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The Best Science Writing Online 2012
Showcasing more than fifty of the most provocative, original, and significant online essays from 2011, The Best Science Writing Online 2012 will change the way...
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YOSEMITE NATIONAL PARK, Calif. – On any given summer evening about 60 tourists gather in campground amphitheatres here for park ranger presentations. Astronomy, geology, human history, fire ecology are on the regular schedule of program topics. Wilderness safety and Yosemite's notoriously aggressive black bears are also popular.
But one July evening Yosemite ranger Matt Holly popped something different onto his projector screen: "Yosemite's climate: Past…and Future?"
What followed was a rare and relatively new occurrence in Yosemite Valley – a ranger program focused exclusively on how one of the jewels of America's national parks system is responding to a changing climate.
During the hour-long slide show, Holly summarized the effects of climate change in Yosemite – including shrinking waterfalls, intensifying wildfires, and vanishing species. He didn't flinch from controversy, presenting evidence for human influence on global temperature and debunking common "natural causes" myths.
"In pretty much every scientific organization, every government – you're going to be hard pressed to find someone who says climate change isn't happening," Holly told his audience. "There really isn't a whole lot of debate about it."
After the presentation, a few visitors approached Holly with general questions about Yosemite’s trails and wildlife. An older couple, longtime volunteers in the Park, thanked him for inserting a new topic into the nightly rotation.
Talks like Holly's, while rare today, represent the future for the National Park Service, said agency director Jonathan Jarvis.
Two years ago Jarvis launched a system-wide Climate Change Response Program. Communication, research, adaptation, and mitigation are the four main components. The Park Service has a legion of scientists, biologists, geologists and other experts working on the latter three. But communication and education, Jarvis said, may ultimately prove to be the agency's biggest contributions to the field.
"We host 280 million visitors a year," he said. "The public come to the national parks not necessarily with an intent to learn something. But it is our intent that they learn something."
In national parks across the country, the impacts of climate change are sobering. Scientists with the U.S. Geological Survey report that global warming could eliminate most glaciers from Glacier National Park within 20 years. Warmer temperatures and increased fire frequency over the next century could eliminate the Joshua tree from 90 percent of its current range within Joshua Tree National Park, according to another USGS study. In Yosemite, scientists from the University of California, Berkeley have documented many species, particularly small heat-sensitive mammals such as the American pika, moving to higher ground
Those changes – some of which are readily apparent to park visitors – make communication easier, Jarvis said. "We're seeing climate change on the ground now in parks," he said. "That's an opportunity to demonstrate to the public that climate change is happening, in their lifetime, in real time, on the ground in front of them."
The threat to these popular recreation sites also gives the public a reason to care. Stanford University education professor Nicole Ardoin says that national parks have a personal and cultural significance that could inspire visitors to act on problems like climate change. "Talking about a very direct threat to those places brings up something very emotional related to climate change," she said. "It's a great time to reach people, when they're emotionally raw and ready to do something."
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15 Comments
Add CommentI agree, and it's interesting that nothing about the changing climate that can possibly have any benefit.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisWhat is taught uniformly everywhere is that the climate is changeing because of human influence and it will eventually become catastophic and nowhere will any good be derived from it.
That storyline runs counter to common sense, whether you belive in AGW or not.
Sea levels are rising and have been for the past 100 years:
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thishttp://academics.eckerd.edu/instructor/hastindw/MS1410-001_FA08/handouts/2008SLRSustain.pdf
This has been confirmed by many studies. Some of the methods used may have underestimated the amount of rise:
http://www.nature.com/climate/2010/1004/full/climate.2010.29.html
The problem with acidification is the rate of change, which is also occuring:
http://www.interacademies.net/10878/13951.aspx
As for the old "who cares if it gets a little warmer, I live in a cold place and would enjoy it" argument, the problem is that the most productive areas of the Earth for food will also shift north.
We live on a globe, so when you shift north, you end up with less total area for this high-productive land. Timbo, you may think that food shortages are no big deal with an increasing global population, but others think that less food for a growing population is, using common sense, not a good thing.
pokerplayer, I provided two links to scientific papers on sea level rise (which is accelerating) in response to your post, plus one link to acidification. You may dislike the term, but the science says it is a problem.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisYou are also now contradicting yourself. First you said that sea levels are not rising, now you say they are, but not fast enough. Which is it? Why do you change your story within a few hours? Could it be that you don't actually know anything about this topic?
Park service people should teach the scientific consensus about AGW. 97.5% of climatologists who actively publish research on climate change say that human activity is a significant contributing factor in changing mean global temperatures.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisShould they teach people the various ideas that the 2.5% fringe scientists believe, or the theory supported by the vast majority of climate scientists?
You mean teach propaganda at National Parks.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thiswww.iceagenow.com for truth on the subject.
This magazine continually violates the basic principal of science, unbiases presentation of both sides of the argument, not only on this subject, but many. Science is not a democracy. Many "accepted" theories have been disproven over history. The big band and continental drift are two that were once scorned, are now accepted by the majority, yet will one day, in my and thousands of other real scientists opinion, be scorned again.
The US governmnet used as an instument of propaganda...who's have 'thunk' it?
