WEBVTT 00:00:09.510 --> 00:00:15.733 Last Chance Films 00:00:17.233 --> 00:00:20.515 In association with 00:00:21.905 --> 00:00:26.466 Event Horizon Productions 00:00:26.816 --> 00:00:29.327 Presents 00:00:29.707 --> 00:00:36.640 ARCTIC DEATH SPIRAL AND THE METHANE TIME BOMB 00:00:42.140 --> 00:00:47.233 Emergency Broadcast System 00:00:49.054 --> 00:00:51.159 We interrupt our programming. 00:00:51.319 --> 00:00:54.800 THIS IS A NATIONAL EMERGENCY. Important details will follow. 00:00:54.969 --> 00:00:58.399 The emergency alert "system" has been activated. 00:01:08.100 --> 00:01:10.408 Ladies and gentleman. 00:01:10.528 --> 00:01:15.520 The very word secrecy is repugnant, in a free and open society. 00:01:15.700 --> 00:01:17.982 We decided long ago, 00:01:18.132 --> 00:01:23.474 that the dangers of excessive and unwarranted concealment of pertinent facts 00:01:23.614 --> 00:01:28.278 far outweigh the dangers which are cited to justify it. 00:01:28.418 --> 00:01:30.552 But I am asking your help, 00:01:30.682 --> 00:01:35.276 in the tremendous task of informing and alerting the American people. 00:01:35.506 --> 00:01:39.990 For I have complete confidence, in the response and dedication of our citizens. 00:01:40.130 --> 00:01:42.618 Whenever they are fully informed. 00:01:42.928 --> 00:01:48.339 Many rivers and the air in many cities, remain badly polluted. 00:01:48.859 --> 00:01:53.980 And our citizens, suffer, from breathing that air. 00:01:54.440 --> 00:01:59.359 We lived with conditions like these for many many years. 00:02:00.028 --> 00:02:04.108 But much that we once accepted as inevitable, 00:02:04.288 --> 00:02:08.668 we now find absolutely intolerable. 00:02:08.907 --> 00:02:11.245 Each of us all across this great land 00:02:11.355 --> 00:02:15.542 has a stake in maintaining and improving environmental quality, 00:02:15.712 --> 00:02:19.570 clean air and clean waters, the wise use of our lands, 00:02:19.710 --> 00:02:24.740 the protection of wildlife and natural beauty, parks for all to enjoy. 00:02:24.930 --> 00:02:28.339 These are part of the birthright of every American. 00:02:28.499 --> 00:02:33.480 To guarantee that birthright, we must act, and act decisively. 00:02:33.669 --> 00:02:36.419 It is literally now, or never. 00:02:36.869 --> 00:02:41.039 Our program will emphasize conservation. 00:02:41.229 --> 00:02:45.159 The amount of energy being wasted, which could be saved, 00:02:45.320 --> 00:02:51.140 is greater than the total energy that we are importing from foreign countries. 00:02:51.310 --> 00:02:54.620 We will also stress development of our rich coal reserves. 00:02:54.800 --> 00:02:57.379 In an environmentally sound way. 00:02:57.709 --> 00:03:03.009 Now it seems to me that if, we would concentrate on resolving the problems, 00:03:03.199 --> 00:03:06.552 uh... of the automobile, the combustion engine, 00:03:06.732 --> 00:03:09.965 thee, the pollution factor and we've gone a long way in that, 00:03:10.345 --> 00:03:14.189 I think of myself as an environmentalist. I uh... 00:03:14.189 --> 00:03:18.769 I don't wanna see all this beauty around us wiped out and destroyed. 00:03:18.930 --> 00:03:23.750 We all know that human activities are changing the atmosphere 00:03:23.930 --> 00:03:28.580 in unexpected, and in unprecedented ways. 00:03:28.919 --> 00:03:34.899 I recommend that we adopt a BTU tax on the heat content of energy, 00:03:35.070 --> 00:03:38.379 as the best way to provide us with revenue to lower the deficit, 00:03:38.539 --> 00:03:42.978 because it also combats pollution, promotes energy efficiency, 00:03:43.118 --> 00:03:46.095 promotes the independence economically of this country, 00:03:46.215 --> 00:03:48.392 as well as helping to reduce the debt. 00:03:48.502 --> 00:03:53.030 And it is environmentally responsible. It will help us in the future, 00:03:53.160 --> 00:03:55.750 as well as in the present with the deficit. 00:03:55.900 --> 00:03:59.030 The United States is committed to strengthening our energy security 00:03:59.150 --> 00:04:01.370 and confronting global climate change. 00:04:01.500 --> 00:04:05.150 And the best way to meet these goals is for America to continue leading the way 00:04:05.280 --> 00:04:09.700 toward the development of cleaner, and more energy efficient technology. 00:04:09.850 --> 00:04:12.119 We're gonna leave this planet... 00:04:12.479 --> 00:04:16.770 At least as good as the, planet we inherited, from our parents 00:04:16.950 --> 00:04:20.880 but, we've got... we've got a bigger problem with climate change. 00:04:21.020 --> 00:04:24.280 We sent, we sent a billion dollars to foreign nations, 00:04:24.450 --> 00:04:27.629 many of them hostile, and in the... because of our addiction to oil, 00:04:27.759 --> 00:04:30.689 and in the bargain we're melting the polar ice caps. 00:04:32.059 --> 00:04:34.829 Changing the weather patterns all around the globe... 00:04:35.010 --> 00:04:39.870 The science is clear that man-made emissions of air pollution and global warming gases 00:04:40.010 --> 00:04:42.860 are changing our atmosphere. - Anthropogenic global warming is still an issue 00:04:42.990 --> 00:04:45.590 that the scientists are still debating and you know it and I know it. 00:04:45.649 --> 00:04:48.700 The debate on the causes of Climate Change are far from settled. 00:04:48.830 --> 00:04:51.540 Well the climate's always changing. That's not the fundamental question. 00:04:51.659 --> 00:04:55.619 The fundamental question is whether man-made activity, is the, is what's contributing most... 00:04:55.739 --> 00:05:00.279 I think CO2 Is a problem, and therefore I don't think it needs to be regulated. 00:05:00.409 --> 00:05:03.060 We all breathe CO2, climate changes, 00:05:03.240 --> 00:05:08.910 but there's no evidence at all that it's man-made CO2 that causes the climate to change. 00:05:09.079 --> 00:05:14.299 The idea of human induced global climate change is... 00:05:14.510 --> 00:05:17.960 one of the greatest hoaxes perpetrated 00:05:18.089 --> 00:05:20.979 out of the scientific community. It is a hoax. 00:05:21.159 --> 00:05:25.139 I'm only concerned about the, incredible frenzy and hype 00:05:25.279 --> 00:05:27.289 for something that's a total myth. 00:05:27.430 --> 00:05:32.000 It's AMAZING to me how aaah, upset so many people are... 00:05:32.180 --> 00:05:37.300 The existence of all these billions of people on earth, have all influenced the climate of earth. 00:05:37.479 --> 00:05:42.870 but NONE of it, is of significance, uhh... and thank goodness, 00:05:43.040 --> 00:05:45.148 things are doing just fine. 00:05:45.358 --> 00:05:50.039 The question is the degree to which man influences the climate and whether actually we can... 00:05:50.249 --> 00:05:53.540 ...this is anything we should worry about or whether we should be... 00:05:53.700 --> 00:05:56.990 bombing the global economy into the dark ages to try and stop it. 00:05:57.160 --> 00:06:00.283 Ya know, the greatest hoax I think has been around, 00:06:00.453 --> 00:06:03.136 in many many years, if not hundreds of years 00:06:03.266 --> 00:06:06.530 has been this hoax on the environment and global warming. 00:06:06.669 --> 00:06:08.709 You notice they don't call it global warming anymore. 00:06:08.709 --> 00:06:10.000 No no no. It's because it's getting cooler! 00:06:10.000 --> 00:06:10.790 It's "Weather Control". 00:06:10.790 --> 00:06:14.540 Yeah! It's getting cooler, you can't call it global warming anymore. 00:06:14.540 --> 00:06:17.650 So what we need, what the world needs is more fossil fuels. 00:06:17.649 --> 00:06:22.579 The evidence we have, is not just that fossil fuels aren't ruining our planet. 00:06:22.579 --> 00:06:23.918 They're making it much better... 00:06:23.918 --> 00:06:26.329 Climate related deaths are going down. 00:06:26.329 --> 00:06:29.519 And, so, what we need is many many more fossil fuels. 00:06:29.589 --> 00:06:32.579 So that people can eat. And they can have food. 00:06:32.579 --> 00:06:35.979 Through the years of high school, "Aqua Net" hair spray use have done 00:06:35.979 --> 00:06:39.520 more damage to the ozone than any global warming scam has. 00:06:39.520 --> 00:06:41.020 Aqua. I remember Aqua Net. 00:06:41.020 --> 00:06:42.489 Aqua Net. 00:06:42.489 --> 00:06:43.418 (Laughter) Every every, every. 00:06:43.433 --> 00:06:45.010 I remember Brill creme. 00:06:45.010 --> 00:06:47.040 But I don't think that had anything to do with the climate change. 00:06:47.029 --> 00:06:49.115 "A little dab'll do ya" Remember that? That's it! 00:06:49.115 --> 00:06:52.800 There´s more! The CO2 can also go... 00:06:52.800 --> 00:06:56.710 (Crazy Gestures & Comic Sounds) 00:06:56.709 --> 00:07:00.899 At times when CO2 was rich in the atmosphere, 00:07:00.899 --> 00:07:06.859 there was... greater growth of farms, vineyards and so forth. 00:07:06.860 --> 00:07:10.139 Uh, I guess in England, there was a time when 00:07:10.139 --> 00:07:14.449 growth of vineyards was so great there was this wine all over the place and... 00:07:15.560 --> 00:07:19.839 But I'm still open to the possibility. So if there's anyone from Exxon-Mobile here... 00:07:19.839 --> 00:07:25.129 I've got a bank account and routing number available for you. (Laughter) 00:07:25.240 --> 00:07:27.519 One could argue from an economic point-of-view... 00:07:27.519 --> 00:07:32.300 We should be burning fossil-fuels like "Gangbusters" to generate as much wealth as we can. 00:07:32.300 --> 00:07:37.899 Divert some of that into alternative energy research and we might get to those alternative energies 00:07:37.899 --> 00:07:40.549 faster, than if we... starve poor people 00:07:40.549 --> 00:07:45.709 and ruin the world's economies, and reduce CO2 emissions. 