I've never really been a skeptic of climate change. When I was 10 or so I started reading Omni magazine. Not only great science fiction, but also great articles in general. I remember reading a rather large article about the "greenhouse effect" after those initial climate change reports were written right around 1981. I think I was in the 8th grade at the time and the article left enough of an impact that I had quite a vivid nightmare. In the dream, all the industrial pollutants mixed and the miasma ate a hole into space releasing the atmosphere. It was one of those classic suffocation nightmares. A few years later when I was in high school I turned it into a short story called "The Balloon Theory" and it borrowed heavily from Kurt Vonnegut's style.
Without wading into the savage debate whether climate change is caused by man-made misadventure, orbital variance or sunspots, one thing is quite clear and that's the climate is changing. I've been around long enough to realize the number of "hottest month on record" headlines have been increasing and beyond being an anomaly and ocean dead zones aren't natural.
I tend to lean toward data as proof. Over the past 2000 years the environment was generally stable. Since the mid-point of the Medieval Warm Period around 1000 AD the global temperature trended downward until the Industrial Revolution. Since then it's been trending upward with increasing velocity. You can get unadulterated daily temperature data from the weather service and quite a few universities who host weather stations going back to the mid-1800's. Just download the data and plug it into Excel. Using formulas you can do simple monthly hi/low averages and graph the results. You'll notice an upward moving trend line. There's also some temperature data going a little back further. You can plug that in, too and the trend line remains sharply upward. It's that upward velocity that's unprecedented.
I love the visual presentation of a good graph. If done really well it presents a set of complex ideas clearly and efficiently. Edward Tufte thought an excellent graph would induce the viewer to think about the substance rather than the methodology, graphic design, technology of production or something else. I want my pieces to do the same even without graphs, but I'd like to sneak a few more into future pieces.
The piece below is called "you can never see it all at once" and is a nod to never being able to fathom a complex problem all at once. I left the title in lower case for two reasons; it looks cool for one and secondly we don't seem to be taking the topic of climate change seriously. The piece is set upon a mid-20th century topographic map of the Lexington, KY toned with a blue wash. The blue perhaps represents the rising seas. Over it I painted an approximation of a UN global temperature graph. The three vertical yellow bars are from photos in a Scientific American article about exploring the Sahara which more areas will be victim to desertification in the future. I ripped the pieces linearly and toned them with Indian Yellow and tried to lay them out in a pleasing arrangement. The piece is anchored by a Baltimore Oriole that was painted in acrylic on a 6 X 5 inch piece of watercolor paper secured by gel medium. As more habitat is lost we going to lose the diversity of more and more wildlife.
Incidentally, the Oriole is one bird I've kept records on when I see them arrive in the Spring and depart late Summer. The particular fellow in the painting I've named Bertram. He's returned to our property the past seven years and announces his return by pecking on our kitchen window reminding us it's time to put out the jelly feeders. His offspring is flourishing and I hope to see he and family next Spring.
