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Global Climate change leading to new types of lifeways?

Jim Jaeger

Still reading Professor Christian's book This Fleeting World while seeing the wildfires on the news brings the idea of climate change to the forefront. One question Professor Christian offers is based on the idea that warmer, wetter, and more productive climates after the last ice age may explain why foragers came together as agricultural communities.

Might global climate change in the twenty-first century alter the nature of communities that we live in? Furthermore, could it even lead to the creation of entirely new types of lifeways akin to the changes of 11,000 years ago?  

As an aside, I visited my family in Wisconsin over the break.  Coming up from Tucson, I feel like the midwest never left the ice age as it is freezing there. 

Welcome back from the winter break everyone!

  • Hahahahah! Wisconsin can get pretty cold.

    A great place to experience climate polarity is Washington State. The Cascade Mountains divide the state so that the west side-- against the ocean, has a wet, humid, fairly mild climate. East of the mountains is semi-arid. The "leeward" side of the Rainshadow Effect is dry, which means for very hot summers and pretty cold winters (but still not as bad as Wisconsin!!).

    I can see Eastern Washington's adaption to a warming climate be crop changes. Different crops are already being grown compared to 30 years ago, and the trend seems to be a long-term acceptance that the shift will continue. The problem, however, will always be access to irrigation. Rivers are lower and warmer, and they must serve more consurmers than they once did.

  • These are some great questions, Jim!! Makes me think about the last unit of BHP. I think these questions could easily be explored in an activity that has students brainstorm ways ecosystems might adjust or adapt to the changes climate change has caused. (Ie. Rising sea levels, hotter/dry climates, increase in flooding, melting ice). 

  • in reply to Donnetta Elsasser

     I have extended family up that way and it sounds like an incredible place to live! In Arizina, we are facing a depletion of the Colorado River and some big changes will need to take place relatively soon to keep the area inhabitable.  I have not looked into the mater to see what the acceptance level of this reality is though. 

  • in reply to Adriane Musacchio

     I agree this would be a perfect activity for students to delve into. I wish I was teaching just this course as I always feel like jumping around causes me (and my students) to miss some of the earlier activities that would be building blocks to the larger activities.

  • in reply to Jim Jaeger

      

    You might be interested in a resource I recently posted in "The Climate Project".

     What Do You Know--Climate? 

    It has to do with rationing and sharing water from the Colorado River. It's a grab and go lesson I created. 

  • Digging into the archives today and this made me think of how climate is affecting us here in the mid-Hudson valley of New York. We grow a lot of apple, hay and corn. I think if you asked a farmer a few decades ago when they would do their first hay harvest, they would have said early June. Now we are getting one or 2 cuts in in May. If you asked a corn farmer when to sow the seeds, again I think it would be June. Now the expression "knee high by the 4th of July" needs to be changed to "taller than a silver spoon by the 6th of June". And the apple crop is a roller coaster. This year we had 2 nights of hard frost in April as the apple blossoms were peaking. Farmers had to activate their anti-frost fans and chew their fingernails to get through it.

    Maybe someone would say that means that climate change isn't happening. More likely is that climate change is just making things less predictable. You simply can't know how your crop is going to fare from one year to the next. Is it great that we can plant the corn earlier and mow the hay in May? Maybe. But it's also a sign that we should read and pay attention to.