vision
„Denying climate change is the same as saying you don't believe in gravity.“
— Cristina Figueres, climate change advocate and diplomat,
In her 2020 book the future we choose
Spotlight
How do we know that the climate is changing and that humans are the cause? To some extent, we ourselves can see and feel it. There is no denying that new temperatures and extreme weather events are occurring, affecting more and more places every year. Additionally, the greenhouse effect (the mechanism by which carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gases trap heat in the Earth's atmosphere) is taught in many basic science classes. However, if you ask people how they know that climate change is real, they may simply say, „Climate change is real.“ 99.9% of scientists agree that this is so..
„Intellectually, to me, it always felt like a bit of a cop-out,“ Grist video producer Jesse Nichols said. Indeed, this is a compelling statistic, and there is nothing wrong with trusting the consensus of the scientific community. But Nichols also feels that understanding how scientists have come to this conclusion and supported it (sometimes in surprising ways) can be enlightening and empowering. Ta.
„What I'm always really fascinated by is people who can uncover huge stories from small pieces of evidence, like in an environmental detective story,“ he said.
That's a big part of the ethos behind proof of concept, a video series created by Nichols that introduces you to the science and scientists behind some of the most surprising environmental research and discoveries of recent times. The video takes viewers from his MIT lab to a primate research center in California to the basement of a Seattle museum where centuries-old fish preserves are kept.
In one, Nichols interviews scientists who study the Flower Garden Banks in the Gulf of Mexico, one of the world's healthiest coral reefs. This reef also happens to be surrounded by offshore oil drilling sites.
Like trees, corals grow bands each year. This allows researchers to determine the age of the corals and gain insight into what was happening to the ocean climate each year the corals grew. As Nichols says in his voiceover, „The legacies of oil extraction, carbon emissions, and climate change are literally etched into the hard skeleton of the coral itself.“
As one scientist notes in the video, these coral „time capsules“ are exactly the kind of clues Nichols was referring to when he likened scientific discoveries to detective stories. By analyzing small pieces of coral taken from each of the different zones, scientists were able to track changes over time that coincided with world events. By examining the carbon content in corals, we found that isotopes associated with fossil fuel emissions were increasing. This is a clear sign that the increase in global carbon emissions is indeed caused by humans. Another finding was the increased presence of barium in coral reef skeletons. Barium is an element commonly used as a lubricant in offshore oil wells.
„By analyzing the dust we get from those coral skeletons, we can learn that climate change is occurring, or that there was a surge in oil in the Gulf of Mexico in the 1970s, that fertilizers from the Mississippi River were increasing, or that nuclear fuel We can show that the effects of the substance have been found.'' Weapons testing was done throughout the Cold War,'' Nichols said. „All of these world history events could be seen in coral skeletons. I think it's amazing that scientists can tell such a big story from such small pieces of evidence. I did.”
In another video in the series, Nichols speaks with parasitologist Chelsea Wood. „I don't think anyone is born a parasitologist, just like no one grows up wanting to study insects,“ Wood jokes in the video. But when I learned how highly biodiverse parasites actually are, and that they often play important roles in ecosystems, it felt like I discovered a whole new secret world. . She decided to dedicate her career to studying the ecology of parasites and how humans affect them.
Wood wanted to find out what was happening in the parasite world during the past 100 years of global change, but the data didn't exist. So she figured out how to get it. Just as the scientists at Flower Garden Banks used the historical records preserved in the corals themselves to study how environmental change has affected coral reefs, Wood is looking into the inside of fish's bellies. found historical records of the parasite in . She opened a jar containing her fish samples dating back to the 1800s at the Burke Museum in Seattle and dissected the fish to see what kind of parasites were living inside them.
„Chelsea used these fish samples that were collecting dust in her basement to uncover a completely overlooked story about how parasites have changed over the last century,“ Nichols told me. told. One thing she and her team have discovered is that complex parasites (parasites that rely on biodiverse ecosystems containing multiple different host species) have been steadily declining, and that the cause is mostly It's definitely climate change.
Third is Lisa Miller, a researcher at the California National Primate Research Center. In 2008, as summer wildfires blanketed Northern California in smoke, Miller had an idea. A group of 50 rhesus macaques had just been born at the center and, like other monkeys in the area, were exposed to unusually high levels of wildfire smoke. She wondered if these monkeys could be studied in comparison to a control group born the following year to learn more about the effects of early exposure to air pollution.
The researchers monitored the monkeys' health through regular health checks, including blood draws and CT scans, and by equipping them with Fitbit-like collars to monitor physical activity. They found that wildfire smoke causes lifelong health effects. The exposed monkeys had weak immune systems when young, but developed overactive immune systems as adults. Their lungs were smaller and harder than the control group, and they slept less well.
Because rhesus macaques are genetically similar to humans, these findings also have implications for human health. Long-term human health research is notoriously difficult because it's nearly impossible to control for the various environmental and lifestyle factors that complicate things. But the wildfire smoke that fell on the Primate Research Center, a completely controlled environment, provided a unique opportunity to learn more about this climate impact.
„In my opinion, it was really a coincidence, in the sense that we were in the right place at the right time,“ Miller said in the video.
The fourth and final video in this year's series will be released tomorrow.check out grist.org/video Then please take a look!
A sneak peek: This story examines ribulose bisphosphate carboxylase/oxygenase (RuBisCO), an enzyme that allows plants to extract carbon dioxide from the air to support photosynthesis. This enzyme is the process that provides energy to all life on Earth. The problem is that RuBisCO is notoriously bad at its job, and climate change seems to be making it even worse. However, scientists are working on developing new varieties.
„I think science itself helps us know how the world works. You can't solve problems unless you know how the system works,“ Nichols said. „These are all stories of people trying to understand more clearly what's going on. And having a better grasp of what's going on means having a map when you're lost in the wilderness.“ It's like being there.“
— Claire Ellis Thompson
parting shot
In last week's newsletter, 15 minute city, we asked you what places you could walk to within 15 minutes from where you live. Just for fun, I put some of your answers into an AI image generator to see what our collective 15-minute city would look like. One thing I found interesting was that, despite my prompts, the generator did not conjure up a „city“ without cars or with various specific features (pizzerias, taco trucks, bookstores, churches, emergency clinics). I had a hard time adapting it to other locations (such as locations). ) he combines into one scene. But I think I still live here. what about you?