Brokaw to pitch global warming

[HurricaneJoe22]

Brokaw joins battle against global threat

By David Bauder
The Associated Press

Tom Brokaw is giving Al Gore some company in the effort to raise awareness of global warming.

The former NBC anchorman is host of Global Warming: What You Need to Know, which doubles as an explainer and call to action for average Americans. It premieres Sunday on the Discovery Channel.

Brokaw said he has seen and was impressed by An Inconvenient Truth, Gore's documentary on the subject.

"It's the same science that we are drawing upon and it's irrefutable," he said. "I thought there was too much of Gore, but that's not my call. I thought it was very effectively done. To give credit to him, he's been on this issue for a long period of time."

Discovery, which has a partnership with NBC News, asked Brokaw last year if there were any projects he would like to work on. He said he was interested in the environment, and Discovery mentioned its global-warming project, which it was making in partnership with the BBC.

On the Discovery documentary, producers travel great distances to make the case that man has contributed to a rapid warming of the planet's atmosphere that has already had noticeable effects and will potentially have much more.

A scientist in the Arctic explains how the increased melting of summertime sea ice is slowly starving the polar bear population. Rising sea water seeping through the ground threatens to eventually swallow entirely the South Pacific island of Tuvalu. Drought threatens the giant Amazon rain forest. Explorers bring cameras beneath ice sheets in Patagonia to show the melting.

More frightening are the scenarios that scientists can see for the future: increased sea levels swallowing cities like New York, more vicious hurricanes like Katrina, more land turning to desert. One expert even envisions half of the planet's species disappearing by the end of this century.

"By the year 2100, in the lifetime of our children and grandchildren, our world will be a drastically different place," Brokaw says in the documentary.

In helping put together the film, Brokaw said he was surprised at the speed with which everything is happening and the growing agreement among scientists about what was once a controversial notion.

Brokaw, 66, spoke by telephone from Colorado, where he's working on a documentary about illegal immigration. Another NBC documentary, about the black underclass, is set to run later this month.

How's this retirement thing working out anyway?

"Good question," he said. "I flunked."

[Matt-hurricanewatcher]

If 2006 becomes the hottest year on record then its time to start taking this seriously. Is it or is it not?

[WxGuy1]

If 2006 becomes the hottest year on record then its time to start taking this seriously. Is it or is it not?

I don't think it's prudent to ever discount or confirm something like global warming by the use of only a single year. Whether 2006 is the hottest or not really shouldn't have too much bearing on whether global warming is fact or fiction. Anomolous years happen, plain and simple. Now, the fact that we've had several very hot years in the past 4 or 5 may say something, but the sample size really should be in terms of 20-30 years, or not many decades.

I don't think too many people argue that global warming isn't occurring. There's quite a bit of evidence to suggest that global warming is indeed real. The primary point of argument is whether or not humans are contributing to it in a significant manner (i.e. the degree of anthropogenic forcing).

[stormtruth]

Global warming is real and humans are responsible. The high C02 levels can't be a coincidence.

[WxGuy1]

Global warming is real and humans are responsible. The high C02 levels can't be a coincidence.

That's a bold statement. There are a lot of people who've spent years looking at data that will disagree with you.

This is not a cut and dry, black and white issue ("this" being the role of anthropogenic component to global warming). From what I've seen, I would agree that humans are having a significant impact on global warming and weather change, but I'm certainly not 100% confident in that assessment. Nearly all international collaborative studies come to the same conclusion -- global warming is being significantly impacted by human activities. Of course, some will say that politics is dictating the conclusions of these studies, but such studies number much more common than those that indicate that humans are not impacting global warming appreciably. There is evidence that points in the opposite direction, obviously (lest we think some experts who believe humans aren't having a significant impact on the global climate are fools). One of the only "organizations" that seems to fervently deny the anthropogenic component of global warming is the Competitive Enterprise Institute (CEI). Per a repot from SourceWatch, CEI receives a large amount of money from the large oil companies (ExxonMobile, for example, has given more than $2 million to CEI since 1998). Is it surprising that CEI's propaganda aims to "show" that humans are not significantly impacting global climate?

I'll stop talking about this, since it's dragging the thread off topic.

[stormtruth]

Here's some more evidence of high CO2 levels harming the planet. The oceans are becoming more acidic:

Already ocean surface concentrations of carbonic acid – created by excess atmospheric carbon dioxide dissolving into the water – are high enough to eat away the skeletons of many vital reef-building corals and microscopic "calcifiers," like caulk-making phytoplankton and tiny marine snails.

"The (acidity) changes that are occurring in the oceans are truly extraordinary," said Joan Kleypas, a marine ecologist at the National Center for Atmospheric Research (NCAR) and a coauthor of the July 5 multi-agency report entitled Impacts of Ocean Acidification on Coral Reefs and Other Marine Calcifiers. "It will continue to change as long as carbon dioxide is rising."

Atmospheric scientists around the world agree that the additional carbon dioxide in the air and oceans has come from exponential growth in fossil fuel burning emissions since the start of the Industrial Revolution in the 19th century.

