Climate Up Close visits Gettysburg

On Sunday, August 4, Gettysburg DFA’s community partner Green Gettysburg along with St. James Lutheran Church’s Creation Care Task Force sponsored a presentation by a team of four climate scientists from Climate Up Close who are traveling throughout Pennsylvania this summer talking with local communities about climate change.  The four presenters are graduate students and postgraduate fellows from Princeton, Harvard and Berkley.

 Nadir Jeevanjee studies the physics of clouds, radiation, and climate. He holds a Ph.D. in Physics from UC Berkeley, and is currently a Harry Hess Post-Doctoral Fellow in the Geosciences Department of Princeton University, where he is also affiliated with Princeton's Department of Atmospheric & Oceanic Sciences and the Geophysical Fluid Dynamics Laboratory.

 Jake Seeley is an Environmental Fellow at the Harvard University Center for the Environment, where he studies the climate of Earth and other planets. He earned his Ph.D. in Earth and Planetary Science from UC Berkeley, and holds a B.Sc. in Physics from Haverford College.

 Aaron Match is a Ph.D. student studying Atmospheric and Oceanic Sciences at Princeton University. Aaron studies the processes that lead to the observed winds and chemical distributions in Earth’s stratosphere, which is the layer of the atmosphere that contains the protective ozone layer. Aaron earned a B.Sc. in Atmospheric Science at Cornell University.

 Nathaniel Tarshish is a graduate student studying the physics of climate at UC Berkeley. Prior to graduate school, he earned a B.Sc. in Mathematical Physics from Brown University, and investigated ocean fluid dynamics as a researcher in Princeton University’s Department of Geosciences.

 From 9:30-10:30  the team presented on the current state of climate science in the sanctuary at St. James to an audience of about 130 church members and interested citizens.  Then, at 12:15 they took part in a pot-luck lunch at Unitarian Universalists of Gettysburg and led a discussion and question and answer session on a range of issues related to climate science. 

 The morning presentation focused on the physics of global warming and included several vivid, hands on demonstrations of how and why the planet is warming, reported in brief video clips but also available for inspection in the gathering area outside after the program. Sidestepping the politics of climate change—excerpt for a brief survey of the range of opinion on the issue at the beginning of their talk—the team was able hold the attention and interest of a fairly diverse crowd. Heads were nodding all round at what was clearly old news for some but brand new for others.

 It seemed particularly effective with this audience to include some examples of things about which we are not fully certain, such as the impact of climate change on hurricanes, where the “signals are full of noise” as one speaker put it, in order to establish credibility and to highlight the things about which we are nearly 100% certain such as sea level rise and likely increases in temperature extremes. 

 Overall, the team’s message was positive and fairly hopeful. In terms of climate change, we have a problem, and it’s serious, but we have the technical means to deal with it once we face that problem squarely. They were also modest about what they knew and what they did not. During the discussion at UUG, for example, they deferred several times to audience members’ knowhow, particularly with regard to no-till agriculture and other farming matters, which made a great hit with the crowd.

 Surprisingly, it turned out that Gettysburg was Climate Up Close’s first stop on their Pennsylvania tour. Our strong turn-out, I hope, got them off to a great start but also demonstrated the potential power of collaboration among churches and other organizations in the community. More information on Climate Up Close is available at https://www.climateupclose.org/

EnvironmentWilliam Lane