earth 101: understanding climate change

8/16/2019 Earth 101: Understanding Climate Change

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Earth2016Understanding Climate Change


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Understanding Climate ChangePicturing what we know about the past,

the present and the futureThe purpose of the Earth101-project is to provide a venue wheresome of the world’s preeminent minds on climate change meetand engage with policy makers, academics, artists and lm-makers in a dynamic fashion, in order to address the manifoldproblems inherent in the public mediation of the environmentalcrisis. This is the greatest challenge the world is facing and therst step towards a rational human response is for mankind to

acknowledge and understand the problem.This is the focus of the third Earth101-conference in Reykjavik,May 26th and 27th 2016, where workshops, academic lecturesand open panels will be used to stimulate the public responseto the complex crisis of climate change.


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Projecting Climate ChangeWorkshop with academics, documentaryflmmakers and writers

Thursday May 26th 10.00–12.00Main Building – Aðalbygging A050University of Iceland

Guðni Elísson: “ Projecting Climate Change”

Stefan Rahmstorf: “The public climate debate – climate skepticism and denial ”

The public climate debate is very dierent from the kind ofdiscourse we are used to in the scientic community, andeven for many climate scientists it is hard to understand whatis going on. My talk will discuss issues such as the publicperception of climate science and climate change, the or-

ganization and funding of anti-science propaganda groups,common characteristics of science denialism, false mediabalance, as well as many real-life examples. It also discusseswhat we can do and names some helpful resources.

Michael E. Mann: “The Madhouse Eect: How ClimateChange Denial is Threatening our Planet, Destroying our

Politics, and Driving us Crazy ”

I oer a somewhat lighthearted take on a very serious issue—the threat of human-caused climate change and what to doabout it, based on my collaboration with Washington Post editorial cartoonist Tom Toles. We target the ongoing cam-paign to deny that threat through satire and where appro-priate, ridicule, built around Tom Toles’ famously insightful,edgy, and provocative climate-themed cartoons in the Wash- ington Post . Using Tom’s cartoons (existing ones and somenew ones exclusive to the book) as a template, we reviewthe scientic evidence of climate change, the reasons weshould care, and the often absurd eorts by special interestsand partisan political gures to confuse the public, attack the


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science and scientists, and deny that a problem even exists.Despite the monumental nature of the challenge this posesto human civilization, we nd a way to end on an upbeat andcautiously optimistic note.

A presentations by the Bifrost team: This is the Beginning

Bifrost – This is the Beginning is a multimodal platform forpublic education, societal engagement and research com-munication focused on climate change. The centerpieceof the Bifrost platform is a major public event in an urbancenter with a prominent artistic component, organized withvarious local partners, and reinforced through a well coor-dinated media campaign. Called a Bifrost action, this eventis intended to be reproducible in dierent urban settings onsubsequent occasions. The inaugural action of Bifrost--This is the Beginning, the next iteration in the Bifrost series, is be-ing planned for Stockholm in 2017, in close cooperation withpartners from civil society such as the Nobel Museum andthe Sigtuna Foundation. The action will include documentaryart installations based on research case studies, talks fromleading scientists, cultural gures and political leaders, paneldiscussions that encourage audience participation, and otherad hoc cultural and scientic activities, all carried out in afestival atmosphere over 2–3 days. A Bifrost action seeksto raise awareness about the realities and risks of climatechange while also encouraging citizens to appreciate theirown agency and capacity for positive societal and environ-mental change. In other words, while drawing attention tothe very real risks and consequences of climate change inour time, the Bifrost action aims to explore and underscore

how our present climate crisis may potentially catalyze con-structive change for human societies and the planet. Othercore elements of the Bifrost action are the project’s o-siteresources, including a web portal and a mobile app intendedto oer greater educational depth to the scientic/scholarlycase studies showcased in the site-specic action. On siteart works include exterior lm projections on urban struct-ures, and multi-screen/modular lm installations (indoor andoutdoor) that seek to frame stories and information for audi-

ences in new ways that may inspire deeper reection.


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ParticipantsMichael E. Mann is Distinguished Profes-sor of Atmospheric Science at Penn State

University and director of the Penn StateEarth System Science Center (ESSC).He received his Ph.D. in Geology & Geo-

physics from Yale University. His researchinvolves use of theoretical models andobservational data to better understandEarth’s climate system. He was a Lead

Author on the Observed Climate Variability and Change chapter of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate

Change (IPCC) Third Scientic Assessment Report in 2001 andhas received a number of honors including NOAA’s outstand-ing publication award in 2002, the Hans Oeschger Medal of theEuropean Geosciences Union in 2012 and the National Conser-vation Achievement Award for science by the National Wild-life Federation in 2013. He also contributed, with other IPCCauthors, to the award of the 2007 Nobel Peace Prize. He madeBloomberg News list of fty most inuential people in 2013.

