This Seems Like Something Everyone Should Know If They’re In The Sciences And/or Interested In Reading

“ Volcan Osorno with Lago Llanquihue / Chile .”

From walking around Lake Louise, Alberta.

Aphid captured under a student microscope.

None Like It Hot

By Joylette Portlock

July. Long known across the U.S. for fireworks, barbecues, and a desire to stay cool any way we can. Whether it’s air conditioning, swimming pools, beaches or popsicles, the dog days of summer are often reminders that as humans, our comfort depends on an experienced ambient temperature roughly somewhere between 59 and 77 degrees (Fahrenheit).

But what if, instead of 77, it’s a full 40 degrees more: 117 degrees, like it was in California on July 6? Or 105, like it was in Japan last week? Then, it’s more than an issue of comfort; our lives depend on finding a way to stay cool, and in fact more than a hundred people have perished in heat-related deaths globally already this year.

Life in this new age, the Anthropocene, is marked by many things, including a human-caused increase in global heat, commonly referred to as global warming, or climate change. Risk from heat (or wildfires, or floods) is no longer something we have to rely on the overwhelmingly strong scientific consensus about global warming to tell us; every year, climate change impacts are becoming more and more obvious to everyone, whether you have a degree in climate science or not.

Weather and climate are different. Weather is what happens on a day-to-day basis. Climate is the range of weather that we expect and consider normal (i.e., summer is hot) – but normal is changing.

Photo: Graph showing the amount of CO2 in the atmosphere and human population from We Are Nature, on display until September 2018.

We’re now up to over 400 consecutive warmer-than-average months and counting. Carnegie Museum of Natural History’s collections, which span more than 140 years, can help show these shifts in many ways. One of the most important things we can do is to make connections and show the relevance between the basic scientific principles underlying natural phenomena and the evidence all around us; between what’s happening globally and what’s happening locally.

Photo: The growth of plants collected today versus 100 years ago in the same locations, shown in We Are Nature, corroborates the observation of increasingly earlier springtime by documenting earlier maturation of these species.

The globe’s increasing heat is a result of fossil fuel use, food production, and our land use practices. We need energy and food, of course; but it’s critical that we recognize that the systems we impact also impact us. It’s not just our actions, but our interactions with the world around us that are the story. To understand what’s happening and improve our interactions with nature, we have to look at the big picture, and work to meet our needs in ways that minimize disruption to the overall system.

As summer heat waves get longer, more numerous, and more intense (and it seems the whole world is on fire, with deadly fires everywhere from California to Greece to inside the Arctic Circle) one connection is obvious: our need to be cool.

Joylette Portlock, Ph.D., is associate director of science and research at Carnegie Museum of Natural History. She is also executive director of Communitopia, a nonprofit focused on climate change communication, and holds many other roles in the community.

Fellow Study Abroad Students

Most Common Profile

Fellow Students

My Background

Adjustments

The most common profile in study abroad is students from "elite colleges, white, female, major in arts/humanities, and have highly educated parents."  Let's see how that compares to me. I am from a small liberal arts school (does that count as elite?), I am white (check), male (nope), I have majors in biology (nope) and Spanish (check), and both of my parents completed high school but never went to college so they would not be considered highly educated.  

Now, compared to my fellow study abroad students, that profile fits a bit more. Girls out number guys by slightly more than 2 to 1, most of us are white, I think there are two science majors max (including myself), we have representatives from American University and other liberal arts schools, and I know at least some of them have parents that are medical doctors or have a doctorate in the arts or humanities. This is my first time outside the United States, but I know that at least five others have spent at least a few weeks outside of the U.S. at some point in their lives. So overall, everyone else is more well-traveled than me.

In general, I usually do not think that my background as a first generation college student affects my interactions with my peers. I think it's a little awkward when someone says that their father is a doctor or that their father has a Ph.D. in Philosophy, but usually, it's just someone that comes up in a casual conversation and they do not expect me to say what my parents do.

I think that I have learned to be independent and I usually do not rely on others when navigating the college system, and I think that is probably also true for learning how to adjust to life abroad. I just need some time and I make the adjustments on my own. I'm sure that the students that have been abroad may be able to adjust easier, but I don't really know if it is that different from my fellow study abroad students.

With Stephen Hawking’s passing, today is a sad day for science. But amongst all his praise and achievements in the fields of physics, for me personally his biggest achievement was making a grand, full life despite the terrible misfortune of being diagnosed with ALS. It would have been easy to become a recluse, embittered with the hand he’d been dealt, a brilliant misanthrope. But this was a man who maintained his sense of humor and refused to be mentally beaten. Three years ago, he told One Direction fans that the theory of alternate universes could provide a reality where Zayn Malik was still in the band. He conducted an interview with John Oliver where his factual, deadpan delivery was funnier than his interviewer, managing the cheekiest grins as he did so. And let us not forget that Stephen Hawking is the only person to have ever portrayed themselves in a Star Trek episode (Next Generation, “Descent, Part 1″), where he appeared alongside actors portraying Einstein and Sir Isaac Newton, whom he proceeded to defeat in poker.

Hawking’s observations on black hole radiation, string theory, alternate universes and artificial intelligence are things that will probably forever remain beyond most of us. But we could all learn a thing or two from his humanity.

A mariachi band playing at my host dad’s mom’s 86th birthday party.

My host dad’s mom’s 86th birthday cake.