The primary public
concern regarding ice sheet retreat is sea level rise. Predictions of sea level
rise would be incredibly useful to communities on the coast so that they can
accommodate flooding and higher storm surges without catastrophic loss of life
and property. On May 12, 2014,
scientists reaffirmed that ice loss can be expected from a particularly
vulnerable region of West Antarctica, the Amundsen Sea sector. The timescale of the loss of the entirety of
these ice streams was predicted to be 200 to 1100 years. This range does not allow us to offer very
precise predictions, for the total sea level rise over this interval amounts to
1.2 m. But this is only a small portion
of the global ice volume. The entire
West Antarctic Ice Sheet is sensitive to climate change. Now we're talking about 4.6 m of sea level
rise.
And we haven't even touched Greenland, home to 7.2 m sea level rise, which has experienced increased melt particularly in the last decade.
We aren't in a position to say whether sea level rise is going to be catastrophic. The authors of the recent study emphasize that collapse of a few ice streams is inevitable, but the timescales could be sufficiently long for humans to adapt. This uncertainty has prompted two diametrically opposed responses. Time magazine communicates assurance that the timescales of ice loss “give us plenty of time to figure out a way to rapidly reduce carbon emissions and slow the pace of climate change, which in turn can give us more time to deal with sea level rise." David Grinspoon, Library of Congress, who was invited to reflect on the findings, is unsettled "I don’t have confidence in our ability to very precisely predict the responses of the Earth system, and that makes me more concerned about results like this, not less."
And we haven't even touched Greenland, home to 7.2 m sea level rise, which has experienced increased melt particularly in the last decade.
We aren't in a position to say whether sea level rise is going to be catastrophic. The authors of the recent study emphasize that collapse of a few ice streams is inevitable, but the timescales could be sufficiently long for humans to adapt. This uncertainty has prompted two diametrically opposed responses. Time magazine communicates assurance that the timescales of ice loss “give us plenty of time to figure out a way to rapidly reduce carbon emissions and slow the pace of climate change, which in turn can give us more time to deal with sea level rise." David Grinspoon, Library of Congress, who was invited to reflect on the findings, is unsettled "I don’t have confidence in our ability to very precisely predict the responses of the Earth system, and that makes me more concerned about results like this, not less."
One of the main
justifications for Antarctic research is that it will reduce uncertainty in predictions of response
to climate change. However, the science
is not there yet. It isn't yet
standard to include ice sheets as a
component of predictive climate models (Vizcaino, 2014). In light of this, we might instead consider
other ways in which Antarctica can serve as a resource. The Antarctic continent was set aside by the International Antarctic Treaty as a public good. The spirit of the treaty is one of a land for everyone, but it may resemble more closely a land for no one, "no man's land." More accurately, it is an immediate area of concern only for the very small number of people who live and work there (1000-5000 people). Besides that number, only the elite will have a firsthand experience of Antarctica, as tourism there is very expensive. It should not even be taken as given that Antarctica will be on the radar when sea level rise occurs. After a long history of not appearing on maps
of the globe, it is still the case that Antarctica holds a marginal place
on our mental geography.
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| Does it look to you like something's missing? |
In what way, then, can Antarctica
really be a thing of value for all? I'd
like to suggest tapping into our emotions. A good candidate for an environment as vast and foreign as Antarctica is awe. Awe is
prompted by a stimulus that challenges one's accustomed frame of reference in
some dimension (Keltner and Haidt, 2003).
There are several ways in which an encountering Antarctica can challenge
our frame of reference: through vastness in space, persistence in time, and complexity
of its features. How do we elicit experiences of awe? Both science and art have the tools to powerfully make the distant more immediate. By visualizations and analogy with more familiar landscapes but drawing on differences in scale, scientists make the hidden canyons and volcanos more accessible. The discovery of psycrophiles, microorganisms that love the cold, leads us to reconsider the meaning of "hostile" environments. Scientists are in the process of generating a narrative that makes vivid the rich geologic history and associated climate conditions that allow the ice sheet to exist today. Artists can mediate these awe-inspiring encounters by conveying the aesthetics of Antarctic forms.
