Linda Moulton Howe reveals toxic polybrominated compounds in sperm whales at 3,000 feet and accelerating glacial retreat—Spain lost 14 glaciers since 1980, Montana’s park may vanish by 2100, Alaska’s Columbia Glacier receded eight miles since 2008. Dr. Mike Meyer confirms sea levels rising ~0.5m by 2100, threatening 150 feet of coastline globally, while West Antarctica’s 3.8M km³ ice sheet could raise levels six meters if destabilized. Despite skepticism, evidence points to irreversible warming, demanding urgent policy shifts to protect vulnerable ecosystems and coastal communities. [Automatically generated summary]
And now there is new scientific information that indicates toxic chemical pollution has spread deeper into ocean waters than previously thought.
Dutch scientists at the Netherlands Institute for Marine Research have discovered man-made polybrominated chemical compounds in sperm whales that have washed up on beaches.
Those whales feed at 3,000 feet down.
So the implication is that man-made chemical pollution is getting into the Atlantic Ocean food chain that deeply.
3,000 feet down is where the sperm whales feed, and they are finding that they've got these polybrominated chemical compounds in the fat, and that would be from what they're feeding on down there.
Also, the oceans are slowly rising as the world's glaciers are melting.
Ice deposits are disappearing in Europe, Africa, Russia, China, New Zealand, and the United States.
And this is, yes, and this is what you are going to hear from a couple of scientists that I've interviewed on this story tonight.
And to drive this point home, in Spain alone, the number of glaciers has dropped by half from 27 to 13 since 1980.
Geophysicists now predict that Montana's Glacier National Park will lose all of its glaciers in this next century.
In Alaska at Valdez, the huge Columbia Glacier has melted back more than eight miles in only the last 16 years.
The reason is that while the average surface temperature of the Earth has risen 1 degree Fahrenheit in the 20th century, the temperature in Alaska, northwestern Canada, and Siberia has increased 5 degrees Fahrenheit since 1968.
Well, the one degree globally and this five degrees in the northern regions, this was predicted by modeling in global warming that the northern regions would warm more and faster than the rest of the planet.
Well, there is one interesting and ironic victim in all this in Alaska in this new warming, and it's trees.
And after the break, we will hear about this from a scientist who has been studying glaciers up there for about 10 years, and he has some very interesting comments to say.
If they live near a coastline, they want to hear the scientists that I'm going to be interviewing because we are dealing with rising sea levels.
And before the break, I was talking about how in this century that the Earth has risen one degree Fahrenheit, but the temperatures in Alaska, northwestern Canada, and Siberia have increased five degrees Fahrenheit since 1968.
One victim in all this new Alaska warming are some trees that ironically can't get enough water as the ice melts and the water table falls lower.
The U.S. Forest Service estimates that one-third to one-half of Alaska's white spruce have died since 1983, and that's in only 15 years.
Because you've got permafrost frozen ground that as it melts and the water seeps down, it goes lower down below the tree roots than it was when it was more in a permafrost condition.
And tonight, one scientist who has seen the forest devastation of the white spruce firsthand and is studying Alaska's glacier melt Is Dr. Greg Wiles, Assistant Professor of Geology at the College of Wooster in Wooster, Ohio.
And you can hear what Dr. Wiles has to say about this.
Well, yeah, there are certain areas where trees are becoming moisture stressed as permafrost melts, and as especially in the Arctic region.
And furthermore, that those trees are being preferentially attacked by bugs and such.
And so there are large parts of the, what we call the boreal forests in the north that are being impacted.
When you have permafrost melting, the water table, you know, where the trees draw their water from, is becoming lower because the actual, the frozen ground is actually melting and therefore there's a drop in the water table.
So those trees don't have the same moisture source that they did in the past.
What is your projection over the next, let's say, 100 years, this next century, for what will happen at the polls, Alaska?
Are we going to be in 100 years of continual melt and retreat?
unidentified
Well, that's a good question.
I think based on what we've seen, the retreat of glaciers that we're seeing today and some other evidence suggests that over maybe a time scale of hundreds of years, that the warming we're experiencing today is unprecedented over that time period, meaning it hasn't occurred prior to the time of, say, over the last thousand years.
So what that would suggest is that perhaps the warming may continue.
