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Last Chance Films
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In association with
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Event Horizon Productions
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Presents
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ARCTIC DEATH SPIRAL
AND THE METHANE TIME BOMB
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Emergency Broadcast System
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We interrupt our programming.
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THIS IS A NATIONAL EMERGENCY.
Important details will follow.
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The emergency alert "system" has been activated.
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Ladies and gentleman.
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The very word secrecy is repugnant,
in a free and open society.
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We decided long ago,
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that the dangers of excessive and unwarranted
concealment of pertinent facts
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far outweigh the dangers
which are cited to justify it.
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But I am asking your help,
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in the tremendous task
of informing and alerting the American people.
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For I have complete confidence, in
the response and dedication of our citizens.
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Whenever they are fully informed.
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Many rivers and the air in many cities,
remain badly polluted.
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And our citizens, suffer,
from breathing that air.
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We lived with conditions like these
for many many years.
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But much that we once accepted as inevitable,
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we now find absolutely intolerable.
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Each of us all across this great land
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has a stake in maintaining
and improving environmental quality,
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clean air and clean waters,
the wise use of our lands,
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the protection of wildlife and
natural beauty, parks for all to enjoy.
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These are part of the birthright of every American.
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To guarantee that birthright,
we must act, and act decisively.
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It is literally now, or never.
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Our program will emphasize conservation.
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The amount of energy being wasted,
which could be saved,
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is greater than the total energy
that we are importing from foreign countries.
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We will also stress development
of our rich coal reserves.
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In an environmentally sound way.
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Now it seems to me that if, we would concentrate
on resolving the problems,
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uh... of the automobile, the combustion engine,
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thee, the pollution factor
and we've gone a long way in that,
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I think of myself as an environmentalist.
I uh...
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I don't wanna see all this beauty
around us wiped out and destroyed.
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We all know that human activities
are changing the atmosphere
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in unexpected, and in unprecedented ways.
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I recommend that we adopt a BTU tax
on the heat content of energy,
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as the best way to provide us
with revenue to lower the deficit,
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because it also combats pollution,
promotes energy efficiency,
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promotes the independence
economically of this country,
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as well as helping to reduce the debt.
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And it is environmentally responsible.
It will help us in the future,
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as well as in the present with the deficit.
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The United States is committed
to strengthening our energy security
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and confronting global climate change.
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And the best way to meet these goals is for
America to continue leading the way
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toward the development of cleaner,
and more energy efficient technology.
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We're gonna leave this planet...
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At least as good as the, planet we inherited,
from our parents
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but, we've got... we've got a
bigger problem with climate change.
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We sent, we sent a billion dollars to foreign nations,
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many of them hostile, and in the...
because of our addiction to oil,
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and in the bargain
we're melting the polar ice caps.
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Changing the weather patterns
all around the globe...
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The science is clear that man-made emissions
of air pollution and global warming gases
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are changing our atmosphere.
- Anthropogenic global warming is still an issue
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that the scientists are still debating
and you know it and I know it.
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The debate on the causes of Climate Change
are far from settled.
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Well the climate's always changing.
That's not the fundamental question.
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The fundamental question is whether man-made
activity, is the, is what's contributing most...
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I think CO2 Is a problem, and therefore
I don't think it needs to be regulated.
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We all breathe CO2, climate changes,
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but there's no evidence at all that it's man-made
CO2 that causes the climate to change.
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The idea of human induced global climate change is...
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one of the greatest hoaxes perpetrated
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out of the scientific community.
It is a hoax.
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I'm only concerned about the,
incredible frenzy and hype
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for something that's a total myth.
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It's AMAZING to me how aaah,
upset so many people are...
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The existence of all these billions of people
on earth, have all influenced the climate of earth.
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but NONE of it, is of significance, uhh...
and thank goodness,
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things are doing just fine.
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The question is the degree to which man influences
the climate and whether actually we can...
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...this is anything we should worry about
or whether we should be...
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bombing the global economy into the
dark ages to try and stop it.
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Ya know, the greatest hoax
I think has been around,
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in many many years,
if not hundreds of years
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has been this hoax on the environment
and global warming.
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You notice they don't call it global warming
anymore.
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No no no. It's because it's getting cooler!
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It's "Weather Control".
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Yeah! It's getting cooler, you can't call
it global warming anymore.
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So what we need, what the world needs is more
fossil fuels.
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The evidence we have, is not just that fossil
fuels aren't ruining our planet.
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They're making it much better...
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Climate related deaths are going down.
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And, so, what we need is many many
more fossil fuels.
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So that people can eat.
And they can have food.
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Through the years of high school,
"Aqua Net" hair spray use have done
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more damage to the ozone
than any global warming scam has.
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Aqua. I remember Aqua Net.
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Aqua Net.
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(Laughter)
Every every, every.
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I remember Brill creme.
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But I don't think that had anything to do
with the climate change.
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"A little dab'll do ya" Remember that?
That's it!
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There´s more!
The CO2 can also go...
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(Crazy Gestures & Comic Sounds)
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At times when CO2 was rich in the atmosphere,
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there was... greater growth of farms, vineyards
and so forth.
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Uh, I guess in England,
there was a time when
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growth of vineyards was so great
there was this wine all over the place and...
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But I'm still open to the possibility. So
if there's anyone from Exxon-Mobile here...
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I've got a bank account and routing number
available for you. (Laughter)
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One could argue from an economic point-of-view...
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We should be burning fossil-fuels like "Gangbusters"
to generate as much wealth as we can.
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Divert some of that into alternative energy research
and we might get to those alternative energies
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faster, than if we...
starve poor people
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and ruin the world's economies,
and reduce CO2 emissions.
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(Applause)
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Now, as we agreed, you owe me two beers.
