Climate Scientists

HowlRound: Climate Scientist’s Challenge to Artists

March 4, 2014newsArts Chantal Bilodeau., Center for the Theater Commons, Center of Sustainable Practices, Climate Change, Climate Scientists, Karen Malpede

Via HowlRound.

Playwright Karen Malpede recently wrote an essay for HowlRound, a Center for the Theater Commons, highlighting how tragedy and theater needs to be restructured around the truths of climate change. At the end of the essay, she highlighted important theatre artists and playwrights making work to begin challenging art to take on a more active role in leading climate change, including a regular contributor to the Center of Sustainable Practices in the Arts Chantal Bilodeau.

Here is the beginning of Karen Malpede’s article:

Relatively recently, the climate modeling of climate scientists has allowed us to see into the future. While we donâ€™t know everything we know enough to ask if we wish to damage the planet beyond repair in this the new Anthropocene era, when the earthâ€™s ecosystems are being altered by human beings at an unprecedented rate. The knowledge we now have thanks to climate models creates both a terrifying certainty and a spiritual dilemma for every person. And to confront the spirit, humans turn to art. Literature changes paradigms, whether the literature of the Bible or of the great Greek Tragedies, we learn our selves through the word.

To read more of how she traces climate’s importance and the arts’ historical role in shaping paradigms like climate change, see here for the full article.

$10,000 in prize money for Climate Fix Flicks

January 17, 2012news, Open CallsAnn Henderson Sellers, Australian Film, Clean Energy, Climate Scientists, Creative Boundaries, Energy Future, Film And Television, Film Competition, Film Makers, Film Submissions, Flicks, I Robot, Macquarie University, Monash University, Positive Messages, Prize Money, Professor Tim, Television Professionals, Tim Flannery, University Of Melbourne

Climate scientists from Macquarie University, the University of Melbourne and Monash University have launched a short film competition, Green Screen: Climate Fix Flicks.

Professors Tim Flannery, Lesley Hughes and Ann Henderson-Sellers are seeking film submissions of between 30 seconds and five minutes that communicate positive messages about a zero or low carbon, clean energy future. Fifteen films will be shortlisted and publicly screened in Sydney around the Australian Film Festival in March 2012. Entries will be judged by a panel of well-known artists, film-makers and scientists including Kimble Rendall (Matrix and I, Robot) and Professor Tim Flannery.

The winning entry will receive $5000, up to five films will be awarded â€˜highly commendedâ€™ prizes of $500 each, and there is a peopleâ€™s choice award worth $2500. Participants are encouraged to push their creative boundaries! This competition is a great opportunity to have work seen by high profile film and television professionals as well as audiences around the country.

Deadline for submissions is February 10^th 2012.

See www.greenscreen.org.au for further details and official entry form..

Proudly supported by CLIMARTE

ashdenizen: wanted: a portrait of the climate scientist as a real person

March 10, 2011Ashden DirectoryAlexander Herzen, Climate Change, Climate Scientist, Climate Scientists, Coast Of Utopia, Conceit, Flesh And Blood, Heretic, Playwrights, Political Influence, Political Subject, Preface, Real Person, Serfdom, Sportsman, Tippingpoint, Tom Stoppard, Tsar Alexander, Turgenev, Twentieth Century History

In his preface toÂ The Coast of Utopia, Tom Stoppard makes the point that writers can have real political influence. His example is Turgenev’sSportsman’s Sketches, which Stoppard writes,

“were plausibly said to have done more than anything else to turn the ‘Reforming Tsar’ Alexander 11 towards abolishing serfdom.”

But the writing has to be precise and observant. Earlier in the preface, when discussing Alexander Herzen, Stoppard writes,

“What he detested above all was the conceit that theoretical future bliss justified actual present sacrifice.”

Twentieth-century history was on Herzen’s side. It’s easy to imagine, today, that many playwrights’ resistance to climate change as a political subject comes from this idea that it deals with a “theoretical future” and that it is being used to justify “actual present sacrifice”. Playwrights like to write about real situations, flesh and blood characters, the here and now. And they like jokes.

In some ways, then, the most interesting characters to put on stage right now are climate scientists: not a climate sceptic disguised as a climate scientist (as happens in The Heretic), but the climate scientists who are simultaneously appalled and fascinated by what they are discovering.

AtÂ last year’s TippingPoint conference in Oxford, climate scientists spoke candidly and wittily about how their work had altered their lives and their world views. If caught accurately, that kind of portrait might have real political influence.

via ashdenizen: wanted: a portrait of the climate scientist as a real person.

Arcola Intern goes to climate negoitations in Cancun #COP16

December 3, 2010Arcola, COP16Act, Anthony Ford, Cancun Mexico, Catastrophic Events, Climate Change Negotiations, Climate Coalition, Climate Scientists, Copenhagen, Delegation, Emissions, Floods Droughts, Ford, Lead, Politicians, Scaremongering, Scepticism, Subject Support, Violent Storms

After the disappointing outcome of Copenhagen last December the next climate change negotiations have started to Â take place in Cancun, Mexico.

