Not the End of the World: Challenging Cultural Narratives About Climate Change

Dr. A. Scott Denning

Visiting Professor of Climate Science, Yale School of the Environment

People are storytellers and story-listeners, and the stories we tell one another about climate change have become a huge impediment to actually achieving sustainability. Framing climate stories about fear and blame, guilt and shame, or environmental benefits vs economic prosperity are dominant in many cultures yet have been pretty ineffective in motivating change on the scale that’s required to meet stated international policy goals.

My own experience in teaching undergrads about climate change for 20 years has been that the majority of my students have moved on from struggling with understanding mechanisms and impacts to fear, anger, and trauma. I will argue that prevailing cultural and academic narratives contribute to policy paralysis and are based on irrational and inaccurate perceptions. I will argue for a rational and resilient framing that can help students cope and activate rather than withdraw in despair.

Department of Earth Sciences

Fall 2024 Seminar Series

McHugh 302

Friday November 15, 2024

12:30PM

Yasar Dogancan - University of Florida

Paleozoic Polymetamorphism of the Western Blue Ridge

The tectonic configuration and evolu­tion of southern Appalachian orogenic epi­sodes are constrained, to a large extent, by knowledge of the timing and environment of pre- or syn-orogenic sediment deposi­tion along with their subsequent thermal and deformational histories. The orogenic events that gave rise to regional folding and Barrovian metamorphism of the Western Blue Ridge (WBR) terrane are a classic ex­ample. We present new U-Pb and 40Ar-39Ar results bearing on the timing of magma­tism and subsequent metamorphism of the Marble Hill Hornblende Schist (MHHS) of the WBR (southeastern USA). The schist is a key marker unit in the Murphy synclino­rium, a central structure in the tectonic con­figuration of the WBR. The MMHS origi­nated as basaltic volcanics overlying the Murphy Marble at the base of the Mineral Bluff Group. Ocean island basalt geochem­istry and a zircon U-Pb age of ca. 437 Ma for the MHHS is consistent with plume-related volcanism in a Silurian remnant ocean basin of the Iapetus Ocean. Hornblende 40Ar-39Ar and rutile U-Pb ages for the MHHS are ca. 380–340 Ma and ca. 320 Ma, respectively, and record subsequent amphibolite facies metamorphism during Devonian Acadian orogeny and the deformation through re­gional folding and thrusting during the Carboniferous Alleghanian orogeny. The new age constraints for the MHHS require that “isograds” mapped in the region of the Murphy Belt are actually polymetamor­phic mineral distributions that developed at least in part through post-Silurian tectonic events.