 Voir la vidéo |
John Baez - Ecological Damage from Global Warming |
Chargement en cours ... |
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
John Baez - Ecological Damage from Global Warming Complete video at: http://fora.tv/fora/showt hread.php?t=584 Celebrated mathematical physicist John Baez looks at global warming from an historical perspective, and details the widespread ecological damage that may result from rapid climate change. ----- John Baez - "Zooming Out in Time" The graphs we see these days, John Baez began, all look vertical--- carbon burning shooting up, CO2 in the air shooting up, global temperature shooting up, and population still shooting up. How can we understand what really going on? "It's like trying to understand geology while you're hanging by your fingernails on a cliff, scared to death. You think all geology is vertical." So, zoom out for some perspective. An Earth temperature graph for the last 18,000 years shows that we've built a false sense of security from 10,000 years of unusually stable climate. Even so, a "little dent" in the graph of a drop of only 1 degree Celsius put Europe in a what's called "the little ice age" from 1555 to 1850. It ended just when industrial activity took off, which raises the question whether it was us that ended it. Zoom out further still to the last 65 million years. The temperature graph show several major features. One is the rapid (every 100,000 years) wide swings of major ice ages. When they began, 1.35 million years ago, is when humans mastered fire. But almost all of the period was much warmer than now, with ferns growing in Antarctica. "Now it's cold. What's wrong with a little warming?" Baez asked. The problem is that the current warming is happening too fast. Studies of 1,500 species in Europe show that their ranges are moving north at 6 kilometers a decade, but the climate zones are moving north at 40 kilometers a decade, faster than they can keep up. The global temperature is now the hottest it's been in 120,000 years. One degree Celsius more and it will be the hottest since 1.35 million years ago, before the ice ages. Baez suggested that the Anthropocene may be characterized mainly by species such as cockroaches and raccoons who accommodate well to humans. Coyotes are now turning up in Manhattan and Los Angeles. There are expectations that we could lose one-third of all species by mid-century, from climate change and other human causes. Okay, to think about major extinctions, zoom out again. Over the last 550 million years there have been over a dozen mass extinctions, the worst being the Permian-Triassic extinction 250 million years ago, when over half of all life disappeared. The cause is still uncertain, but one candidate is the methane clathrates ("methane ice") on the ocean floor. Since methane is a far worse greenhouse gas than carbon dioxide, massive "burps" of the gas could have led to sudden drastic global heating and thus the huge die-off of species. Naturally the methane clathrates are being studied as an industrial fuel for when the oil runs out in this century, "which could make our effect on global warming 10,000 times worse," Baez noted. "Zooming out in time is how I calm myself down after reading the newspapers," Baez concluded. "A mass extinction is a sad thing, but life does bounce back, and it gets more interesting each time. We probably won't kill off all life on Earth. But even if we do, there are a hundred billion stars in our galaxy, and ten billion galaxies in the observable universe." --Stewart Brand, The Long Now Foundation
Date : 01 février 2007 - 20:24:43
Tags : greenhouse fora climate environment gases Howto fora.tv emissions graphs environmental ecology history charts
|
|
 |
Ajouter à ton site |
Les vidéos sont stockées et diffusées au travers du site www.youtube.com conformément aux conditions d'utilisation de Youtube. Nous ne sommes pas responsables de leur contenu.
|
|
| Liens sponsorisés |
|
|
|
| Vidéos similaires |
|  | Bush At War With ...
Bush At War With Environment - Richard Nixon's EPA Head
| |  | Inside the ...
Inside the Transition: Energy & Environment Policy Team
A behind-the-scenes ... | |  | Michael Jackson - ...
Michael Jackson - Earth Song - World Environment Day
Earth Song Lyrics What ... | |  | Coral reef fish ...
Coral reef fish danger - Blue Planet - BBC Environment
BBC 'Blue Planet - ... | |  | How's the ...
How's the environment? - Yes Minister - BBC comedy
Another quiet chat at a ... | |  | Gene Organism and ...
Gene Organism and Environment
The standard metaphors used to describe DNA and ... | |  | Barack Obama on ...
Barack Obama on Energy and the Environment
Barack Obama discusses his plan for a ... | |  | HOME - The environment
HOME - The environment
HOME has a very clear message. We have a greater impact ... |
|
|
|
|