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(Laughter)
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"Scientific American" editorialized on the
escalating ugliness of climate denier tactics and rhetoric.
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The editors wondered if we are a people
increasingly estranged from critical thinking,
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divorced from logic,
alienated from objective truth.
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Now to the big headline from
"Climate Scientists" tonight.
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The UN International Panel on Climate Change
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says we are hurdling toward the day when
Climate Change could be irreversible,
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with catastrophic consequences they say.
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It's only going to get worse if we don't take
drastic measures.
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We've seen an increasing number of regions
over the decades, starting to lose ice,
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but this is the first time we've seen it
ALMOST globally.
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Most ominously, the report says
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we are in REAL danger of
exceeding our carbon limit of one-trillion tons.
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Scientists say that would warm the earth more
than three and a half degrees Fahrenheit,
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making the impacts of climate change
MUCH more dangerous...
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And that's the worry.
Many of the worlds cities are in the crosshairs.
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Most of the people around the world
live in coastal areas,
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it's where most of your major cities are
because that's where ports are.
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And they are at sea level.
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So even small changes in sea level rise can
displace millions of people.
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Scientists fly over a giant chunk of Antarctic
ice as it cracks and collapses.
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The chunk is enormous.
About seven times the size of Manhattan
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160 Square Miles.
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It was part of the Wilkins Ice shelf.
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The biggest on Antarctica yet, scientists
say to fall victim to Global Warming.
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Watching Wilkins ice shelf disappear at the moment,
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we learn a lot more about
how Ice responds to climate change.
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The Ice is just a small fraction of the
Antarctic ice sheet.
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But it broke off well before scientists predicted.
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A sign they said that Climate Change may be
happening faster than expected.
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One expert told us last year:
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"I think what we, what we do know is that
ice, uhh, uh, is probably our best sensor,
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of these large scale changes taking place.
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And in many ways I think we're in
unchartered territory."
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Ice plays a vital role in cooling the Earth's
temperature and regulating sea levels.
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As it´s lost, the planet gets warmer,
sea levels rise and more ice is threatened.
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A vicious environmental circle.
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There are glaciologists now
who are getting very worried.
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But they haven't really come out
and said what they think.
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Take a good look at it,
because it won't be there for long.
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It's cracking and it's breaking up.
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And it's only one of dozens
of Antarctic ice shelves
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collapsing faster than anyone predicted.
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I would say the vast majority of we we're
looking at back there is broken up this year.
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It was a cool summer right? Chicago, New York,
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places like that, so.
How could it be Global Warming?
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This is how.
Look at the context.
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These blue dots over North America represent
below average temperatures
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for the Summer... June, July, August.
What we call "Climate Logical Summer".
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But look at the context. They're lost in a sea of red dots across much of the rest of the globe.
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Just a couple other blue dots here and there.
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Those red dots are above-average temperatures.
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What that translates to in terms of a ranking
for this summer and for August
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globally, second warmest on record. Period of record going back a little more than a century.
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June through August globally.
The third warmest on record.
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The oceans which had cooled for a couple years
now recovered with a vengeance.
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August the warmest on record. June through August also the warmest on record.
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Now, if the scientists are anywhere near correct,
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then this is the greatest challenge
facing humanity today.
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It is the greatest challenge
humanity has ever faced,
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and probably WILL ever face.
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If someone asks me,
if the climate system were changing.
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I would say, look at the data.
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The Arctic is, is experiencing, uh..
I would say a crisis.
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The meltdown is changing long held beliefs
about the Arctic and it's weather patterns.
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As well as being blamed for
affecting conditions around the globe
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and triggering a rise in global sea levels.
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From all these collective studies of the whole
Arctic region,
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you can see that it's warming much faster
than the rest of the planet.
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In 2012, we had the new record set
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in terms of melting
over the Greenland ice sheet.
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But here, amid this snow and ice
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It's hard to believe that the ice sheet is
melting as fast as scientists say.
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But it is.
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Scientists say, we are watching the polar
regions melt right before our eyes.
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So you can tell, there's a stream, here.
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And then there's a bunch of flow
coming down on this right side.
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Interpreting the info that comes from satellites
called "The Gravity Recovery And Climate Experiment".
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In science circles, it's called "GRACE".
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"GRACE" can detect the most subtle minute
changes in land ice,
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down to the width of a human hair.
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The faster speeds that we're seeing uhh...
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In Greenland are not going to slow down.
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That's not the way, uh, ice sheets behave.
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Ooohohohooooo!
Aaaaaah!
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Ouch! Oh my God!
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"Here comes the water...
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Uh ohoo."
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"Look at that."
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"ohoo, ohoo..."
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Woooooow!
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So how big, was this calving event that we
just looked at?
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We'll resort to some illustrations again to
give you a sense of scale.
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It's as if the entire lower tip of Manhattan
broke off.
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Except that...
the thickness, the height of it
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Is equivalent to buildings that are two and
a half or three times higher than they are.
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That's a magical, miraculous
horrible, scary thing
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I don't know that anybody's really seen the
miracle and horror of that.
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It took a hundred years for it to retreat
eight miles, from 1900 to 2000.
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From 2000 to 2010, it retreated nine miles.
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So in ten years, it retreated more than it
had in the previous one-hundred.
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First of all, we're going to look at the
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runaway behavior, that is actually happening,
to the Arctic system.
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Going almost exponential.
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We saw the rate of change of ice area, accelerating.
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We saw the change in ice mass, or thickness
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also accelerating and moving towards zero,
over the next two or three years.
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And taken all together,
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we have the unmistakable footprint of a system
in, what we call, self-amplification
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or, "Runaway Behavior".
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Uhh, you may remember that in 2007,
there was a, uh,
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a big study that came out
from this group called
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"The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change".