Arcola intern, Anthony Ford-Shubrook has been chosen as one of a group of eight to represent UK youth at the UN conference. He will be part of the UKYCC (UK Youth Climate Coalition) delegation, to campaign for politicians to sign up to real emissions cuts and cap temperature rises before itâ€™s too late. Thereâ€™s a lot of scaremongering and even scepticism around about climate change but when a recent study shows that 98% of climate scientists that publish research on the subject support the view that human activities are warming the planet and that this warming will lead to catastrophic events such as floods, droughts and violent storms across the world he feels we have to do something. Anthony says, â€œIâ€™m going to go and take part in the movement trying to call for something to be done. If we act now to cut emissions we really can make a difference.â€

At the conference Anthony will be campaigning and sitting in on the negotiations each day.

Visit www.ukycc.org for more information on Anthonyâ€™s trip.

Go to Arcola Energy

ashdenizen: is climate change a zombie concept?

May 3, 2010Ashden DirectoryChange Climate, Climate Change Scenarios, Climate Scientist, Climate Scientists, Conference Attendees, Constructions, Ethical Frameworks, Founder Director, Greenpeace, Ipcc, Kings College London, Kronick, Philosophical Exploration, Philosophical Perspective, Swathe, Tipping Point, Tyndall Centre, Uea, Uk Climate Change, World Nature

Kellie Payne reports on theÂ Tipping Point event, held earlier this month, where Mike Hulme suggested climate change was aÂ zombie concept:

as a metaphor it has done its work. As a concept, it connects a large swathe of issues combined through the scientific narrative and perhaps there are other ways to make progress.

Much less the as-billed scientific update, the Tipping Point event held on Wednesday 13th April at Kings College, London was a philosophical exploration of the status of our current conceptualisation of climate change.

Hosted by Tipping Point, the arts organisation that seeks to build bridges between artists and climate scientists, the afternoon featured Mike Hulme, UEA climate scientist and author ofÂ Why We Disagree About Climate Change, climate change adaptation specialistÂ Emma Tompkins and Greenpeaceâ€™s Senior Climate AdvisorÂ Charlie Kronick . In attendance were past Tipping Point conference attendees, a mix of artists, academics and a few scientists.

Hulme is a veteran climate scientist whose career has included serving as the founder-director of the Tyndall centre and contributing scientist to UK climate change scenarios and reports for the IPCC. However, writing his recent book led Hulme to take a more philosophical perspective: his interest being more in the positioning of our larger conceptualisations of climate change and interrogating different epistemological constructions of climate change. Moving beyond the merely scientific understanding of climate change, he investigates how climate change is understood in disciplines varying from economics, ethics, politics and humanities. In particular, he argues that climate change is a value laden concept that reflects our views of the world, nature, the economy and ethical frameworks.

Hulmeâ€™s presentation was largely an explanation of the four myths he explores in his book: lamenting Eden which draws on a sense of nostalgia, presaging apocalypse based on a sense of fear, constructing Babel (hubris) and celebrating jubilee which builds upon our sense of justice. In essence, what Hulme argues is that every individual brings their own agenda, applying the challenge of climate change to their own problems, that is, climate change is the raw material that is used to work on our individual projects. Hulme suggested we ask ourselves whether stabilising the climate was indeed our ultimate goal or whether stabilising climate was instead a means to an end, and we were using climate change to achieve our other goals.

Emma Tomkins on the other hand bases her work on a belief that climate change is happening and asserts that the government is leading the way on adaptation. Based at Leeds and the Governmentâ€™s Department for International Development, Tomkins outlined types of adaptation currently being implemented including risk management policies and attempts to build resilience. When Tomkins asked the audience how many were currently taking adaptive measures, it became clear that the line between what constitutes mitigation activities and adaption is often blurred in the minds of many. The government makes a clear distinction between mitigation measures (limiting ones emissions) and adaption (preparing for the impacts of climate change). For instance when asked about what types of adaptation individuals were taking, some audience members mentioned the work of the Transition Town movements, but from the government perspective Transition Town activities would constitute mitigation measures as their main focus is reducing emissions.

Tomkins conducted an exercise to see how we as an audience would allocate adaptation funds, whether we would base our decisions on: equitable distribution of resources, reward mitigators, help those facing the most exposure, help the most vulnerable, or offer developmental assistance. At the moment, current government policy (Adaptation Policy Framework) is based on risk mapping and awareness and therefore has its focus on those who face the most exposure to risk. Tomkins stressed the need to be aware that in any adaptation policy there are a number of decisions to be made about the type of losses we are willing to take and warned that there is a potential to make serious mistakes unless we seriously consider the issues.

Charlie Kronick weighed in with the activist viewpoint, reminding the audience that in the past adaptation wasnâ€™t even considered because to do so would be to accept defeat. Further, he didnâ€™t see the need to separate out adaptation and mitigation as he sees them as one and the same. For Charlie, climate change isnâ€™t about science, or art, but about power politics, â€˜the deal makers and takersâ€™ and inequality is a major driver.

Hulme agreed that itâ€™s about politics and our ambitions about what type of society we want to inherit. Hulme suggested that perhaps climate change was indeed a zombie concept, and as a metaphor it has done its work. As a concept, it connects a large swathe of issues combined through the scientific narrative and perhaps there are other ways to make progress.

Kellie Payne is a PhD student in the Geography department at the Open University researching culture and climate change