00:07:45.709 --> 00:07:47.009 (Applause) 00:07:47.009 --> 00:07:50.116 Now, as we agreed, you owe me two beers. 00:07:50.116 --> 00:07:51.633 (Laughter) 00:07:51.633 --> 00:07:59.180 "Scientific American" editorialized on the escalating ugliness of climate denier tactics and rhetoric. 00:07:59.180 --> 00:08:03.490 The editors wondered if we are a people increasingly estranged from critical thinking, 00:08:03.490 --> 00:08:07.989 divorced from logic, alienated from objective truth. 00:11:59.488 --> 00:12:02.048 Now to the big headline from "Climate Scientists" tonight. 00:12:02.148 --> 00:12:05.116 The UN International Panel on Climate Change 00:12:05.216 --> 00:12:09.857 says we are hurdling toward the day when Climate Change could be irreversible, 00:12:09.967 --> 00:12:12.778 with catastrophic consequences they say. 00:12:12.888 --> 00:12:16.419 It's only going to get worse if we don't take drastic measures. 00:12:16.559 --> 00:12:21.020 We've seen an increasing number of regions over the decades, starting to lose ice, 00:12:21.140 --> 00:12:23.799 but this is the first time we've seen it ALMOST globally. 00:12:23.900 --> 00:12:26.109 Most ominously, the report says 00:12:26.249 --> 00:12:29.689 we are in REAL danger of exceeding our carbon limit of one-trillion tons. 00:12:29.799 --> 00:12:33.840 Scientists say that would warm the earth more than three and a half degrees Fahrenheit, 00:12:33.940 --> 00:12:37.119 making the impacts of climate change MUCH more dangerous... 00:12:37.249 --> 00:12:40.989 And that's the worry. Many of the worlds cities are in the crosshairs. 00:12:41.090 --> 00:12:43.410 Most of the people around the world live in coastal areas, 00:12:43.530 --> 00:12:46.509 it's where most of your major cities are because that's where ports are. 00:12:46.589 --> 00:12:48.199 And they are at sea level. 00:12:48.269 --> 00:12:52.720 So even small changes in sea level rise can displace millions of people. 00:12:52.800 --> 00:12:58.310 Scientists fly over a giant chunk of Antarctic ice as it cracks and collapses. 00:12:58.640 --> 00:13:02.660 The chunk is enormous. About seven times the size of Manhattan 00:13:02.780 --> 00:13:04.980 160 Square Miles. 00:13:05.080 --> 00:13:07.099 It was part of the Wilkins Ice shelf. 00:13:07.199 --> 00:13:12.532 The biggest on Antarctica yet, scientists say to fall victim to Global Warming. 00:13:12.665 --> 00:13:15.309 Watching Wilkins ice shelf disappear at the moment, 00:13:15.389 --> 00:13:18.699 we learn a lot more about how Ice responds to climate change. 00:13:18.829 --> 00:13:22.459 The Ice is just a small fraction of the Antarctic ice sheet. 00:13:22.549 --> 00:13:25.449 But it broke off well before scientists predicted. 00:13:25.560 --> 00:13:30.290 A sign they said that Climate Change may be happening faster than expected. 00:13:30.390 --> 00:13:32.770 One expert told us last year: 00:13:32.909 --> 00:13:39.309 "I think what we, what we do know is that ice, uhh, uh, is probably our best sensor, 00:13:39.480 --> 00:13:42.480 of these large scale changes taking place. 00:13:42.580 --> 00:13:46.249 And in many ways I think we're in unchartered territory." 00:13:46.709 --> 00:13:51.619 Ice plays a vital role in cooling the Earth's temperature and regulating sea levels. 00:13:51.789 --> 00:13:57.228 As it´s lost, the planet gets warmer, sea levels rise and more ice is threatened. 00:13:57.338 --> 00:13:59.728 A vicious environmental circle. 00:13:59.838 --> 00:14:03.799 There are glaciologists now who are getting very worried. 00:14:03.929 --> 00:14:08.059 But they haven't really come out and said what they think. 00:14:08.219 --> 00:14:11.772 Take a good look at it, because it won't be there for long. 00:14:11.922 --> 00:14:14.345 It's cracking and it's breaking up. 00:14:14.485 --> 00:14:17.649 And it's only one of dozens of Antarctic ice shelves 00:14:17.769 --> 00:14:20.738 collapsing faster than anyone predicted. 00:14:20.848 --> 00:14:25.269 I would say the vast majority of we we're looking at back there is broken up this year. 00:14:25.410 --> 00:14:27.649 It was a cool summer right? Chicago, New York, 00:14:27.769 --> 00:14:30.300 places like that, so. How could it be Global Warming? 00:14:30.410 --> 00:14:32.499 This is how. Look at the context. 00:14:32.619 --> 00:14:35.889 These blue dots over North America represent below average temperatures NOTE Paragraph 00:14:36.019 --> 00:14:39.709 for the Summer... June, July, August. What we call "Climate Logical Summer". 00:14:39.839 --> 00:14:44.340 But look at the context. They're lost in a sea of red dots across much of the rest of the globe. 00:14:44.469 --> 00:14:46.938 Just a couple other blue dots here and there. 00:14:47.059 --> 00:14:49.790 Those red dots are above-average temperatures. 00:14:49.910 --> 00:14:54.099 What that translates to in terms of a ranking for this summer and for August 00:14:54.229 --> 00:14:58.979 globally, second warmest on record. Period of record going back a little more than a century. 00:14:59.139 --> 00:15:02.279 June through August globally. The third warmest on record. 00:15:02.420 --> 00:15:06.230 The oceans which had cooled for a couple years now recovered with a vengeance. 00:15:06.389 --> 00:15:11.129 August the warmest on record. June through August also the warmest on record. 00:15:11.608 --> 00:15:16.169 Now, if the scientists are anywhere near correct, 00:15:16.340 --> 00:15:20.689 then this is the greatest challenge facing humanity today. 00:15:20.849 --> 00:15:24.449 It is the greatest challenge humanity has ever faced, 00:15:24.588 --> 00:15:27.399 and probably WILL ever face. 00:15:27.530 --> 00:15:30.550 If someone asks me, if the climate system were changing. 00:15:30.710 --> 00:15:33.249 I would say, look at the data. 00:15:35.419 --> 00:15:40.528 The Arctic is, is experiencing, uh.. I would say a crisis. 00:15:42.288 --> 00:15:46.939 The meltdown is changing long held beliefs about the Arctic and it's weather patterns. 00:15:47.089 --> 00:15:50.619 As well as being blamed for affecting conditions around the globe 00:15:50.779 --> 00:15:54.109 and triggering a rise in global sea levels. 00:15:59.330 --> 00:16:02.050 From all these collective studies of the whole Arctic region, 00:16:02.180 --> 00:16:06.170 you can see that it's warming much faster than the rest of the planet. 00:16:06.360 --> 00:16:09.209 In 2012, we had the new record set 00:16:09.339 --> 00:16:12.458 in terms of melting over the Greenland ice sheet. 00:16:14.728 --> 00:16:17.149 But here, amid this snow and ice 00:16:17.280 --> 00:16:20.950 It's hard to believe that the ice sheet is melting as fast as scientists say. 00:16:21.089 --> 00:16:22.400 But it is. 00:16:22.580 --> 00:16:27.470 Scientists say, we are watching the polar regions melt right before our eyes. 00:16:28.640 --> 00:16:31.929 So you can tell, there's a stream, here. 00:16:32.099 --> 00:16:36.389 And then there's a bunch of flow coming down on this right side. 00:16:37.809 --> 00:16:43.799 Interpreting the info that comes from satellites called "The Gravity Recovery And Climate Experiment". 00:16:43.969 --> 00:16:46.948 In science circles, it's called "GRACE". 00:16:47.088 --> 00:16:50.918 "GRACE" can detect the most subtle minute changes in land ice, 00:16:51.048 --> 00:16:53.988 down to the width of a human hair. 00:17:09.989 --> 00:17:13.039 The faster speeds that we're seeing uhh... 00:17:13.179 --> 00:17:15.968 In Greenland are not going to slow down. 00:17:16.108 --> 00:17:18.689 That's not the way, uh, ice sheets behave. 00:17:52.489 --> 00:17:56.239 Ooohohohooooo! Aaaaaah! 00:17:56.439 --> 00:18:00.649 Ouch! Oh my God! 00:18:01.549 --> 00:18:05.256 "Here comes the water... 00:18:05.996 --> 00:18:08.503 Uh ohoo." 00:18:12.413 --> 00:18:14.430 "Look at that." 00:18:18.900 --> 00:18:22.033 "ohoo, ohoo..." 00:18:29.943 --> 00:18:32.646 Woooooow! 00:18:38.356 --> 00:18:41.290 So how big, was this calving event that we just looked at? 00:18:41.440 --> 00:18:45.990 We'll resort to some illustrations again to give you a sense of scale. 00:18:48.880 --> 00:18:52.990 It's as if the entire lower tip of Manhattan broke off. 00:18:53.129 --> 00:18:56.219 Except that... the thickness, the height of it 00:18:56.380 --> 00:19:01.190 Is equivalent to buildings that are two and a half or three times higher than they are. 00:19:15.759 --> 00:19:20.829 That's a magical, miraculous horrible, scary thing 00:19:21.460 --> 00:19:26.180 I don't know that anybody's really seen the miracle and horror of that. 00:19:28.679 --> 00:19:34.039 It took a hundred years for it to retreat eight miles, from 1900 to 2000. 00:19:34.259 --> 00:19:37.800 From 2000 to 2010, it retreated nine miles. 00:19:37.950 --> 00:19:42.900 So in ten years, it retreated more than it had in the previous one-hundred. 00:19:47.000 --> 00:19:50.509 First of all, we're going to look at the 00:19:50.969 --> 00:19:56.359 runaway behavior, that is actually happening, to the Arctic system. 00:19:56.819 --> 00:19:59.109 Going almost exponential. 00:19:59.269 --> 00:20:04.390 We saw the rate of change of ice area, accelerating. 00:20:04.590 --> 00:20:08.350 We saw the change in ice mass, or thickness 00:20:08.490 --> 00:20:14.530 also accelerating and moving towards zero, over the next two or three years. 