Dr. Mann is author of more than 190 peer-reviewed publi-

cations and has published the books Dire Predictions: Un-derstanding Climate Change and The Hockey Stick and theClimate Wars: Dispatches from the Front Lines. He co-foundedthe award-winning science website RealClimate.org.

Stefan Rahmstorf obtained his PhD in oceanography at Victo-ria University of Wellington in 1990. He hasworked as a scientist at the New ZealandOceanographic Institute, at the Institute ofMarine Science in Kiel and since 1996 atthe Potsdam Institute for Climate ImpactResearch. His work focuses on the role ofthe oceans in climate change.

In 1999 Rahmstorf was awarded the $ 1million Centennial Fellowship Award of theUS-based James S. McDonnell found-

ation. Since 2000 he teaches Physics ofthe Oceans as a professor at Potsdam University. Rahmstorfserved from 2004–2013 in the German Advisory Council onGlobal Change (WBGU) and was one of the lead authors of the


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4th IPCC Assessment Report.Dr. Rahmstorf has published over 100 scientic papers (30

in leading journals such as Nature, Science and PNAS ) andco-authored four books. Available in English are Our Threat-ened Oceans (2009, with Katherine Richardson) and TheClimate Crisis (2010, with David Archer).

Bifrost Research-Arts Collaboration Bifrost is the name of a series of mediacollaborations bridging science and artundertaken by environmental humanitiesresearchers from the Nordic Network for

Interdisciplinary Environmental Studies(NIES) in partnership professional mediaartists. The Bifrost team includes StevenHartman (environmental humanitiesscholar and chair of NIES, Mid SwedenUniversity), Peter Norrman (independ-ent lmmaker and award-winning artist),

Anders Birgersson (independent jour-nalist and art director, multiple award-

winner of the Swedish Design Prize)and Þorvarður Árnason (environmentalhumanities scholar and photographer,University of Iceland). A number ofdocumentary installations merging scien-tic and artistic content, as well as othermedia outputs devoted to environmentaltopics, have been produced in the Bifrost series since 2012,with previous works exhibiting in Sweden, Norway, the USA,

Iceland, the UK, Barbuda and Antigua.

Ragnar ‘RAX’ Axelsson has been travel-ling to the Arctic for three decades, drawnby a deep respect and anity for thehunting communities of northern Green-land and Canada. His book publications,Faces of the North (2003), Last Days ofthe Arctic (2010) and Behind the Moun-tains (2013), collect the highlights from hisevocative photographic journey among


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the people of the North, from Canada and Greenland to North-ern Scandinavia and Siberia. For over a decade Axelssonhas documented the depletion of the ice caps of Iceland andGreenland and is currently working on the project The Arctic,uniting his signature narrative documentation of hunters, sh-ers and herders with photographs of the dramatic results ofclimatic change in the Arctic landscape.

Guðni Elísson is the founder of theEarth101 project. He is a Professor in thedepartment of Comparative Literature inthe Faculty of Icelandic and Compara-tive Cultural Studies at the University ofIceland. He has written extensively onthe climate change discourse in Icelandicmedia.

Benedikt Erlingsson is one of the mostsuccessful stage directors of the lastdecade in Iceland and has several times

been awarded for his work both as adirector, author and actor. As an actor hehas played number of roles on the stagesof the Icelandic theater. His rst featurelm Of Horses and Men received manyprizes. Among them Nordic Council FilmPrize 2014.

Anton Helgi Jónsson is a writer of ctionand poetry, living in Reykjavík. He haspublished several books of poetry but isnow working on a novel.

Ari Alexander Ergis Magnússon studiedat the Sorbonne University 1990–91 andearned a BFA in ne arts from Parsons

Paris School of Art and Design, 1991–96.Since then he has exhibited his paintings, installations, andvideo work in galleries in various European countries, in the


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United States, China, Argentina, Russiaand Siberia. Magnússon has collaboratedwith Erró, Björk, Sigur Rós, Ólafur Elías-son, Sigurdur Gudmundsson, Alain Rob-be Grillet, Albert Maysles, David Lynchand Yoko Ono. Among his documentariesare Home to Siberia (1993), ScreamingMasterpiece (2005), At the Edge of theWorld (2007) and Imagine Peace, Yok-oOno (2012).

Linda Mokdad is an Assistant Profes-sor of Film Studies and English at St.Olaf College. She is the co-editor, withCorey Creekmur, of The International FilmMusical. She is currently nishing a bookon post-9/11 American cinema, which isunder contract with Rutgers UniversityPress. In the summer of 2017 she will co-teach a course on Media and the Environ-ment in Iceland.

