New and expanded "Climate Change in Our World" photography exhibition seen by 8000 in Belgium government climate science weekend; moves to Munich Botanical Garden for the winter.
A new version of Gary Braasch's color print exhibition "Climate Change in Our World," curated and mounted for display throughout Europe, opened 16 September at the Ecological Education Centre, Munich Germany. Curated and organized by Maiken Winter, CEO of the NGO WissenLeben, the exhibit of large prints is supported and funded by the U.S. Consulate General in Munich, KIS GmbH software, TUM University School of Education, Meteodata and the insurance company Gothaer.
The exhibition was next displayed at the opening ceremony of a Belgian government Climate Science Education centre and 50 year celebration of climate science in Brussels. More than 8000 people saw the show during the weekend opening October 10-14. Next show for these prints is an all-winter display inside the Munich Botanical Garden.
The exhibition includes 32 large photos from regions all over the world, expanding and updating from the selection displayed last at the Boston Museum of Science in 2013-14. Designed for public venues, the prints may also be shown at education centers and agencies on application to WissenLeben or this website.
Images and captions, and full credits are available here.
Climate and energy change in European mountains and cities -- sketches from World View of Global Warming's 10-year repeat visit.
Rephotography of glaciers in the Alps, first made for the project in 2001 and 2004, has been the focus of World View of Global Warming in August and September. Global warming has not paused, as a few noisy deniers would have you believe, and the great loss of ice in the Alps in only ten years is one visible proof. We photographed shrinking glaciers in Austria and Switzerland, including the Rhone Glacier and the ice landscape around the Matterhorn. Scientific study of climate changes and action to change the polluting energy sources causing global warming also is clearly visible across the European landscape.
Biennale of Architecture features our photo and information about the health threats from indoor biomass cookstoves in hundreds of millions of homes.
Our trip to Europe coincided with the use of one of our photographs in the Venice Biennale of Architecture (June to November 2014) in an exhibit focusing on the fireplace as an element of human habitation for 10s of thousands of years. With the image from Nepal by Joan Rothlein the curators of the exhibit make the point that despite great advances in home heating, 3 billion people still cook and eat over open, polluting biomass home fires. These fires cause illness and death, gathering fuel deforests fragile slopes, and the smoke carries soot to glaciers speeding their loss. Our research and photography on these subjects and more from Europe will be featured in coming weeks. Another view of the cookstove image and a solution via biogas is available here, image number 10.
Tropical forest trees and mountain wildflowers are in motion, glaciers are not just receding but completely disappearing, pushed by rapid climate change. World View of Global Warming's photo locations of 10 and 15 years ago show significant change seen in repeats made this summer.
In 1999, at the beginning of World View of Global Warming, photojournalist Gary Braasch made a repeat photo of Broggi Glacier in the Peruvian Andes, finding that the glacier had receded about a kilometer in sixty-six years. Fifteen years later, this July, Braasch again trekked up to 4600 m to photograph the Broggi Glacier – but now the glacier is completely gone. That glacier, which in the 1932 photo filled the valley at center-left of the ridge and in 1999 was a patch of ice on the headwall, has melted away -- nothing there but the rocky cirque and a set of tiny tarns. Glaciologists think hundreds of glaciers may have disappeared since the Little Ice Age, but it is rare to have a direct record of one completely gone. Glacier loss in the equatorial Andes is accelerating, cutting off up to sixty percent of the water flowing down valley according to scientists who were at work in Peru when Braasch was there – a loss to Peru’s rivers and the people, farms and hydroelectric uses below. Portfolio and story to come.
In Peru’s Amazon, trees are migrating upslope as temperature rises. Here in the upper Amazon Basin of Peru, lowlands stretch out from the tropical highlands of the Rio Cosnipata, in Manu National Park, a region where there are more species of trees on a hectare than there are in all of North America. A study here lead by Miles Silman and Kenneth Feeley shows some trees are moving upslope to cooler habitats at an average rate of 2.5 to 3.5 m per year -- seeds being successful upslope while old trees die out below – but the scientists have estimated the rate of change needed to match the rampant warming is about 6 meters a year. Work here measuring thousands of trees to gauge their growth and calculate their biomass contributed to a new inventory of carbon stored in Peru's ecosystems. This forest is one of the deepest reservoirs of sequestered carbon on our planet, giving new value to forest protection and international negotiation over Reducing Emissions from Deforestation and Forest Degradation (REDD). Full details and photos coming soon.
World View of Global Warming traveled widely this summer to revisit scenes of major images which made the project a success. There are many visible and significant changes in 10-15 years and less. We revisted alpine flower and ecosystem research on Shrankogel mountain, Austria, a key site in a world-wide network of mountain studies, photographed previously in 2004. This research project reported that regional warming of 2 degrees C is causing cold-adapted wildflowers and grasses to try to grow higher on the mountainsides, often not finding suitable habitat. Thus, alpine ecosystems are being disrupted as climate change intensifies. Life zones and ecological systems are being fragmented and rearranged as plants and animals try to adapt in individual ways to changes far faster than had been normal.
Other recent stories available on World View of Global Warming
A lone scientist reveals the meaning of a melting Arctic Ocean: “You don’t have to care about Arctic seabirds or pack ice,” George Divoky told World View of Global Warming, because the Arctic is not the only place where climate change is causing problems. “Species are struggling to deal with it,” he says, “and we are going to be in the same situation.” Please see story and portfolio here.
In the Pacific Northwest, the oyster industry, with an $84 million yearly value and 3,000 employees, is already seeing and reacting to the effects of unhealthy ocean water.
Story and photos here.
COPYRIGHT NOTICE:
Photography and text Copyright © 2005 - 2017 (and before) Gary Braasch All rights reserved. Use of photographs in any manner without permission is prohibited by US copyright law. Photography is available for license to publications and other uses. Please contact requestinformation@worldviewofglobalwarming.org. View more of Gary Braasch's photography here.