00:20:15.290 --> 00:20:17.270 And taken all together, 00:20:17.340 --> 00:20:24.329 we have the unmistakable footprint of a system in, what we call, self-amplification 00:20:24.439 --> 00:20:26.709 or, "Runaway Behavior". 00:20:26.870 --> 00:20:29.790 Uhh, you may remember that in 2007, there was a, uh, 00:20:29.930 --> 00:20:32.180 a big study that came out from this group called 00:20:32.330 --> 00:20:35.118 "The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change". 00:20:35.248 --> 00:20:42.518 And, they looked at computer models of how rapidly Arctic ice would go away. 00:20:42.750 --> 00:20:47.908 And, as of early 2007, this is what they were telling us. 00:20:48.058 --> 00:20:49.830 That, aahm... 00:20:49.970 --> 00:20:56.130 We would see, gradual drop in Arctic... ice minimum. 00:20:56.410 --> 00:21:01.770 going down to where we probably still have a fair amount of ice left in the year 2100. 00:21:01.920 --> 00:21:04.630 Worst case, maybe by 2070, 00:21:04.819 --> 00:21:10.689 we would see open water, in the Arctic, in the Summertime. 00:21:11.669 --> 00:21:13.979 That very same year, 00:21:14.989 --> 00:21:22.559 we saw, in the actual observations, a huge drop in the Arctic ice. 00:21:22.910 --> 00:21:26.710 And, that drop has continued so that in 2012, 00:21:26.870 --> 00:21:28.680 this is now where we are. 00:21:28.820 --> 00:21:34.309 So we're something like fifty years ahead of the worst case scenarios, 00:21:34.479 --> 00:21:38.819 that the scientists were giving us just five years ago with Arctic Ice. 00:21:39.609 --> 00:21:46.538 I'm actually in agreement with many climate change deniers, in that the IPCC is wrong. 00:21:46.770 --> 00:21:50.849 But I think, they're actually wrong, because they're too conservative. 00:21:51.009 --> 00:21:54.630 And they haven't really been telling the story of what really could happen... 00:21:54.779 --> 00:21:57.789 Can you summarize the effect of an ice-free Arctic on the world. 00:21:57.970 --> 00:22:01.669 Yes, the effect of an ice-free Arctic on the world is a very large one, 00:22:01.889 --> 00:22:05.049 because it goes way beyond the Arctic itself. 00:22:05.238 --> 00:22:07.999 Because once thee sea ice has disappeared, 00:22:08.140 --> 00:22:12.980 firstly, that produces a decrease in the global albedo, 00:22:13.140 --> 00:22:16.630 the amount of radiation reflected by the earth. 00:22:16.790 --> 00:22:22.030 And has a knock-on effect in the sense that the warmer air masses in the Arctic in summer, 00:22:22.210 --> 00:22:24.610 cause a retreat of the snowline, 00:22:24.749 --> 00:22:30.309 and the snow-line decrease has just as big an effect on the albedo as the sea ice decrease has. 00:22:30.549 --> 00:22:35.520 So as global albedo change, which affects thee temperature of thee entire planet, 00:22:35.670 --> 00:22:37.430 it warms it all up. 00:22:37.598 --> 00:22:41.029 Uh, and then, there's the fact that as the sea ice retreats 00:22:41.179 --> 00:22:46.759 it allows the water masses around the shelves of the Arctic to warm up. 00:22:46.929 --> 00:22:52.789 And that warms up the seabed and releases more Methane from the sub-sea permafrost 00:22:52.909 --> 00:22:55.180 which is melting away. 00:22:55.320 --> 00:22:59.798 And, that methane itself is a very very powerful greenhouse gas. 00:22:59.978 --> 00:23:04.848 So we're having a methane kick, uh, coming in from the retreat of the sea ice, 00:23:05.018 --> 00:23:09.980 which again, is a global effect rather than simply an Arctic effect. 00:23:10.580 --> 00:23:13.088 When the IPCC is uh... 00:23:13.298 --> 00:23:15.899 It's not a whole load of people agreeing. 00:23:16.049 --> 00:23:19.740 It's a load of people saying, oh, it's this, it's this, it's this. 00:23:19.880 --> 00:23:24.530 It's just that, nearly, everybody thinks that we are warming the planet, 00:23:24.720 --> 00:23:27.940 they, disagree about how fast it'll happen. 00:23:28.120 --> 00:23:33.370 They disagree about whether negative or positive feedbacks are going to be more important. 00:23:33.689 --> 00:23:37.819 This is one of the more conservative scientific bodies on the planet. They work by consensus, 00:23:38.049 --> 00:23:40.658 and, after the scientists reach consensus... 00:23:40.788 --> 00:23:44.159 they then, vet they're report through the political process. 00:23:44.329 --> 00:23:48.279 So politicians have to sign off on the IPCC's assessment before it's released. 00:23:48.460 --> 00:23:51.840 And they conclude that, that we've reached "Runaway", 00:23:52.159 --> 00:23:54.619 in the absence of Geo-engineering. 00:23:55.099 --> 00:23:57.248 And, this is not in the model. 00:23:57.388 --> 00:24:00.058 The models don't show this happening. This IS happening. 00:24:00.209 --> 00:24:06.278 So what happens when we update the models, so that it does reflect that the Arctic is melting? 00:24:07.208 --> 00:24:09.259 So we're seeing effects. 00:24:09.439 --> 00:24:13.519 And, one of thee primary effects, that, uh... 00:24:14.499 --> 00:24:18.729 grabs most peoples attention is what's happening with the Arctic sea ice, 00:24:18.890 --> 00:24:24.150 the ice that's floating on the Arctic ocean, that covers usually most of the Arctic Ocean. 00:24:24.330 --> 00:24:32.040 Last year 2012 was the record low as lowest, Arctic summer ice that we have seen 00:24:32.140 --> 00:24:34.790 ever since we've been observing it. 00:24:34.959 --> 00:24:37.990 Whereas the rest of the globe has cooled, since 1997, 00:24:38.150 --> 00:24:44.329 temperature in the Arctic has started to increase and increase, increasingly rapidly. 00:24:44.449 --> 00:24:47.538 The hotter it gets, the faster it gets hotter. 00:24:47.708 --> 00:24:53.830 2007 alone, in one year, it melted more in the previous year 00:24:53.970 --> 00:24:57.990 by an area equal to three times the size of California. 00:24:58.390 --> 00:25:02.420 And it will be all gone, in five or ten years. 00:25:02.630 --> 00:25:08.250 It's pretty clear from the death spiral, that's the way in which the volumes of ice 00:25:08.399 --> 00:25:12.529 in the summer are zeroing in towards uh, towards zero, 00:25:12.699 --> 00:25:17.089 that the ice can't last more than a couple more years. 00:25:19.510 --> 00:25:25.640 There's no way... that ice mass, of the end of September, 00:25:25.920 --> 00:25:31.520 can continue going round this circle, for the next five decades. 00:25:32.109 --> 00:25:36.269 It's moving very rapidly into the zero point in the center. 00:25:36.869 --> 00:25:40.620 It's been decreasing for several decades. 00:25:40.790 --> 00:25:43.839 In fact, way back into the nineteen-sixties and seventies, 00:25:44.019 --> 00:25:49.680 we have a trend pattern of decreasing area of sea ice, particularly at it's minimum. 00:25:49.850 --> 00:25:55.009 and the minimum sea ice occurs in September at the end of the summer warming. 00:25:55.458 --> 00:25:59.940 But, do have a look at the last few years, from 2007 onwards. 00:26:00.120 --> 00:26:05.019 The data points have been pulling way down below the straight line. 00:26:05.769 --> 00:26:11.259 It becomes more and more obvious that straight line representations are no longer 00:26:11.449 --> 00:26:17.140 the appropriate statistical tool for demonstrating what is going on in the Arctic. 00:26:17.360 --> 00:26:24.396 Then we see it looks like the end of the Arctic sea ice area 00:26:24.866 --> 00:26:28.362 in September, by about 2015. 00:26:28.532 --> 00:26:33.080 So we're seeing a temperature rise, this is the NASA temperature graph, 00:26:33.219 --> 00:26:38.089 going back to 1880 when we feel we have good global coverage with instruments. 00:26:38.229 --> 00:26:40.710 We can take it back much further. NOTE Paragraph 00:26:40.880 --> 00:26:45.049 In fact, a very significant paper came out, just this past Spring, 00:26:45.239 --> 00:26:51.050 which looked at a number of different... temperature Proxies, as we call them, 00:26:51.210 --> 00:26:57.119 like tree rings and corals and stalactites in caves and things like that. 00:26:57.279 --> 00:27:00.619 And we pushed back the temperature record eleven-thousand years... 00:27:00.788 --> 00:27:02.749 And what you've got is this, uhn... 00:27:02.880 --> 00:27:05.650 you've got us coming out of the ice age, back here, 00:27:05.790 --> 00:27:11.260 and then we've got a slow, slow, slow gradual, gradual decline, until the last century. 00:27:11.509 --> 00:27:13.959 And then, this is us. Here. 00:27:14.300 --> 00:27:19.179 So, we're... we're... we're pretty clear that, that, uhh... 00:27:19.669 --> 00:27:22.619 something's changed in the last two-hundred years 00:27:22.769 --> 00:27:27.288 and the only thing that we've been able to track down that really answers it is the... uhn 00:27:28.728 --> 00:27:32.089 greenhouse gases that human beings have been putting out. 00:27:32.810 --> 00:27:39.620 What's going on in the Arctic area at the moment is, probably, the fastest moving response, 00:27:39.850 --> 00:27:44.340 to Global Warming and Climate Change anywhere on the planet. 00:27:46.830 --> 00:27:52.250 In 1859, the English physicist John Tyndall, using equipment of his own design, 00:27:52.480 --> 00:27:58.000 showed that certain gases in the atmosphere blocked and absorbed long wave or heat radiation. 00:27:58.000 --> 00:28:02.379 Four decades later, Svante Arrhenius, with thousands of manual calculations, 00:28:02.379 --> 00:28:10.110 made an estimate of the global warming power of CO2, that was very close to today's best models. 