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And, they looked at computer models of how
rapidly Arctic ice would go away.
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And, as of early 2007,
this is what they were telling us.
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That, aahm...
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We would see, gradual drop in Arctic... ice minimum.
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going down to where we probably still have
a fair amount of ice left in the year 2100.
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Worst case, maybe by 2070,
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we would see open water, in the Arctic,
in the Summertime.
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That very same year,
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we saw, in the actual observations, a
huge drop in the Arctic ice.
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And, that drop has continued so that in 2012,
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this is now where we are.
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So we're something like fifty years ahead
of the worst case scenarios,
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that the scientists were giving us
just five years ago with Arctic Ice.
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I'm actually in agreement with many climate
change deniers, in that the IPCC is wrong.
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But I think, they're actually wrong, because
they're too conservative.
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And they haven't really been telling the story
of what really could happen...
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Can you summarize the effect
of an ice-free Arctic on the world.
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Yes, the effect of an ice-free Arctic on the
world is a very large one,
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because it goes way beyond the Arctic itself.
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Because once thee sea ice has disappeared,
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firstly, that produces a decrease
in the global albedo,
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the amount of radiation reflected by the earth.
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And has a knock-on effect in the sense that
the warmer air masses in the Arctic in summer,
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cause a retreat of the snowline,
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and the snow-line decrease has just as big
an effect on the albedo as the sea ice decrease has.
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So as global albedo change, which affects
thee temperature of thee entire planet,
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it warms it all up.
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Uh, and then, there's the fact
that as the sea ice retreats
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it allows the water masses around
the shelves of the Arctic to warm up.
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And that warms up the seabed and releases
more Methane from the sub-sea permafrost
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which is melting away.
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And, that methane itself
is a very very powerful greenhouse gas.
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So we're having a methane kick, uh,
coming in from the retreat of the sea ice,
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which again, is a global effect rather than
simply an Arctic effect.
-
When the IPCC is uh...
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It's not a whole load of people agreeing.
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It's a load of people saying, oh, it's this,
it's this, it's this.
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It's just that, nearly, everybody thinks that
we are warming the planet,
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they, disagree about how fast it'll happen.
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They disagree about whether negative or positive
feedbacks are going to be more important.
-
This is one of the more conservative scientific
bodies on the planet. They work by consensus,
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and, after the scientists reach consensus...
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they then, vet they're report through the
political process.
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So politicians have to sign off on the IPCC's
assessment before it's released.
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And they conclude that, that we've reached
"Runaway",
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in the absence of Geo-engineering.
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And, this is not in the model.
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The models don't show this happening.
This IS happening.
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So what happens when we update the models,
so that it does reflect that the Arctic is melting?
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So we're seeing effects.
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And, one of thee primary effects, that, uh...
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grabs most peoples attention is
what's happening with the Arctic sea ice,
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the ice that's floating on the Arctic ocean,
that covers usually most of the Arctic Ocean.
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Last year 2012 was the record low as lowest,
Arctic summer ice that we have seen
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ever since we've been observing it.
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Whereas the rest of the globe has cooled,
since 1997,
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temperature in the Arctic has started to increase
and increase, increasingly rapidly.
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The hotter it gets, the faster it gets hotter.
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2007 alone, in one year, it melted more in
the previous year
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by an area equal to
three times the size of California.
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And it will be all gone, in five or ten years.
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It's pretty clear from the death spiral,
that's the way in which the volumes of ice
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in the summer are zeroing in towards
uh, towards zero,
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that the ice can't last more
than a couple more years.
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There's no way... that ice mass,
of the end of September,
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can continue going round this circle,
for the next five decades.
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It's moving very rapidly
into the zero point in the center.
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It's been decreasing for several decades.
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In fact, way back into the nineteen-sixties
and seventies,
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we have a trend pattern of decreasing area of sea ice,
particularly at it's minimum.
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and the minimum sea ice occurs in September
at the end of the summer warming.
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But, do have a look at the last few years,
from 2007 onwards.
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The data points have been pulling way down
below the straight line.
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It becomes more and more obvious that straight
line representations are no longer
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the appropriate statistical tool for demonstrating what is
going on in the Arctic.
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Then we see it looks like the end of the
Arctic sea ice area
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in September, by about 2015.
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So we're seeing a temperature rise, this is
the NASA temperature graph,
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going back to 1880 when we feel
we have good global coverage with instruments.
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We can take it back much further.
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In fact, a very significant paper came out,
just this past Spring,
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which looked at a number of different...
temperature Proxies, as we call them,
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like tree rings and corals
and stalactites in caves and things like that.
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And we pushed back the temperature record
eleven-thousand years...
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And what you've got is this, uhn...
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you've got us coming out
of the ice age, back here,
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and then we've got a slow, slow, slow gradual,
gradual decline, until the last century.
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And then, this is us.
Here.
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So, we're... we're... we're pretty clear that,
that, uhh...
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something's changed
in the last two-hundred years
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and the only thing that we've been able to track down
that really answers it is the... uhn
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greenhouse gases
that human beings have been putting out.
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What's going on in the Arctic area at the
moment is, probably, the fastest moving response,
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to Global Warming and Climate Change
anywhere on the planet.
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In 1859, the English physicist John Tyndall,
using equipment of his own design,
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showed that certain gases in the atmosphere blocked
and absorbed long wave or heat radiation.
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Four decades later, Svante Arrhenius,
with thousands of manual calculations,
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made an estimate of the global warming power of CO2,
that was very close to today's best models.
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In the 1950's, american Charles Keeling
began to measure accurately
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the steady increase of CO2 in the atmosphere.
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Spectrographic analysis soon showed that the
new carbon was, without a doubt, man-made.
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So it's a rare gas.
-
The atmosphere is almost all, Nitrogen and
Oxygen.
