– A debate among scientists and its impact on us The epoch of humans (and their obvious intervention in the Earth system) In order to understand what the ‘Anthropocene’ means for us, we need to define first what it actually is. This poses a rather complex question in itself, as various disciplines have given the term rather different and alternative definitions. For instance, the public medi ...[Read More]
Put a Climate lab in school and make it better!
Put a Climate lab in school and make it better “The car will not go through this road”, the driver replied. Well, the path, which he was mentioning was a mudslide made up of clay soil, completely wet from the rain the previous day. We were traveling to a small village in Sundarban to establish a climate laboratory. The concrete road ends 2 kilometers before the schools, and then it was a mud bath! ...[Read More]
A glimpse into the INTIMATE’s summer school of 2022
The Earth’s climate has been rapidly changing in the last decades. That’s a fact! Virtually, every one of us has been experiencing those changes in person, but how do we know that Earth’s climate has changed in the past beyond the instrumental data of the last ~200 years? From ancient manuscripts to geologic records, there are many “archives” one might consider “reading” to infer or reconstruct pa ...[Read More]
Communicating climate change
Both the uncertainty inherent in scientific data, and the background and ethics of the communicators who report such data to any given audience, can sow doubt about the science of climate change. The perception of this duality is engrained in how the human mind works, whereby we tolerate lies but are always ready to condemn hypocrisy. We illustrate this through a personal experience that is connec ...[Read More]