Current carbon dioxide levels are higher than they have been for at least 650,000 years, according to ice core data from the Arctic and Antarctic.

Ocean acidity has already increased 30 percent since the start of the Industrial Revolution in the early 19th century, said Richard Feely, an oceanographer at NOAA’s Pacific Marine Environmental Laboratory in Seattle.

By the end of the 21st century that could go up to 150 percent, he said.

"This is not controversial," said Kleypas, referring to the current acidity levels. There’s an overwhelming amount of data backing it up, she said.

More in the Discovery Channel article

[TexasSam]

I was a bit young in the '70's but seems I remember after a few very cold winters all the news stations were talking about us going into a new Ice Age for all the same reasons.... I remember it got down to 40 below zero where I lived, and it even snowed in Houston. Lake Michigan froze over for the first time in many years. So from the 30's to the 70's, to now just a cycle

[BigO]

I don't really have a dog in this hunt, but I do know someone who had an advanced preview copy of this show. He tells me that even if you buy all of the science in the show, the fact that not one single solitary critic of the science is included, it should raise an eyebrow.

Simply put, it isn't objective journalism. It's a hack job.

[x-y-no]

I was a bit young in the '70's but seems I remember after a few very cold winters all the news stations were talking about us going into a new Ice Age for all the same reasons.... I remember it got down to 40 below zero where I lived, and it even snowed in Houston. Lake Michigan froze over for the first time in many years. So from the 30's to the 70's, to now just a cycle

Sigh ...

Maybe news stations were saying something like that, but there was not one piece of actual published scientific research - not one - which said we were imminently headed for an ice age.

There was some active discussion in the climatological community about which anthropogenic factor - greenhouse gasses or particulate pollution (the former having a warming effect, the latter a cooling effect) - would have the larger impact, but that question was quite rapidly answered in favor of greenhouse gasses.

The notion that there was any serious scientific belief, let alone consensus, in the 70's that an ice age was imminent is quite simply false.

[richartm]

I don't think too many people argue that global warming isn't occurring. There's quite a bit of evidence to suggest that global warming is indeed real. The primary point of argument is whether or not humans are
contributing to it in a significant manner (i.e. the degree of anthropogenic forcing).

Agreed.

So, that leaves us with four possibilities:

1. Humans are not contributing to global warming; we do nothing.
2. Human are not contributing; we reduce human impact.
3. Humans are contributing; we do nothing.
4. Humans are contributing; we reduce human impact.

If it turns out that one of the first three come to pass, oh well. But if there's any chance that the right answer is number 4, shouldn't we make the effort?

Yes I know it may be too late to make a difference, we may already be screwed. But come on, we're talking about the future of human life on this planet. (Sounds like an issue Pro-Lifers would really get behind...)

[x-y-no]

I don't really have a dog in this hunt, but I do know someone who had an advanced preview copy of this show. He tells me that even if you buy all of the science in the show, the fact that not one single solitary critic of the science is included, it should raise an eyebrow.

Simply put, it isn't objective journalism. It's a hack job.

How thoroughly discredited does an idea need to be before it's acceptable to just omit it from discussion? Would a program about the solar system be a "hack job" if it fails to include the Earth-centered model, or the flat Earth model?

[Steve H.]

Unfortunately two hundred years worth of data is still a very small sample size. Anything previous to that is taken from journals and accounts. I still am very interested in what Dr. Gray comes up with in his new pursuit. The scientific community is discrediting the old bird, but he isn't one to give a knee-jerk reaction to any given situation. The old boy is on fire for this subject. though, and to tell you the truth, I am not convinced man has got anything to do with the changing climate - at the noise level at best. But that is TBD.

[x-y-no]

Unfortunately two hundred years worth of data is still a very small sample size. Anything previous to that is taken from journals and accounts.

Well, there are all sorts of proxy records.

But in any case, I'm not sure why even the recent record isn't adequate evidence in light of solid physical understanding of how greenhouse gasses affect the radiative balance and incontrovertible evidence that human activity is responsible for pretty much all of the observed increase in greenhouse gasses.

I still am very interested in what Dr. Gray comes up with in his new pursuit. The scientific community is discrediting the old bird, but he isn't one to give a knee-jerk reaction to any given situation. The old boy is on fire for this subject. though, ...

I'll read anything he does with interest. I have to say, though, that what I've seen so far (his powerpoint presentation from the hurricane conference and the AMS conference earlier this spring) was a terrible disappointment. He gets some rather elementary things dead wrong. The most inexplicable to me is his unexplained reversal on what he thinks is happening with the thermohaline circulation and how that affects the Atlantic storm season. I don't object to revising an hypothesis, but if one completely reverses oneself (and in particular if that revision incorporates a false picture of the THC), I think that demands explanation.

... and to tell you the truth, I am not convinced man has got anything to do with the changing climate - at the noise level at best. But that is TBD.

May I suggest this site as an excellent resource. Also the IPCC, of course.

[Lindaloo]

The way the weather has been, I am starting to believe in global warming.