La mia partecipazione a ISEA 2020 pubblicata su Noema / My participation in ISEA 2020 published on Noema

Noema ha pubblicato il testo della mia partecipazione al video con le presentazioni di Nina Czegledy, Roberta Buiani, Ian Clothier ed Elena Giulia Rossi, che è stato mostrato nel panel online “The ocean that keeps us apart also joins us: charting knowledge and practice in the Anthropocene”, a ISEA 2020 “Why Sentience?” (Montreal, 14 Ottobre 2020), qui l’abstract del panel. Il panel, moderato da Pat Badani, ha discusso i temi affrontati nell’evento “Dal Mediterraneo al Pacifico. Dialoghi attraverso i mari”, tenutosi a Cervia nel luglio 2018 presso il Museo del Sale sull’impatto dei cambiamenti climatici sul livello del mare in occasione dell’apertura del progetto di ricerca triennale art*science – Art & Climate Change. Ho scritto dell’evento ISEA anche qui. Il testo è solo in inglese.

English

Noema has published the text of my participation in the video also featuring the presentations of Nina Czegledy, Roberta Buiani, Ian Clothier and Elena Giulia Rossi, that was performed in the online panel “The ocean that keeps us apart also joins us: charting knowledge and practice in the Anthropocene”, at ISEA 2020 “Why Sentience?” (Montreal, 14 October 2020), here the abstract of the panel. The panel, moderated by Pat Badani, debated the issues addressed in the event “From the Mediterranean to the Pacific. Dialogues through the seas”, held in Cervia in July 2018 at the Salt Museum on the impact of climate change on the sea level in occasion of the three-year research project art*science – Art & Climate Change opening. I wrote about the ISEA event also here.

Below an excerpt from the text published in Noema:

Climate is a complex system since it emerges as the concurrent action of quantities of elements. Its behavior is intrinsically difficult to model due to the interactions between its parts or between the system and its environment.

We have many indicators of a climate crisis. The average world temperature is rising (fig. 1). According to the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) within the next 12 years it is essential not to exceed an increase of 1.5 °C, considered by the scientists as the limit to avoid the threat of the tipping points for human and non-human systems [1].

In 2013, for the first time since the Pliocene, that is from 3 to 5 million years ago, the percentage of CO2 in the atmosphere has been exceeding 400 parts per million [2], and since 2014 it is consistently above this value (fig. 2).

We are quickly going back to the climate conditions of that world. In the Pliocene humans did not exist, Earth was about 3–4 °C warmer than today (the poles up to 10 °C more) and the sea level was 5 to 40 meters higher [3]. And recent research goes even backward: by 2025 the Earth would be likely to have even worse CO2 conditions [4].

Our project art*science – Art & Climate Change, started in 2018, has activated a three-year research program (2018-2021) [5], with conferences and exhibitions where art and science collaborate to imagine the future. Cultural institutions, scientists, artists, researchers are asked for focussing together on the environment transformations and on their geographical, ecological, economic and cultural consequences. Until now four events have been organized in Italian cities: in Cervia the topic was the sea level rising and impact; in Rome it was the relevance of data in climate study and research; in Urbino, at the Fine Arts Academy, along a week of conferences and workshops with the students, the topic was a possible role of the communities in the climate emergency; and in Bologna it was the role that fear can play in the climate crisis.

Environment, animal and vegetal life and humans activities are intimately interconnected, requiring the collaboration of scientific disciplines and humanities, including the knowledge base of indigenous and ethnic minorities. Therefore a transdisciplinary approach to overcome the distance that often exists among different disciplines is needed, a constructive synthesis that goes beyond a mere collaboration. The concept of “transdisciplinarity” was introduced by Jean Piaget in 1970, and recently its meaning has been discussed in the field of science by Bernard Choi and Anita Pak [6], who confronted it with concepts like “multidisciplinarity” and “interdisciplinarity”, whose meaning is often considered as analogue or interchangeable. The difference among these concepts is illustrated in fig. 3.

Notes

1) See: Ruth Lorenz, Zélie Stalhandske, Erich M. Fischer, “Detection of a Climate Change Signal in Extreme Heat, Heat Stress, and Cold in Europe From Observations”, Geophysical Research Letters, n. 14, vol. 46, 28/07/19, pp. 8363–8374, online https://doi.org/10.1029/2019GL082062 (Last accessed 01/07/20); Valerie Masson-Delmotte et al. (eds.), IPCC, 2018: Global Warming of 1.5 °C. An IPCC Special Report on the impacts of global warming of 1.5 °C above pre-industrial levels and related global greenhouse gas emission pathways, in the context of strengthening the global response to the threat of climate change, sustainable development, and efforts to eradicate poverty, cit. Also Richard Conniff, “The Last Resort”, Scientific American, cit.; William J. Ripple, et al., “World Scientists’ Warning of a Climate Emergency”, BioScience, 05/11/19, online https://doi.org/10.1093/biosci/biz088 (Last accessed 07/07/20). On the climate tipping points see Timothy M. Lenton et al., “Climate tipping points — too risky to bet against”, Nature, vol. 575, 28 November 2019. Also online, https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-019-03595-0?fbclid=IwAR0QkmPlYf0sjFDpSOgfCMytRbOWmw-0r5pL-KWd-W7AgIkEMmxTQA1CrGU (Last accessed 6/07/20).

2) See: National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA), “Global Monthly Mean CO2”, NOAA Earth System Research Laboratory, Global Monitoring Division, 5 November 2019, online https://www.esrl.noaa.gov/gmd/ccgg/trends/global.html#global (Last accessed 07/07/20). Rebecca Lindsey, “Climate Change: Atmospheric Carbon Dioxide”, NOAA Climate.gov, 19/09/19, online https://www.climate.gov/news-features/understanding-climate/climate-change-atmospheric-carbon-dioxide (Last accessed 17/07/20). Also the dedicated Website CO2.Earth, https://www.co2.earth (Last accessed 17/07/20).

3) NASA Climate Change, “Graphic: Carbon dioxide hits new high”, NASA Global Climate Change, online https://climate.nasa.gov/climate_resources/7/graphic-carbon-dioxide-hits-new-high/ (Last accessed 06/06/20).

4) Elwyn de la Vega et al., “Atmospheric co2 during the Mid-piacenzian Warm period and the M2 glaciation”, Scientific Reports, Vol. 10, n. 11002, 2020, also online https://www.nature.com/articles/s41598-020-67154-8 (Last access 19/07/20).

5) On the art*science – Art & Climate Change project see https://artscience.online (Last access 19/07/20).

6) Bernard C. K. Choi, Anita W.P. Pak, “Multidisciplinarity, interdisciplinarity and transdisciplinarity in health research, services, education and policy: 1. Definitions, objectives, and evidence of effectiveness.”, Clin Invest Med, n. 29 (6), 2006, pp. 351–364.