Concerned viewers,
welcome to
this week’s edition of
Planet Earth:
Our Loving Home,
featuring our program
on the state of Arctic
sea ice and glaciers.
The Arctic is
the polar crown
of our planet,
yet the ice and snow
in this precious area
are disappearing
at an unprecedented rate
due to climate change,
which is driven by
the production
and consumption
of animal products.
These destructive practices
are the main source
for the human-generated
greenhouse gases
rapidly heating the globe.
Today we’ll examine
how the beautiful but
fragile northern polar region
is vital to life on our Earth
and how it affects
weather and climate.
One way in which
the Arctic plays a key role
in regulating
global temperatures
is through the ice-albedo
effect, by which
the area’s ancient layer
of snow and sea ice
reflects 85 to 90%
of the Sun’s energy
back into space,
keeping our planet cool.
Hence,
the more ice and snow
that are present
in the region, the cooler
our Earth becomes.
However when
this cover disappears,
the opposite effect occurs,
as the dark, Arctic Ocean
and exposed Arctic land
absorb the Sun’s energy
and cause
planetary warming,
which in turn drives
more melting and
more exposure of these
non-reflective surfaces.
Oceanographer
Dr. James Overland
of the US National
Oceanic and Atmospheric
Administration’s
Pacific Marine
Environmental Laboratory
directs research
on this phenomenon
and will now
provide more details.
Without ice there to reflect
the summer sunlight
from the white ice,
we absorb
a whole lot more heat
from the Sun that the Earth
normally used to not get,
and that heat is returned
to the atmosphere
in the fall, and that helps
set up these highly variable
climate patterns.
A lot of people know that
the Arctic is warming
twice as fast as anywhere
else on the planet but
what we’re seeing now
is new evidence that
this is really accelerating.
In 2007
we were really surprised
that we lost about 40%
of the area of the ice
that is normally covered
during the summer.
It looks like this process
will continue.
It will go up and down.
We will have
more or less size,
but we are on
a downward trajectory
caused by global warming.
The planet is warming,
and we’re seeing
an amplification
of that warming
in the poles of the planet,
particularly the Arctic
or the Northern Pole.
We’re just coming into
the summer conditions
in 2010,
so we’ve been watching
the aerial extent ice
quite closely.
And we’re finding
that the ice conditions
look to be quite light
this year and that
we’re probably going
to lose quite a bit of ice
through the summer.
And so we’re expecting it
to be another year that’s
fairly similar to 2007,
which was the last record
of the minimum extent
of sea ice in
the northern hemisphere.
For millennia in the Arctic,
new ice formed annually
over the remaining ice
from previous years.
However, nowadays
the ice is so thin
in many places
that this “multi-year ice”
has nearly disappeared.
Professor David Barber,
Canada Research Chair
in Arctic System Science
at the University
of Manitoba, Canada
explains the situation.
What happens
in the Arctic is that
when we lose the ice,
we’re really losing
multi-year sea ice,
and that is replaced
with first year sea ice.
So multi-year sea ice
is the stuff
that survives the summer,
and starts to re-grow
again the next year.
So it can become
quite thick and quite hard,
and it used to be
that 80 to 85%
of the Arctic basin
was covered
with that kind of ice.
We’re now down to about
18% of the Arctic basin
being covered by
that kind of ice,
and what happens is,
as we lose that ice,
it’s replaced in the fall
with this first year ice,
which is much thinner.
It has a maximum thickness
of about two meters.
It’s much more, say, lean,
and much warmer,
so it’s much easier to break
and it’s much more
susceptible to winds
and wave action.”
The frightening loss
of Arctic sea ice
and glaciers has other
profound effects
on global climate.
The delicately balanced,
ocean-current
circulation system has
many functions, such as
carrying vast amounts
of energy from the cooler
to the warmer parts
of our Earth,
and providing moisture
for North-western
Europe’s precipitation.
This highly complex
“thermohaline circulation”
system is driven by
differing temperatures
and densities of seawater,
and any destabilization
of this process
can have planet-wide
climatic effects.
If you put additional
fresh water into
the North Atlantic by
melting Greenland or by
having more discharge
from Siberian rivers,
then you can freshen
the North Atlantic
so strongly that there
won’t be any sinking
of water anymore, and
that would disrupt this
thermohaline circulation,
and could make it stop.
Because there’s so much
heat transport associated
with this thermohaline
circulation,
it’s going to disturb
the entire climate system.
Professor Anders Levermann
and other scientists say
that disrupting
the thermohaline circulation
pattern could cause
a 10 degree Celsius drop
in average temperature
for Europe,
effectively destroying
agricultural production
on the continent,
shift rainfall away from
environmentally sensitive
areas such as
the Amazon rainforest,
or even result in
a one-meter rise in
the North Atlantic Ocean.
We’ll now pause
for a brief message,
and when we return
we’ll examine other ways
in which Arctic warming
can severely affect
global weather and climate.
Please stay tuned
to Supreme Master
Television.
Welcome back to today’s
Planet Earth:
Our Loving Home
where we are focusing on
the state of the Arctic,
which is rapidly warming,
due largely to
the production
and consumption
of animal products.
Use of the term
“global warming”
sometimes misleads people
into thinking
that rising temperatures
are the key indicators
of climate change.
But in fact
planetary heating also
leads to a variety of
extreme weather events
such as severe snow storms
and unusually
frigid temperatures.
