Alexandra Shostak's Blog

PBS: Sinking Cities

I'm not doing well at updating the blog right now. My best intentions are to continue to provide resources and tips for using real environmental science to create good cli-fi and eco-fiction. But this summer I'm taking Calculus and Physics (plus lab) at the same time over a 10-week period, plus starting a new novel (with wildfires!) So...the limit may not exist for Cady Heron, but I'll fail my exams if I write that for every answer.

That being said, I recently watched the Miami episode of the PBS...

Florida Ecosystems: Pine Flatwoods

If you're writing eco fiction or cli-fi, getting an ecological setting right is essential. I'm fortunate enough to have a job that allows me to explore the ecosystems in my very own Florida county. During lockdown I've also been attending webinars to learn more about the natural areas all around me.

In the spirit of sharing ecological knowledge, I'm going to write a series of posts about ecosystems from the perspective of using them to create rich settings. I'll start with Florida, but I'll...

Favorite Novels with Environmental Themes

THE BROKEN EARTH TRILOGY by NK Jemisin - A truly fantastic trilogy with astounding world-building and characters. The Earth is also a character, fighting back against humans for trying to control it. Natural disasters on a scale that can wipe entire civilizations.

THE SOUTHERN REACH TRILOGY by Jeff VanderMeer - The ecology of Area X is deceptively normal at first, and it's fun to realize just how alien this new environment is as the characters explore it.

THE SALT LINE by Holly...

What Is Scientific Uncertainty?

Inspired by this infuriating piece in the NYT, I want to go over the concept of scientific uncertainty.

Scientific uncertainty is a concept meant to remove bias and prevent scientific findings from becoming misleading. It means that, in any given experiment, there may be variables that the scientist can't see or can't control. Those variables could affect the experiment or the findings. Or, they may have nothing to do with it. Whatever an experiment or an observational study found, uncertainty...

DuPont and Dark Waters

I've lived in Florida since 2012, but I was born in Ohio, in a county that touches the Ohio River. The city of Parkersburg, WV, where the DuPont C8 scandal took place, was a 45-minute drive away from me. We used to visit the neighboring city Vienna to go to the mall and to Borders (RIP Borders.)

DuPont secretly did health studies on employees who worked closely with Teflon and dumped PFOA pollution into the Ohio River. The story is a damning and scary one, and will make you realize just how...

The Folly of Individual Responsibility

In studying environmental science and following environmentalist Facebook pages, Twitters, and blogs, I've noticed an extreme focus on individual responsibility in fighting climate change. This focus typically involves listing things individuals should do in order to help the planet.

I may catch flack for saying this, but we don't have the choices available to us to truly make a difference on an individual level...YET. For one thing, figuring out which companies are truly sustainable and which...

30-Day Challenge

One of the to-do list items in the 30-Day Challenge is to engage someone skeptical about climate change in a discussion. I'm broadening that aspect of the challenge to encompass engaging everyone in a discussion.

I'm in school for environmental science, and I'm learning a lot of cool things. One purpose of this blog is to share what I'm learning, and emphasize that we are never done learning. I currently do not live nearly as sustainable a lifestyle as I could, but I'm trying to make improveme...

The Rainforest Alliance's 30-Day Challenge

The Rainforest Alliance hosts a 30-day sustainability challenge. When you sign up, you receive an email every 3 days giving you sustainability tips, for a total of 30 days.

I just signed up. I won't spoil the fun and reveal everything the challenge offers, but I'll be chronicling some of my journey here on this blog. The first email includes several actions to take, from simple to time-consuming, and explains why each action is beneficial to your community and the planet.

Because some of the ti...

On Oceanic Garbage Patches

Why is it so important that we refuse single-use plastic and other materials? Because those materials are often not disposed of correctly (even municipal trash collection and disposal has its issues) and end up in terrifying oceanic gyres called garbage patches (which also have a significant amount of ship waste and fishing gear within them). The gyres themselves are natural phenomena to do with ocean tides, but because of human waste, they're now filled with garbage [1, 2].

When I first learn...

Do you *believe* in global warming?

Because I've been asked the question "do you believe in global warming?" before, I want to make something clear about science and scientists. Climate scientists don't "believe" in global warming or  anthropogenic climate change. They look at an extensive body of peer-reviewed evidence that supports a variety of hypotheses surrounding climate change, and they come to a consensus. Data from many studies show that 97% of scientists are in agreement that anthropogenic influences are acting o...