The Wild Center and Climate Disruption
The Wild Center is deeply committed to understanding and helping all of us appreciate the gravity of current changes in the Earth’s climate, and our potential responses.
For many years, climate scientists have told us a story that is not easy to hear. There is a disruption taking place that will have a profound impact on the Adirondacks. The entire natural system that we work to describe is already undergoing changes.
As a science center we have an absolute charge to monitor and understand our subject matter. We believe that a wider understanding of climate disruption is the best way we can foster informed decisions that have the potential to reduce the scale of climate-related damage to the Adirondacks.
The World in Three Minutes
New imaging technology and new sensors have made possible this beautiful image of Earth, showing how carbon dioxide and carbon monoxide flow around the planet and shift as plants bloom in the spring in each hemisphere.
A Matter of Degrees
The Wild Center produced and distributed a film narrated by Sigourney Weaver looking at current and projected climate disruptions in relation to the last Ice Age. The movie shows how a few degrees of climate change will have massive impacts. The film, now with a classroom discussion guide and distributed to schools around New York State, is the winner of numerous national and international film prizes.
To order a free classroom version of the film, including the classroom guide, please email us here.
The film’s free distribution was made with generous seed support from the Betsy and Jesse Fink Foundation.
Adirondack Youth Climate Summit
Every fall The Wild Center organizes and hosts the Adirondack Youth Climate Summit (AYCS), a tremendous gathering of regional college and high school students who come to The Wild Center to develop energy strategies for their schools and universities. The summits have spawned major changes in area school operations.
Baseline Greenhouse Gas Inventory for the Adirondacks
Every plan to solve a problem starts with defining the problem. The Wild Center commissioned one of the largest regional carbon audits in the United States, covering the entire 10,000 square miles (26,000 square kilometers) of the Adirondack region. The numbers are startling, and show where solutions lie.
The Book on Adirondack Climate Disruption
The Wild Center provided seed funding support for a book documenting current and projected impacts of climate disruption for the Adirondack egion. The book, Climate Change in the Adirondacks – The Path to Sustainability, is authored by Jerry Jenkins with a forward by Bill McKibben, published in association with the Wildlife Conservation Society and is available online.
“If you care about the future of the Adirondacks, you must read this book.” Phillip Terrie