When I sit down to write a blog post, I usually do a little Google search to see what’s new with climate change in the media. Sometimes, it gives me really good ideas, leading me on a research adventure that deepens my knowledge and gets me excited.

Then there are times when I can barely keep a level head, ranting and swearing at whichever of my friends are near me about how frustrated I am that politicians dismiss humans’ involvement in climate change, all the misleading information scattered across the internet like chickenpox on skin, the utter lack of action, whatever.

I’m human.

I’m a human who loves nature. I love being outside and surrounded by trees. There is something deep inside me that itches and urges to drop everything and climb a tree, get lost in the woods, or follow a butterfly from flower to flower.

This love of nature has percolated into nearly all aspects of my life and has even turned into my career path and identity as an environmental writer. My passion fills my body from corner to corner. My favorite band puts this feeling into words for me:

My blood it boils with passions because they overflow sometimes.   Umphrey’s McGee, “All in Time”

I am filled with this frustration because I love and care about nature, wilderness, the earth a lot.

It’s disheartening for me, and the hordes of other environmentalists, to see so much disrespect for the earth when we need it so much.

Here’s an example of this disheartened anger, and passionately boiling blood in my own life right now.

The IPCC just released a new synthesis report about the latest updates in climate change science, and people are annoyed because they feel like the reports year after year are redundant. “We get it,” they say.

Now zoom into my room where I’m waving my hands at my computer screen, thinking about how the IPCC wouldn’t need to release more of the same reports if people (collective humanity) did something about what they are saying.

When I re-looked at this post, I wasn’t sure if I should provide an example since it defeats the purpose of me shaking of my negative thoughts, calming my boiling blood, but I think it’s important to connect my snappier tones to the fact I am passionate–not just a grouchy grump.

It started with trees. Their splintering deaths for our endless needs disturbed and unsettled something inside of me. I chanted reduce, reuse, recycle. Reduce. Reuse. Recycle. But no one seemed to care. Then, it was the air. I saw stifling hazes draped across cityscapes, and swelling plumes of pollution that streaked the sky. I’d look to my feet, imagining I could see the pores of rocks deep beneath, see the water and toxins slowly creep.

One day, I found a thread, a thread that trailed through trees and down to their roots and flapped in the air: climate change. It didn’t seem so big with only a glimpse. I followed the thread, feeling it must end around the next bend.

But the thread is heaping in my hands, and my eyes trace the ground like a hunter with his hound. The more thread I see and hold, the more I know. I stop my hunt, my ceaseless search, and look up and around me.

The thread is everywhere.

It’s looped and knotted around all the people I see. It is wound around the trees, tied to snowflakes and flames, lacing through the news, and tethered to the shoes of politicians that shake it off then stumble on it again. It coils around me and snares my mind as I attempt to unwind this thread that holds everything together. I gather people around me, pointing out the thread that has caught on their hair, trailing behind their cars, stuck to their shirt. Look, I tell them. Look.

Sometimes, my awareness of the world around me is heightened. I try to focus on all the things that surround me as I walk to class, sit on my porch or in my room with the window wide open.

I notice if the ground is hard or soft, if my step is jarring or sliding in slick mud. Wiggling my toes as they press against the damped fabric that dewdrops clung to.

I look up. The tips of trees are burning red and orange, and the leaves that have fallen are consumed by brittle brown. I notice if the sky is a rippling sheet, gray and hanging low or if the clouds are stretched and think, hardly there against the blue sky.

I hear branches and leaves shivering as critters scurry unseen. I focus on the calls of birds, twiddling, tweeting, cooing as they float in the air with gusts of wind, lifting up and fading quietly.

I remember one day last year when I had totally forgotten how to be grounded, aware. I was in the quad between classes, crying and distraught for reasons I can’t recall. It had felt like everything was just crumbling around me. I couldn’t remember how to breathe or stay calm.

I stood under this stand of pine trees that are an island in the sea of green grass and rogue coniferous trees. My tears had subsided and I gazed across the quad unseeingly.

Something moving caught my eye. A huge hawk alighted onto a branch in the big oak tree next to Albion College’s library. I don’t think I made a conscious choice, but I started walking towards it with phone in hand. B-lining across the quad, cutting in front of the students who stuck to sidewalks like glue.

I glanced around but no one else seemed to notice the bird. I walked softly as I got closer and stood underneath the branch where the hawk rested. My first instinct was to take a picture with my phone, capture the moment forever, but as soon as I opened up the camera, my phone died.

