An All-Too Convenient Truth

Photo by Kortnie Westfall Glenn Sheehan is the Director of the Barrow Arctic Science Consortium. He offered some words of caution on jumping to conclusions about climate change.

Arctic extremes aren't easy to explain

In a time where major media outlets are fixated on global warming, we sometimes read climate change into deverything we see—even when other explanations may apply.

Glen Sheehan, executive director of Barrow Arctic Research Consortium summed it up, "We know the climate is changing, but people are grasping at anything to illustrate it."

As director at the Barrow center, a non profit science education organization established with the cooperation with a local Native corporation, he is well positioned to assess climate changes. Journalists from all over the world have interviewed him.

He's sometimes frustrated by friends and colleagues he finds quoted in newspapers who speak on topics for which they lack expertise. He comes across geologists and oceanographers offering opinions on wildlife instead of hunters or biologist, who he describes as "those intimately familiar with the environment."

He points to several examples people frequently cite as proof of a changing climate—walruses washed up on shore and some starved wildlife—that could be described as natural phenomena. Biologists and others with a better grasp of long-term regional history can better explain the weather-driven variations in Barrow and if these happenings are simply rare events or implicit of a changing world, "These data points have no meaning all by themselves," he said.

This scientist's distaste for how media report the Arctic climate story was shared by many we encountered during our trip. Most people we approached on the streets of town were reluctant to talk; many seemed bored by topic. To them, our project was anything but a novelty, just more of the same. Barrow is used to it by now. Barrow is tired of it.

One woman I spoke to said a journalist from London visited Barrow for two months during the summer working on a similar story. "She followed me around with a voice recorder," the woman recalled, "even though I told her I did not want to talk to her."

Before our trip, we saw Barrow residents quoted in the New York Times. We found ourselves interviewing some of the same people. A few had been interviewed so many times their comments had a polished and rehearsed feel. They'd heard our questions before.

I saw how this story could be skewed by reliance on a handful of individual observers willing to open up to parachuting reporters. I also saw how easy it could be to oversimplify the story. And what of the missing voices from this story? Folks with valuable perspectives lacking from the mainstream coverage because they are not easy to find or are bored with talking about the subject.

Some of the rhetoric magnifies events that may not implicate rising temperatures.

It is not unheard of for ice to come in late, according to Sheehan, for wildlife to starve to death, even for polar bears to be found dead in the water. What is unusual is that some of these things are happening with increasing frequency.

Other signs Sheehan noted as extremely unusual include lightning storms last summer. He recalled some locals were so unfamiliar with such storms they watched while standing outside on metal grates. There are changes, but there are nature's surprises too—unrelated to warming temperatures.

The fruitfulness of his wife's summer garden—surpassing anything the household produced in the last 12 years also surprised him. To him, these are signs of climate change, but nothing is proven. As natural events in the North Slope reach extremes, the complex causes driving the striking, even startling, events aren't always obvious.