Soundprint_news_09-00049: Fire and Ice/Climate Change College

Piece Description

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Fire and Ice 
The Eskimos in Alaska have a legend that they call "The year of no summer". One year, summer never came, winter just continued. No one could fish or hunt. And nothing could grow. The story is a creation myth. A few survivors were left to form what is now the Kauwerak tribe. Scientists are now looking at the legend as another piece of evidence for what they believe was a major climate shift in the Northern Hemisphere. Producer Dan Grossman takes on a journey to discover the truth behind the legend.

This is part of our special international collaboration called Global Perspective: Nature in the Balance. Click on the following link to find out more.

Climate Change College 
It’s easy to grow numb reading about and listening to the news, day in and day out. There are so many problems, so much suffering, so many competing interests for our good will, let alone brain power. It’s simply not possible for an ordinary person to keep abreast of all these events, no matter how much we read, how hard we try. But there’s reading about something, and then there’s seeing it. Nothing like coming face to face with a problem to make it really hit home. That’s what happens in today’s program. Way up in Barrow, Alaska, the northernmost city in the U.S., a group of people are learning firsthand about climate change. They are face to face with it. Some of them live there. Some are only visiting, and hoping to take their newfound knowledge back to the countries from which they came. They see climate change as a big problem, but not an intractable one. Radio Deutsche-Welle Producer Irene Quaille visited their Climate Change College as part of Pole to Pole, our international media celebration of the International Polar Year, produced with support from the National Science Foundation.