00:28:10.109 --> 00:28:14.270 In the 1950's, american Charles Keeling began to measure accurately 00:28:14.308 --> 00:28:17.558 the steady increase of CO2 in the atmosphere. 00:28:17.558 --> 00:28:23.190 Spectrographic analysis soon showed that the new carbon was, without a doubt, man-made. 00:28:23.190 --> 00:28:24.929 So it's a rare gas. 00:28:24.929 --> 00:28:27.890 The atmosphere is almost all, Nitrogen and Oxygen. 00:28:27.890 --> 00:28:32.059 But you see here that, out of a million molecules of air in 1958, 00:28:32.058 --> 00:28:36.940 about 314 of them would be carbon dioxide molecules. 00:28:36.940 --> 00:28:42.570 And you see the graph there at the lower left, tracing the first few years. 00:28:42.569 --> 00:28:45.879 So, you can see a lot of things on this graph just, right away. 00:28:45.880 --> 00:28:48.870 First of all, it's increasing with time. 00:28:48.869 --> 00:28:52.289 And here's what the Keeling curve, which is the popular name for this, 00:28:52.289 --> 00:28:53.730 looks like today. 00:28:53.730 --> 00:28:56.980 And you can see that what was 314 then, 00:28:56.980 --> 00:29:01.759 is now 395 or so, pushing 400 today. 00:29:01.759 --> 00:29:05.179 That's a remarkable story right there. 00:29:05.179 --> 00:29:08.820 Because that increase is something like 25%. 00:29:08.819 --> 00:29:14.528 Mankind is changing the chemical composition of the atmosphere in important ways. 00:29:14.528 --> 00:29:18.190 And, the greenhouse effect had been understood for a long time. 00:29:18.190 --> 00:29:25.190 The fact that Carbon Dioxide, and other molecules trap infrared energy, they trap heat essentially, 00:29:25.339 --> 00:29:29.449 had been known to experimental physicists in the middle 1800's. 00:29:29.449 --> 00:29:32.750 John Tyndall, in London, put Carbon Dioxide in a tube 00:29:32.750 --> 00:29:38.240 and measured how it could absorb infrared energy, which he could shine on it. 00:29:38.240 --> 00:29:46.270 The first attempts to understand the implications of this for climate date back to the 1890's. 00:29:46.270 --> 00:29:49.499 So, in a sense, the science was there, 00:29:49.958 --> 00:29:54.111 connecting Carbon Dioxide amounts of the atmosphere to Climate Change 00:29:54.111 --> 00:29:58.924 until we had the measurements showing that the CO2 was actually increasing 00:29:58.924 --> 00:30:02.419 and increasing much more quickly than had been foreseen in the nineteen century. 00:30:02.419 --> 00:30:06.900 There were more people using more coal and oil and natural gas, 00:30:06.900 --> 00:30:11.859 and the rapidity of the growth of CO2 was a surprise to everyone. 00:30:12.619 --> 00:30:17.339 Popular mechanics magazine wrote about this in 1953. 00:30:17.339 --> 00:30:24.339 The products of research were showing us that if we continue to add Carbon Dioxide to the atmosphere, 00:30:24.359 --> 00:30:28.158 by burning fossil fuels, we're going to see a rise in temperature 00:30:28.278 --> 00:30:34.288 This was the work of Doctor Gilbert Plas, who published a very significant paper on this. 00:30:34.288 --> 00:30:41.288 This had been an issue that had been kicked around for the previous hundred years or so, 00:30:41.538 --> 00:30:49.358 but, it was this research that really kind of nailed it in so far as making the science clear. 00:30:50.020 --> 00:30:55.520 Yet it's taken us this long to really even begin to get through to the public dialogue 00:30:55.519 --> 00:30:57.069 on how important this is. 00:30:57.069 --> 00:31:02.509 The amount of Carbon Dioxide in the atmosphere is what matters to the climate. 00:31:02.509 --> 00:31:07.418 Climate just reacts to how many and what kinds of heat trapping gases are there. 00:31:07.419 --> 00:31:10.510 The more there are of an important gas, like CO2 00:31:10.510 --> 00:31:13.389 which is by far the most important man-made gas, 00:31:13.390 --> 00:31:14.520 the warmer it gets. 00:31:14.519 --> 00:31:18.109 Now, on this graph is temperature and Carbon Dioxide. 00:31:18.109 --> 00:31:21.298 Let's look at the black line first. That's Carbon Dioxide. 00:31:21.298 --> 00:31:23.409 1880 on the left, the present on the right, 00:31:23.490 --> 00:31:28.519 and so, we know that it was rising gradually before Keelings measurements began. 00:31:28.519 --> 00:31:33.009 And that, in the times before the 1800's, 00:31:33.009 --> 00:31:36.980 when human activities presumably had no strong effect on climate, 00:31:36.980 --> 00:31:42.210 It was near a value of 280 and these same units of molecules per million molecules. 00:31:42.210 --> 00:31:48.490 So CO2 has been rising, but in all the years before the 1930's, 00:31:48.490 --> 00:31:51.048 you might say, every year was below that average, 00:31:51.048 --> 00:31:53.829 and in recent years, every year's been above it. 00:31:53.829 --> 00:31:58.839 Again, the natural variability is due to factors like El Nino and the occasional strong Volcano, 00:31:58.839 --> 00:32:02.099 which temporarily cools the climate for a year or two. 00:32:02.099 --> 00:32:07.480 And uh, so these things here are some of the strongest El Nino's on record. 00:32:07.480 --> 00:32:10.000 But that there's a warming now and that this period is different 00:32:10.000 --> 00:32:13.240 from this period, isn't in doubt at all. 00:32:13.240 --> 00:32:16.130 So the question that people typically ask is... 00:32:16.130 --> 00:32:18.699 How do we know this isn't just some kind of a normal cycle? 00:32:18.699 --> 00:32:21.859 OK. It's getting warmer but, It's been warmer in the past. 00:32:21.859 --> 00:32:24.089 It's been colder in the past. 00:32:24.089 --> 00:32:26.959 How do we know this is different from the past? 00:32:26.960 --> 00:32:27.840 Well. 00:32:27.839 --> 00:32:33.269 We can measure what's coming into and out of the planet by satellite, 00:32:33.269 --> 00:32:35.908 and the satellites do a pretty good job of this. 00:32:35.909 --> 00:32:41.559 We know, that, the planet is in energy imbalance. 00:32:41.558 --> 00:32:48.130 We know that that energy imbalance is completely consistent with the predictions 00:32:48.130 --> 00:32:51.470 that have been made about greenhouse gases. 00:32:51.470 --> 00:32:54.339 And we know that that's quite a big energy imbalance. 00:32:54.339 --> 00:32:55.798 It's not small. 00:32:55.798 --> 00:33:02.798 In fact, it's equal to about 400 thousand Hiroshima nuclear bombs exploding everyday. 00:33:03.409 --> 00:33:05.880 That's about four or five every second or so. 00:33:05.880 --> 00:33:11.110 That's how much energy is being trapped, primarily in the ocean 00:33:11.110 --> 00:33:14.990 because the ocean is the biggest heat sink, by far. 00:33:14.990 --> 00:33:20.690 So, natural sources are in balance between emission and absorption. 00:33:20.690 --> 00:33:23.970 The oceans are actually net absorbers but... 00:33:23.970 --> 00:33:26.370 Human beings. It's one-way traffic. 00:33:26.369 --> 00:33:30.019 So it's only us that can be causing the increase. 00:33:30.019 --> 00:33:34.148 Everything else, even volcanoes, is balanced by uptake. 00:33:34.148 --> 00:33:37.599 So, it's only us, that can be causing the increase. 00:33:37.599 --> 00:33:41.089 From here you are in the early nineteen hundreds til today. 00:33:41.089 --> 00:33:44.479 Blue is cooler than average, and yellow and orange are warmer than average 00:33:44.479 --> 00:33:47.339 and you can see here, it's still some blue areas and so on. 00:33:47.339 --> 00:33:53.688 But starting in the 1970´s, you start to see the yellow and orange colors predominating. 00:33:53.688 --> 00:33:57.508 By the time this ends in 2010 or so, 00:33:57.508 --> 00:34:01.119 you can see what the world looks like today in this picture. 00:34:01.119 --> 00:34:02.429 There's warming everywhere. 00:34:02.429 --> 00:34:05.370 There's more warming over the continents than over the oceans. 00:34:05.369 --> 00:34:07.609 There's more warming in the North than in the South. 00:34:07.609 --> 00:34:09.690 And there's the strongest warming in the Arctic. 00:34:09.690 --> 00:34:13.369 This is a Mercator projection so it exaggerates the area of the Arctic. 00:34:13.369 --> 00:34:16.460 But the warming is strongest in high Northern latitudes. 00:34:16.460 --> 00:34:19.688 And that's because of a number of feedbacks that we think we understand 00:34:19.688 --> 00:34:23.818 of which the most important is that, when warming occurs in the far North, 00:34:23.818 --> 00:34:26.119 the ice and snow melt , as we've seen. 00:34:26.119 --> 00:34:31.277 And, the ice and snow having melted revealed darker water and darker land that was under them, 00:34:31.940 --> 00:34:34.789 which reflect less sunlight and therefore absorb more sunlight. 00:34:34.789 --> 00:34:39.228 So the chain of events is Carbon Dioxide causes the warming, 00:34:39.228 --> 00:34:40.777 the warming melts snow and ice, 00:34:40.777 --> 00:34:44.277 the melted snow and ice make the surface darker, 00:34:44.277 --> 00:34:46.829 the darker surface absorbs more sunlight, 00:34:46.829 --> 00:34:48.829 and that adds to the warming. 00:34:48.829 --> 00:34:51.649 The human trigger is now almost irrelevant. 00:34:51.648 --> 00:34:54.748 The feedbacks have taken over. 00:34:54.748 --> 00:34:57.298 The mirror that's at the top of the world is gonna be gone. 00:34:57.298 --> 00:35:01.579 It won't be gone in the wintertime but the Sun's not shining on it in the wintertime. 00:35:01.579 --> 00:35:03.640 So, it matters in the summertime. 