Susan Muska produces and directssocial-issue feature documentaries withGréta Olafsdottir under the umbrella oftheir company Bless Bless Productions,based in NYC and Reykjavik. Theirdocumentaries have won awards inter-nationally and have been nominated for

an Emmy Award for Excellence in Inves-tigative Journalism. Presently they areworking on a follow-up to their award-winning documentary The Brandon Teena Story , and are inthe research phase of an environmental documentary abouthuman-animal ecology in the far-northern hemisphere. Susanhas also worked since 1986 in Rwanda and Zambia on devel-oping community public health information about HIV, for NIH-funded projects. She teaches communications and media

training at the UN University Progammes for Gender Equality,and Land Restoration in Iceland, and a course in Art, Ecology& Animals at the University of Iceland. She has taught corecourses in Digital Narrative at Parsons in NYC.


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Björn Norðfjörð is a visiting AssociateProfessor at St. Olaf College wherehe teaches courses on literature andlm from around the world. Most of hisresearch and publications in Englishare devoted to Nordic cinema, while inIcelandic he has published extensively onUS and world cinema. In the summer of2017 he will co-teach a course on Mediaand the Environment in Iceland.

Anna Dís Ólafsdóttir is head of produc-tion / producer at Prolm specializing in

documentary production. Having workedin London for the BBC, Discovery Channeland Channel 4, Anna Dís has spent thelast 14 years producing various interna-tional documentaries for Prolm, most ofwhich have been distributed world-wide.

A. Gréta Ólafsdóttir is an independentdocumentary lmmaker who producesand directs feature documentaries withSusan Muska. They have produced,directed and edited the award-winninglms The Brandon Teena Story and Edie& Thea: A Very Long Engagement , amongothers. Their lm about women survivingethnic cleansing in Kosova, Women, the

Forgotten Face of War , has been shownboth in art museums and as part of campaigns by AmnestyInternational and Women in Black, to end violence againstwomen. Their lms have won best documentary and audi-ence awards at the Berlinale and Vancouver International,among others, and have been nominated for an Emmy Awardfor Excellence in Investigative Journalism, and GLAAD Mediaawards. They are presently developing an animal-themeddocumentary set in the circumpolar environment. Gréta

works on co-productions internationally, most recently on LaChana, the comeback story of a Roma amenco icon. Grétahas taught narrative lm and editing at Parson NYC, and hasdegrees in women’s studies and photography.


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Kjartan Már Ómarsson is a doctoralstudent in comparative literature, focus-ing on contemporary Icelandic cinemaand critical theory. He is a member of theEarth101 team.

Gunnlaugur Thor Palsson is an independ-ent TV and lm producer/director. Hestarted his career in documentaries andthen became the Head of RUV Sport’sProduction. Gunnlaugur is now nishing adocumentary on the Icelandic. The melt-ing and retreating of glaciers and a risingsea level threaten human habitation alongcoasts and lowlands worldwide. A carefulstudy of glaciers is therefore somethingthat is crucial for all mankind.

Jóhann Sigfússon founded Prolm in1990. He is a Director of Photography

and Director who has made over 80documentaries during the last 3 decades.He has been fortunate enough to receivemany accolades for his work including anEmmy nomination for best cinematogra-phy.

Magnús Örn Sigurðsson is a producer

of radio documentaries and a doctoralstudent at Rice University Department of Anthropology. He holds an M.A. in Envi-ronment and Natural Resources from theUniversity of Iceland with an emphasison the cultural representation of climatechange.

Alda Björk Valdimarsdóttir is an associateprofessor at the University of Iceland, incomparative literature. She has published


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books on contemporary Icelandic ction and is at the mo-ment working on a book on Jane Austen. She published herrst volume of poetry in 2015.

Sigurbjörg Þrastardóttir is an Icelandicpoet. Author of ten poetry collections,two novels and a couple of staged plays.Currently a columnist for the culturalradio program Víðsjá, formerly a jour-nalist for the Morgunblaðið newspaper.Sigurbjörg has co-operated with foreignphotographers and local musicians, andis a regular guest at international poetryfestivals.

Sjón is an Icelandic author. His novelThe Blue Fox was awarded the Nor-dic Council’s Literary Prize and thenovel From the Mouth of the Whale wasshortlisted for the IMPAC Dublin Liter-

ary Award and the Independent ForeignFiction Prize. Sjón’s latest novel Moon- stone – The Boy who never was wonevery major literary prize in Iceland. In2001 he was nominated for an Oscarfor his lyrics in the lm Dancer in the Dark. His latest musiccollaboration is neo-arctic an oratorio about climate changethat will be premiered in fall 2016 in Riga and Copenhagen.