Are we in global warming as a human-caused condition or is it a perturbation of the Earth?
unidentified
Okay, first of all, let me say that global warming is absolutely real.
There are many, many records that prove that this is so, so you cannot deny the fact that there is warming.
The big question is how much of global warming has been caused by humans' actions in releasing greenhouse gases and things like that.
That's more difficult, but the IPCC, which was a consortium of thousands of scientists, did come to a consensus that we can now see the impact of humans.
And the consequences of a foot and a half in terms of global coastlines, what would we, as humans living in animals and marine life and so forth, what kind of consequences might that have, if any?
unidentified
You know, a foot and a half doesn't sound like much, but on the other hand, most of the shorelines of the world slope at a very flat slope of about 100 to 1.
So 1.5 feet of sea level rise translates to 150 feet of coastline retreat.
And some things are even more pronounced, like the saltwater wedge and under the freshwater in estuaries will probably retreat maybe 1,000 times greater than the amount of actual sea level rise.
Furthermore, the retreat of a coastline of 150 feet will not only damage real estate, it will also pinch out the coastal wetlands and have lots of other bad effects.
So far in Western civilizations, or this industrial civilization, we have not been through a 100-year period with a projected global temperature rise of 2 to 6 degrees Fahrenheit before.
Could there be surprises out there?
unidentified
There could be.
Science always progresses, you know, even though nature throws little surprises at us occasionally.
There could be some surprises that we do not anticipate, cannot anticipate.
But I think that the models are robust and the physics is very simple about greenhouse gas concentrations.
So that although there may be some fluctuations that we didn't think about, in general terms the global mean annual temperature is going to rise by about the amount you said.
So shouldn't it be a policy of government to dissuade people from building close to shorelines that are going to disappear?
unidentified
There's a gap between should and will.
And you can imagine the homeowner that has just bought this beautiful piece of real estate with this fantastic ocean view and puts a little dog down and so on.
But aren't we past the point of where we've got to shift this to practical, global, environmental terms that are logical and in balance with what is happening in the world around us versus greed, politics, and money?
Can scientists have an impact, for example, on administrations and policies?
unidentified
I think you have to criticize scientists.
They're generally pretty reticent, and they produce a result, and they understand that there are certain basic assumptions about it and errors and the measurements.
They don't want to come out and be dogmatic.
And the politician wants a soundbite, you know, a dogmatic statement.
And so scientists have been not so very good in terms of letting the public know.
But from a scientist's point of view, if you were talking to your family or your neighbors about what they should try to do as homeowners and as people who are going to have some kind of stake in what kind of future we're having, what would you say?
unidentified
Well, I would say that you better take into consideration the fact that sea level is rising and will rise even more rapidly in the future.
That this will cause shoreline retreat, storm surges from storms will go further inland, wetlands will be endangered and so on.
And you should consider this before you buy or develop property or whatever.
And that frozen seawater can melt or freeze and it won't directly affect sea level just as ice melting in your glass takes up the same volume and it doesn't spill over the top.
Yeah, but at the South Pole, Antarctic, there is a continent of land underneath huge ice glaciers.
The West Antarctic ice sheet, for example, contains 3.8 million cubic kilometers of ice.
It is ever, if it ever disintegrated, releasing its water into the ocean, the sea level could rise as much as 6 meters or 18 feet.
But Dr. Meyer pointed out that the bulk of that ice is at temperatures of minus 20 to minus 40 degrees Celsius, which is minus 68 to minus 104 degrees Fahrenheit.
So if the average global temperature rises even 6 degrees Fahrenheit, which is the projected maximum over the next century, it won't have much effect on the extremely cold Antarctic ice.
In other words, we don't have to worry, Art, about the West Antarctic ice sheet sliding off the land into the sea in our lifetimes or even our children's lifetimes.
But in a few centuries, if global warming continued, the West Antarctic ice sheet might become a problem.
Well, yes, and the fact is that I think that there is a cynical mood in many places that is working against our trying to live in different ways, handle industrial civilization differently, and balance with the earth, which if we don't, we're going to have worse problems.
If we were now trying to have reasonable policies about shoreline development, it might make people grouch.
But wouldn't you rather have intelligent policies now about the fact that we are inescapably headed toward rising sea levels?