“Hi.” I whispered to it. I felt silly, but then its big yellow eyes flicked down to look at me. Its feathers were brown and gold, speckled with white and sepia; they were fluffed up and relaxed.

I stayed under the tree with the hawk for a while. It had turned it’s eyes to something farther away, but didn’t fly away either. As I walked to class, I kept glancing back—it was still there in the knobby branches.

I stood with my geology regional field class on a dark basaltic coast near Honolulu. I squinted my eyes, shielding them from the bright glare off the Pacific Ocean.

We were standing around a tall outcrop; the top of it was many feet above my head. When I inspected it closely, I could see fossilized coral that was trapped in time, frozen–it was an ancient coral reef.

The professor from University of Hawaii, Chip, was guiding us around Honolulu, and he asked, “If this is a coral reef, what does that mean about sea level?”

I would have been underwater when that coral reef was alive. I remember feeling strange. I was surrounded by air and cries of seagulls and kids.

I pictured all of this underwater. Deep sapphire blues enveloped me. When I looked up, colors faded to indigo to aquamarine where the surface of the ocean met the sunlight. Tiny schools of fish darted everywhere. Beyond the reef, the waters blended into midnight blue that turned black, hiding whatever lurked in the shadows.

I knew about sea level rise and climate change  before this trip, but standing there on the shores of Hawaii that were submerged gave me a new perspective.

The oceans are starting to rise. Shorelines are creeping closer and closer inland because ice sheets are melting faster than glaciologists originally thought they would in a warming atmosphere. Sea level rise is estimated between 3 feet to 16 feet or greater.

Where I was standing could really, truly be underwater again.

The main headline about climate change lately is on how the Pentagon released an official report on the immediate threats climate change imposes on National Security.

I think it’s pretty cool because the Department of Defense realized how climate change is affecting their passion, which is protecting the U.S.

The Department of Defense report, signed by Defense Secretary Chuck Hagel, is basically saying, “Hey. So we once thought climate change was just a future threat, but turns out the future is closer than we thought, and we are witnessing the effects of climate change; ignoring these threats is too risky. We have to prepare for the potential and immediate danger that climate change will have on our nation’s security.”

What is the Department of Defense worried about?

Sea level rise will threaten naval and military bases on the coast around the world, increased extreme weather that will place a higher demand on humanitarian efforts, limited water and food resources that will lead to internal and global strife, hazards of infectious diseases, and increased terrorism.

These things listed above have been outlined and considered in the IPCC report in the Human Security section.

All the sudden, climate change felt a lot more real to the Department of Defense because it’s knocking on their door.

At the end of the 2013-2014 academic year, I gave a presentation at Albion College’s Elkin R. Isaac Student Research Symposium.

I presented my FURSCA project from summer of 2013, where I read books about climate change and examples of creative nonfiction, and I wrote endless pages of words that eventually became two essays about climate change for the Millennial Generation.

It’s akin to the great grandparent of The Climate Pickle—the beginning of my journey.

After Elkin Isaac, there is a Keynote Speaker, and last year it was Richard Alley. Oh, do I know who Richard Alley is. He was one of the main climate scientists that I research during FURSCA.

Alley is an incredibly intelligent and quirky scientist who has been researching climate science for a long time. His official job position is a professor at Penn State in the Geosciences Department, but is known for much more than that.

This dude has received a Nobel Peace Prize for his contribution as an author of the IPCC reports, and has advised many U.S. officials in the White House on what is actually going on in the world. He spent months in Antarctica, studying ice cores and collecting data about historic geologic climate changes.

A pretty important guy who knows what he is talking about.

Guess who my geology professor brought to my presentation in the second biggest auditorium on campus?

Alley.

I kept my cool, I am proud to say, and delivered the best presentation I have ever given. It was a good day.

I went to a small Q&A with him that several geology classes where geology students could ask him whatever we wanted.

Richard Alley sat on the edge of the gray speckled desk at the front of the classroom. He looked at the small gathering of students through his thick glasses. Most of us were required by a professor to be there. Alley’s hair stuck out at odd angles with his beard covering his face like brambles on a forest floor.

We started talking about how climate change is measurable. Lots of scientists have argued over the best way to measure or to average temperatures, but the same answer comes back—the Earth is warming.

Alley said, “Climate change should be a debate between environmentalists and scientists to figure out the best and lowest impact solution, but right now scientists are just trying, and failing, to show Politicians reality.”

