Forecasting

Interesting Worlds

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Laura Faye Tenenbaum

Laura Faye Tenenbaum

USA

Laura Faye Tenenbaum is an award-winning globally recognized innovator in science and climate communication. She is the former Senior Science Editor of NASA’s Global Climate Change website at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL) where she reported on sea level rise, ice mass loss, climate modeling, anthropogenic climate forcing and regional climate impacts. She was chosen to travel to Greenland multiple times with NASA suborbital campaigns to report on new research into the rate of ice mass loss around Greenland’s coastline being studied for the first time.

Tenenbaum has been an adjunct professor in the Physical Science Department at Glendale Community College, where she taught for 13 years. She also wrote, produced and edited an oceanography video series to accompany Pearson Higher Education’s Essentials of Oceanography textbook. She combines personality, emotionality and a sense of humor with scientific expertise and can translate complex technical scientific jargon into language the public can comprehend without compromising scientific accuracy or nuance. She works to broaden the scientific community by providing new, confrontational and often controversial tools and tips for science education to teachers, students and the public at large. Her goal is to foster a motivated and enthusiastic science literate society that will be ready to take on the huge environmental challenges we face.

Tenenbaum lived in Southeast Asia and travelled extensively, which informed, shaped and influenced her perspectives and worldview. She has a MS degree in Marine Science and taught SCUBA in Thailand, Sri Lanka and Hong Kong.

Globe

When I worked at NASA, I spent a large portion of my day looking at satellite images of Earth. The view from far above was often amazing and glorious and the expanded viewpoint gave me a unique window into places on our planet that I hadn’t been to, or to places that maybe I’ll never ever go. Looking at life from a distance put my everyday challenges and struggles into perspective. Seeing the globe from the perspective of space reminded me that all of us—you and I—we are together on this planet. And at same time, I can find meaning and inspiration from things that appear small or mundane. I discovered that I don’t need to travel all the way around the globe in order to get excited. I can be astounded by what’s here. The whole planet is my neighborhood and halfway around the world is still my home.

Rubber Duck

This rubber duck represents the truth about what is real and what is illusion. At first, we believe the rubber duck is a fake. It’s not an actual duck. It’s not even a true rubber duck; it’s made of plastic. It’s a fake plastic duck, right?

But here’s the illusion: That stupid plastic duck — that foolish, insignificant, meaningless toy — will remain relatively unchanged in Earth’s environment for a very long time, for something on the order of a million years. That duck will most likely outlast human civilization. That duck is real. It’s more real than you or I. It’s more real than all of us.

Colorful Shining Stone

When I was teaching oceanography, I would bring a large piece of basalt into the classroom for the students to see, feel and lift. Basalt is a type of rock, the material that makes up the bottom of the ocean, the sea floor. It’s black and mind-blowingly heavy. When I introduced the rock, students would stare at me like I was nuts. Who cares about a dumb rock? While they were still glazed over, I would talk about a rock collection I had when I was a little girl. I loved those rocks; they were so pretty and shiny and each one was different. At this point, one student would usually confess that they used to have a rock collection too. Then, sure enough, pretty much the entire class would remember that they collected rocks.

When we were children, we all liked rocks. Why? Because nature is freaking cool. Someday, materialism will lose its grip and people will wake up from the trance of busyness. At that point, we’ll have the opportunity to go back to that childlike sense of awe we felt about the natural world. We’ll reconnect and become engaged, moved and inspired by the millions of tiny, everyday aspects in the world around us.

Satellite

Right now, Earth-orbiting satellites observe increased carbon dioxide concentrations in Earth’s atmosphere. They observe higher temperatures on land and sea, increasingly powerful tropical cyclones, melting ice sheets and mountain glaciers as well as global sea level rise. After we stop burning fossil fuels, the satellites will still be there. They’ll record a decrease in carbon pollution. At last. But our oceans will hold onto the extra heat for a long time, for about a thousand years. This means those satellites will continue to measure the heat waves, the melting ice and the rising seas. They’ll silently watch as we try to adapt to our self-inflicted wounds.

Hamburger

Many people are already moving away from meat-heavy diets toward plant-based ones. This trend includes hamburgers made from artificial meat. As intensive animal agriculture continues to exact an ever-increasing burden on Earth’s environment, I expect this trend will expand further. On top of that, people will likely turn to unusual protein sources, such as bugs, meal worms and insects for their dietary needs. This may seem off-putting, but remember, the arthropod exoskeleton is high in protein and many of these nasty little critters are probably significantly healthier than beef.

I have friends who laud the paleo diet, as if the Paleolithic age was a romantic fantasy of spear hunting for wooly mammoths, when health was abundant and diseases rare. But 2.5 million years ago, people probably ate a lot more lice and grubs than we’d like to think about. Even now, insect body parts can be found in a variety of packaged foods such as cereal, coffee and chocolate. So you can probably count on a ground cricket burger coming soon to a diner near you. Bon appetit!

Central Territory: Soil