A dozen years ago my wife and I took a trip to Patagonia, in southern Chile. We took a zodiac boat on Lago Grey where our hosts chipped ice off an iceberg, put it in a blender, mixed in other ingredients and served us the best pisco sour I’ve ever tasted. But they also told us how far the glacier had receded in the few years they’d worked there.
We’re just back from a trip to Alaska to see the northern lights with Special Interest Tours, led by Bob Berman, an astronomer familiar to listeners of this station. First, we traveled by railroad through Alaska’s Denali National Park and enjoyed its stunning beauty. We also gained a better appreciation of Amtrak’s smooth, fast ride through our own very beautiful Hudson Valley.
Then we traveled by bus to see the aurora. Our tour bus driver was a great story teller and Bob took us through the night sky and led us through the solar wind to the aurora. Wow.
Zero seemed warm up there! It takes lots of gear to stay outside in the Alaska cold to see the lights even though the natives don’t need what we packed and we felt like we’d overpacked.
Three nights were dedicated to giving us an opportunity to bathe in the aurora. On the first we all traveled by bus to an excellent place to observe. It was private property and the neighbors hadn’t been consulted so we got calls of what are you doing out there. But no real problem and those with cameras recorded wonderful patterns in the sky.
The second night was just too cloudy. On the third evening dedicated to the lights, we intended to use our cell phone cameras but our fingers didn’t work as well in the coooollld. We stayed outside, watched the aurora coalesce, enjoyed its green glow, stepped in to warm up and then went back out to soak up more of the lights, finally turning in around 2:30 a.m., though others stayed out another hour or so. The makeup of our own eyes partially determines what colors we see; most of us saw the green though cameras pick up more than human eyes. Our photos weren’t the equal of friends on the tour and we learned new respect for National Geographic photographers: they have the patience, persistence, money and equipment to come back repeatedly and chase the lights around the globe. This was a single shot for us but it was a marvelous adventure.
Still, the EPA tells us:
“Over the past 60 years, the average temperature across Alaska has increased by approximately 3°F… more than twice the warming seen in the rest of the United States.” Winter warming increased by an average 6°F. The extent of arctic sea ice has declined by more than half, a decline more than twice the size of Texas. And recent measurements show that sea ice is now half as thick as it was as recently as 1979.
These changes matter. Sea ice and glaciers exhaust heat from the earth like the radiators on the gas powered cars most of us still drive. When the radiator gets clogged, the engine melts – it doesn’t just get hotter, it melts and fuses so the car is completely without power. The fused block of steel has to be replaced in its entirety or redrilled.
So behind the beauty is a warning. The threat to the earth we share is catastrophic.
— If you think I’m on target, please pass it on. For the podcast, please click here. This commentary was scheduled for broadcast on WAMC Northeast Report, on February 28, 2023.
Constitutionalism and Democracy 