He paused after this, swinging his leg off the desk. I remember paper shuffling and a cough or two before he broke the silence.

“Science isn’t something you believe in.”

Alley believes that science is testable knowledge. It’s how we understand the physical workings of the natural world. Science isn’t real or validated because people put their faith in it.

His statement is simple yet beautiful. Science isn’t something that you believe in. 

When the word “environmentalist” pops up in a conversation, I bet some people think of a granola-crunching hippie scolding people for not recycling, eating meat, and just being a bad person.

But this stereotypical image of an environmentalist is not completely accurate. There are lots of other people who have the ideals of environmentalists, but may not look like it.

Take hunters for example.

My oldest sister, Justina, in the past year or two has started getting into hunting with her boyfriend, Scott, on the western side of Michigan. They don their camouflage garments and lace their boots with hand warmers shoved in the toe, preparing to sit for hours in a tree house. “It can sometimes get boring, and fucking scary when Scott left me alone. But I get to go for a walk in the woods.”

I myself have never taken part in hunting or even enjoyed the idea of it; hunting gives me the heebie geebies, thinking about the skins of dead animals all fluffed up and on display. But I was given a new perspective on it.

Instead of going to the store to buy their meat, Justina and Scott go hunting in the fall and early winter to stock up on meat for the year.

Before my sister was into hunting, I mostly pictured hunters as people who only stuffing their kills to show them off with pride to anyone who would look.

Hunting is a sustainable way to live. My sister and her boyfriend don’t shoot more than they can eat. And if they do, they share it. This idea reverts back to the hunting and gathering societies, back when all humans knew what it was like to kill an animal so they could eat and survive, when they knew how to collect and grow the proper plants to supplement their diet.

Hunters and humans in general are nothing without a healthy environment.

When I think about the word drought, it triggers images of farmers standing in the barren fields of the Dust Bowl with endless blue skies and no sign of a cloud, the steaming landscape of the Western United States.

Or I just think about present-day California suffering through the depths of a four-year drought—the worst one they have ever faced.

I have never been to California myself, but I’ve been thirsty. That moment when I have to literally peel my tongue from the roof of my cotton ball mouth. Throat is dry, scratching. No water fountain in sight. No sink. Not even a puddle to lap from.

Rivers in the West are shrinking. They shrivel in on themselves, pulling away from the banks. The riverbeds are gnarled scars. Lakes drain as if someone pulled the plug, letting the water slip away.

Westerners watch the lakes and rivers and faucets with a nervous eye. Maybe Californians shake their fists at the sun-soaked skies and dance for the rain that probably won’t come because things have changed.

For many years climate scientists, including those involved in the IPCC reports, have projected an increase in intensity and regularity of droughts as the atmosphere warms (section 26.8.1 in the current IPCC report).

California’s drought is an example of the projection above. The warming atmosphere caused this strange high-pressure ridge to form off the coast in the Pacific. The ridge is pushing moisture away from California, deflecting it like a sprinkler caught on a rock—rain on one side, and none for California.

In my junior year in high school, I was in Advanced Placement Environmental Science (APES). At some point, we had to give a presentation on some sort of infectious disease that was related to the environment.

My topic was Ebola.

I stated all the necessary facts to complete the presentation. But I never once thought about how it feels to have Ebola and didn’t think about it until a few weeks ago.

Ebola is not pretty, that’s for sure.

The burnt orange dirt stretches to the horizon, tangling with the stiff green grass. Colors dull as eyes gaze farther into the atmosphere. A fly hums somewhere near. Houses, shacks and huts stack on top of each other like a game of jenga.

Food is scarce. There is no superstore lined with endless walls of packaged goods. Hunger contracts abdomens like a snake strangling the life out of its prey. Bats dart through the air, and primates lurk in the branches of trees. When there is nothing to eat, a bat or a monkey so tantalizingly close does not sound like a bad idea. Anything to ease the breath-taking hunger.

Where did Ebola come from?

Ebola originates from primates and bats. When a human eats an infected animal, the microscopic worm-like virus infects its body. The virus incubates and hides in blood streams, growing stronger before symptoms start to appear. The first symptom is a fever that rages hot and consuming. Muscles twinge in pain. Headaches gnaw. Bowels convulse, expelling diarrhea. Stomach twists.

As days pass, liver and kidney dysfunction increase the blinding pain and discomfort. Bruises bloom on skin as blood vessels erupt and seep out of the soft gums of mouths, noses, mixing with stool.

