Summary: State of climate science notes (Richard Alley); feature on rising seas - Francesca Rheannon of "Writer's Voice" interviews Brian Fagan, author of "The Attacking Ocean." Plus Alison Martin from the American Livestock Breeds Conservancy on endangered farm animals. Radio Ecoshock 130717 IMPORTANT NOTE TO RADIO STATIONS GETTING RADIO ECOSHOCK FROM THIS BLOG! Alex is going on vacation. You can download our "best of Radio Ecoshock" summer replays from our web site, on this page. Hi there, welcome to another vacation show of Radio Ecoshock. After a few words about a video lecture update on the latest climate science by Richard Alley, you'll hear the awful truth about rising seas around the world. Francesca Rheannon, host of "Writer's Voice" interviews scientist Brian Fagan, author of "The Attacking Ocean". We'll wrap up with my own interview of Alison Martin from the American Livestock Breeds Conservancy. Yep, we'll talk about the Tennessee Fainting Goat and the need to keep up the biodiversity of your food chain. Download/listen to this Radio Ecoshock Show in CD Quality or Lo-Fi Listen to this Radio Ecoshock Show right now (courtesy of archive.org) RICHARD ALLEY REPORTS ON THE STATE OF CLIMATE SCIENCE IN 2013 Dr. Richard Alley Dr. Richard Alley is one of America's best known and most cited climate scientists. Actually he was trained as a geologist, and teaches at Pennsylvania State University. Alley chaired a U.S. government panel on abrupt climate change, has testified to Congress and written for the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, specializing in melting ice at the poles. Alley has given an update called "The State of the Climate System 2013" at a special conference of the American Geophysical Union held in Colorado at the beginning of June. It was called the Chapman Conference. I recommend you spend about 45 minutes of your valuable time watching the video of Alley's presentation. Find the link for this important video talk below - or just search for "State of the Climate System" and "Chapman". I'll just squeeze in a couple of fast observations. First, Alley does a simple job of explaining the complex relationship between heat in the atmosphere and heating of the ocean. Although our emissions have been increasing exponentially, most of the extra heat held in by the greenhouse gases have gone into the ocean. That is because during the last decade a period of cooler ocean water in the Pacific, called La Nina, has dominated. A cooler ocean surface will soak up more heat from the air. Expect different results when we get more of the hotter ocean in El Nino. Check out Alley's charts on the heat tolerance of our major food crops, like corn, wheat and rice. We are already above the optimum growing conditions the major crops that feed the world. Actual production figures show that countries hit with just a few very hot days, at critical periods, suffered a loss in food production. That isn't a prediction, that's an observation now. The obvious conclusion: as the earth warms, and hot spells increase, world food production may drop - even as the number of mouths we need to feed increase dramatically. It's even possible that by the year 2100, according to other research, that parts of the planet may become too hot for unprotected humans and other large mammals to survive. It's also been shown that human productivity, that important economic indicator, drops as the weather becomes hotter. So we'll have less energy to deal with problems of the future. Alley's speech shines when he enters his field of expertise, the melting polar ice. For once there is a little bit of good news. Those pundits and a few scientists who suggested Greenland's ice cap may quickly slide into the sea are mistaken, Alley says. Yes giant new lakes of melt water are forming in Greenland in Summer. Yes they can rather suddenly drain down to the depths of the glaciers. But the land under the glaciers is not a nice even slope toward the sea. There are mountains