-
But you see here that,
out of a million molecules of air in 1958,
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about 314 of them would be
carbon dioxide molecules.
-
And you see the graph there at the lower left,
tracing the first few years.
-
So, you can see a lot of things on this graph
just, right away.
-
First of all, it's increasing with time.
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And here's what the Keeling curve,
which is the popular name for this,
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looks like today.
-
And you can see that what was 314 then,
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is now 395 or so,
pushing 400 today.
-
That's a remarkable story right there.
-
Because that increase is something like 25%.
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Mankind is changing the chemical composition
of the atmosphere in important ways.
-
And, the greenhouse effect had been understood
for a long time.
-
The fact that Carbon Dioxide, and other molecules
trap infrared energy, they trap heat essentially,
-
had been known to experimental physicists
in the middle 1800's.
-
John Tyndall, in London,
put Carbon Dioxide in a tube
-
and measured how it could absorb
infrared energy, which he could shine on it.
-
The first attempts to understand the implications
of this for climate date back to the 1890's.
-
So, in a sense, the science was there,
-
connecting Carbon Dioxide amounts of the atmosphere
to Climate Change
-
until we had the measurements
showing that the CO2 was actually increasing
-
and increasing much more quickly than had
been foreseen in the nineteen century.
-
There were more people using more coal and
oil and natural gas,
-
and the rapidity of the growth of CO2 was
a surprise to everyone.
-
Popular mechanics magazine
wrote about this in 1953.
-
The products of research were showing us that
if we continue to add Carbon Dioxide to the atmosphere,
-
by burning fossil fuels,
we're going to see a rise in temperature
-
This was the work of Doctor Gilbert Plas, who
published a very significant paper on this.
-
This had been an issue that had been kicked
around for the previous hundred years or so,
-
but, it was this research that really kind
of nailed it in so far as making the science clear.
-
Yet it's taken us this long to really even
begin to get through to the public dialogue
-
on how important this is.
-
The amount of Carbon Dioxide in the atmosphere
is what matters to the climate.
-
Climate just reacts to how many and what kinds
of heat trapping gases are there.
-
The more there are of an important gas,
like CO2
-
which is by far the most important man-made gas,
-
the warmer it gets.
-
Now, on this graph is temperature and Carbon
Dioxide.
-
Let's look at the black line first.
That's Carbon Dioxide.
-
1880 on the left,
the present on the right,
-
and so, we know that it was rising gradually
before Keelings measurements began.
-
And that, in the times before the 1800's,
-
when human activities presumably had no strong
effect on climate,
-
It was near a value of 280
and these same units of molecules per million molecules.
-
So CO2 has been rising, but
in all the years before the 1930's,
-
you might say, every year
was below that average,
-
and in recent years,
every year's been above it.
-
Again, the natural variability is due to factors
like El Nino and the occasional strong Volcano,
-
which temporarily cools the climate
for a year or two.
-
And uh, so these things here are some of the
strongest El Nino's on record.
-
But that there's a warming now
and that this period is different
-
from this period,
isn't in doubt at all.
-
So the question that
people typically ask is...
-
How do we know this isn't just
some kind of a normal cycle?
-
OK. It's getting warmer but,
It's been warmer in the past.
-
It's been colder in the past.
-
How do we know this is
different from the past?
-
Well.
-
We can measure what's coming into and out
of the planet by satellite,
-
and the satellites do
a pretty good job of this.
-
We know, that, the planet is in energy imbalance.
-
We know that that energy imbalance is completely
consistent with the predictions
-
that have been made
about greenhouse gases.
-
And we know that
that's quite a big energy imbalance.
-
It's not small.
-
In fact, it's equal to about 400 thousand
Hiroshima nuclear bombs exploding everyday.
-
That's about four or five
every second or so.
-
That's how much energy is being trapped,
primarily in the ocean
-
because the ocean is
the biggest heat sink, by far.
-
So, natural sources are in balance between
emission and absorption.
-
The oceans are actually net absorbers but...
-
Human beings. It's one-way traffic.
-
So it's only us that can be causing the increase.
-
Everything else, even volcanoes,
is balanced by uptake.
-
So, it's only us,
that can be causing the increase.
-
From here you are in the early
nineteen hundreds til today.
-
Blue is cooler than average, and yellow and
orange are warmer than average
-
and you can see here,
it's still some blue areas and so on.
-
But starting in the 1970´s, you start to see
the yellow and orange colors predominating.
-
By the time this ends in 2010 or so,
-
you can see what the world looks like
today in this picture.
-
There's warming everywhere.
-
There's more warming over the continents
than over the oceans.
-
There's more warming in the North
than in the South.
-
And there's the strongest warming in the Arctic.
-
This is a Mercator projection so it exaggerates
the area of the Arctic.
-
But the warming is strongest in high Northern
latitudes.
-
And that's because of a number of feedbacks
that we think we understand
-
of which the most important is that,
when warming occurs in the far North,
-
the ice and snow melt ,
as we've seen.
-
And, the ice and snow having melted revealed
darker water and darker land that was under them,
-
which reflect less sunlight and therefore
absorb more sunlight.
-
So the chain of events is
Carbon Dioxide causes the warming,
-
the warming melts snow and ice,
-
the melted snow and ice make the surface darker,
-
the darker surface absorbs more sunlight,
-
and that adds to the warming.
-
The human trigger is now almost irrelevant.
-
The feedbacks have taken over.
-
The mirror that's at the top of the world
is gonna be gone.
-
It won't be gone in the wintertime but the
Sun's not shining on it in the wintertime.
-
So, it matters in the summertime.
-
One of the key effects that this has is that
when all of these Northern areas are covered
-
with white reflective snow and ice,
-
it bounces most of the Solar energy off,
-
bounces it back off into space.
