In an exclusive Fresh Dialogues interview, Robert Ballard, ocean explorer of Titanic fame says, "If you want to know the truth: it's too late. All the ice is going to melt. There's a lag and it's already in the system."
Ballard, a respected scientist, professor of oceanography and founder of the Inner Space Center says he is worried about the future of mankind, "Sometimes I see this tombstone that says, 'the human race came and went but it was politically correct.' As a scientist I am not politically correct. My job is not to be politically correct. My job is to call it as I see it."
Ballard was in Silicon Valley as part of the Foothill College Celebrity Forum Series to talk about his educational outreach programs and his recent expeditions to the Black Sea. He sat down with me for an interview in the Green Room of the Flint Center before his lecture on January 22 and we discussed global warming, alternative energy, funding his expeditions, and how he sees his role in educating children in science.
Although some scientists argue that global warming is part of a natural cycle in the earth's climate, and humans have no part to play, Ballard clarifies the debate. Yes, we're in a natural cycle, he says, but the real argument is this: how much of this is a natural cycle and how much is it human additive?
Ballard says it's both, and explains, "Whenever you have a tremendous controversy both sides tend to be right and wrong." He says we are experiencing natural interglacial warming, but we're increasing the severity of it with our heavy human footprint and if we steepen it too much, evolution can't keep up and extinction will happen. He says we can do a lot to impact our human carbon footprint and suggests population control is vital.
On the subject of alternative energy, Ballard says he's proud of the investment being made in wind energy, but is also an enthusiastic supporter of nuclear power.
Finally, for all Ballard's youthful fans (he received over 16,000 letters from children when he discovered the Titanic), and in tribute to the infamous query by Barbara Walters I asked him, "If you were a sea creature, what sea creature would you be?" Check out the Fresh Dialogues transcript to find out.
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Stratospheric Water Vapor is a Global Warming Wild Card
January 28, 2010
"A 10 percent drop in water vapor ten miles above Earth’s surface has had a big impact on global warming, say researchers in a study published online January 28 in the journal Science. The findings might help explain why global surface temperatures have not risen as fast in the last ten years as they did in the 1980s and 1990s. Current climate models do a remarkable job on water vapor near the surface. But this is different — it’s a thin wedge of the upper atmosphere that packs a wallop from one decade to the next in a way we didn’t expect,” says Susan Solomon, NOAA senior scientist and first author of the study. Since 2000, water vapor in the stratosphere decreased by about 10 percent. The reason for the recent decline in water vapor is unknown. The new study used calculations and models to show that the cooling from this change caused surface temperatures to increase about 25 percent more slowly than they would have otherwise, due only to the increases in carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gases."
http://www.physorg.com/news183916084.html
Scientists who probed two kilometers (1.2 miles) through a Greenland glacier to recover the oldest plant DNA on record said that the planet was far warmer hundreds of thousands of years ago than is generally believed. DNA of trees, plants and insects including butterflies and spiders from beneath the southern Greenland glacier was estimated to date to 450,000 to 900,000 years ago, according to the remnants retrieved from this long-vanished boreal forest. That view contrasts sharply with the prevailing one that a lush forest of this kind could not have existed in Greenland any later than 2.4 million years ago. These DNA samples suggest that the temperature probably reached 10 degrees C (50 degrees Fahrenheit) in the summer and -17 °C (1 °F) in the winter. They also indicate that during the last interglacial period, 130,000–116,000 years ago, when temperatures were on average 5 °C (9 °F) higher than now, the glaciers on Greenland did not completely melt away.[33]"
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Greenland#Geography_and_climate
All true. For more, see:
http://www.vanishingofaspecies.com
One 'gate' too many.
No complaints on the media's failure to warn us of AGW before it was too late?
Whatever respect I had for this guy is all gone now. What else should I expect for a Military-Industrial-complex shadow elite.
He did say we are in a "interglacial warming period", did he not?... meaning the natural cycle, the one we've had for millions of years is one of glacial periods. I don't know of any interglacial warming in the last millions of years where ALL the ice melts, do you?
If he says it's too late, all the ice is going to melt, that obviously the AGW crowd is correct, more correct, the most correct, the only correct that matters. It's a worse case scenario!
I could go on and on about other problems I have with it, but I'm wasting my time.