Tracking Climate Change

Tue, 06 Feb 2007 04:00:00

TRACKING CLIMATE CHANGE

Piseolak Alainga with his son, credit: CBC

Climate change is real, and we are the cause of it. That's the conclusion reached this past week in Paris, when a report by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change was released.

We often hear how the effects of climate change are seen most clearly in the Arctic. Today, Dick Gordon talks with Pitseolak Alainga. Pitseolak is an Inuit, an aboriginal Canadian living in Iqaluit on Frobisher Bay. He's also a Canadian Ranger, responsible for patrolling the terrain he grew up on.

Piseolak Alainga, credit: nunatsiag.com

Either for work or pleasure, Pitseolak often finds himself out on the land, on his snowmobile, or in a boat. His activities range from patrolling atop the bay on snowmobile to hunting polar bears. What he sees now is startling:

The seals, in the springtime, when they're out sun tanning, they like to lie on their backs more, and have their tummies showing to the sun. We have caught a few seals in the past where some seals have absolutely no hair on their tummy from sun tanning. We never would have seen that in the past.
- Pitseolak Alainga

Pitseolak traces his own sense of foreboding over the weather back to an incident which happened a little over 12 years ago. A walrus hunt went wrong, and 8 people drowned including his own father.

See photos of Pitseolak's hometown
Find out more about the Canadian Rangers

Music heard on the program: "Naked Spirit" by the artist Sainkho for the album Naked Spirit

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SPIRITUAL SEIZURES

Kathy Lopez

Kathy Lopez sent us an interesting message recently.

She wrote: "I have temporal lobe epilepsy. My seizures felt like moments of transcendence.... When I was diagnosed however, I accepted the medical model of my experience hook line and sinker and turned my back on other ways of defining my experiences. But ... does a medical model have to negate their truth as an authentic experience of God?"

Today, Dick talks to Kathy about what she describes as her "spiritual seizures," which started exactly sixteen years ago this month.

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YOUR STORY - TUCKER CRUM

Tucker Crumb shares the pivotal moment in her life. In 1977, Tucker worked in a lab. She spent a year conducting an experiment. On the last day of the experiment, she pulled out the test tube, and dropped it. The accident altered the course of her life.

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The Story from American Public Media - Tracking Climate Change

Tracking Climate Change

TRACKING CLIMATE CHANGE

SPIRITUAL SEIZURES

YOUR STORY - TUCKER CRUM