-
But, when we are seeing
-
more and more open water, dark soil
and dark surfaces,
-
then the solar energy
tends to get absorbed.
-
So instead of reflecting 90% of all the energy,
-
you're absorbing 90% of all the energy.
-
So, this is what scientists call:
"A Positive Feedback",
-
and they don't mean that it's good.
-
It's not a positive thing for us because,
it's more like a vicious cycle,
-
more heat equals less ice,
and less ice equals more heat
-
and it just sort of
continues on in a spiral.
-
And that's what we're seeing in the Arctic.
-
And that's why the Arctic is warming at about
twice the rate of the rest of the planet.
-
And that means that Sun's energy is being
absorbed into the tundra,
-
the frozen areas of the Northern continental
masses and into the open ocean where the ice was.
-
So that the whole system is now accelerating
and accelerating and accelerating
-
and the hotter it gets
the faster it gets hotter.
-
The faster it gets hotter,
the more water vapor.
-
The more water vapor,
the faster it gets hotter.
-
The faster it gets hotter,
the less ice.
-
The less ice, the less reflection
so the faster it gets hotter...
-
You begin to get the idea?
-
It has to be a downward curving,
-
what we call exponential decay.
-
And you project that line forward
as is done in this particular setting of the equations
-
and understanding of Arctic ice mass loss,
-
then, once again, it shows
zero ice floating on the Arctic ocean...
-
by the end of Summer... 2015.
-
Which confirms precisely, my own work
on the decay of Arctic ice area to the same date.
-
Mind you, at the same time, the thickness of the ice
has also been diminishing.
-
The ice in the Arctic now
is thinner than it used to be,
-
thus more vulnerable to melting.
-
And just to give you an example of what's
happening
-
just in this past season...
-
This is from March
-
March and April of 2013.
-
Looking at this area above Alaska.
-
We had a cyclone going on, up in this area,
that was moving, causing some torque on this ice
-
and the ice just started to fracture and
break up, in a manner that was very very unusual.
-
I talked to scientists at
the National Snow and Ice Data Center,
-
and they said: "What you're seeing here is happening
because this ice would've been maybe
-
twenty feet thick thirty years ago,
and now it's only three feet thick."
-
And so it´s getting pushed around
and broken up.
-
And much of this did in fact refreeze,
but it refroze in a manner that was much thinner,
-
much more fragile, and it´s now being pushed around,
deformed much more easily
-
and melted much more quickly
then it would've been fifty years ago.
-
When our people think about Climate Change,
they think in 2100. 2100!
-
We might have two feet of more sea level.
-
Gee, well, I can kinda deal with that...
-
We're talking about 2010.
2020.
-
It's gonna be really serious impacts.
-
If any of these things happen
which could happen... anytime.
-
It's like playin Russian Roulette
with kind of a few bullets in the chamber.
-
As the temperature starts to increase
more quickly,
-
then other feedbacks are also
brought into play,
-
and more powerfully
then they had been previously.
-
The sixth consequence concerns
what's happening to the Greenland icecap.
-
Now, it sits there as a one-and-a-half mile
thick
-
layer of ice
across a large piece of land mass.
-
Once upon a time,
15 000 years ago,
-
we had great ice sheets,
covering our most populous zones
-
in the Western hemisphere.
-
Those ice sheets retreated, very rapidly when
the climate and the oceans switched.
-
And what we're getting here now is a rate
of retreat that, I believe, is unprecedented
-
in terms of the last ten-thousand years.
-
Earlier this month, the surface of the ice sheet
covering Greenland melted more widely
-
than has been seen in thirty-three years
of satellite imagery.
-
We got some reports that there was melt going
on around Greenland.
-
Literally, like so much water running off
that it was washing out bridges and things.
-
That there were runways that were on the snow
that were having problems.
-
You just had to be here,
-
this time last year, to watch this bridge,
completely wash-out.
-
The discharge of the river, at the point
was...
-
basically two-hundred times that of the Thames.
-
The effect is small, so far...
-
but, Greenland's mass loss has doubled over
the last decade.
-
And if that pattern of doubling continues
over coming decades,
-
then we're gonna have to rewrite some of the
predictions that we've made
-
about how rapidly
this is gonna happen.
-
The bed of the ice sheet and the interior
ice sheet is frozen to it's base.
-
And it's starting to slip.
-
This is the bedrock. OK?
-
And this is your ice.
-
And this is your water.
-
And that this water suddenly and violently
drains through this channel.
-
Then suddenly you have a change in direction
but it goes very fast.
-
We're focusing on this little lake over here,
-
you can see these mountain water lakes popping
up across the surface of the ice sheet
-
as the weather gets
warmer and warmer.
-
So, what you'll see here is this meanders along,
it meanders along
-
until it goes down,
into the ice, right there.
-
And as it goes down,
-
it's delivering all that heat
down into the deep levels of the ice.
-
So now the heat goes down here and,
just like a stick of butter,
-
the ice sheet begins to get soft.
-
It begins to move faster and that water goes
down to the bottom
-
and, because it's an incompressible fluid,
-
It will support, even a kilometer of ice.
-
It will lubricate even a huge volume of ice
and make it move faster over that rocky surface.
-
So that accelerates the process as well.
-
The water across the surface of this ice sheet
is rampant,
-
and it's causing untold damage to the base
of the ice sheet,
-
and it's doing that in deep interior regions
that never before,
-
not least in the last ten-thousand years,
have been susceptible to that warming.
-
That water input.
-
That water draining down into the ice
is relatively warm.
-
The average temperature of the ice sheet, at depth,
is several degrees below the freezing point,
-
whereas the water that's draining in is right
at the freezing point.