00:35:03.639 --> 00:35:10.400 One of the key effects that this has is that when all of these Northern areas are covered 00:35:10.400 --> 00:35:13.619 with white reflective snow and ice, 00:35:13.619 --> 00:35:17.249 it bounces most of the Solar energy off, 00:35:17.248 --> 00:35:19.838 bounces it back off into space. 00:35:19.838 --> 00:35:22.419 But, when we are seeing 00:35:22.419 --> 00:35:27.368 more and more open water, dark soil and dark surfaces, 00:35:27.369 --> 00:35:29.749 then the solar energy tends to get absorbed. 00:35:29.748 --> 00:35:32.208 So instead of reflecting 90% of all the energy, 00:35:32.208 --> 00:35:35.228 you're absorbing 90% of all the energy. 00:35:35.228 --> 00:35:39.919 So, this is what scientists call: "A Positive Feedback", 00:35:39.920 --> 00:35:43.278 and they don't mean that it's good. 00:35:43.278 --> 00:35:47.708 It's not a positive thing for us because, it's more like a vicious cycle, 00:35:47.708 --> 00:35:50.939 more heat equals less ice, and less ice equals more heat 00:35:50.939 --> 00:35:54.759 and it just sort of continues on in a spiral. 00:35:54.759 --> 00:35:56.909 And that's what we're seeing in the Arctic. 00:35:56.909 --> 00:36:02.690 And that's why the Arctic is warming at about twice the rate of the rest of the planet. 00:36:02.690 --> 00:36:07.619 And that means that Sun's energy is being absorbed into the tundra, 00:36:07.619 --> 00:36:15.589 the frozen areas of the Northern continental masses and into the open ocean where the ice was. 00:36:16.219 --> 00:36:21.630 So that the whole system is now accelerating and accelerating and accelerating 00:36:21.630 --> 00:36:24.479 and the hotter it gets the faster it gets hotter. 00:36:24.528 --> 00:36:26.900 The faster it gets hotter, the more water vapor. 00:36:26.900 --> 00:36:29.209 The more water vapor, the faster it gets hotter. 00:36:29.208 --> 00:36:31.199 The faster it gets hotter, the less ice. 00:36:31.199 --> 00:36:35.009 The less ice, the less reflection so the faster it gets hotter... 00:36:35.009 --> 00:36:36.798 You begin to get the idea? 00:36:36.798 --> 00:36:38.920 It has to be a downward curving, 00:36:38.920 --> 00:36:42.979 what we call exponential decay. 00:36:42.978 --> 00:36:49.379 And you project that line forward as is done in this particular setting of the equations 00:36:49.380 --> 00:36:52.588 and understanding of Arctic ice mass loss, 00:36:52.588 --> 00:36:59.588 then, once again, it shows zero ice floating on the Arctic ocean... 00:36:59.599 --> 00:37:02.870 by the end of Summer... 2015. 00:37:03.309 --> 00:37:11.259 Which confirms precisely, my own work on the decay of Arctic ice area to the same date. 00:37:11.789 --> 00:37:17.099 Mind you, at the same time, the thickness of the ice has also been diminishing. 00:37:17.099 --> 00:37:20.079 The ice in the Arctic now is thinner than it used to be, 00:37:20.079 --> 00:37:22.610 thus more vulnerable to melting. 00:37:22.949 --> 00:37:25.528 And just to give you an example of what's happening 00:37:25.528 --> 00:37:28.059 just in this past season... 00:37:28.059 --> 00:37:30.450 This is from March 00:37:30.449 --> 00:37:33.760 March and April of 2013. 00:37:33.760 --> 00:37:39.679 Looking at this area above Alaska. 00:37:39.679 --> 00:37:44.690 We had a cyclone going on, up in this area, that was moving, causing some torque on this ice 00:37:44.690 --> 00:37:50.179 and the ice just started to fracture and break up, in a manner that was very very unusual. 00:37:50.179 --> 00:37:53.798 I talked to scientists at the National Snow and Ice Data Center, 00:37:53.798 --> 00:37:59.650 and they said: "What you're seeing here is happening because this ice would've been maybe 00:37:59.650 --> 00:38:04.349 twenty feet thick thirty years ago, and now it's only three feet thick." 00:38:04.349 --> 00:38:07.430 And so it´s getting pushed around and broken up. 00:38:07.430 --> 00:38:13.690 And much of this did in fact refreeze, but it refroze in a manner that was much thinner, 00:38:13.690 --> 00:38:20.339 much more fragile, and it´s now being pushed around, deformed much more easily 00:38:20.339 --> 00:38:23.639 and melted much more quickly then it would've been fifty years ago. 00:38:23.639 --> 00:38:28.978 When our people think about Climate Change, they think in 2100. 2100! 00:38:28.978 --> 00:38:32.099 We might have two feet of more sea level. 00:38:32.099 --> 00:38:34.320 Gee, well, I can kinda deal with that... 00:38:34.320 --> 00:38:38.190 We're talking about 2010. 2020. 00:38:38.639 --> 00:38:40.978 It's gonna be really serious impacts. 00:38:40.978 --> 00:38:45.578 If any of these things happen which could happen... anytime. 00:38:45.579 --> 00:38:49.519 It's like playin Russian Roulette with kind of a few bullets in the chamber. 00:38:49.518 --> 00:38:52.028 As the temperature starts to increase more quickly, 00:38:52.028 --> 00:38:56.650 then other feedbacks are also brought into play, 00:38:56.650 --> 00:39:00.698 and more powerfully then they had been previously. 00:39:03.028 --> 00:39:07.199 The sixth consequence concerns what's happening to the Greenland icecap. 00:39:08.689 --> 00:39:13.749 Now, it sits there as a one-and-a-half mile thick 00:39:14.889 --> 00:39:19.139 layer of ice across a large piece of land mass. 00:39:20.268 --> 00:39:22.938 Once upon a time, 15 000 years ago, 00:39:22.938 --> 00:39:28.768 we had great ice sheets, covering our most populous zones 00:39:29.998 --> 00:39:31.588 in the Western hemisphere. 00:39:31.588 --> 00:39:39.148 Those ice sheets retreated, very rapidly when the climate and the oceans switched. 00:39:39.179 --> 00:39:46.869 And what we're getting here now is a rate of retreat that, I believe, is unprecedented 00:39:46.998 --> 00:39:49.929 in terms of the last ten-thousand years. 00:39:49.929 --> 00:39:54.949 Earlier this month, the surface of the ice sheet covering Greenland melted more widely 00:39:54.949 --> 00:39:58.498 than has been seen in thirty-three years of satellite imagery. 00:39:58.498 --> 00:40:01.338 We got some reports that there was melt going on around Greenland. 00:40:01.338 --> 00:40:04.659 Literally, like so much water running off that it was washing out bridges and things. 00:40:04.659 --> 00:40:07.578 That there were runways that were on the snow that were having problems. 00:40:07.579 --> 00:40:09.609 You just had to be here, 00:40:09.608 --> 00:40:16.248 this time last year, to watch this bridge, completely wash-out. 00:40:16.248 --> 00:40:21.399 The discharge of the river, at the point was... 00:40:21.400 --> 00:40:23.889 basically two-hundred times that of the Thames. 00:40:23.889 --> 00:40:28.699 The effect is small, so far... 00:40:28.699 --> 00:40:34.079 but, Greenland's mass loss has doubled over the last decade. 00:40:34.079 --> 00:40:39.690 And if that pattern of doubling continues over coming decades, 00:40:39.690 --> 00:40:45.029 then we're gonna have to rewrite some of the predictions that we've made 00:40:45.029 --> 00:40:48.259 about how rapidly this is gonna happen. 00:40:48.259 --> 00:40:52.989 The bed of the ice sheet and the interior ice sheet is frozen to it's base. 00:40:52.989 --> 00:40:54.478 And it's starting to slip. 00:40:54.478 --> 00:40:59.679 This is the bedrock. OK? 00:40:59.679 --> 00:41:01.588 And this is your ice. 00:41:01.588 --> 00:41:06.139 And this is your water. 00:41:06.139 --> 00:41:11.978 And that this water suddenly and violently drains through this channel. 00:41:11.978 --> 00:41:16.948 Then suddenly you have a change in direction but it goes very fast. 00:41:16.949 --> 00:41:19.349 We're focusing on this little lake over here, 00:41:19.349 --> 00:41:25.009 you can see these mountain water lakes popping up across the surface of the ice sheet 00:41:25.009 --> 00:41:28.420 as the weather gets warmer and warmer. 00:41:28.420 --> 00:41:32.179 So, what you'll see here is this meanders along, it meanders along 00:41:32.179 --> 00:41:36.150 until it goes down, into the ice, right there. 00:41:36.150 --> 00:41:37.989 And as it goes down, 00:41:37.989 --> 00:41:42.219 it's delivering all that heat down into the deep levels of the ice. 00:41:42.219 --> 00:41:45.659 So now the heat goes down here and, just like a stick of butter, 00:41:45.659 --> 00:41:48.409 the ice sheet begins to get soft. 00:41:48.409 --> 00:41:52.689 It begins to move faster and that water goes down to the bottom 00:41:52.689 --> 00:41:55.778 and, because it's an incompressible fluid, 00:41:55.778 --> 00:41:58.248 It will support, even a kilometer of ice. 00:41:58.248 --> 00:42:03.948 It will lubricate even a huge volume of ice and make it move faster over that rocky surface. 00:42:03.949 --> 00:42:08.068 So that accelerates the process as well. 00:42:08.068 --> 00:42:13.170 The water across the surface of this ice sheet is rampant, 00:42:13.170 --> 00:42:19.400 and it's causing untold damage to the base of the ice sheet, 00:42:19.400 --> 00:42:24.430 and it's doing that in deep interior regions that never before, 00:42:24.429 --> 00:42:30.948 not least in the last ten-thousand years, have been susceptible to that warming. 00:42:30.949 --> 00:42:32.809 That water input. 00:42:32.809 --> 00:42:36.609 That water draining down into the ice is relatively warm. 00:42:36.608 --> 00:42:43.950 The average temperature of the ice sheet, at depth, is several degrees below the freezing point, 00:42:44.119 --> 00:42:48.659 whereas the water that's draining in is right at the freezing point. 00:42:48.659 --> 00:42:55.629 So this is relatively warm water that drains in and it heats the ice sheet, internally. 