Helga Ögmundardóttir is an assistantprofessor of anthropology at the Uni-versity of Iceland. She teaches anthro-pological theory and method, as well asenvironmental anthropology and doesresearch in the eld of environmentwith humans in it, climate change andits eects on society and culture, and

the human-nature nexus in general. Hermain interest now is the perception ofhuman future under climate change.


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The Past, the Future.How Fast, How Far? ThreatsFacing the Climate System

Friday May 27th 13.00–17.00Háskólatorg 105 (University of Iceland)

Guðni Elísson:“Earth2016”

Michael E. Mann:“Dire Predictions: Understanding Climate Change”

This lecture will begin with a review of the now-solid evidencefor a human inuence on the climate of recent decades. Suchevidence includes instrumental measurements available for thepast two centuries, paleoclimate observations spanning morethan a millennium, and comparisons of the predictions fromcomputer models with observed patterns of climate change.The lecture will then address future likely impacts of human-induced climate change including possible inuences on sealevel rise, severe weather, and water supply. The lecture willconclude with a discussion of solutions to the climate changeproblem.

Stefan Rahmstorf:“Rising Seas: How Fast, How Far?”

Sea-level rise is one of the inevitable results of global warming,

as warmer ocean waters expand and land ice is melting andadding water to the oceans. Observations show that the seasare indeed rising, and that the rise in the 20th Century is uniquein the context of the previous millennia. However, more dicultto answer is the question of how fast and how far sea level willrise in the future. The billion-dollar-question is: How stable arethe ice sheets on Greenland and Antarctica?

Stefan Rahmstorf:“Is the Gulf Stream System Slowing?”

A slowdown or even collapse of the Gulf Stream System as a


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result of global warming has long been a concern of climatescientists and has fuelled the imagination of Hollywood. Regu-lar direct observations of this giant ocean current system donot go back far enough to tell whether there is any long-termtrend. However, in recent years indirect evidence is mountingfor a remarkable slowdown over the 20th Century.

15 minutes break

Michael E. Mann:“The Hockey Stick and the Climate Wars: The Battle Con-

tinues”

A central gure in the controversy over human-caused cli-mate change has been “The Hockey Stick,” a simple, easy-to-understand graph my colleagues and I constructed to depictchanges in Earth’s temperature back to 1000 AD. The graphwas featured in the high-prole “Summary for Policy Makers”of the 2001 report of the Intergovernmental Panel on ClimateChange (IPCC), and it quickly became an icon in the debateover human-caused (“anthropogenic”) climate change. I tellthe ongoing story behind the Hockey Stick, using it as a vehicle

for exploring broader issues regarding the role of skepticism inscience, the uneasy relationship between science and politics,and the dangers that arise when special economic interestsand those who do their bidding attempt to skew the discourseover policy-relevant areas of science. In short, I attempt to usethe Hockey Stick to cut through the fog of disinformation thathas been generated by the campaign to deny the reality of cli-mate change. It is my intent, in so doing, to reveal the very realthreat to our future that lies behind it.

Michael E. Mann:“The Madhouse Eect: How Climate Change Denial is

Threatening our Planet, Destroying our Politics, and Driving

us Crazy”

I oer a somewhat lighthearted take on a very serious issue—the threat of human-caused climate change and what to doabout it, based on my collaboration with Washington Post edi-torial cartoonist Tom Toles. We target the ongoing campaign todeny that threat through satire and where appropriate, ridicule,built around Tom Toles’ famously insightful, edgy, and provoc-


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ative climate-themed cartoons in the Washington Post. UsingTom’s cartoons (existing ones and some new ones exclusive tothe book) as a template, we review the scientic evidence ofclimate change, the reasons we should care, and the often ab-surd eorts by special interests and partisan political gures to

confuse the public, attack the science and scientists, and denythat a problem even exists. Despite the monumental nature ofthe challenge this poses to human civilization, we nd a way toend on an upbeat and cautiously optimistic note.

Stefan Rahmstorf:“Extreme Weather: What Role Does Global Warming Play?”

Humans have had to cope with extreme weather eventsthroughout their history. However, the data show that thenumber of certain types of extreme events is on the rise inrecent decades. For some types of extremes, such as heatwaves, droughts and extreme rainfall events, this is an expect-ed outcome of global warming. Other consequences have sur-prised climate researchers, such as changes in the jet streamand planetary waves in the atmosphere that have been linkedto some unprecedented recent extreme events.


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earth 101: understanding climate change

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