Hospitals overflow with infected patients and bodily fluids swimming with the virus. Chlorine and bleach are running low. Nurses haphazardly cover their bodies with masks and smocks and gloves. Plastic covered shoes slip on the floor as bodies are carried out one by one after a mist of disinfectant settles.

Loved ones mourn the loss of mothers, fathers, daughters, sisters, brothers, and friends. Mourning rituals involve touching the body, connecting with their loved one before they’re buried.

Less than two weeks pass. More friends and family and strangers are slick with the beginning fever. Their ritual, the touch spreads the deadly virus.

For the past week, I have been obsessively poring over news articles and official reports from the Center for Disease Control (CDC) and World Health Organization (WHO) on the current Ebola outbreak and epidemic in West Africa. I blurted out “shit!” when I was at work on Thursday, sitting at my desk job in the art building on campus as I watched the death and infection tolls increase by hundreds each day.

In Sierra Leone, five people are infected every hour.

Shit.

According to the CDC, as of October 3, 2014 7,470 people in West Africa are infected and 3,431 have died.

So, besides being an “informed individual,” why am I weirdly obsessed with this gnarly disease? My curiosity was sparked when I read the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) annual reports. The reports are writing and complied by hundreds of scientists around the world, and in one section they warned that infectious disease epidemics would increase with the changing climate. Hmm.

I combed through the report, looking to see if they directly addressed Ebola. They didn’t. But connections are still there.

The outbreak is too recent for scientific articles on the topic, but climate change affects things that have and could potentially aggravate this epidemic.

But more importantly, this epidemic should serve as a warning because increased climate change means vector-born disease will get worse. The gnats, flies, or whatever nasty little creatures can survive longer if there’s warmer winters; this makes the chances of survival better for the vector, and the disease.

And those diseases will be equally awful and even more widespread than Ebola.

If the rest of the world ignores West Africa, the number of infected people could reach over a million by January. That’s a lot of humans. And humans interact and touch other humans.

For as long as I can remember, I have been afraid of thunderstorms. I wish I could say I’ve been in a tragic tornado that tore a gash in my hometown, roof snatched from my house, downed limbs and trees littered in its wake like breadcrumb trails.

I have no real logical explanation besides how scary, and utterly uncontrollable storms are, especially severe ones. Nature doesn’t give a shit if we happen to be at the wrong place at the wrong time. This childhood fear has settled into me as an anxious, cautious awareness whenever I spy the stony wall of gunmetal storm clouds.

This past summer I took a road trip to Colorado with a couple of my best friends to see my hands down favorite band Umphrey’s McGee at the infamous Red Rocks Amphitheater. I drove half way across the country in one short weekend just to see Umphs light up the natural rock amphitheater and fill it with their jammy sound waves. It was totally worth it.

We travelled all the next day across the incredibly flat planes of the Midwest. Colorado to Nebraska to Iowa and onward. The cow pastures stretched on and on for miles, a wavering mirage in the 95 degree heat. When I stepped out of the car at a rest stop in Iowa, the air was so dense with moisture and heat I could practically feel the languid molecules press against my skin.

As the sun lowered in the sky, nearly half way through Iowa now, I saw a thick layer of charcoal clouds stacking up like an artist layering shades of black and gray on a sheet of paper. My eyes kept snapping back to the horizon, watching them morph. I turned to my friend Fedy; he was sitting in the passenger seat, fingers combing his brown hair into mountain peaks. “Check the radar on my phone. I don’t like those clouds.” The phone’s screen glowed in his glasses.

The building edge of the storm front loomed closer and closer as we raced down the freeway, clouds swooping above, impossibly high. The weakening sun refracted into an innocent creamsicle orange.

The already fading light dimmed eerily like electricity in a brownout. Heavy drops of water struck the windshield with a plunk, tapping tap tapping on my window to catch my attention. Rain ripped through the heavy clouds in a sheet of water. I could only see taillights blurred and shattered through the downpour, nothing else.

I totally panicked. My breath caught in my chest like trying to tug a piece of string out of a bush. Sharp, snagged, and unsuccessful.

The wall of rain slowly thinned; car tires cut through the waterlogged roads, spewing water to the side. I felt safer.

The sky was lighter, but then I saw a thick tower of sooty gray clouds ahead of me that shifted into a sickeningly blue color that smoldered and glowed. I’d never seen anything like it; clouds shouldn’t look like that.