Going to Antarctica changed how I think about making art. Since going there six years ago I have listened to artists, scientists and others who have worked there, and in the Arctic, and concern myself now with communicating facts about climate change. This is not to say I don’t express feelings about it. Feelings are facts, whole being responses to our environment, expressed through mind and body. The questions I am finding important to ask are: How do we respond to the huge changes we have made to Earth since the industrial revolution, how can we know these responses, what forms can they take, and how can these be communicated?
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Dear Lisa my letter to the editor probably won’t be published so I’ll post it here – when writing it I moved from rant to wry:
Sir
Australians all must be warming to the rising level of humour that
Brumby and Rudd are introducing to climate change. If ‘clean
coal’ wasn’t the best joke, akin to ‘honest politician’, then turning
climate change into a lifestyle decision is not a bad effort. It would
be a treat to hear Brumby explain how putting a 2kW cap on systems
that can feed power into the grid is giving a leg-up to the emerging
renewable industry. Northcote Plaza has a north facing supermarket
roof on which it would be almost economic to install a 4 Megawatt
solar array, generating over 12 megawatts of electricity a day. This
would provide clean power to the plaza or about 750 houses. But as Al
Gore pointed out, it’s more convenient to keep subsidising the coal
industry. Coal’s paying for these comedians – isn’t it; or is the
biggest joke that, we will be paying?
Google peeks at a scary future
Sarah Wotherspoon
May 22, 2008 12:00am
YOU can search the internet for footy results, your name, restaurants, directions and the latest news and gossip – and now you can also look into the future.
The world’s most popular internet search engine, Google, yesterday added a climate change overlay to its Google Earth function, which shows how climate change could affect the planet over the next 100 years.
Using information from the British Met Office Hadley Centre and British Antarctic Survey, the animations illustrate how temperatures are forecast to change in different countries and how the Antarctic ice shelves have retreated during the past 50 years.
One overlay uses a changing colour scale to show how temperatures are likely to rise between now and 2100 under medium climate projections and includes personal stories from people in Africa, Asia and Central America who are tipped to be the worst affected by global warming.
Focusing Google Earth on Victoria shows a predicted temperature rise across the state of up to 5C and up to 8C in parts of Australia by 2099.
The worst possible effects are in the Arctic where by 2099 temperatures could increase by as much as 18C unless efforts are made to drastically reduce greenhouse gas emissions.
The program was launched by British Prime Minister Gordon Brown yesterday at the Google Zeitgeist conference.
Google technologist Ed Parsons said the project was a fantastic educational tool for Google users.
“Google Earth brings stories to life and opens up their reach to a limitless number of potential users,” he said.
UK Environment Secretary Hilary Benn said: “This project shows people the reality of climate change using estimates of both the change in the average temperature where they live, and the impact it will have on people’s lives all over the world.”
“By helping people to understand what climate change means for them and for the world we can mobilise the commitment we need to avoid the worst effects by taking action now.”
URL: http://www.news.com.au/heraldsun/story/0,21985,23738209-662,00.html