Event name: Trip to Climate and Society Related Galleries at the National Museum of Natural History

Event time and place: Washington DC, Dec.2 10:30 AM


Me as a cat emoji in the cellphone exhibit.
During my visit at the Museum of Natural History, I visited several exhibits examining the effects of technology on society, and the history of past global climate change and how it relates to today. The first exhibit I visited was the Cellphones: Unseen Connections exhibit. I was surprised at how well thought out the exhibit was, as I expected a torrent of anti-cellphone media, but the actual result was much more interesting. The least effective part, in my opinion, was attempting to show how many minerals went into the mining required to produce cellphones, as that argument could be replicated for many other systems, including a human body. The best of these was the rare-earth exhibits, showing both the brutality and opportunity of artisanal mining- while the work is backbreaking, it provides income that many in the locations it was performed would never have had access to. The exhibits showing the sheer scale of infrastructure required to support modern connected life, and the cutaways showing the intricate technology, I think were very effective- many people probably lack even the slightest clue as to how their phone works, it being a literal black box. These paved the way to what I think is the star of the show, the repair exhibit- showcasing that cellphone repair is much better for the environment than a full replacement, and actually inspiring an impactful and reasonable action that can help the environment. The social impact side with respect to how cellphones affected Native Americans was quite good, but the survey machine with an interface designed to look like texting was very unreliable and slow. Overall, the impact on telecommunications, and ability to both spread misinformation and provide information was well showcased.

The next exhibit I explored was the Ocean Hall. I watched two videos on the flatscreens. The first was “How many horseshoe crabs.” This video details the process of determining the spawning population of horseshoe crabs via measuring the number of them in a series of squares. It is easy to understand the environmental motivations, and the method to anyone with a basic knowledge of multiplication. The next video was titled “Hurricane Hunters.” This video describes the formation of hurricanes briefly, and the crew of NOAA aviators assigned to fly through the destructive storms and use an advanced set of sensors in order to gather valuable data that will be used to assist the accuracy of models of both the current hurricane and storms to come. This is very important for modeling and predicting the effect of climate change on the severity of hurricanes. The most interesting part, in my opinion, is the spherical globe screen in the adjacent room. It goes through a series of videos detailing changes in the Earth showing Earth in its natural form. It provides information about the formation of water and oceans, and then the emergence of life. It highlights the importance of the Earth's ocean, and the base microorganisms of the ocean - phytoplankton - and how they provide both food and half the Earth’s oxygen. It also provides information of how the oceans topography is shaped by the.movement of tectonic plates, and how the world worked in the past, as the supercontinent Pangea and the ocean Panthalassa. Today, plate tectonics governs events like volcano formation and earthquakes which lead to tsunamis. The next segment moves on to talk about the direction and speed of surface ocean currents. The currents are driven by wind. They also greatly influence our weather and navigation in the ocean. The circumpolar current keeps Antarctica isolated. Additionally, deep ocean currents combined with the others help drive heat, nutrients, and oxygen around the globe in a cyclical motion. The next section outlines how the ability of water to hold heat both gives the ocean power to make the planet habitable but also can form massive and devastating storms. El Niño and la Niña trigger shifts in weather patterns, shifting patterns of drought, and influences the creation of these storms. Another factor in storm intensity is the greenhouse effect. The greenhouse effect can be visualized via the color of phytoplankton. It explains how dead marine organisms are turned into carbon sinks and subsequently how it is released by modern society via the burning of fossil fuel. Ocean acidification is causing degradation of marine life and weather is becoming more extreme. Permafrost and coastal erosion cause damage to those in the arctic. However, we have faced threats like this before. We can combat these changes with environmentally conscious technologies and cooperation. The spherical video format is very useful, given it shows the Earth as it really is and does not lose any information to flattening effects. It also somehow feels more personal than watching on a flat screen, like you are truly viewing the home of humanity.

The next exhibit I visited was the Hall of Human Origins. While it did have mostly information pertaining to evolution, it also had an exhibit showing the impact of human life on Earth. The first I visited was the current world population meter, a constantly-increasing tally of the human population. It emphasizes how the creation of agriculture and later medicine has led to humans covering the planet. It uses this live counter and a map of lights of human civilization as seen from space and discusses the magnitudes of human changes and the costs and benefits. To further emphasize these scales, it uses human and animal population columns. Large glass pillars in the center of the room filled with plastic humans and animals respectively show the immense increase over a short period of time of the human population and domestic animal population. These both serve to show how the Industrial Revolution and development of antibiotics has led to the rapid expansion of our population. The next shows humanity’s current environmental challenge of greenhouse gasses and compares it to the massive geological timescale of natural climate events preceding the Industrial Revolution. A large graph of CO2 concentrations shows the standard fluctuations over 6 million years, comparing to events in human history and showcasing how the recent and dramatic spike is not part of a standard climatological cycle. While some may believe this exhibit fails to show the impact on Earth’s climate and environment, I disagree. I think it emphasizes humans as a part of the environment, which can lead to some compelling points about an anthropocentric view on climate change- nature will be fine, the fight against a changing climate is not one for the good of the planet, but for our own survival.

The final hall I visited was the Fossil Hall, and specifically the Deep Time exhibit. The first part I visited involved several dioramas of how the environment might have looked during various periods of time. The first one I visited was modeling the Archean-Devonian. This period shows a comprehensive picture of the beginnings of life. CO2 was probably relatively high given the small size of animals and plant life being in its early phases, meaning oxygen production probably hadn’t fully developed. I then went to see the pylon starring the Carboniferous Period. The massive plants and storage of CO2 in them meant that CO2 concentration would be decreasing across this period. It was definitely warmer, and vertebrates were starting to leave water. It could do a better job on showing scale of geologic time, and a pathway on the ground showing progression of said time would be a helpful addition. Another nearby exhibit showed the more direct analogue between past climate change and what is happening now. These exhibits detail mainly change over the quaternary period, and bones are easier to come across from this time. They use data like the size of animals and location of fossils to show adaptation. Changes in climate and events like fires can be found in the geologic record by microorganisms trapped in layers of sediment. These exhibits are important and effective in showing more comprehensive pictures of life in the more recent geologic past, and is effective in providing information that can lead to correlations on what.may happen to life because of climate change, but a more direct exhibit of these correlations wouod be nice to highlight the importance of studying the fossilized past.