Earlier this week I attended a talk by George Adamson of
Kings College London, titled “Gilbert Walker, the Moché and an angry sea god: the
two histories of El Niño”. For those of
you who weren’t there, he opened with the three different representations of El
Niño that simply come from searching in Google Images.
The first type is scientific images and
diagrams, such as can be seen in my previous post. The second type is photos showing
the shocking human and environmental impact, such as:
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| Source: Live Mint
“El Nino in 2009 turned India’s monsoon patchy, leading to
the worst drought in nearly four decades
and helping push global sugar prices
to their highest in nearly 30 years.”
|
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| Source: Armor Glass “Houston, June 2001 - 30,000 became homeless after the storm flooded over 70,000 houses and destroyed 2,744 homes.” These photos really hit home the devastation that El Niño brings to crops, homes, and more. I believe they have also contributed to developing a third kind of representation: |
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Source: Paul Duginski, Los Angeles Times, August 2015 |
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| Source: INKCINCT |
Being associated with powerful masculine destruction, El Niño has been personified, and characterised in the form of cartoons as shown above. They are in stark contrast to the real effects of El Niño and bring a sense of humour and light relief, to an otherwise destructive occurrence.
I found these different representations of El Niño
fascinating so wanted to share them with you – I hope you do also! A quote from
the talk by George Adamson which I think sums this up nicely; “El Niño is both
a force upon, and a product of society”.
Thanks for adding the link to this post in your comment on my blog, Alana. It is interesting the range to styles that can be employed for communicating the impacts of El Nino. The scientific diagrams, I imagine have quite a limited appeal, but using heart-breaking images or humorous cartoons, if the important issues are raised and different parts of society learn about how they may be impacted then all styles have some validity, Personifying climate phenomena, as the cartoons you added do, I think is an effective way to develop a narrative and help people identify with impacts.
ReplyDeleteYes, exactly Geoff! It's a clever tool which could perhaps be adopted more often in the sciences..?
ReplyDeleteI also think cartoons can be really effective - have you seen this?
ReplyDeletehttps://www.academia.edu/8177295/Earthworks_The_geopolitical_visions_of_climate_change_cartoons