José Abel Flores Villarejo is a professor and member of the Group of Ocean Geosciences at the University of Salamanca, in addition to directing the Hispanic-Japanese Cultural Center of the same institution. His relationship with the land of the rising sun began 35 years ago through a collaboration with a Japanese university, and since then travel and organizing student exchanges has not stopped. They say that, in his talks, this paleontologist always talks about colors: “White is the color of Japan, because of that white mantle that covers the ground when the cherry trees bloom and also because of the snow on Mount Fuji, visible from many parts of the country ”, he explains to us in this chapter of Science on the Street. “But, in addition, white is the color of colors, that of ice, of the Arctic and of Antarctica. It is the color of those poles that are the extremes that are determining all that key gradient so that our entire system, the atmosphere and the ocean, moves, so that the energy goes from one place to another. This engine has existed since the planet is the planet, for 4 billion years practically white has been an intermittent color, sometimes also absent but absolutely decisive, not only for geological aspects but for life itself: life exists and it is as it is because we have a target on the planet ”, reflects the scientist.
As a paleontologist, José Abel has made several trips to Antarctica and his research group is witnessing, through samples collected in the confines of our planet, the speed at which climate change occurs: “We make a Reconstruction of the climate of the past, of hot and cold episodes, we control numerous parameters and show how they have been and what has caused these changes. And the conclusion we have reached is that recently these patterns are being altered and that the interference in the registry is due to human society , fundamentally to the discharges and compounds that are being emitted into the atmosphere and are giving rise to a change. dramatic in the climate in a very fast way and that until now was not known ”.
Science on the Street is a project carried out in collaboration with the Scientific Culture Unit of the University of Salamanca. Our goal is to get scientists out of the lab and into the outside world so they can tell us what they do. We will be with them in the bar, in the gym, in the pool … even in an airport!
