When the USA dumped Climate Change 11/08/16

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Wednesday Thoughts

"The problem of climate change involves a fundamental failure of markets: those who damage others by emitting greenhouse gases generally do not pay.
Climate change is a result of the greatest market failure the world has seen. The evidence on the seriousness of the risks from inaction or delayed action is now overwhelming. We risk damages on a scale larger than the two world wars of the last century. The problem is global and the response must be a collaboration on a global scale" - Nicholas Stern. Nov, 2007

A dark day in History

    The day after one of the most important days in history, our history. The day we most likely will look back at and wonder what the hell happened. There are many things that don't look great with the outcome of this election, but I am not gonna talk about that. I am going to talk about the consequences of choosing a president who don't believe in Climate Change. My research is based on climate change, my husbands research is based on climate change. The national science foundation (NSF) is a federal agency and funds many climate related projects, every year.

    Det blev ju en ganska mörk dag i historien efter valet. Vi kommer troligen se tillbaka på denna tiden och undra vad det egentligen var som hände. Det är väldigt många dåliga saker som resultatet av valet bar med sig, men jag kommer inte nämna något av de. Det jag vill ge större uppmärksamhet är konsekvenserna då ett land så stort som USA väljer en president som inte tror på klimatförändringar. Min forskning, min mans forskning och många andras forskning är faktiskt baserat på klimatförändringar på ett eller annat sätt. National Science Foundation (NSF) är ett regeringsorgan som städer mycket forskning inom klimatförändringar varje år. 

The result of this election might be the death of science and research as we see it today.  

Det är många som menar att detta är undergången av allt som innefattar forskning.

Obviously I am not the only scientist worried about the future of science in this country. 

Jag är ju förstås den enda som är orolig över detta.

    Here is a nice letter by a professor at the university of Columbia, worth a read in order to cheer up maybe? Click on the image below to get to the full letter on his website.

    Nedan är ett fint brev som en professor skickade ut till sina studenter efter valet, tycker det är viktigt nu att verkligen visa vad vi går för!

    Well, I think that is all. I'll share some pictures from the field below. What are your opinions about the outcome of this election when it comes to the environment? Are you worried?

    Det var nog allt, här kommer även några fina bilder från mitt fältarbete. Vad tycker ni om valet, alltså konsekvenserna för vår natur? Är du orolig?

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    And, if you want to know more about my research:

    Om du vill veta mer om min forskning:

Work and Research

Learn more about my research and what I do. Doktorera i USA.

Driving in Alaska

When I moved here I didn't even have a drivers license, so I didn't know how to drive. After a couple of years I started thinking more and more about learning how to drive, and W was about to move out of state, and living in a dry cabin without a drivers license can be....tricky. So, I went to the DMV, picked up one of their tiny books on rules etc, and went back after a few weeks and took the written test. Passed, and got the permit. Then I went driving with a friend of mine, in his truck, and compared to Sweden most cars here are automatic, so driving that truck was pretty easy. I practiced with him, maybe 3-5 times.

Then W was going to teach me how to drive his car, that I later bought when he moved. Well, his (now mine) is a manual, and I remember up at my summer house in northern Sweden when my dad tried to teach me, for fun, on one of the back roads how to drive....that just did not work for me. Driving with W didn't really work that great either, and I stalled out almost every time I got to a stop. Then W moved, and I asked another friend of mine to drive me to the driving school because I booked a session (which is way cheaper here compared to Sweden). The car I was driving there was an automatic, I don't even think they have manuals at the driving school. At the end of the session my teacher said: 

-well to bad you didn't sign up for the drivers test because I think you would have passed! 

He went on to his next customer and I tried to schedule a new appointment for the test. But that was tricky, my schedule didn't quite align and by the time we were almost done with everything the teacher came back and said that he had some extra time if I wanted to take test. So I did, and I passed and then I had a drivers license, and a manual car that I didn't quite know how to drive. 

I taught myself how to drive the manual by doing my errands very very early in the morning, or late in the evening, and today I have no issues driving any car!

When you go out in the field you drive a truck, so next step was getting used to drive a truck. Driving the field truck turned out to be really easy, and fun, also this truck is super old! Every time we go out in the field we also use ATVs to get around from one end of the watershed to another, and these can be tricky to drive in uneven terrain if you have a lot of stuff on them. 

However, today I had to go out into the field and the truck I was given is a real "monster" truck, a "spaceship" it's literally taller than me. It's scary to be near other cars in it, I mean in the parking lot, backing up and turning because it's hard to see where the rear end is. In the end though it's just another vehicle and once you get used to it, it's like riding a bike. 

Don't Stop the Science

This blogpost will be a little different, I want to share with you some brief fact McMurdo research station in Antarctica. This is a description from United states antarctic program:"McMurdo Station (77°51'S, 166°40'E), the main U.S. station in Antarctica, is a coastal station at the southern tip of Ross Island, about 3,864 km (2,415 miles) south of Christchurch, New Zealand, and 1,360 km (850 miles) north of the South Pole. The original station was built in 1955 to 1956 for the International Geophysical Year. Today's station is the primary logistics facility for supply of inland stations and remote field camps, and is also the waste management center for much of the U.S. Antarctic Program. Year-round and summer science projects are supported at McMurdo"

"Research is performed at and near McMurdo Station in aeronomy and astrophysics External U.S. government site, organisms and ecosystems External U.S. government site, earth sciences External U.S. government site, glaciology and glacial geology External U.S. government site, integrated system science External U.S. government site, ocean and atmospheric sciences External U.S. government site. Participants of the Antarctic Artists and Writers Program External U.S. government site also work at sites in the area."

Why am I writing about this? Because the government shutdown is now forcing McMurdo station to close, and send home researchers and technicians and loose millions of dollars in research costs, but more importantly loose extremely important research information.

Here is some more information from the sign the Congress: Shutdown Exemption for the United States Antarctic Program website: "The effects this shutdown will be the loss of continuity in projects that have been ongoing since the International Geophysical Year (IGY) some 50 years ago. Scientific data such as the Long-Term Ecological Research (LTER) which has been ongoing for 30 years will have a large data gap in at a crucial time in our understanding of climate change. A similar problem would be the abrupt end to 11 years of continuous data on the solar cycle that is used, for example, by the UC Boulder Lidar project. Since solar cycles are 11 years long, missing this last critical bit of data could jeopardize the multi-year investment. Also threatened is our understanding of rapidly changing ecosystems that is being generated by the study of Penguins in the Palmer Peninsula.

Research conduct in Antarctica is costly and can only be conducted during very specific windows of time. Even a brief shutdown could ruin the integrity of studies and translate to millions of dollars of research funds wasted. It’s incredibly costly to re-start studies and could take months or even years to begin again because of the climate. Not to mention that research conducted by other nations will also be affected by the closure of USAP facilities."

The guy who created this petition (Richard Jeong) is hoping for this: "Congress must pass a shutdown exemption, similar to US Military Pay and US Defense Contractors, for the USAP program or end the shutdown."

So if you think research in the Antarctic region is important please sign this petition in hope for something to change and allow the research to continue. Maybe it will work, maybe it wont, at least we can say we tried.

So please go to this website and sign the petition: sign the Congress: Shutdown Exemption for the United States Antarctic Program website

So with this I think it is appropriate with some pictures, not from Antarctica, but from Alaska.

Don't Stop the Science

Have a nice Saturday