-
So this is relatively warm water that drains
in and it heats the ice sheet, internally.
-
Warmer ice deforms more easily than cold ice.
-
So, an increase in melt water draining in
to the ice sheet has a softening effect,
-
especially when the amount of melt water is
increasing.
-
You know, Greenland is 23 feet of sea level.
-
7.3 meters, if it all melts.
-
And the history is very clear.
-
When it was warm, there's no ice on Greenland.
-
When it's cold, there's lots of ice on Greenland.
-
And so it's very clear Greenland is very tightly
tied to temperature
-
and if it gets too hot
it goes away.
-
And too hot is not very many degrees above
where we are now...
-
And this is the Ilulissat glacier.
-
This is the calving front of Ilulissat glacier
that we flew along on the first day.
-
This is the fastest moving ice stream
in the world.
-
It's 400 feet high.
-
The water is coming down under the ice and
squirting out down here, below the water line,
-
like... a Jacuzzi.
-
And it's creating circulation down here
-
and it's drawing warm ocean water
in underneaththe the water line here.
-
And it makes it accelerate the calving off
of the giant glaciers.
-
And this whole bay here is just full of gigantic
glaciers.
-
As that movement accelerates...
-
the ice upstream begins
to crack and deform, like this,
-
and, you can see, as it cracks, that water begins
to collect in those cracks.
-
And that water begins to absorb more heat
and, because water is heavier than ice,
-
it actually begins to hydro fracture it's way,
down into the ice sheet.
-
accelerating the movement even further.
-
So what you're seeing is that,
at every stage,
-
there is a different kind of a process that,
not only feeds on itself,
-
but feeds into all
the other processes in the cycle.
-
On the ice sheet,
if you wanna know what's happening,
-
you need to just follow the water
and see what it's telling you.
-
And this is the story that it's telling us.
-
This is why scientists
are starting to feel that
-
Greenland and ice sheets across the planet
have the capacity to move much faster
-
then what they have
during human experience.
-
So, the big concern is that we don't tip ourselves
into some kind of an event like that
-
where the ice sheets begin to move at a pace that
is really beyond human capacity to keep up with.
-
As we move to acceleratingly
increasing temperature change,
-
as the waters all around Greenland are no
longer covered with floating ice,
-
and as the temperature of those waters around
begins to increase,
-
so, of course the air over Greenland is hotter.
-
The waters around it are hotter.
-
The ice surface begins to melt,
-
right across the dome.
-
Well, last year in this place
where we actually flew into, Kangerlussuaq,
-
this is what the river looked like there.
-
It was overflowing,
this bridge was washing out,
-
giant machinery was being swept away
-
because we were seeing melting that was happening
over the entire surface of the ice sheet.
-
They had never seen this kind of water flow
there in that river.
-
So. The consequences for the Greenland ice
cap are massive.
-
And as it melts, it adds fresh water to the
global ocean,
-
and starts to raise the sea level...
-
If it goes quickly then we can expect
2, 3, 5, 7 meters of sea level change...
-
right across the world,
-
to happen, on a decadal basis.
-
i.e., within 10 to 20 years.
-
That would be catastrophic for civilization,
-
many of whose urban centers would be below
sea level, in the new situation.
-
Actually, the Greenland ice sheet is de-glaciating.
-
It's retreating...
-
but it's retreat is dynamic.
-
It's drawing down the interior of the ice
sheet, faster than the models assume at present.
-
And hence, the ice sheet and it's interior
is accelerating,
-
and the melt of the margin is enhanced,
-
and I think that means that this ice
sheet is ... actively de-glaciating.
-
And that's... a pretty serious problem,
for sea level rise.
-
Let's move on now to the fourth consequence.
-
And that is the impact on the tundra.
-
Those land masses,
that border onto the Artic ocean,
-
now have a warmer, open sea coast,
-
and the warmer air and the warmer temperatures
are being fedback over the land mass.
-
And of course what that does is increase the
rate of melting of the tundra permafrost,
-
and we get this depth of permafrost melt,
which we call the cast,
-
increases year on year.
-
That also has consequences.
-
For instance, there's a lot of biological
material in the deep freeze of the tundra,
-
and as that thaws out, it begins to decay,
the microbes have a field day
-
and out comes more carbon dioxide
and more methane from the rotting vegetation.
-
So, methane is being released into the atmosphere...
-
not only from the ocean floor, but also, as
I said, from the melting of the tundra.
-
And the more methane there is in the atmosphere,
-
as this next slide shows,
-
the greater the greenhouse effect,
and methane is a very powerful greenhouse gas.
-
When the permafrost thaws,
-
the organic matter in the permafrost thaws as well
and begins to decay.
-
The microorganisms start to eat it.
-
If there's no oxygen,
the microorganisms make methane.
-
If there's oxygen,
the microorganisms make carbon dioxide.
-
Ahh, permafrost.
Right here.
-
Frozen dirt.
-
We found, as far as
the organic matter coming out of this hill slope,
-
is that it's much more bio-available,
-
meaning it's yummier for the microbes that
are decomposing it,
-
than carbon, or organic matter
near the surface today.
-
So that has climate implications.
-
Because that means that this organic matter
is processed quicker,
-
it's return to the atmosphere is
carbon dioxide and methane,
-
and can feed back on climate that way.
-
Sites like this where the permafrost is releasing
organic matter act as accelerators.
-
They speed up the process of human caused
climate change.
-
So it's uh, it's a large amplification of
what we're doing.
-
It feeds back on to our impact.
-
It's important to realize that the scale and
rate of change that we're talking about now
-
is several degrees, two to five degrees in
just a hundred years.
-
So this is much faster than has happened in
the last 50 million years.
-
We're talking about unprecedented climate change
and a very rapid abrupt response
-
from this eco-system.
