Michael Morrison is fascinated with how our world works, the nature of awareness and perception, the experience of wonder and beauty, and the central role humanity now plays in Earth’s evolution—and the future of Civilization. With a scientific background, his passion lead him to earn the first degree in Earth System Science at the University of New Hampshire and serve as the Scientific Coordinator for the Greenland Ice Sheet Project Two (GISP2), which produced a detailed, 100,000 year history of climate—a history that revolutionized our understanding of climate. His research activities have taken him to the the South Pole, the Transantarctic Mountains, Mt. Erebus, Alaska, The Himalayas, and the highest point on the Greenland Ice Sheet. He is anticipating an ice coring expedition to the Andes in 2010.
Though he loves and values scientific discovery, he finds that the beliefs at the core of our behavior are intriguing and stubborn beasts, not always responsive to simple facts. He believes creative expression is central not only to meaning and joy in life, but to the trajectory Civilization will take moving forward from here. Following belief, creativity, circumstances, and the digital revolution in imaging, Michael now offers fine-art digital imaging and printing services in Santa Fe, New Mexico and is co-authoring a book of photographs and stories from research expeditions with Dr. Paul Mayewski, a world-class climate scientist and the Chief Scientist of GISP2.
“Graphs, tables, and didactic discourse are important, but are not fully able to reach our collective conscious on the level called for by our time in history. This is the domain of creativity—playful, beautiful, surprising, and innovative—it reaches deep into our psyches, dreams, and motivations. Into our beliefs …”
Read more here about his personal experiences, what he’s learned, and his thoughts on what we can do.

In the late 1980s, we were finding that understanding the behavior of large-scale Earth processes, such as climate and ecosystems, required many disciplines: geology, biology, oceanography, physics, astrophysics, chemistry, mathematics, and more. In response, the University of New Hampshire developed the “Earth System Sciences” degree, of which I was the first graduate. I was fascinated with these phenomena and, in October, 1988 found myself on the way to Antarctica as part of a project digging a 20-foot snowpit into the -60 °F ice sheet and collecting ultra-clean snow samples from every half-inch to evaluate whether the newly discovered ozone hole was new, or whether it had occurred before.
We found that the ozone hole was in fact a new occurrence—an important part of the evidence supporting the Montreal Protocols that have dramatically reduced atmospheric CFCs now known to be the cause of ozone loss. The ultraviolet light-ravaged planet we avoided because of these Protocols constantly reminds me of both our ability to disrupt—or to avoid disrupting—Earth systems critical to the survival of Civilization and of whole ecosystems.
Just prior to my departure for Antarctica, we learned that the most ambitious effort to recover a detailed climate history for the Northern Hemisphere, the Greenland Ice Sheet Project Two (GISP2), had been funded. The Chief Scientist of the project, Dr. Paul Mayewski, was also the leader of the ozone snowpit study and, while we dug and sampled at our camp a day’s sledge from the South Pole, we discussed this new effort.
GISP2 was to drill an ice core two miles long from the highest point on the Greenland Ice Sheet. When finished, we had produced a continuous, detailed, 100,000 year record of climate. To get there though, we first needed to coordinate the scientific activities of the more than twenty universities that would be involved, the drilling and logistics teams, and the hundred or so people who would be in the field each season. I took on the job of Scientific Coordinator, and after five years we had turned conventional climate wisdom upside down having discovered that many large shifts in climate occurred rapidly—sometimes in decades—rather than over thousands, or tens of thousands of years.
The GISP2 history has provided a rich trove of insight into many dimensions of climate. It has also shown the unequivocal impact of humanity’s industrial activities. From radioactivity, to ions such as sulfate and nitrate, to atmospheric gases like methane and carbon dioxide, to metals like lead, we found a profound human impact. Many of these components are tightly linked to climate and to disease. It had become overwhelmingly clear that the ozone-CFC story was just the tip of the iceberg.
Today, the role of atmospheric carbon dioxide from fossil fuel combustion in disrupting the relatively pleasant climate we have enjoyed for the last 10,000 years—and is the setting in which Civilization arose—is understood in great detail. We also understand that we should sound the highest, and most urgent, global level of alarm.
There is much to be done, much of which centers around energy—along with technology, one of the great sources of our wealth. It turns out that reducing the amount of energy needed to provide a given energy service: heat, light, transportation, and all the many things we use energy to do, costs far less than buying the energy we can save. For example, when used correctly, insulation can save hundreds of times its cost in energy while providing a more comfortable living or working space. The New England Energy Efficiency Partnership reported in 2005 that existing efficiency projects reduced the electricity necessary to provide energy services at a cost of 3.5¢ per kilowatt hour, about one-fifth the cost of buying the power.
Further, capturing and storing energy locally amounts to creating new wealth. As the costs of energy collection and storage rapidly decrease—in contrast to the costs of finding and obtaining fossil fuels, which are steadily and inexorably increasing—securing energy from the half kilowatt-hour or so of sunlight that is delivered to every square foot every day, and from the winds that are strong and steady at high altitudes, will bring us profits, security, and enhanced environmental quality.
The main obstacle is the work involved in figuring out how to do these things and then doing them. We are used to doing things as we have done them, and learning new ways is challenging—both in the effort required, and in overcoming our innate, biological resistance to change. But change is coming whether we like it or not: the only option is whether we have sway over the change and direct it in our favor, or whether we are caught trying to respond to a rapidly escalating series of crises and catastrophes.
We can do a lot on personal and professional levels by learning how to profit from increased energy efficiency and generating new wealth from local renewable energy supplies. One of the most important thing we can do is to support government officials at all levels in developing policies and regulations that will move us swiftly in this direction. There are many avenues for doing all these things, and I recommend identifying one’s particular skills and opportunities and beginning there.
Today, I own and run a digital imaging business. I am keenly interested in the role of art and creativity in conveying the profound risks—and the many profitable and attractive solutions—at hand. Belief, by nature, is a stubborn creature. While there is more to learn from advanced climate research, what we know now is far more than we need to know to know that we must act, and act now. Our greatest risk today is our collective human difficulty to grasp our circumstances.
Graphs, tables, and didactic discourse are important, but are not fully able to reach our collective conscious on the level called for by our time in history. This is the domain of creativity—playful, beautiful, surprising, and innovative—it can reach deep into our psyches, dreams, and motivations. Into our beliefs.
Find out more about Michael Morrison here.
Want to learn more? Michael recommends these online resources.
Joe Romm’s blog.
American Physical Society’s report on energy efficiency.
The Executive Summary of the Stearn Report
Jim Hansen’s June 2008 testimony to Congress:
The McKinsey Group’s report on the profitability of reducing carbon emissions.
Real Climate
Earth2Tech