2008 Woodie Awards
Global warming speaker melts down issue for audience in Fireside Room
Katherine J. White
Issue date: 10/10/07 Section: Campus
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The Earth is like a varnished basketball.
That is how scholar and writer Carl Sagan described the Earth and its atmosphere, in light of global warming and climate change, according to photographer Mark Abrahamson who spoke Sept. 27 in Bakersfield College's Fireside Room as part of BC's Eminent Speakers Program.
Abrahamson, a native of Washington state, presented a slide show of photographs from his Watershed Investigations series.
Abrahamson's photos went on display in BC's Wylie and May Louise Jones Gallery in the Grace Van Dyke Bird Library and featured North American watersheds, the devastations from human use of water and land, and the origins of human-induced carbon dioxide emissions.
Abrahamson, who has a degree in chemistry and was a dentist for 30 years, has taken photos related to water and land issues for 27 years.
Wearing well-worn blue jeans, cowboy boots, black shirt, glasses and an almost completely gray beard, Abrahamson briefly explained that watersheds are areas that drain to waterways, such as streams, lakes, wetlands, and oceans.
He then presented slides connected with the human-inflicted corruptions of waterways as well as landscapes caused by toxicities such as methane, nitrous oxide, and carbon dioxide.
Abrahamson showed the slide of his photo "Methane Ranch," featuring desiccated Montana ranchland.
He also showed his "Port Arthur, #44," taken in 2006, which featured the broiling, smoking mouths of factory stacks spewing out reams of carbon dioxide. Methane, carbon dioxide, along with nitrous oxide, are gases which seep into Earth's atmosphere, Abrahamson explained, and they cause the rise in Earth's temperature since they trap the heat of the sun.
With global warming, Abrahamson said, sea levels are on the rise, which means water expands with rising temperatures.
Rising Earth temperatures melt glaciers, and this brings more water to the world's oceans, resulting in flooding of littoral areas.
"The beaches in Puget Sound will be gone in 50-100 years," Abrahamson said.
That is how scholar and writer Carl Sagan described the Earth and its atmosphere, in light of global warming and climate change, according to photographer Mark Abrahamson who spoke Sept. 27 in Bakersfield College's Fireside Room as part of BC's Eminent Speakers Program.
Abrahamson, a native of Washington state, presented a slide show of photographs from his Watershed Investigations series.
Abrahamson's photos went on display in BC's Wylie and May Louise Jones Gallery in the Grace Van Dyke Bird Library and featured North American watersheds, the devastations from human use of water and land, and the origins of human-induced carbon dioxide emissions.
Abrahamson, who has a degree in chemistry and was a dentist for 30 years, has taken photos related to water and land issues for 27 years.
Wearing well-worn blue jeans, cowboy boots, black shirt, glasses and an almost completely gray beard, Abrahamson briefly explained that watersheds are areas that drain to waterways, such as streams, lakes, wetlands, and oceans.
He then presented slides connected with the human-inflicted corruptions of waterways as well as landscapes caused by toxicities such as methane, nitrous oxide, and carbon dioxide.
Abrahamson showed the slide of his photo "Methane Ranch," featuring desiccated Montana ranchland.
He also showed his "Port Arthur, #44," taken in 2006, which featured the broiling, smoking mouths of factory stacks spewing out reams of carbon dioxide. Methane, carbon dioxide, along with nitrous oxide, are gases which seep into Earth's atmosphere, Abrahamson explained, and they cause the rise in Earth's temperature since they trap the heat of the sun.
With global warming, Abrahamson said, sea levels are on the rise, which means water expands with rising temperatures.
Rising Earth temperatures melt glaciers, and this brings more water to the world's oceans, resulting in flooding of littoral areas.
"The beaches in Puget Sound will be gone in 50-100 years," Abrahamson said.
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