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"Climate of Uncertainty:" Public Radio Project Examines the Impact of Global Warming
Earth Institute climate experts part of documentary on abrupt climate change

August 11, 2004 (St. Paul, MN.) — Not long ago, scientists discovered that the Earth’s climate is capable of changing abruptly, as if a switch were flipped. In the past, this kind of abrupt change may have caused droughts, floods and even regional cooling.

Some scientists warn that we could be heading for another sudden, massive climate shift— this one triggered by the human actions that cause global warming.

American RadioWorks (ARW), the national documentary unit of American Public Media, has produced a radio documentary and a Web Site that examine the potential impact of global warming, which is caused by carbon dioxide produced when fossil fuels like oil or coal are burned. Although the available information is imperfect, scientists tell ARW the phenomenon could cause drastic changes to the Earth’s climate — and that we must make tough decisions about whether and how to act.

TUNE IN: Hosted by National Public Radio's Ira Flatow, the one-hour ARW documentary, "Climate of Uncertainty," will air on public radio stations across the country in mid-August.

WEBSITE: www.americanradioworks.org/features/climate features audio of the documentary, along with a transcript and links to other resources on global warming.

"Climate of Uncertainty" features interviews with scientists and researchers who are studying ice caps, glaciers, snowfields, seas, wildlife movements and computer models for signs of climate change. They include:

• James Hansen, a climate expert for the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) and director of the Goddard Institute for Space Stuides, a unit of the Earth Institute, who notes that carbon dioxide emissions have increased by 30 percent over the last 150 years. This is like adding two tiny Christmas tree bulbs to each of the 150 trillion square meters that make up the Earth's surface.

• Will Steger, an adventurer who is collecting impressions of Inuit hunters and elders about climate change in the Arctic. One hunter tells him that previously permanent snowfields now melt by late summer and that ground squirrels, foxes and other animals are migrating further north every year.

• Paul Mayewski, a glacier expert who led a U.S. team that collected glacial core samples in Greenland during the 1980s and early 1990s. "What we discovered in that record…is that there are responses to climate change that can be extremely abrupt," he says.

• Archeologist Harvey Weiss, who has been excavating a northern outpost of the once-great empire of Akkad in Mesopotamia (now northeastern Syria and northern Iraq). The civilization collapsed suddenly, which scientists now attribute to the advent of a 300-year drought that toppled societies from present-day Crete to India.

• Climatologist Wally Broecker, who has developed a theory about the cause of abrupt climate changes in Greenland some 8,000 years ago that has gained widespread scientific acceptance. He has proposed that a massive ocean current known as the Great Ocean Conveyor Belt — whose tropical heat warms western Europe — was shut down due to an influx of fresh water, leading to a dramatic cooling. Global warming, he says, could also flip the conveyor's off switch, by causing more water to evaporate in the warm parts of the planet. That would create extra rain and snow in the regions around the north Atlantic that would add enough fresh water to kill the conveyor. Broecker is Newberry Professor of Earth & Environmental Sciences at Columbia University and has been a researcher at the Lamont-Doherty Earth Observatory, a unit of the Earth Intitute at Columbia University, for over 50 years.

• Canadian climate researcher David Keith, who says: "The key question is, are we willing as a species ultimately to spend a couple percent of global economic productivity over the next century to avoid making major climatic changes that lead to really quite substantial changes and extinctions and so on throughout the global environment?"

"Climate of Uncertainty" is produced by Daniel Grossman and John Rudolph.

American Public Media™ is the national production and distribution unit of Minnesota Public Radio. It is the nation's second-biggest producer of national public radio programs, reaching 11.9 million listeners nationwide each week. National programs include A Prairie Home Companion®, Saint Paul Sunday®, Marketplace®, Sound Money®, The Splendid Table®, Speaking of Faith® and special reports produced by its documentary unit, American RadioWorks®. Minnesota Public Radio, along with its sister company Southern California Public Radio, belongs to a larger family of companies within American Public Media Group, a national nonprofit organization whose purpose is to develop resources, services and systems to support public media for public service. A complete list of stations, programs and additional services can be obtained at www.americanpublicmedia.us.