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.
During the lecture, Abrahamson showed the slide of his photograph, “Knik Glacier Meltdown” taken in 2006.
Because of the rise in temperature, said Abrahamson, the Pacific Northwest, will see more premature snow melting, an increase in rain on snow, and less summer stream flow. Emphasizing that the warming of the planet will often render the polarities of floods and droughts.
Abrahamson showed a slide of the Klamath River in Washington state, and remarked that the Klamath basin is drying up rapidly.
Abrahamson mentioned that the climate changes have adversely affected the coldwater fish such as salmon and that Pacific Northwest oyster beds are very delicate and easily damaged by temperature changes.
In fact, according to Abrahamson, the rise in temperature has ruined many oyster beds in the Pacific Northwest.
An avid fisherman and hunter, Abrahamson has seen the natural opulence of the Pacific Northwest decline over the decades, particularly Puget Sound.
“Life was rich there in the 50s,” Abrahamson said.
According to Abrahamson, because of carbon dioxide emissions from cars and other gases getting trapped in the Earth’s atmosphere, thus causing the rise in Earth’s temperature, there will be the repercussions of more intense hurricanes, along with the greater incidences of droughts and floods.
Along with the climate changes of increased droughts and floods because of carbon dioxide from cars and even the gases dispersed through cement production as well as methane and nitrous oxide dispersal, there has been higher amounts of diseases in areas that did not previously have them.
The hell that humanity has wreaked upon the landscape has also afflicted the physical status of humanity, according to Abrahamson.
For example, Abrahamson brought up the case of his own wife who suffers from Parkinson’s disease, which she got at age 30. There was a direct link between her getting the disease and her being exposed to a chemical used to perfect Washington state tulips, Abrahamson said.
During the lecture, he presented a slide of an aerial photo titled, “Cheese Steak,” taken in 1997, depicting a body of water with rusty buoys bobbing in jet-black oil spills and cheese-yellow water.
Another slide of an aerial photo showed a body of water, which had sulfuric acid dumped into it.
Continuing on with his previous food/”Cheese Steak” metaphor, Abrahamson said that the water looked like southern sweet tea filled with brown sugar.
Another slide of his showed an aerial view of a paper plant in Puget Sound.
Abrahamson said his wife saw it and commented that it looked like a microscope slide showing metastatic cancer, thus perhaps unconsciously linking the desecration of the environment with the desecration of the human form.
However, not all of Abrahamson’s slides showed horrific damage to landscapes and waterways. One slide was titled, “Wind Farm 2001” and showed lustrous-white wind towers with propellers set against a purple and green landscape.
“They were like elegant dancers,” Abrahamson said of the towers and their arm-like propellers.
During the question and answer portion of the lecture, Abrahamson stated that the photos he rendered into slides were taken while he was hanging on the outside of a helicopter or plane. He said that while some photographers mount cameras to the fuselage, he always chooses not to do that. He also conceded he does not use digital cameras.
After the lecture, BC photography student Shelly Mraz lamented the current selfishness of Americans.
“Americans are ignoring global warming,” she said. “We should be interested in our children and their futures.”
BC forestry student Patty Snyder agrees that something is amiss with the planet. However, she said that she was not prepared to give up certain conveniences.
“I’m not ready to give up my car,” she said.