When it comes to climate change, there are more questions than there are answers. How do you explain the big-picture risks of subtle changes like rising sea levels, fluctuating crop yields, and shifts in ocean currents — and more importantly, how do you make people care? One solution: use photographs. But photographer Joshua Wolfe is convinced that, for the purpose of illustrating climate change, polar bears and penguins just won’t cut it.
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Wolfe and NASA climatologist Dr. Gavin Schmidt recently published a collection of scientific essays and photographs in a book called Climate Change: Picturing the Science. The aim is to shed light on a complex problem, and to make it both accessible and important to the public. It’s a compilation of scientific (but readable) essays, mostly by scientists from Columbia University’s Earth Institute. And it’s illustrated by not only photographs, but also diagrams and satellite images.