For example,
the winter of 2009-2010
saw drastically cold,
snowy weather in
several parts of the globe,
such as Mongolia,
Europe, China
and North America.
For more insight
on this topic,
Professor David Barber
will now explain
the difference between
weather and climate.
The reason we call it
climate change
is we’re interested in
the average change.
So a good way
to think about it
is that climate is
what you expect to see
if you look out
of your window.
So if you wake up one day
and it’s July, you expect
to look out the window
and see a sunny day,
and it’s fairly warm
and the birds are singing,
that’s the climate; that’s
what you expect to see.
If you wake up
and you look out,
and it’s snowing in July,
that’s weather: It means
that a freak weather
storm has come in,
and has done something
different than
what you’d expect to find.
And the similar can be said
in the wintertime,
if you look out
in December, you expect it
to be cold and snowy,
but if you look out,
that would be climate
if it’s cold and snowy, that’s
what you expect to see;
but if you look out
and you see
it’s a nice warm day and
all the snow is melted,
that’s weather.
So weather is
short-term things,
climate is long-term things.
How is Arctic sea ice
and glacier melting
linked to the intense,
wintry weather
being experienced in
some regions of our Earth?
Dr. James Overland
now explains.
Actually,
the Arctic is warming
and the heat that’s stored
from the summer
in the ocean is given back
to the atmosphere
in the fall, and it forms
a dome of high pressure
and warm temperatures
over the Arctic.
But when it does that,
it sets up some lower
pressures further south,
and it is the difference
between this high pressure
and low pressure
that causes winds.
So now we have more
winds from the Arctic,
from the north,
and from the east
that are occurring in
mid-latitude, Scandinavia,
the eastern US
and eastern Eurasia,
and they’re stopping
the storm patterns
that normally occur there
so we end up
having the colder
and snowier weather that
occurred last December
and last January,
which are linked to
the large changes
that we are seeing
in the Arctic now.
So with
the (Arctic) warming
you have more winds
coming out of the north,
but they’re bringing
relatively colder air
from the north
into the south,
so that’s why you have
the cold temperatures.
And it’s also
blocking a lot of
the normal warm storms
that occur further south
and come into Europe.
Normally, it’s the warmer
temperatures
coming from
the Atlantic Ocean.
These extra winds that are
connecting to the Arctic
are blocking some of
those warm storms.
While speaking at
the recent
International Polar Year
Oslo Science Conference,
Dr. Overland stated that
for Europe, East Asia and
eastern North America,
“cold and snowy winters
will be the rule,
rather than the exception.”
Another
highly dangerous trend
occurring in
the northern polar region
is the release of
stored greenhouse gases.
As the Arctic warms,
the permafrost or
permanently frozen soil
lying beneath the surface
releases huge amounts of
the toxic greenhouse gases
into the atmosphere,
leading to higher
global temperatures,
which in turn causes
further release of gases
in an endless cycle.
One of the things that
we’ve realized is
that there are feedbacks
that begin to come
into play and amplify
the direct effect of
human-made emissions.
One of those is
the release of methane
as permafrost melts, and
from the continental shelf
under the ocean.
That comes about
because of the warming;
as the planet gets
warmer, the ice melts
and it releases
this frozen methane.
So that is potentially
very dangerous.
The way that
we can avoid that is
by reducing the warming
or by stopping
the warming.
The effects discussed today
will continue
to increase and intensify
unless global warming
is quickly halted, and
if the passing of certain
“tipping points” occurs,
runaway climate change
will result in severe
planetary instability.
While the alarming state
of the Arctic
has already cost many lives
and seems to portend
a bleak future,
a brief period remains
in which we can save
our planet’s ice anchor
and restore our Earth
to a climate
that can support life
as we know it.
The fastest and
most effective way
to address climate change
is for the world
to quickly adopt
the organic vegan diet.
This occurrence would mean
livestock raising,
an enormous source
of poisonous greenhouse
gases such as methane
and nitrous oxide,
would end.
Our planet
would then cool, with
the splendid ice sheets
and glaciers reforming
and our climate
and weather returning
to a harmonious balance.
Finally we would like
to thank scientists
across the globe
whose invaluable research
on climate change
and the Arctic
is bringing
greater awareness
to the public of
the tremendous challenges
facing our world.
For more details
on the scientists featured
in today’s program,
please visit
the following
respective websites:
Dr. David Barber
www.UManitoba.ca
Dr. James Hansen
www.GISS.NASA.gov
Professor Anders Levermann
www.PIK-Potsdam.de
Dr. James Overland
www.PMEL.NOAA.gov
Thank you,
intelligent viewers,
for your company today
on Planet Earth:
Our Loving Home.
Up next is
Enlightening Entertainment,
after Noteworthy News.
May the Providence
always guide us
throughout our lives.
Dr. Neal Barnard, MD
is the president of
the US-based
non-profit organization
The Cancer Project
whose mission is
to promote the vegan diet
as the answer to cancer.
If I take chicken breast
and I grill that,
same thing,
the carcinogens are likely
to form because
it's hot animal muscle.
What if I take a veggie
burger and I grill that?
What happens?
It gets warm.
That's about it.
Learn how to
avoid cancer through
a plant-based diet
in Part 2 of an 8 part
presentation of
Dr. Barnard’s series
of lectures entitled
“Eating Right
for Cancer Survival,”
Monday, July 19
on Healthy Living.