Last night, The Nature of Things aired Part 5, the final episode of its series on the impact of Global Warming. Once more, an excellent show. A good part of the footage was shot on board a Canadian research vessel which has been travelling throughout the Arctic seas collecting data. A number of the scientists on board were interviewed -- and what was so striking to me, is that these are scientists from major universities from around the world. All of them had interesting things to say about the science behind global warming -- the things that we can expect to see happen over the next century, and what the impacts will be.
For example, on scientist showed models of carbon dioxide releases into the atmosphere over the past century. Releases are ramping up very quickly now.. standing at around 7 billion tonnes released in 2000, and projected, at the current rate of increase (if nothing is done), to reach at least 25 billion tonnes per year by 2100 (if not before). The impact to the environment would be incredible.
Another researcher spoke of what is currently being seen in the Arctic seas. The ice fields are not closing up as much as they used to after each arctic summer. The closing over of the ice fields is important because, when ice forms in a solid sheet, it becomes reflective of the sun's rays, and that helps to cool the Arctic and helps to preserve the polar ice and stabilize temperatures. However, as the ice fields fail to form for greater and greater periods of time each year, the open water actually absorbs rather than reflects the sun's rays. This raises temperatures a little more each year, and that, in turn, prevents ice formation. As more than a couple of the scientists commented, this is a trend which will be very difficult to halt now, as there is a kind of "inertia" that exists in the arctic that makes it difficult to roll back this kind of effect. Of course, as the Arctic waters warm, that changes the nature of the flow into the Atlantic and Pacific. The major streams of water flowing from the Arctic are undergoing change in response to increased heating of the waters.
On rising water levels, there was quite a bit of consensus on the type of levels that we'll see. If not sooner, the expectation is that water levels of the oceans could rise by about 3 - 4 meters (120 - 160 inches) even by about mid-century and surely by the end of the century. Further, as a couple of the scientists said, that's just the volume of water at relatively current temperatures. If the water heats up anywhere near what might be expected, there will be an even greater increase in water levels due to heat expansion, so we're probably looking at something more in line with at least 5 meters (200 inches) of increase by the end of the century or thereafter. Needless to say, a 200 inch increase in levels would be rather devastating for many nations around the world, especially those with low elevations, or those with cities built close to ocean shorelines -- or, as in the case of the Netherlands, with sections of land even below current sea level.
Part of the episode also looked at the problem of the melting permafrost in the Canadian Arctic, Alaska, and in Siberia. This is, perhaps, just as scary as the issue of rising sea levels. As the sea levels have risen, and as water temperatures have increased, the permafrost of the Arctic has begun to melt. The permafrost contains vast quantities of methane and carbon dioxide, trapped in frozen organic matter which, once heated, begins to rapidly decay and release gases into the atmosphere. The amount of annual thawing along the Alaskan coastline, the Mackenzie Delta in the Canadian Arctic, and in Siberia is unprecedented. And, as the coastline areas melt, the rising ocean eats into the permafrost and speeds up its erosion and further melting. According to all of the scientists interviewed on this subject, the effect of all of these released gases is practically unfathomable -- what it might do to the atmosphere is unknowable, but will probably be incredible.
All of the researchers interviewed for this episode, were in agreement that the situation is becoming serious and that it's important to act *now* and not in a few year's time. All of them emphasized that the effects that we are seeing are cumulative, and that they have been steadily ramping up, especially since around 1970. Regardless of what aspect of the air or water was being discussed, just about every scientist showed charts that were almost identical.. a sort of rocket-like rise in air temperatures, carbon dioxide levels, water levels, etc... since 1970. The rising line is now almost vertical with no sign of slowing down. Pretty scary stuff.
Last point, and an interesting one (to me) was that one of the scientists was emphatic that it's up to the western world to take action to try to solve these problems. To paraphrase, he said, "We made this thing, and it's our responsibility to try to do something about it. We can't expect developing countries to have to shoulder the devastation that we've brought about through our recklessness." He said this very emphatically, and repeated it twice...
All in all, the entire series was excellent. I like the balance which they struck when interviewing "experts" for the series.
* Inuit people who have lived in the Arctic all of their lives and have seen immense changes to the Arctic ecosystem, particularly over the past 20 years, but especially the last 5 or so years.
* Older wildlife biologists who have been travelling to the Arctic to study wildlife populations for 25+ years and have seen remarkable changes to the ecosystem and the impacts which these have had on the various creatures and the land.
* Climatologists who showed, through their computer models, that the models are rapidly undergoing change and that the old rules have had to be abandoned to go with ever-changing models due to rapid changes to the world's atmosphere and the ocean currents.
* Oceanographers, marine biologists, and other international researchers who have been working in the Arctic on Canadian reseach vessels -- collecting and analyzing all kinds of data from ocean temperatures, to air and water contaminants, to plankton composition, etc...
Then, to actually go out with the cameras to film shorelines and have Inuit people describe where the shorelines once were, how high the water used to be, how the ice once formed in areas of the ocean.
Very comprehensive series. I wish that more people living outside of Canada could have had a chance to see the entire series. I think there's some irony in the fact that this series was produced here, and that, from what I saw of the ocean work, while the scientists doing research are from around the globe, they are using Canadian research vessels to carry out the work across the Arctic. The same goes for the sailing ship that was outfitted for research and carried international scientists across the north (seen in the first episode of the series). The whole thing kind of makes me wonder about just how serious some "other" parts of the world are taking the issue of global warming. Interesting to me that, at a time when we (up here) continue to hear back-handed U.S criticism of how we didn't "get in on" the war in Iraq, or how we're being sh*ts for so much of our population not wanting to have any part in the new U.S. missile defense shield (which will basically explode incoming missiles over Canada and the Canadian arctic), there is so very little interest from the U.S. government (with the exception of U.S. scientists from some universities) about global warming. Quite frankly, all of this talk coming out this week about about the Pentagon and it's "emergency planning" for global warming thoroughly *disgusts* me. All of a sudden the U.S. is "worried" about global warming, but what is the knee-jerk reaction??? How is it going to effect US???? What are we going to do to combat all of the other countries in the world that will rise up in anger and maybe want to come HERE to get away from the effects of rising sea levels, crop failures, etc...??? How are we going to protect our borders from the ecological refugees from other countries of the world? How will we keep having everything the way we like it while the climate goes on the rampage?
Jeezuz..it just about makes me want to puke. Seriously.. I have a *major* problem with this attitudinal disconnect. Maybe the U.S. should stop doing so much complaining and worrying and planning for saving its OWN ass and get the hell concerned about doing something to deal with a problem that is so vast that it will probably make the "war on terror" look like a party game.
I suppose one can only hope, eh?
croc |