-
There have been changes in the Arctic, in
the permafrost,
-
in terms of the temperature overtime,
-
not only in the shallow layers near the surface,
-
but at 10, 20 and 50 meter depths.
-
You're seeing changes that are even more rapid.
-
That indicates that not only is there heating
near the surface,
-
but that this heat
is being transported to depth, very efficiently.
-
The permafrost stores methane.
-
As Richard was talking about,
it's currently melting.
-
It's warmer up there. It's like, 5 degrees warmer
up in the Arctic than it is...
-
The average temperature of the world
is only up a degree
-
but in the Arctic it's up five degrees.
-
And it's releasing 50 million tons per year,
which is a billion tons of CO2.
-
And it's obviously rising.
-
If it all went, we'd basically all be dead.
I mean.
-
And, it's happening now.
-
And the problem here is it's accelerating.
-
Once it starts generating, through this process
or any of the other ones I talk about,
-
once those processes
generate more CO2 than we do,
-
it won't matter if we stopped completely,
-
it's gonna keep going.
-
These are positive feedback loops.
-
And by the way, it's not in the models.
-
The fifth implication of the Arctic dynamics
concerns the feedback of the methane release.
-
It is probably one of the most important
issues that we have to examine.
-
We will be in danger of destabilizing these
things called methane hydrates
-
which store a lot of methane
on the bottom of the ocean,
-
in a kind of frozen form,
-
10 000 billion tons of this stuff.
-
And they are known to be destabilized by warming.
-
This chunk of ice may look pretty unremarkable
at first glance,
-
but put a match to it
and something amazing happens...
-
As reported in this month's issue of the Atlantic,
it's called methane hydrate,
-
and it's actually not unusual at all.
-
In fact, there are more than one-hundred thousand
trillion cubic feet of it on Earth.
-
Volume wise, that's like the size of the Mediterranean
sea.
-
And it has a greater energy capacity than
all the coal, oil and natural gas on Earth combined.
-
And well methane burns clean.
-
Unburned methane is
a potent greenhouse gas,
-
and if it leaks,
it can be devastating to the environment.
-
The USGS is confident leakage won't be a problem,
as long as proper precautions are taken.
-
There are potential irreversible effects of
melting the sea ice.
-
If it begins to allow the Arctic ocean to
warm up and warm the ocean floor,
-
then, we'll begin to release methane hydrate.
-
About 80 years ago, we switched to studying
the East Siberian Arctic shelf.
-
And actually, we've been studying it for
the last 80 years.
-
Continuously, year by year by year.
-
Conducting one or two expeditions a year.
-
That hydrocarbons are produced within the
sedimentary drape, was sealed
-
and prevented the methane escape into the atmosphere.
-
That is why we're telling that this should
be the largest hydrocarbon stock in the world.
-
Over there...
-
There is a potential risk that,
if warming continues,
-
the larger and, maybe, great and massive
amount of methane
-
could be released
from this Arctic shelf.
-
Of course there is a potential risk.
-
And in terms of potential risk, I would say
that this Siberian Arctic shelf has the most potential.
-
Because, as I said, the carbon pool is huge
and the wall of the shell is very shallow
-
and the warming occurs stronger than in different
areas of the worlds ocean.
-
And of course it is a potential risk.
-
So the methane in the atmosphere,
-
the amount, the total amount of methane in
the atmosphere,
-
in the current atmosphere,
-
it's about five Gigatonnes.
-
The amount of carbon preserved in the form
of methane in this East Siberian Arctic shelf,
-
is approximately...
-
from hundreds to thousands of Gigatonnes.
-
And of course it's only one percent of that
amount is required
-
to double the atmosphere burden of methane.
-
But to destabilize one percent of this
carbon pool,
-
I think it's not much effort needed,
-
considering that the state of permafrost
and the amount of methane currently involved.
-
Because what divides this methane from the
atmosphere is a very shallow water column,
-
and a weakening permafrost,
-
which is losing it's ability to seal,
-
to serve as a seal.
-
And this is, I think it's a matter of...
-
it's not a matter of thousands of years,
it's a matter of decades, I think.
-
Maybe, at most, hundred years but
I think,
-
matter of decades.
-
(It could happen any day)
-
It might potentially happen because,
-
I would list many factors that might, that are very convenient .. convincing for us.
-
So that might happen.
-
Not anytime.
-
Anytime sounds like it might happen today.
-
It might happen tomorrow.
-
The day after tomorrow.
(It might!)
-
You think so?
-
Igor is very convinced person
because he spend a lot of time over there.
-
And where the ice should be about two meters
thick, it was 40 centimeters thick...
-
That means that the processes...
-
All the processes that serves the stabilization
of everything...
-
of the sea ice, of the water column,
of the currents increasing,
-
(the currents, I mean the movement of water
beneath the sea ice increased).
-
So everything, everything looks anomalous.
Even from our experience from this ten years,
-
everything looks anomalous.
-
And this is what makes him thinking that...
-
making him think that the worst thing might
happen...
-
Shortly speaking, we do not like what we see
there,
-
absolutely do not like.
-
Uh, look at this.
-
In a matter of days...
just days,
-
we're having this huge, this huge area...
-
look at this....
-
going almost exploding with methane.
-
The only way this is possible is by melting
of methane clathrate.
-
It´s just the only explanation
-
Hi, uhm... how long do you think we have
before it becomes
-
socially and otherwise
unacceptable to emit carbon.
-
and, I mean, how radically do you think we
need to act consensually?
-
Right, well I mean...
-
I think, it's, the more we act, the better
things will be for future generations.
-
I don't, yeah, I mean there's all sorts of
estimates.
-
And um...
-
Basically, if we do a huge amount within the
next ten years,
-
we will still face quite an uncomfortable
future,
-
and the less we do, the worse it will get.