00:42:55.630 --> 00:42:59.789 Warmer ice deforms more easily than cold ice. 00:42:59.789 --> 00:43:05.469 So, an increase in melt water draining in to the ice sheet has a softening effect, 00:43:05.469 --> 00:43:08.509 especially when the amount of melt water is increasing. 00:43:08.509 --> 00:43:11.599 You know, Greenland is 23 feet of sea level. 00:43:11.599 --> 00:43:14.890 7.3 meters, if it all melts. 00:43:14.889 --> 00:43:18.288 And the history is very clear. 00:43:18.289 --> 00:43:21.019 When it was warm, there's no ice on Greenland. 00:43:21.018 --> 00:43:23.899 When it's cold, there's lots of ice on Greenland. 00:43:23.900 --> 00:43:28.118 And so it's very clear Greenland is very tightly tied to temperature 00:43:28.118 --> 00:43:30.889 and if it gets too hot it goes away. 00:43:30.889 --> 00:43:36.409 And too hot is not very many degrees above where we are now... 00:43:36.409 --> 00:43:38.788 And this is the Ilulissat glacier. 00:43:38.789 --> 00:43:43.160 This is the calving front of Ilulissat glacier that we flew along on the first day. 00:43:43.159 --> 00:43:46.308 This is the fastest moving ice stream in the world. 00:43:46.309 --> 00:43:47.959 It's 400 feet high. 00:43:47.958 --> 00:43:53.948 The water is coming down under the ice and squirting out down here, below the water line, 00:43:53.949 --> 00:43:55.748 like... a Jacuzzi. 00:43:55.749 --> 00:43:59.090 And it's creating circulation down here 00:43:59.090 --> 00:44:05.969 and it's drawing warm ocean water in underneaththe the water line here. 00:44:05.969 --> 00:44:10.329 And it makes it accelerate the calving off of the giant glaciers. 00:44:10.329 --> 00:44:14.109 And this whole bay here is just full of gigantic glaciers. 00:44:14.109 --> 00:44:16.589 As that movement accelerates... 00:44:16.588 --> 00:44:20.588 the ice upstream begins to crack and deform, like this, 00:44:20.588 --> 00:44:26.078 and, you can see, as it cracks, that water begins to collect in those cracks. 00:44:26.079 --> 00:44:31.919 And that water begins to absorb more heat and, because water is heavier than ice, 00:44:31.919 --> 00:44:37.469 it actually begins to hydro fracture it's way, down into the ice sheet. 00:44:37.469 --> 00:44:40.659 accelerating the movement even further. 00:44:40.659 --> 00:44:45.448 So what you're seeing is that, at every stage, 00:44:45.448 --> 00:44:51.984 there is a different kind of a process that, not only feeds on itself, 00:44:51.984 --> 00:44:56.220 but feeds into all the other processes in the cycle. 00:44:57.480 --> 00:45:00.048 On the ice sheet, if you wanna know what's happening, 00:45:00.048 --> 00:45:03.529 you need to just follow the water and see what it's telling you. 00:45:03.588 --> 00:45:05.858 And this is the story that it's telling us. 00:45:05.858 --> 00:45:10.218 This is why scientists are starting to feel that 00:45:10.249 --> 00:45:18.905 Greenland and ice sheets across the planet have the capacity to move much faster 00:45:18.905 --> 00:45:26.021 then what they have during human experience. 00:45:27.051 --> 00:45:34.499 So, the big concern is that we don't tip ourselves into some kind of an event like that 00:45:34.630 --> 00:45:40.899 where the ice sheets begin to move at a pace that is really beyond human capacity to keep up with. 00:45:42.139 --> 00:45:48.228 As we move to acceleratingly increasing temperature change, 00:45:48.228 --> 00:45:54.868 as the waters all around Greenland are no longer covered with floating ice, 00:45:55.678 --> 00:46:00.969 and as the temperature of those waters around begins to increase, 00:46:00.969 --> 00:46:06.368 so, of course the air over Greenland is hotter. 00:46:07.838 --> 00:46:10.588 The waters around it are hotter. 00:46:11.598 --> 00:46:14.458 The ice surface begins to melt, 00:46:15.578 --> 00:46:17.449 right across the dome. 00:46:17.880 --> 00:46:24.060 Well, last year in this place where we actually flew into, Kangerlussuaq, 00:46:24.060 --> 00:46:26.209 this is what the river looked like there. 00:46:26.209 --> 00:46:28.818 It was overflowing, this bridge was washing out, 00:46:28.818 --> 00:46:31.059 giant machinery was being swept away 00:46:31.059 --> 00:46:38.448 because we were seeing melting that was happening over the entire surface of the ice sheet. 00:46:41.829 --> 00:46:46.789 They had never seen this kind of water flow there in that river. 00:46:47.449 --> 00:46:52.920 So. The consequences for the Greenland ice cap are massive. 00:46:53.940 --> 00:46:58.869 And as it melts, it adds fresh water to the global ocean, 00:46:59.639 --> 00:47:01.989 and starts to raise the sea level... 00:47:02.909 --> 00:47:11.099 If it goes quickly then we can expect 2, 3, 5, 7 meters of sea level change... 00:47:11.509 --> 00:47:13.558 right across the world, 00:47:13.559 --> 00:47:16.099 to happen, on a decadal basis. 00:47:16.099 --> 00:47:18.560 i.e., within 10 to 20 years. 00:47:19.579 --> 00:47:24.269 That would be catastrophic for civilization, 00:47:24.268 --> 00:47:30.658 many of whose urban centers would be below sea level, in the new situation. 00:47:31.409 --> 00:47:35.028 Actually, the Greenland ice sheet is de-glaciating. 00:47:35.028 --> 00:47:36.958 It's retreating... 00:47:36.958 --> 00:47:39.848 but it's retreat is dynamic. 00:47:39.849 --> 00:47:47.559 It's drawing down the interior of the ice sheet, faster than the models assume at present. 00:47:47.818 --> 00:47:51.838 And hence, the ice sheet and it's interior is accelerating, 00:47:51.838 --> 00:47:55.198 and the melt of the margin is enhanced, 00:47:55.198 --> 00:48:01.088 and I think that means that this ice sheet is ... actively de-glaciating. 00:48:01.699 --> 00:48:07.319 And that's... a pretty serious problem, for sea level rise. 00:48:09.489 --> 00:48:11.970 Let's move on now to the fourth consequence. 00:48:11.970 --> 00:48:15.350 And that is the impact on the tundra. 00:48:16.719 --> 00:48:21.378 Those land masses, that border onto the Artic ocean, 00:48:22.048 --> 00:48:26.249 now have a warmer, open sea coast, 00:48:26.969 --> 00:48:32.339 and the warmer air and the warmer temperatures are being fedback over the land mass. 00:48:32.998 --> 00:48:38.799 And of course what that does is increase the rate of melting of the tundra permafrost, 00:48:38.799 --> 00:48:44.338 and we get this depth of permafrost melt, which we call the cast, 00:48:44.338 --> 00:48:46.789 increases year on year. 00:48:47.699 --> 00:48:50.359 That also has consequences. 00:48:51.579 --> 00:48:58.519 For instance, there's a lot of biological material in the deep freeze of the tundra, 00:48:58.518 --> 00:49:03.310 and as that thaws out, it begins to decay, the microbes have a field day 00:49:03.310 --> 00:49:08.679 and out comes more carbon dioxide and more methane from the rotting vegetation. 00:49:09.659 --> 00:49:12.688 So, methane is being released into the atmosphere... 00:49:12.688 --> 00:49:19.018 not only from the ocean floor, but also, as I said, from the melting of the tundra. 00:49:19.688 --> 00:49:22.468 And the more methane there is in the atmosphere, 00:49:22.469 --> 00:49:24.929 as this next slide shows, 00:49:24.929 --> 00:49:28.769 the greater the greenhouse effect, and methane is a very powerful greenhouse gas. 00:49:29.279 --> 00:49:31.969 When the permafrost thaws, 00:49:32.220 --> 00:49:36.919 the organic matter in the permafrost thaws as well and begins to decay. 00:49:36.919 --> 00:49:39.380 The microorganisms start to eat it. 00:49:39.380 --> 00:49:43.528 If there's no oxygen, the microorganisms make methane. 00:49:43.528 --> 00:49:49.789 If there's oxygen, the microorganisms make carbon dioxide. 00:49:50.869 --> 00:49:54.129 Ahh, permafrost. Right here. 00:49:54.569 --> 00:49:57.560 Frozen dirt. 00:49:57.560 --> 00:50:01.588 We found, as far as the organic matter coming out of this hill slope, 00:50:01.588 --> 00:50:03.859 is that it's much more bio-available, 00:50:03.859 --> 00:50:08.269 meaning it's yummier for the microbes that are decomposing it, 00:50:08.799 --> 00:50:12.939 than carbon, or organic matter near the surface today. 00:50:12.938 --> 00:50:14.899 So that has climate implications. 00:50:14.900 --> 00:50:17.969 Because that means that this organic matter is processed quicker, 00:50:17.969 --> 00:50:21.229 it's return to the atmosphere is carbon dioxide and methane, 00:50:21.228 --> 00:50:24.058 and can feed back on climate that way. 00:50:24.058 --> 00:50:29.458 Sites like this where the permafrost is releasing organic matter act as accelerators. 00:50:29.458 --> 00:50:32.919 They speed up the process of human caused climate change. 00:50:32.920 --> 00:50:36.079 So it's uh, it's a large amplification of what we're doing. 00:50:36.079 --> 00:50:38.089 It feeds back on to our impact. 00:50:38.088 --> 00:50:42.338 It's important to realize that the scale and rate of change that we're talking about now 00:50:42.338 --> 00:50:46.360 is several degrees, two to five degrees in just a hundred years. 00:50:46.360 --> 00:50:50.648 So this is much faster than has happened in the last 50 million years. 00:50:50.648 --> 00:50:55.209 We're talking about unprecedented climate change and a very rapid abrupt response 00:50:55.209 --> 00:50:57.670 from this eco-system. 00:50:57.670 --> 00:51:01.379 There have been changes in the Arctic, in the permafrost, 00:51:01.379 --> 00:51:03.629 in terms of the temperature overtime, 00:51:03.630 --> 00:51:07.059 not only in the shallow layers near the surface, 00:51:07.059 --> 00:51:09.829 but at 10, 20 and 50 meter depths. 