Thursday, January 3, 2008

Greenhouse Worlds

Half hour interview with deep time expert Dr. Robert Spicer of UK's Open University. Bob Spicer has been a key scientific consultant for several recent BBC specials on climate change. He describes past (and possibly future) greenhouse worlds. Spicer says there have been past abrupt climate heatings, and we may be in one now.

I also review the records set in 2007 weather events. Scary stuff - including a new record for rapid rainfall events - over 12 feet, almost 4 meters, of rain in 72 hours. Many American heat records set. The insurance industry paid out a record $30 billion dollars for weather-related damage, and definitely attributes that to climate change.

The show begins with a caution on Sir James Lovelock's fatalism in his Royal Society speech, broadcast in last week's Radio Ecoshock program. Lovelock has been quite wrong on previous issues - and most world scientists have not yet given up on controlling human greenhouse gas emissions. Two American scientists, James Hansen and Michael Oppenheimer, say there may be NO UPWARD LIMIT TO THE WARMING. We could even go to a "different planet" scenario, if we keep dumping our carbon waste into the air. So it does matter. Oppenheimer says we can't base our policy on a "hope" that the climate will stabilize around 5 degrees C hotter.

Finally, I play a few clips where top scientists plead for more activism from the scientific community. How can we just study the demise of civilization? Includes a new clip from the author of "The Population Bomb" - Paul Ehrlich.

Next week's show is on population and Peak Oil, a guest broadcast from George Kenny of electricpolitics.com

Production Notes: 30 sec music bed for station ID at 30:37, followed by re-intro. 30 sec music at end (cut if needed). Packed show, no copyright music.

Also available (not recommended for radio stations): LoFi 14 MB 32 kbps mono.

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