-
How much of it we can prevent,
depends on how bold we are,
-
how much we're prepared to do, and that in
turn is going to depend on changing social opinions.
-
What are the implications of all this,
-
for global dynamic behavior,
-
both in climate, and indeed,
for humanity as a civilization,
-
and the biosphere of which we are a part?
-
Well obviously, the Arctic is connected to
the rest of the world, it is part of the world,
-
and what happens in the Arctic inevitably
has implications and consequences and spin-off
-
for the rest of the planet.
-
Socially, we know we will be beginning to
remove some of the aerosols,
-
these particulates in the atmosphere that,
at the moment,
-
are reflecting much of the solar energy
back into space.
-
We also know that much energy is being taken
up by heating of the deeper ocean, at the moment.
-
And, as the effects of carbon dioxide,
and the other greenhouse gases
-
and the global behavior as a whole,
begin to come back on stream,
-
so, global temperatures will begin to respond
much as Arctic temperatures did.
-
Co2 begins to increase temperature,
-
increased temperature drives water vapor feedback,
-
water vapor feedback accelerates heating....
-
And then we begin to get hotter conditions
for some of the tropical forests,
-
we get burn and dieback
and increased release of carbon dioxide
-
from the bio-mass of the planet.
-
It's a different set of feedbacks from that
operating in the high Arctic,
-
but it is nonetheless potent.
-
And as in the Arctic, so tomorrow, in the
world, as a whole.
-
And if the implications of jet-stream behavior
and food production and Arctic dynamics spin-off
-
into our survival as a species, into our economics,
into our food production,
-
into the abandonment of the poor,
-
and the inability to sustain a population
of eight, nine, ten billion people,
-
so, also...
-
The increasing acceleration of global behavior...
-
which will inevitably follow...
-
unless we are able to intervene,
to slow it down...
-
bring it to a halt...
and reverse it,
-
then, without that intervention...
-
global dynamics hold a dark future for humanity...
-
a dark future for the biosphere of which we
are a part.
-
It is time to take action...
-
Not only for the Arctic...
-
but for the global crisis in which we are
all placed.
-
There's not agreement on how much we need
to do, how fast.
-
To be honest, I don't think there needs to
be, because the one thing I am certain of is
-
that we will not do as much as the scientists
say we need to do.
-
That's why I've never sort of looked that
closely at that particular question because,
-
what the scientists say we need to do
is over here...
-
what we're currently doing is way over here....
-
and what various global agreements have tried
to get us to do, and often failed,
-
is somewhere over here...
-
So the gulf is so enormous...
-
that um, I yeah, I mean, it's a perfectly
fair question....
-
but for that reason I've never really looked
at it in much detail.
-
But I do believe that
the more people believe this...
-
that the more likely they are to act, so I
suspect that there's...
-
also denial can operate on many levels...
-
You can sort of believe something factually,
but not believe it deep down in your heart,
-
and so, if you say:
"Oh, yes, I accept climate change",
-
but, but you just won't allow yourself,
on an emotional leve,l to think about
-
what is gonna happen
to the planet in the future,
-
and you can sort of separate
your everyday life
-
from what you believe,
in the more academic side of your mind.
-
So, I think that uh...
in many ways,
-
changing social opinion is the
most important thing we can do at present...
-
to deal with this problem, because then...
-
people might start moving towards what the
scientists are saying we need to do.
-
We've got a lot of work to do
and not much time to do it.
-
Um, as I Iook at the world,
which is sort of where I start.
-
Um...
-
We've gotta cut carbon emissions fast.
-
Then it becomes clear, we need to cut carbon
emissions 80%, not by 2050, but by 2020.
-
For decades now, we environmentalists have
been talking about the need to save the planet.
-
But as I think about it, the planet's gonna
be around for a long time to come...
-
What we need to save now is civilization itself...
-
This is, this is what's at stake...
-
Coming up here today, I have no hidden agenda.
-
I am fighting for my future.
-
I am here to speak for all generations to
come.
-
I am here to speak on behalf of the starving
children around the world whose cries go unheard.
-
I am here to speak for the countless animals,
dying across this planet,
-
because they have no where left to go...
-
And now we hear of animals and plants going
extinct, everyday, vanishing forever...
-
All this is happening before our eyes and
yet we act as if we have all the time we want
-
and all the solutions.
-
You don't know how to fix the holes in our
ozone layer.
-
You don't know how to bring the salmon back
up in a dead stream...
-
You don't know how to bring back an animal
now extinct.
-
And you can't bring back the forest that once
grew where there is now a desert...
-
If you don't know how to fix it,
-
please... stop breaking it.
-
I'm only a child yet I know
we are all in this together,
-
and should act as one single world
towards one single goal.
-
If a child on the streets who has nothing
is willing to share
-
then why are we who have everything still so greedy?
-
I am only a child yet I know
if all the money spent on war
-
was spent on finding environmental answers,
ending poverty and finding treaties,
-
what a wonderful place this earth would be.
-
At school, even in Kindergarten,
-
you teach us how to behave in the world.
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You teach us, not to fight with others...
to work things out,
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to respect others,
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to clean up our mess,
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not to hurt other creatures,
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to share,
not be greedy.
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Then why do you go out and do the things you
tell us not to do?
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You are deciding what kind of a world we are
growing up in.
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Parent's should be able to comfort their children
by saying
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"Everything's going to be alright, it's not
the end of the world,
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and we're doing
the best that we can..."
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But I don't think you can say that to us anymore...
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Are we even on your list of priorities?
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My dad always says
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"You are what you do, not what you say."
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Well, what you do makes me cry at night.
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You grown-ups say you love us.
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But I challenge you, please,
make your actions reflect your words.
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Thank you.