The Wake

The Varsity Theater in Dinkytown was set up more like a coffee shop than a theater. Twinkling lights filled the ceiling, while The Day After Tomorrow, starring hunk of the moment Jake Gyllenhaal plays in the background to set the mood. On Monday, Sept. 11, about 30 people gathered to discuss the change in weather and climate happenings as pollution and the environment become a growing concern to the general public.

The first in a three-part series of Café Scientifique at the Varsity Theater in Dinkytown, “Global Climate Change: It’s Getting Hot in Here!” showcased the global “warming” happening to the earth, caused in large part by pollution, deforestation and the burning of fossil fuels.

“It’s great to talk about this in a [relaxing] environment,” says panelist J. Drake Hamilton, science policy director for Fresh Energy adding that the “science” part of discussions on global climate change can get in the way of people actually learning the problem.

“We’ve been investigating global climate change since the end of the 19th century. In the 1970s very serious national efforts began,” panelist and environmental historian Daniel Philippon says. “This year though we’ve seen a shift in the cultural attitude toward global change.”

Philippon spoke of the media efforts that have happened recently to alert and instill fear in the general public. “But there’s a disconnect between what scientists know and what the public knows.”

Real life events such as “Hurricane Katrina can help put the global warming impact in context and help shape our understanding,” Philippon says. But overall, the public sees the problem in a frame the media creates, which can cause problems because it’s not the frame scientists want the public to see,” he says. “The media is more focused on the drama,” Philippon says, and this escalates fear.

This is all boiling up to a “perfect ethical storm,” says Peter Ciborowski from the Minnesota Pollution Control Agency. “There are theoretical concerns, generational concerns and scientific concerns,” he says. “If we can transfer these global concerns to community and personal concerns, change could occur,” Ciborowski says.

Another problem with the framing of the global warming problem is that “warming” is used when talking about the dilemma, when in fact the entire globe is not warming up, just certain spots. “‘Global warming’ is threatening and apocalyptic,” Ciborowski says.

On the positive side, “things are moving and being helped by grassroots actions,” Hamilton says. “But many more people need to weigh in on this. We don’t have [the] luxury of not doing anything for 10 years,” she says. “We have to be pushing for the best possible [solutions].”

Hamilton says that “within the next 10 years we need to stabilize emissions and make cuts. These gas emissions are rising everything—temperatures and costs.” If these changes are made, and quickly, we can prevent the worst damage. Most of what needs to be changed is decisions regarding the environmental choices made by large companies with carbon-burning factories, she says.

All three panelists mentioned the work of James Hansen, lead climate scientist and director of the NASA Goddard Institute for Space Science. In 1988, as the director, he was the first person to testify to the House of Representatives that there was a strong “cause and effect relationship” between observed temperatures and human emissions into the atmosphere. Hansen now claims that if we proceed with business as usual the planet will become unrecognizable, Hamilton says. “I’m not talking doomsday, but this means that species and lifeforms will change drastically,” she clarifies.

Ciborowski showed slides that documented the expected outcomes of global climate change efforts. “Most of our greenhouse gases come from energy use and the rest is from agricultural use, which goes hand in hand with increased diminishing forests,” he says. He added that the high percentage of gases from agricultural sources come from Minnesota’s strong farming economy.

“In the next 30 to 40 years, whatever we do will not really matter, but the 50 years after that is when the problem will grow exponentially [if nothing is done],” Ciborowski says. “Not a scientist in the world disagrees with that.”