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to this'Believe' or perish has been a tact of movements for centuries. Accept our teachings or suffer the consequences. 'Catastophe' awaits the non-believer.
A Natonal Park should be a place to learn about the environment from an ecological persepective. This means the wildlife, plants, geology and so on. The National Park's should not be pushing an agenda.
iceagenow IS propaganda Jimmy. It’s brought to you by either the fossil fuel companies or the crazy conspiracy theorists that have fallen victims to their propaganda. There are $TRILLIONS in revenue the dirty energy companies are protecting by delaying the day we finally start cleaning up our act. The tobacco companies did the EXACT SAME THING with the evidence linking their product to lung cancer. They ran off with $BILLIONS in profit while society ended up with MILLIONS more lung cancer cases.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to this"This magazine continually violates the basic principal of science, unbiases[sic] presentation of both sides of the argument"
Well, when 1 side of the argument contains 98% of the people who, you know, ACTUALLY do climate science along with EVERY national government outside of the Persian Gulf and EVERY major scientific body in the WORLD, while the other side has the 2% of fringe scientists and hucksters on the fossil fuel industry's payroll, there really isn't a debate. FYI, about 2% of AIDS researchers don't think HIV is the cause of the disease, but no one takes them seriously either, now do they?
"Many "accepted" theories have been disproven over history."
Please list the theories that have been disproven and the process used to disprove them. For example, The Geocentric Theory of Planetary Motion was disproven by multiple lines of evidence like the shape of the Earth's shadow on the moon during a lunar eclipse, the observations that Venus goes through phases like the moon and the fact that the OBSERVED motion of the planets was IMPOSSIBLE to explain with the Earth at the center of the Solar System.
The Hypothesis(?) that Humans AREN'T causing climate change was disproven again by multiple lines of evidence:
http://www.skepticalscience.com/docs/Guide_to_Skepticism.pdf
So please, don't try to lecture people about how REAL scientists operate because you definitely aren't one.
Well, if the rangers are seeing the place change right before their eyes, it would be a dereliction of duty NOT to communicate their findings to park visitors.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisYou are either ill-informed or stuck in your idealist views because of your presupposed positions. Please put your head back in the sand now.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisyou're a "real scientist" but have doubts about continental drift? -great job
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisI was all on-board with this article until I was told that we can prevent all this by driving a hybrid vehicle and pumping tons of poisonous mercury into the ecosystem with fluorescent bulbs.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisYou don't know that!
I wish you did have the answer, but it is, at the very least, disingenuous to pretend that you know, you just don't.
This from the commenter who quoted a one-month annual vacation on an island (without references) as 'evidence' that sea levels are not rising. Puhlease....
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to this@pokerplayer, you must be bluffing.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisjimmy and geo...I agree, government sponsored propaganda is not part of the Park Service's job.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thispoker, I am a AGW skeptic but must agree with your point that we must keep an open mind on this subject. Concerning the Skeptical Science article, the Aloha Ocean Station is about 50 miles north of Oahu and this is where the pH measurements are gathered. I have several concerns. 1) The station sits on the edge of the large plastic debris field where surface area allows marine organisms to thrive, releasing organic acids and C02. This area will be made worse by the addition of debris(organic and inorganic) from the Japan tsunami. 2) the plume from Kilauea Volcano erupting since 1983 nonstop releases about 2,000 tons of S02/day or more depending on the lava activity. This plume usually flows to the west of the Big Island but with Kona Winds, shifts NW and directly into the vicinity of the Aloha Ocean Station.
All the pH studies have automatically assumed the effects have been due to Anthropogenic C02 without the consideration of what I've mentioned above. I live on the slopes of Mauna Loa, close to the NOAA station (MLO) where the famous Keeling Curve was developed. The C02 from the volcano, at the 4000ft level easily reaches the station located at the 9000 ft elevation and looking at the raw data, one can see the astronomical rise of C02 during frequent inversion atmospheric activity. Looking at the Keeling curve, you'll see a significant rise of C02 from the 1950 and this is when a massive lava flow began right up to the 80's when Kilauea began its unprecedented continuous activity in 1983.
http://weather.hawaii.edu/vmap/hysplit/index.cgi?banner=uhmet&domain=haw&variable=so2&orient
Great article. I have been a Park Ranger for about 12 years now and had a chance to work at the amazing Glacier National Park in 2004. Just FYI - some of us Rangers have been telling visitors about climate change in national parks for quite awhile now. I first started delivering climate program for the public at Marsh-Billings-Rockefeller National Historical Park in Woodstock, VT in 2001. A perfect fit based on the parks theme as the 'birthplace of the American conservation movement'. Also, one if its namesakes: George Perkins Marsh was a big believer in humankinds ability to alter natural systems. Back in 1847, he gave a speech in Rutland, VT where he said: "But though man cannot at his pleasure command the rain and the sunshine, the wind and frost and snow, it is certain that climate itself has been gradually changed and ameliorated and deteriorated by human action."
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisI also delivered climate change talks at Glacier NP campfire talks in 2004, and Marsh-Billings continues to offer climate programs. There may be relatively few climate based programs in the NPS, but there number is growing!