one year ago this month

a whiteout on a glacier in Iceland

Hi All,

I’ve been working on various projects about weather and climate change; there seem to be a number of sub-plots, sub-projects, off-shoots, tangents, etc. etc. First, there’s a weblog which I hope will eventually provide a useful research archive of relevant contemporary artists’ projects. The blog lives at http://StrangeWeather.info.

Another recent project (2006) took the form of a group exhibition and was fairly whimsical: out of the blue.

I’ve been interested in the conflicted relationship between art and the documentary. At times they seem to be pitted against each other…

Currently I am working on a series of paintings. In brief, I pull images — news documentation of climate events and disasters — and re-enact them as paintings.

Here’s an introduction to a subset of these that focus on post-Katrina New Orleans, by way of an announcement and a few links :

I’m in Denver this week, where I’ve been snowed in and unable to leave the house for two days, after one of the worst blizzards on recent record in Colorado. Of course, we didn’t lose power, so we didn’t lose heat, light, or the [blessed] internet, and therefore the worst consequences were a little bit of cabin fever and a sort back from shoveling.

With plenty of time to read my news feeds, I’ve just learned of a new climate change indicator emerging in the bear family. Not arctic polar bears this time; rather, brown bears in the mountainous region of northern Spain, who have come out mid-winter to let us know that things aren’t the way they used to be. Whereas freezing temperatures used to keep them holed up all winter long storing energy and body mass, the weather’s now mild enough that food is available well into the winter, and hibernation is no longer a…bear necessity.

I chaired the science Working Group for an international conference of arctic indigenous peoples called Snowchange in August of last year (www.snowchange.org). There were several other working groups. Indigenous leaders from Greenland to Siberia gathered to share their stories of what they are seeing in changes to fish, wildlife and habitat. The list of observed changes grows longer each year:

–beaver are now in the arctic as the tree line moves north

–salmon are showing up with lesions and parasites in greater frequency

–weather is much more unpredictable, causing danger and death to hunters

–more and more salmon are appearing in the Chukchi Sea

–water levels in lakes and rivers are going down

–permafrost is melting

–reindeer are having difficulty accessing forage due to freeze-thaw-freeze cycles,

covering tundra with ice

–migratory birds are arriving earlier and leaving later

And does it matter if our food chain consumes 20% of our fossil fuel budget?

I am currently “digesting” Michael Pollan’s book “The Omnivore’s Dilemma”, Joe D’Aleo’s “Alternative view of climate change” slide deck from his presentation at the 7th Southern New England weather Conference on October 28th, 2006, and Al Gore’s “An Inconvenient Truth”. Talk about a lot of moving parts in many dimensions - with many apparent contradictions, ambiguities and uncertainties.

I have just started to blog on this over on Greater Democracy at [permalink]. Download D’Aleo’s slide decks [here].

D’Aleo presents a range of interesting data that does not appear to fit “conveniently” with the dominant global warming theories. He reports, for example, that Mt. Kilamanjoro is actually getting colder as the snows recede. So why are they receding? D’Aleo suggests it is because there is less snow fall to replace the snow that naturally evaporates. And why less snow? Because of variations in sun energy output and cyclical changes in sea conditions.