Arctic Warming
Before the 19th century, the balance between incoming energy from the sun and outgoing radiation from the earth kept the planet's average temperature relatively stable. Only natural processes, such as volcanic eruptions and variations in solar output, caused periods of relative warming and cooling. Today, however, thanks to human-driven activities such as the burning of fossil fuels, industrial processes, deforestation and agriculture, global carbon dioxide levels are rising rapidly, which has led to an average global temperature increase of approximately 1°C since 1900.
This number may seem small, but the Arctic region has actually warmed by about 2°C in this time. This disparity in warming between the poles and the tropics is a phenomenon known as polar amplification. In just the last 30 years, areas of Arctic sea ice larger than Norway, Sweden, and Denmark combined have melted away. In the documentary Under Thin Ice, diver and underwater explorer Jill Heinerth travels to the Arctic regions of Greenland and Northern Canada to document what is happening above and below this rapidly disappearing ice. “The Arctic is changing faster than anywhere else on the planet,” says Heinerth. “And it's really evident here.”
There is a scientific explanation for why this is occurring. Fresh snow is the brightest natural surface on earth, as it reflects nearly 85% of solar radiation that hits it. Oceans, on the other hand, are the darkest natural surface on earth, and they only reflect about 10% of sunlight, absorbing the remaining 90%. In the winter, the Arctic Ocean is covered in ice, acting as an insulating blanket for the ocean below. In the springtime, this ice melts and exposes the dark ocean underneath, which leads to warming of the region, and this warming melts even more ice, resulting in a positive feedback loop. This process of polar amplification is stronger in the Arctic than it is in Antarctica, and this is because the Arctic is primarily an ocean covered in sea ice, while Antarctica is an elevated landmass that is covered in thicker layers of ice and snow. In fact, the average temperature of Antarctica has not changed in the last several decades, despite an increase in the concentration of greenhouse gases in the atmosphere. With more of the Arctic Ocean becoming free of ice in the summer, more waves are being generated. In summer, this surge in wave action breaks up large ice floes into smaller pieces, which melts the ice more quickly. In the autumn, large storms in the open ocean create more waves that cause the Arctic waters to mix with warmer waters, which increases the heat absorbed in the summer, making ice formation more difficult again in the autumn. These increased temperatures have also spread over the land. The Arctic land that was once covered in snow during the summer has shrunk in size significantly, and this darker land absorbs more heat than before, further warming the Arctic and the rest of the planet.
However, this melted water does not simply remain on the surface to freeze again in the fall. Instead, it sinks down into the ice sheet through large holes called moulins, which lubricates the ice sheet and causes glaciers to move more rapidly and release more icebergs into the ocean. The level of melting of the Greenland ice sheet is a major indicator of potential sea level rise; if it completely melts, global sea levels could rise by as much as 6 metres, endangering coastal cities and small island nations while making dangerous weather events, such as floods and hurricanes, even more deadly.
The most troubling effect of this feedback loop is the release of methane into the atmosphere. The Arctic stores an enormous amount of carbon, mostly in the soil, which is permanently stored in perennially frozen land called permafrost. Humans release around 9 billion tonnes of carbon dioxide per year through industrial activities. It is estimated that an astounding 14,000 billion tonnes of carbon exist in permafrost soil alone, or the equivalent of 155 years' worth of fossil fuel combustion. As this permafrost melts, plants and animals that were frozen under the ice begin to decay, and if there is no restriction on oxygen, this releases mostly carbon dioxide. However, if the soil is waterlogged, fermentation occurs and this discharges a gas called methane. Although it only lingers in the atmosphere for a fraction of the time, methane traps heat in the atmosphere around 23 times more efficiently than carbon dioxide.
As the situation nears its tipping point, a global campaign is underway to actually remove carbon dioxide from the atmosphere manually, using techniques such as Direct Air Capture, a process of capturing carbon dioxide directly from the air surrounding us, as opposed to direct capture from point sources, such as factories, and sequestering this carbon directly or utilizing it for other purposes. This is what plants do naturally, but Direct Air Capture does it much more rapidly and requires less land space. In addition, it delivers the carbon dioxide in a pure, condensed form that can easily be stored in the ground or reused. The success of such efforts will likely spell the difference between a prosperous and sustainable future for mankind and a descent into bleak, climate-driven chaos.
