South Pole
I just found out I have been invited to the South Pole to present a customized live oral version of An Inconvenient Truth.
I met Al Gore almost one year ago, in January 2007, when I was trained by him to present his movie. He gave me all of the slides from the movie, several hundred more, and instructed me to help him educate people, change their behaviors, and help reduce the impacts and effects we are creating on our planet.
That meeting has led to an incredible and diverse set of circumstances. I have spoken in the U.N. General Assembly Room (twice) and to heads of international banks, spent an evening with Gwenyth Paltrow and Jade Jagger, made some new and unique friendships, and was invited to Egypt, New Zealand, Thailand, and Lincoln, Nebraska, among many other places*. My work with The Climate Project helped get me to Antarctica with ANDRILL ARISE, and now I’ve been invited to the South Pole.
I’m really excited to go to the Pole because it is the edge of the map. Being a computer scientist we are trained to look at “edge cases” as that is where the bugs most often occur. All sorts of strange things can happen when you approach an edge. For example, I can stand in all the different time zones at the same time. I can walk “around the Earth” so to speak too. Anyone can do that anywhere, but usually it’ll take a few years and a few pairs of shoes. I can also walk North for 10m, East for 10m, South for 10m, and end up right where I started! In EdGCM the two poles require a lot of special code and cases for the software to simulate climate physics in and across those grid boxes. I can do a hand-stand, have someone take a picture, rotate the picture 180 degrees, and it’ll look like I’m hanging off the bottom of the planet. Oh the possibilities! They are limitless.
* I’ve turned down many travel requests and instead recommended local speakers in order to reduce my travel carbon footprint (and due to time constraints and scheduling conflicts).
