed something was a little off today,” and so many of the platforms and accounts that emergency managers have spent years building up trust and visibility for have disappeared or become unverifiable because of Twitter’s meltdown. Best to go to straight to the source when you can. 

This flowchart is solely focused on the US federal government and is not meant to be comprehensive, but provides a starting point for anyone looking for more information. 

Unnatural

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“It is generally accepted among environmental geographers that there is no such thing as a natural disaster. In every phase and aspect of a disaster – causes, vulnerability, preparedness, results and response, and reconstruction – the contours of disaster and the difference between who lives and who dies is to a greater or lesser extent a social calculus.”

This essay and others at Understanding Katrina were written in the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina, addressing the political and social issues laid bare by the devastation. They call the supposed “naturalness” of disasters a form of ideological camouflage for the fact that many dimensions of a disaster are preventable.

Even when the hazard itself is natural, like the earthquakes devastating Mexico, the effects are socially determined. Meanwhile, the battering ram of  hurricanes in the last month was doubly so, exacerbated by the unnatural role of climate change that the government and special interests continue to let go unchecked. It’s easier – and more convenient – to dismiss disasters as an Act of God than to address them as failures of government, infrastructure, and preparedness.

AGU2014: Frack Quakes, Black Riders and Failing with Grace

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Like wildebeest through the Serengeti, the common Homo geologicus make their way through San Francisco International Airport in droves, identifiable by ever-present poster tubes, hiking boots, and a tendency to flannel. It is once again that time of year, for the long migration known as the fall meeting of the American Geophysical Union.

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Or rather, it was that time of year, since the conference was before Christmas. About 25,000 geoscientists come to this every year, including myself this year; I was presenting a poster on my undergrad research in Tanzania. The posters and talks available are innumerable, so the first challenge is figuring out what to go to first, but the main themes I followed this year were energy, climate, and induced earthquakes related to energy projects.

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The Weather Outside is Frightful

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~ And Denial is So Delightful ~

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I’d like to give a warm shout out to all my friends soldiering through in Buffalo with your literally above my head levels of snow – at this point you should probably consider giving in and hibernating through the rest of the year. No one will judge. Even for upstate and our beloved lake effect, this week’s storm was intense for this time of year, though sadly Ithaca remains almost entirely snow free. The weather was quite apropos considering the activities this week at Cornell, which was a busy one so far as climate change and its effects were concerned. The president of Iceland was visiting, and hopefully felt right at home. The weekly department seminar was as relevant a topic as you could hope to have for a presentation: “Has a warming Arctic contributed to colder winter weather in the Northern Hemisphere mid-latitudes?”

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