How will global warming affect the drilling project?
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Transcript
- Question:
- How will global warming affect the drilling project?
- Donald
- Well in the short term it won’t, even over the 20 years. Remember that global warming has occurred naturally. Our planet has not always been the same. If we go back to before there were plants, carbon dioxide levels were 18 times higher than they are now. If we go even back a couple of million years carbon dioxide levels have been three times higher, and carbon dioxide levels do change. They change all the time. Now with global warming, there’s two parts to this. One of them is, we can’t effect global warming, it’s been happening long before humans ever evolved on this planet. In fact some of the fantastic core that’s been recovered by the Russians in central Antarctica, show that three times temperatures have changed dramatically in the Antarctic. 65 million years ago Antarctica was lush forest, and now this is what the sub title is for the field trip. We are moving from a greenhouse environment, to an icehouse. And that’s a warm lush place at the bottom of the pole. I think your question is also about, if you take your car and go to the supermarket, are you responsible for global warming? And that’s another whole question. Now I’ll give you an example, Travis doesn’t know it yet, but Travis can you tell us what I got you to do in this coffee percolator when you came in, what did we do to it?
- Travis
- We filled the glass half way with water and put ice cubes in it.
- Donald
- And what was the rubber band for?
- Travis
- Probably to just mark where the water level was back then when I filled it up.
- Donald
- Now I’ve chosen things that you can do, so a container with ice cubes in it, and Travis as he said, he told you where he put the rubber band at the level of the water. Now the interesting thing here is, is that when the ice melts the water level won’t change. It’s a very common misconception that if the poles melt, the sea levels are going to rise. They won’t. What does happen, however, is this. If the sea ice melts, and the ice shelves melt, now they are two different things. Sea ice is actually made of salt water, frozen and ice shelves are glaciers that have flowed out to sea. Now if an ice shelf or sea ice melts, it’s taking up space in the water anyway, the ice melts, the level doesn’t change. The trouble is this. And this is one problem with Antarctica that we are concerned about. Now if you take the sea ice away, and you take the ice shelves away, then the ice that is on the continent, that is sitting on the rock will start to flow out to sea. Now that will give us a change in sea level. IF all of Antarctica’s ice that is on the continent flows out to sea and melts, that is 95% of the worlds fresh water, and sea levels could rise 65 meters. Now separate those two, when you hear in the Arctic that the ice caps are melting, don’t worry about sea level change, worry about it when the continental ice shelf heads off to sea.
- Donald
-
Jared can you lift the floaty thing out and show people?
Now you can probably get access to one of these, this is just a hydrometer, it just measures density. It’s used for making home brew, it just tells you if your brew is actually made, you know ready to bottle using this. So when we put it in the rubber band just shows the level. But if we put some water in – now Jared’s adding some warm water…Has the rubber band changed position?
- Jared
- It’s gone down.
- Donald
- Right okay it’s gone down. What’s happened is the warm water had made the whole container warmer, it’s less dense, and so this floaty thing sinks down lower. Now part of that story is another thing we should think about with global warming. One of our other problems is the sea is expanding.