The Science of “Sleeping on It”
A Each one of us has experienced a wide array of dreams, from the funny and romantic to the terrifying and bizarre. In dreams, bits of reality, imagination, and memory intermingle in nonlinear narratives that often make little sense upon awakening. Dreams seem to be related to a reshuffling of memories, and indeed, it is often said that studying before sleep is a good way to retain information. When people say they will “sleep on” a decision or problem, it is likely because they know they will awaken the next day with a clearer solution in mind, and scientific evidence has shown that this is in fact the case.
B To test whether or not sleep really does play a role in solving difficult problems, researchers at Northwestern University conducted a study in which they presented participants with a series of tricky, carefully designed puzzles, each of which participants had two minutes to figure out. During this time, a unique sound clip would play in the background, and a new sound clip would be played with each new puzzle. After this initial stage of the experiment, which always took place in the early evening, members of the study group were sent home with some specialized equipment that monitored their sleep and played some of the sound clips they heard while attempting the puzzles in the lab. The ensuing morning, they all returned to the lab to try to solve the puzzles that stumped them the previous night. Their success rate improved across the board, but the most marked improvement was in puzzles that were associated with sound clips they had heard while sleeping, solving 32% of the sleep-cued puzzles, compared to only 21% of the un-cued puzzles.
C A study on the benefits of napping, headed by Sara Mednick, assistant professor of psychiatry at the University of California San Diego, and Denise Cai, a graduate student, revealed that rapid eye movement (REM) sleep enhances creative problem solving. The findings of this study may have implications for how sleep, and REM sleep in particular, promotes the formation of associative networks. “For creative problems that you've already been working on, the passage of time is enough to find solutions. However, for new problems, only REM sleep enhances creativity.” Mednick believes that REM sleep does this because it stimulates associative networks, which allow the brain to make connections between unrelated concepts or ideas.
D Robert Stickgold, professor of psychiatry at Harvard Medical School, states that “when you get into bed, the brain does a triage and rifles through the events of the day and sees what's left unfinished.” The brain picks out emotions that occurred during or shortly after something happened, and uses these memory cues to indicate that the event was important and needs to be analyzed further. Stickgold believes that there are two key elements at play here, the first being that the prefrontal cortex shuts down. This region of the brain is in charge of executive decision-making, along with rational thinking and impulse control. With the prefrontal cortex shut down, there are no categories into which ideas can be sorted, allowing the brain to freely associate and process information in the background. The other factor at play is that when we enter REM sleep, the neuromodulators norepinephrine and serotonin are turned off. Norepinephrine enhances focus on immediate issues, and it is believed that the brain is biased into placing higher value on loose connections when serotonin is turned off. With both neurochemicals dormant, parts of ideas come together as one.
E Mark Beeman, a professor of psychology at Northwestern University, stated: “There was this idea that during sleep the brain is resting, but now we know there's a lot of important work being done,” following research by his team. While we sleep, our brains sort, consolidate, and store new information, and we “walk through” memories of recent events. This rehearsal appears to distinguish meaningful patterns from unhelpful “background noise.” Beeman believes that this can be useful in problem-solving and provides an explanation as to why playing sound clips associated with certain puzzles facilitates this type of rehearsal. “This research adds to a growing list of literature suggesting that sleep can reorganise information to facilitate problem-solving,” says Kristin Sanders, first author of the study and a doctoral student at Northwestern University. “It also suggests that a replay of the problem memory during sleep is critical for this reorganisation.” Sanders also goes on to explain that “problem solving is part of everyone's daily life; while we use tricky puzzles in our study, the underlying cognitive processes could relate to solving any problem on which someone is stuck or blocked by an incorrect approach.” However, she warns that this can only be applied to situations in which one already has some background knowledge or information. For example, this effect would not help someone find a cure for a rare disease if they are not already working on this problem.
F Some researchers also believe that dreams have an evolutionary basis, and that our ability to dream may have indeed evolved from the need to solve problems. “Dreams are thinking or problem-solving in a different biochemical state from that of waking,” writes the Harvard psychologist Deirdre Barrett in The New Science of Dreaming. According to Barrett, all functions of the brain must have some practical usage, and are rooted in evolution and natural selection, which may explain why the brain utilizes dreams to help break down, analyze, and solve problems.