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| David Ruth, NSF-sponsored artist who spent a season in Antarctica, and his work in glass |
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| Scientific figure of ice crystal size and orientation with depth |
Some scientific knowledge can be
assimilated into our existing schema, but scientific knowledge or aesthetic
encounters of the awe-inspiring sort require a different kind of cognitive
processing. The accommodation of these
experiences requires creating new schema or updating existing schema (Fieldler,
2001; Keltner and Haidt, 2003). Kim
Stanley Robinson, science-fiction author who was hosted by the NSF Polar
Program, expresses confidence that the public is able to think on century-scale
timelines. I agree but I think this
ability is not cognitively innate but must be acquired through experience. This cognitive hypothesis renders science as
a public good not because knowledge is inherently valuable or has utility, but
as an enabling condition on schema transformation.
In the contemporary moment, such
experiences of awe are not only good because they are pleasurable. Since awe brings about a change in schema to
accommodate the larger spatial scales and timescales that are operative in Antarctica*,
it can make us better equipped to assimilate information about environmental
change. Schemas with that
ability are needed for decision-making in a world that is sensitive to actions
on a variety of scales and is contingent on conditions of the deep past. According to Curt
Stager, in response to the recent findings,
"We’ve become a major force of nature in this new Anthropocene epoch;
politics and psychology have now become branches of ecology, and how we think,
feel, and act has consequences of geological scope that will echo deep into the
future."
*Antarctica is not the only place
we could purpose to fuel awe, but its unfamiliarity does not allow us to
repurpose our usual modes of dividing space and of tuning to recent change,
particularly the human imprint on the landscape.
A problem of representation
Neither art nor science is a
universal language. The communication
of awe-inspiring features of Antarctica will happen using the cultural
metaphors of the artists and scientists themselves. The use of "collapse" in reference
to the irreversible retreat of the West Antarctic ice streams prompted a
critical look at whether its meaning was relevantly similar in the scientific
community and the readership of the media reports (Andrew C. Revkin, BethanDavies). A similar analysis could be had
of the metaphor of the "weak underbelly" of the West Antarctic Ice
Sheet, originally used by Terry Hughes in his 1981 scientific publication and repeated in the recent news
coverage. Since frames of reference
differ across cultures, the features of Antarctica that will challenge them
will likely also differ. This locates
the problem not merely in the limited distribution of scientific discoveries in
Antarctica but the make-up of the community that has access to Antarctica. Representation in the sciences and arts in
Antarctica becomes a crucial issue because it determines which populations have
access to these powerful encounters with the continent.
Willers and Van Staden (1998, as cited in Carlson & Van Staden, 2006: 8) suggest that environmental concern develops from interactions between individual subjective experience, personal
factors, structures at the socio-level, and
temporal and spatial structures. We can't assume that national involvement in
Antarctica garners access for a diverse body of citizens. In the South African case, despite investment
in Antarctic research through public funds, the continent remains
"peripheral to the public imagination." In New Zealand, which has a high level of
involvement in Antarctica relative to their population size, two-thirds of the population say that Antarctica is important to them. The most common reason for those who say it
isn't important to them is that isn't relevant to their daily life (37%). In a survey at a West
coast U.S. university (Shiota et al., 2007), respondents reported that they
felt unaware of day-to-day concerns while describing awe-inspiring experiences
of natural beauty. This suggests that
communicating to inspire awe may be a way of cutting through the barrier of
every day concerns. Though any conflict
must still be settled at the decision-making stage, the new schema will allow
us to assess the broader set of information which can be assimilated using this
schema.
Representation in Antarctica is
limited to the signatories of the Antarctic Treaty. In order to increase access to Antarctica as
a cognitive resource, we ought to invite representatives from other populations
to experience Antarctica. As it stands,
participation is limited to those nations who have the resources to contribute
to research or who have a territorial interest there and those wealthy
individuals who can see the sights.
Until we diversify our access points to the continent, it cannot attain
the status of public good as the signatories intended.
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| Parties to the Antarctic Treaty. Brown has made a territorial claim and green reserves the right to do so. |
On Awe
Fiedler, K. 2001. “Affective states
trigger processes of assimilation and accommodation”. InTheories of mood and cognition: A user's guidebook, Edited by: Martin, L. L. and Clore, G. L. Mahwah, NJ:
Lawrence Erlbaum Associates, Inc.
Shiota, Michelle; Keltner, Dacher;
Mossman, Amanda (2007). "The nature of awe: Elicitors, appraisals, and
effects on self-concept". Cognition
and Emotion 21 (5):
944–963.doi:10.1080/02699930600923668
Keltner, D.; Haidt, J. (2003). Approaching awe, a moral, spiritual, and aesthetic
emotion. Cognition and Emotion (PDF) (17).
pp. 297–314.