00:51:09.829 --> 00:51:12.699 You're seeing changes that are even more rapid. 00:51:12.699 --> 00:51:14.930 That indicates that not only is there heating near the surface, 00:51:14.929 --> 00:51:19.649 but that this heat is being transported to depth, very efficiently. 00:51:21.950 --> 00:51:26.188 The permafrost stores methane. 00:51:26.188 --> 00:51:29.059 As Richard was talking about, it's currently melting. 00:51:29.369 --> 00:51:33.099 It's warmer up there. It's like, 5 degrees warmer up in the Arctic than it is... 00:51:33.099 --> 00:51:35.118 The average temperature of the world is only up a degree 00:51:35.118 --> 00:51:37.409 but in the Arctic it's up five degrees. 00:51:37.409 --> 00:51:44.409 And it's releasing 50 million tons per year, which is a billion tons of CO2. 00:51:44.518 --> 00:51:46.428 And it's obviously rising. 00:51:46.428 --> 00:51:49.689 If it all went, we'd basically all be dead. I mean. 00:51:49.689 --> 00:51:52.588 And, it's happening now. 00:51:52.588 --> 00:51:55.028 And the problem here is it's accelerating. 00:51:55.028 --> 00:51:59.728 Once it starts generating, through this process or any of the other ones I talk about, 00:51:59.728 --> 00:52:04.149 once those processes generate more CO2 than we do, 00:52:04.149 --> 00:52:08.629 it won't matter if we stopped completely, 00:52:08.629 --> 00:52:10.088 it's gonna keep going. 00:52:10.088 --> 00:52:12.018 These are positive feedback loops. 00:52:12.018 --> 00:52:16.338 And by the way, it's not in the models. 00:52:24.088 --> 00:52:31.528 The fifth implication of the Arctic dynamics concerns the feedback of the methane release. 00:52:32.219 --> 00:52:37.159 It is probably one of the most important issues that we have to examine. 00:52:37.159 --> 00:52:40.479 We will be in danger of destabilizing these things called methane hydrates 00:52:40.479 --> 00:52:43.739 which store a lot of methane on the bottom of the ocean, 00:52:43.739 --> 00:52:46.399 in a kind of frozen form, 00:52:46.399 --> 00:52:48.099 10 000 billion tons of this stuff. 00:52:48.099 --> 00:52:51.559 And they are known to be destabilized by warming. 00:52:51.559 --> 00:52:55.420 This chunk of ice may look pretty unremarkable at first glance, 00:52:55.420 --> 00:52:59.579 but put a match to it and something amazing happens... 00:52:59.579 --> 00:53:03.189 As reported in this month's issue of the Atlantic, it's called methane hydrate, 00:53:03.188 --> 00:53:05.389 and it's actually not unusual at all. 00:53:05.389 --> 00:53:10.659 In fact, there are more than one-hundred thousand trillion cubic feet of it on Earth. 00:53:10.659 --> 00:53:13.578 Volume wise, that's like the size of the Mediterranean sea. 00:53:13.579 --> 00:53:19.729 And it has a greater energy capacity than all the coal, oil and natural gas on Earth combined. 00:53:19.729 --> 00:53:22.308 And well methane burns clean. 00:53:22.309 --> 00:53:24.590 Unburned methane is a potent greenhouse gas, 00:53:24.590 --> 00:53:27.188 and if it leaks, it can be devastating to the environment. 00:53:27.188 --> 00:53:32.179 The USGS is confident leakage won't be a problem, as long as proper precautions are taken. 00:53:32.179 --> 00:53:36.989 There are potential irreversible effects of melting the sea ice. 00:53:36.989 --> 00:53:45.899 If it begins to allow the Arctic ocean to warm up and warm the ocean floor, 00:53:45.908 --> 00:53:49.368 then, we'll begin to release methane hydrate. 00:53:49.368 --> 00:53:56.028 About 80 years ago, we switched to studying the East Siberian Arctic shelf. 00:53:56.028 --> 00:54:00.909 And actually, we've been studying it for the last 80 years. 00:54:00.909 --> 00:54:03.608 Continuously, year by year by year. 00:54:03.608 --> 00:54:08.969 Conducting one or two expeditions a year. 00:54:08.969 --> 00:54:15.969 That hydrocarbons are produced within the sedimentary drape, was sealed 00:54:17.119 --> 00:54:20.818 and prevented the methane escape into the atmosphere. 00:54:20.818 --> 00:54:27.818 That is why we're telling that this should be the largest hydrocarbon stock in the world. 00:54:27.969 --> 00:54:28.949 Over there... 00:54:28.949 --> 00:54:33.269 There is a potential risk that, if warming continues, 00:54:33.269 --> 00:54:37.199 the larger and, maybe, great and massive amount of methane 00:54:37.199 --> 00:54:39.849 could be released from this Arctic shelf. 00:54:39.849 --> 00:54:41.789 Of course there is a potential risk. 00:54:41.789 --> 00:54:48.640 And in terms of potential risk, I would say that this Siberian Arctic shelf has the most potential. 00:54:48.778 --> 00:54:54.528 Because, as I said, the carbon pool is huge and the wall of the shell is very shallow 00:54:54.528 --> 00:55:01.159 and the warming occurs stronger than in different areas of the worlds ocean. 00:55:01.159 --> 00:55:03.800 And of course it is a potential risk. 00:55:04.780 --> 00:55:07.849 So the methane in the atmosphere, 00:55:07.849 --> 00:55:11.739 the amount, the total amount of methane in the atmosphere, 00:55:11.739 --> 00:55:13.499 in the current atmosphere, 00:55:13.498 --> 00:55:16.368 it's about five Gigatonnes. 00:55:16.369 --> 00:55:22.548 The amount of carbon preserved in the form of methane in this East Siberian Arctic shelf, 00:55:22.548 --> 00:55:24.509 is approximately... 00:55:24.509 --> 00:55:27.608 from hundreds to thousands of Gigatonnes. 00:55:27.608 --> 00:55:32.879 And of course it's only one percent of that amount is required 00:55:32.879 --> 00:55:36.410 to double the atmosphere burden of methane. 00:55:36.410 --> 00:55:40.449 But to destabilize one percent of this carbon pool, 00:55:40.498 --> 00:55:44.868 I think it's not much effort needed, 00:55:44.869 --> 00:55:51.390 considering that the state of permafrost and the amount of methane currently involved. 00:55:51.389 --> 00:55:58.699 Because what divides this methane from the atmosphere is a very shallow water column, 00:55:58.920 --> 00:56:01.390 and a weakening permafrost, 00:56:01.389 --> 00:56:03.759 which is losing it's ability to seal, 00:56:03.759 --> 00:56:06.108 to serve as a seal. 00:56:06.108 --> 00:56:10.598 And this is, I think it's a matter of... 00:56:10.599 --> 00:56:14.889 it's not a matter of thousands of years, it's a matter of decades, I think. 00:56:14.889 --> 00:56:19.298 Maybe, at most, hundred years but I think, 00:56:19.298 --> 00:56:21.708 matter of decades. 00:56:21.708 --> 00:56:25.214 (It could happen any day) 00:56:25.214 --> 00:56:28.722 It might potentially happen because, 00:56:32.759 --> 00:56:40.260 I would list many factors that might, that are very convenient .. convincing for us. 00:56:40.920 --> 00:56:45.709 So that might happen. 00:56:45.708 --> 00:56:48.748 Not anytime. 00:56:48.748 --> 00:56:51.889 Anytime sounds like it might happen today. 00:56:51.889 --> 00:56:53.708 It might happen tomorrow. 00:56:53.708 --> 00:56:56.321 The day after tomorrow. (It might!) 00:56:56.494 --> 00:56:58.608 You think so? 00:57:01.759 --> 00:57:08.289 Igor is very convinced person because he spend a lot of time over there. 00:57:08.739 --> 00:57:15.739 And where the ice should be about two meters thick, it was 40 centimeters thick... 00:57:17.088 --> 00:57:20.298 That means that the processes... 00:57:20.298 --> 00:57:25.728 All the processes that serves the stabilization of everything... 00:57:25.728 --> 00:57:32.038 of the sea ice, of the water column, of the currents increasing, 00:57:32.039 --> 00:57:36.499 (the currents, I mean the movement of water beneath the sea ice increased). 00:57:36.498 --> 00:57:43.399 So everything, everything looks anomalous. Even from our experience from this ten years, 00:57:43.400 --> 00:57:45.338 everything looks anomalous. 00:57:45.338 --> 00:57:51.068 And this is what makes him thinking that... 00:57:51.068 --> 00:57:58.068 making him think that the worst thing might happen... 00:58:08.010 --> 00:58:11.920 Shortly speaking, we do not like what we see there, 00:58:11.920 --> 00:58:14.659 absolutely do not like. 00:58:14.659 --> 00:58:17.009 Uh, look at this. 00:58:17.009 --> 00:58:21.129 In a matter of days... just days, 00:58:21.199 --> 00:58:25.269 we're having this huge, this huge area... 00:58:25.268 --> 00:58:27.659 look at this.... 00:58:27.659 --> 00:58:32.629 going almost exploding with methane. 00:58:32.630 --> 00:58:38.949 The only way this is possible is by melting of methane clathrate. 00:58:39.308 --> 00:58:42.068 It´s just the only explanation 00:59:24.258 --> 00:59:27.468 Hi, uhm... how long do you think we have before it becomes 00:59:27.468 --> 00:59:30.938 socially and otherwise unacceptable to emit carbon. 00:59:30.938 --> 00:59:34.288 and, I mean, how radically do you think we need to act consensually? 00:59:34.289 --> 00:59:36.839 Right, well I mean... 00:59:36.838 --> 00:59:43.548 I think, it's, the more we act, the better things will be for future generations. 00:59:43.548 --> 00:59:47.920 I don't, yeah, I mean there's all sorts of estimates. 00:59:47.920 --> 00:59:49.139 And um... 00:59:49.139 --> 00:59:54.679 Basically, if we do a huge amount within the next ten years, 00:59:54.679 --> 00:59:57.798 we will still face quite an uncomfortable future, 00:59:57.798 --> 01:00:01.208 and the less we do, the worse it will get. 01:00:01.208 --> 01:00:04.879 How much of it we can prevent, depends on how bold we are, 01:00:04.880 --> 01:00:10.749 how much we're prepared to do, and that in turn is going to depend on changing social opinions. 