G Before we fall asleep, the brain wants to acknowledge a thought and move on to the next one, but in reality, we tend to latch onto one thought and ruminate on it, and then feelings of regret start to set in, triggering an adrenaline rush, according to Stickgold. It is helpful to acknowledge a thought and let it go by without passing judgment, similar to the calming methods used in meditation. However, if a particular thought won't go away, there are calming steps that can be taken. Stickgold states that “there is nothing wrong with checking,” and for issues that cannot be resolved right away, it is acceptable to keep a notepad and pencil nearby to write down a reminder for the following day. Getting up in the middle of the night to work on a problem, however, is not particularly helpful, as it will just leave you exhausted in the morning without having gotten any closer to an answer. The best solution is in fact to just let the ideas pass through your mind unimpeded.
Children’s literature studies today
Who studies children's literature and what is it that they study? The answers to this question are complex and messy, because of the many confounding factors which exist in this field.
Firstly, unlike literature for adults, children's literature is not generally written by its own readers. Adults write for children, and thus adult perceptions of what children are and of what they could and should be become woven into the literature.
Furthermore, some of those who study children's literature (and those who write certain kinds of children's books) are less interested in literary values than in the kinds of lessons it can teach—either in terms of creating better children or in terms of serving a particular curriculum. The issue of how a teacher can use a children's book is often contentious, but even outside the classroom, much material for children is still didactic.
Thirdly, while almost all literature is currently promoted within a strong commercial matrix, children's literature is often especially targeted for marketing initiatives. This fact means that readers are often recruited with a message that is negligibly literary and significantly oriented to ideas of consumption. Daniel Hade (2002) has raised useful questions about whether children's experience of reading is altered when their books are part of a larger marketing framework involving the movie, the game, and the toy of a popular children's book. How children perceive and respond to their stories in this new context is an important question.
It is also important to note that texts in an ever-increasing range of new media compete with print media for the attention of the child reader, and create definitional issues for scholars. Does the term 'literature' exclusively imply a verbal text? If not, where are the limits? Could a literary computer game ever be considered a work of literature? If not, what kind of attention should be paid to it, since children themselves undoubtedly perceive their print literature as part of a broader continuum? The internet provides one forum through which children now communicate with each other. (In 2003, the internet search engine Google listed 7,920,000 sites relating to the Harry Potter novels; even allowing for duplication and dead ends, that is a number with revolutionary implications.)
Finally, in the context of the higher education institutions where the formal study of children's literature is often located, at least three disciplinary frameworks (English, education, and librarianship) fragment the focus of scholarly study of children's literature.
How is the value of the imaginative encounter with the work of literature sustained and honored among such a welter of conflicting interests? One route through this maze is to ask the child readers for help. As David Lewis (2001) has perceptively noted, what children think of reading is not usually the same as what adults think, whether teachers or parents. As Lewis points out, children “sometimes see more and they often see differently”. If those who study reading can explore children's perceptions as well as those of adults, their understanding of the nature of reading will be enhanced.
Lewis makes a further valid point when he adds that exploring children's perceptions is usually justified for educational reasons: “It is true that a better understanding of how children read and how they learn to read, is a prerequisite to improved approaches to teaching.” However, it can also be argued, as Lewis rightly does, that when children's responses to literature are accessed and interpreted, they frequently lead to an understanding of how picture books appeal to children.
Young people's accounts of what and how they read also enable a more sophisticated description of many of the complex processes involved in reading. All descriptions of reading run the risk of solipsism: i.e. this is how I read so this is what reading is for everyone. Asking other readers how they read, however, reduces that risk. For example, if I am a strong visualizer as I read, I may consider that visualization is a key component of successful reading and I may judge books by their capacity to evoke a vivid visual response. Other readers, however, may help me to realize that not everyone reads with mental pictures. Some readers respond to the patterns of the words, “hearing” them inaudibly like a subliminal radio program. Others respond to the patterns of feelings in the story, responding with an emotional connection. Talking to competent readers, of all ages, provides a better understanding of reading experiences.
Children's insights are even more important when it comes to understanding the significance of print literature as one aspect of literary culture. Too often adults assume that reading any book at all is a more worthwhile experience than playing a digital game of any kind. A humbler approach would include asking why the game appeals to the player. Many adults will probably never develop the automatic skills to process a game as readily as they can read a book. This does not indicate that a book is better, but that a particular set of skills is absent. Non-players must acknowledge that some fictional universes are thus closed to them, and a logical response would be to find someone who can guide them to the pleasures and challenges of the gaming world. Games need to be judged individually just as books do, and any evaluative framework needs to take this into account.