Sunday, March 01, 2020

Apocalyptic Planet - Chapter 5: Cold Returns, West Coast, Greenland


In Chapter 5 Childs takes off to Greenland with a group of scientists studying ice movement and the impact of ice on climate.  As usual he finds very interesting folks to travel with and to pick their brains on the details of his exploration.  The team is made up of Koni, lead scientist, Jose, Koni’s field partner, 2 NASA guys and one other. 

Childs starts off introducing Jose as someone who is searching the background data for patterns.  He’s not interested in the robust patterns that most scientist study, he’s looking at the background for less well-explained indications of information that might have been missed.   His thought is that “the actual future is the one we never expect.”

Koni on the other hand has been on the ice for decades and he has been monitoring ice movement and he knows that big, probably unprecedented changes are afoot.  But he can’t actually say what that means for our future. 

The esteemed 19th century scientist Louis Agassiz postulated that the planet geography indicates that much of the earth has been covered in ice indicating an oscillation of earth’s temperatures throughout history.  His theory proved irrefutable.  Ultimately however no one knows what starts an ice age; the major driver appears to be changes in solar radiation.  The earth has been in a long-term cooling phase for about 60 million years. 

Current trends seem to indicate that it could take 50 thousand years before the ice age returns due to excess atmospheric carbons keeping temperatures high.  This could be good news if you don’t like ice.  Bad news though for predictable and unpredictable climatic breakdowns.  

This chapter then begins exploring ‘geoengineering’ the act of man to deliberately tinker with planetary forces to counteract unwanted environmental conditions.  Class had an interesting discussion around this topic, leaning towards the notion that this kind of tinkering could definitely have unintended consequences.  So what happens if scientists seed the clouds with 10% sulfuric acid when in fact the correct number should have been 5%.  Consequences, big consequences for the entire planet!!

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