01:00:13.360 --> 01:00:16.088 What are the implications of all this, 01:00:16.088 --> 01:00:18.318 for global dynamic behavior, 01:00:18.318 --> 01:00:23.409 both in climate, and indeed, for humanity as a civilization, 01:00:23.409 --> 01:00:27.208 and the biosphere of which we are a part? 01:00:28.758 --> 01:00:34.139 Well obviously, the Arctic is connected to the rest of the world, it is part of the world, 01:00:34.139 --> 01:00:40.719 and what happens in the Arctic inevitably has implications and consequences and spin-off 01:00:40.719 --> 01:00:43.318 for the rest of the planet. 01:00:43.318 --> 01:00:49.929 Socially, we know we will be beginning to remove some of the aerosols, 01:00:49.929 --> 01:00:52.688 these particulates in the atmosphere that, at the moment, 01:00:52.688 --> 01:00:56.829 are reflecting much of the solar energy back into space. 01:00:57.369 --> 01:01:04.369 We also know that much energy is being taken up by heating of the deeper ocean, at the moment. 01:01:05.568 --> 01:01:09.529 And, as the effects of carbon dioxide, and the other greenhouse gases 01:01:09.529 --> 01:01:15.678 and the global behavior as a whole, begin to come back on stream, 01:01:15.679 --> 01:01:22.679 so, global temperatures will begin to respond much as Arctic temperatures did. 01:01:23.159 --> 01:01:26.828 Co2 begins to increase temperature, 01:01:26.829 --> 01:01:29.910 increased temperature drives water vapor feedback, 01:01:29.909 --> 01:01:33.188 water vapor feedback accelerates heating.... 01:01:33.868 --> 01:01:38.759 And then we begin to get hotter conditions for some of the tropical forests, 01:01:38.759 --> 01:01:44.158 we get burn and dieback and increased release of carbon dioxide 01:01:44.158 --> 01:01:47.618 from the bio-mass of the planet. 01:01:47.619 --> 01:01:52.759 It's a different set of feedbacks from that operating in the high Arctic, 01:01:52.759 --> 01:01:55.278 but it is nonetheless potent. 01:01:56.318 --> 01:02:02.528 And as in the Arctic, so tomorrow, in the world, as a whole. 01:02:03.619 --> 01:02:10.619 And if the implications of jet-stream behavior and food production and Arctic dynamics spin-off 01:02:11.989 --> 01:02:17.398 into our survival as a species, into our economics, into our food production, 01:02:18.208 --> 01:02:22.088 into the abandonment of the poor, 01:02:22.088 --> 01:02:29.088 and the inability to sustain a population of eight, nine, ten billion people, 01:02:30.418 --> 01:02:32.268 so, also... 01:02:32.268 --> 01:02:36.639 The increasing acceleration of global behavior... 01:02:36.639 --> 01:02:39.788 which will inevitably follow... 01:02:39.789 --> 01:02:45.900 unless we are able to intervene, to slow it down... 01:02:45.900 --> 01:02:48.359 bring it to a halt... and reverse it, 01:02:50.208 --> 01:02:53.049 then, without that intervention... 01:02:53.049 --> 01:02:58.528 global dynamics hold a dark future for humanity... 01:02:59.478 --> 01:03:04.869 a dark future for the biosphere of which we are a part. 01:03:04.869 --> 01:03:07.838 It is time to take action... 01:03:07.838 --> 01:03:11.528 Not only for the Arctic... 01:03:11.528 --> 01:03:16.748 but for the global crisis in which we are all placed. 01:03:16.748 --> 01:03:21.528 There's not agreement on how much we need to do, how fast. 01:03:21.528 --> 01:03:25.528 To be honest, I don't think there needs to be, because the one thing I am certain of is 01:03:25.528 --> 01:03:31.698 that we will not do as much as the scientists say we need to do. 01:03:31.778 --> 01:03:36.748 That's why I've never sort of looked that closely at that particular question because, 01:03:36.748 --> 01:03:40.178 what the scientists say we need to do is over here... 01:03:40.179 --> 01:03:44.099 what we're currently doing is way over here.... 01:03:44.099 --> 01:03:48.759 and what various global agreements have tried to get us to do, and often failed, 01:03:48.759 --> 01:03:50.579 is somewhere over here... 01:03:50.579 --> 01:03:52.818 So the gulf is so enormous... 01:03:52.818 --> 01:03:57.528 that um, I yeah, I mean, it's a perfectly fair question.... 01:03:57.528 --> 01:04:01.958 but for that reason I've never really looked at it in much detail. 01:04:01.958 --> 01:04:06.159 But I do believe that the more people believe this... 01:04:06.159 --> 01:04:10.618 that the more likely they are to act, so I suspect that there's... 01:04:10.618 --> 01:04:13.298 also denial can operate on many levels... 01:04:13.298 --> 01:04:20.298 You can sort of believe something factually, but not believe it deep down in your heart, 01:04:20.329 --> 01:04:23.150 and so, if you say: "Oh, yes, I accept climate change", 01:04:23.150 --> 01:04:28.408 but, but you just won't allow yourself, on an emotional leve,l to think about 01:04:28.408 --> 01:04:31.578 what is gonna happen to the planet in the future, 01:04:31.579 --> 01:04:34.258 and you can sort of separate your everyday life 01:04:34.258 --> 01:04:38.828 from what you believe, in the more academic side of your mind. 01:04:38.829 --> 01:04:42.089 So, I think that uh... in many ways, 01:04:42.089 --> 01:04:47.179 changing social opinion is the most important thing we can do at present... 01:04:47.179 --> 01:04:49.869 to deal with this problem, because then... 01:04:49.869 --> 01:04:54.119 people might start moving towards what the scientists are saying we need to do. 01:04:57.049 --> 01:05:00.269 We've got a lot of work to do and not much time to do it. 01:05:00.268 --> 01:05:04.189 Um, as I Iook at the world, which is sort of where I start. 01:05:04.189 --> 01:05:06.630 Um... 01:05:06.630 --> 01:05:09.749 We've gotta cut carbon emissions fast. 01:05:09.748 --> 01:05:16.418 Then it becomes clear, we need to cut carbon emissions 80%, not by 2050, but by 2020. 01:05:16.418 --> 01:05:22.728 For decades now, we environmentalists have been talking about the need to save the planet. 01:05:22.728 --> 01:05:27.568 But as I think about it, the planet's gonna be around for a long time to come... 01:05:27.568 --> 01:05:31.778 What we need to save now is civilization itself... 01:05:31.778 --> 01:05:34.760 This is, this is what's at stake... 01:05:36.150 --> 01:05:39.499 Coming up here today, I have no hidden agenda. 01:05:39.498 --> 01:05:42.338 I am fighting for my future. 01:05:42.338 --> 01:05:46.688 I am here to speak for all generations to come. 01:05:46.688 --> 01:05:53.688 I am here to speak on behalf of the starving children around the world whose cries go unheard. 01:05:54.298 --> 01:05:58.498 I am here to speak for the countless animals, dying across this planet, 01:05:58.498 --> 01:06:02.688 because they have no where left to go... 01:06:02.688 --> 01:06:09.458 And now we hear of animals and plants going extinct, everyday, vanishing forever... 01:06:09.458 --> 01:06:16.308 All this is happening before our eyes and yet we act as if we have all the time we want 01:06:16.309 --> 01:06:18.719 and all the solutions. 01:06:18.719 --> 01:06:22.659 You don't know how to fix the holes in our ozone layer. 01:06:22.659 --> 01:06:27.068 You don't know how to bring the salmon back up in a dead stream... 01:06:27.068 --> 01:06:30.668 You don't know how to bring back an animal now extinct. 01:06:30.668 --> 01:06:37.389 And you can't bring back the forest that once grew where there is now a desert... 01:06:37.389 --> 01:06:39.489 If you don't know how to fix it, 01:06:39.489 --> 01:06:43.278 please... stop breaking it. 01:06:43.278 --> 01:06:46.559 I'm only a child yet I know we are all in this together, 01:06:46.559 --> 01:06:51.269 and should act as one single world towards one single goal. 01:06:51.268 --> 01:06:57.889 If a child on the streets who has nothing is willing to share 01:06:57.889 --> 01:07:02.048 then why are we who have everything still so greedy? 01:07:03.088 --> 01:07:08.418 I am only a child yet I know if all the money spent on war 01:07:08.418 --> 01:07:14.064 was spent on finding environmental answers, ending poverty and finding treaties, 01:07:14.064 --> 01:07:17.610 what a wonderful place this earth would be. 01:07:17.610 --> 01:07:21.488 At school, even in Kindergarten, 01:07:21.489 --> 01:07:25.228 you teach us how to behave in the world. 01:07:25.228 --> 01:07:31.409 You teach us, not to fight with others... to work things out, 01:07:31.409 --> 01:07:33.259 to respect others, 01:07:33.259 --> 01:07:34.918 to clean up our mess, 01:07:34.918 --> 01:07:37.429 not to hurt other creatures, 01:07:37.429 --> 01:07:40.039 to share, not be greedy. 01:07:40.130 --> 01:07:46.139 Then why do you go out and do the things you tell us not to do? 01:07:46.139 --> 01:07:49.969 You are deciding what kind of a world we are growing up in. 01:07:49.969 --> 01:07:53.588 Parent's should be able to comfort their children by saying 01:07:53.588 --> 01:07:57.859 "Everything's going to be alright, it's not the end of the world, 01:07:57.859 --> 01:08:00.940 and we're doing the best that we can..." 01:08:00.940 --> 01:08:04.709 But I don't think you can say that to us anymore... 01:08:04.708 --> 01:08:08.578 Are we even on your list of priorities? 01:08:08.579 --> 01:08:09.849 My dad always says 01:08:09.849 --> 01:08:14.099 "You are what you do, not what you say." 01:08:14.099 --> 01:08:18.960 Well, what you do makes me cry at night. 01:08:18.960 --> 01:08:21.408 You grown-ups say you love us. 01:08:21.408 --> 01:08:26.518 But I challenge you, please, make your actions reflect your words. 01:08:26.518 --> 01:08:29.058 Thank you.