John Baez - Ecological Damage from Global Warming

Complete video at: http://fora.tv/fora/showthread.php?t=584

Celebrated mathematical physicist John Baez looks at global warming from an historical perspective, and details the widespread ecological damage that may result from rapid climate change.

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John Baez - "Zooming Out in Time"

The graphs we see these days, John Baez began, all look vertical--- carbon burning shooting up, CO2 in the air shooting up, global temperature shooting up, and population still shooting up. How can we understand what really going on? "It's like trying to understand geology while you're hanging by your fingernails on a cliff, scared to death. You think all geology is vertical."

So, zoom out for some perspective. An Earth temperature graph for the last 18,000 years shows that we've built a false sense of security from 10,000 years of unusually stable climate. Even so, a "little dent" in the graph of a drop of only 1 degree Celsius put Europe in a what's called "the little ice age" from 1555 to 1850. It ended just when industrial activity took off, which raises the question whether it was us that ended it.

Zoom out further still to the last 65 million years. The temperature graph show several major features. One is the rapid (every 100,000 years) wide swings of major ice ages. When they began, 1.35 million years ago, is when humans mastered fire. But almost all of the period was much warmer than now, with ferns growing in Antarctica. "Now it's cold. What's wrong with a little warming?" Baez asked.

The problem is that the current warming is happening too fast.
Studies of 1,500 species in Europe show that their ranges are moving north at 6 kilometers a decade, but the climate zones are moving north at 40 kilometers a decade, faster than they can keep up. The global temperature is now the hottest it's been in 120,000 years. One degree Celsius more and it will be the hottest since 1.35 million years ago, before the ice ages. Baez suggested that the Anthropocene may be characterized mainly by species such as cockroaches and
raccoons who accommodate well to humans. Coyotes are now turning up in Manhattan and Los Angeles. There are expectations that we could lose one-third of all species by mid-century, from climate change and other human causes.

Okay, to think about major extinctions, zoom out again. Over the last 550 million years there have been over a dozen mass extinctions, the worst being the Permian-Triassic extinction 250 million years ago, when over half of all life disappeared. The cause is still uncertain, but one candidate is the methane clathrates ("methane ice") on the ocean floor. Since methane is a far worse greenhouse gas than carbon dioxide, massive "burps" of the gas could have led to sudden drastic global heating and thus the huge die-off of species. Naturally the methane clathrates are being studied as an industrial fuel for when the oil runs out in this century, "which could make our effect on global warming 10,000 times worse," Baez noted.

"Zooming out in time is how I calm myself down after reading the newspapers," Baez concluded. "A mass extinction is a sad thing, but life does bounce back, and it gets more interesting each time. We probably won't kill off all life on Earth. But even if we do, there are a hundred billion stars in our galaxy, and ten billion galaxies in the observable universe."

--Stewart Brand, The Long Now Foundation

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[qbit77]

I usually don't do this but I can't resist - WAKE UP YOU IDIOTS. All of you who are focusing on his little arithmetical mistake - grow up - even geniuses are allowed to make mistakes - and those of you who think global warming is not real - what makes you so sure? Keep driving your SUV's - damn hicks. Just stupid assholes - the lot of you.

[qbit77]

He is a GREAT mathematician...not just an average brilliant guy. And I know that it is hard to get this through to most people - but dealing with numbers is not what most mathematicians do. We look at patterns and relationships between objects. Besides, can't a great writer be allowed to make a spelling mistake? William Blake...eg...

[Rockmaster2112]

This guy was my calculus professor, he's cool

[TheStringtheorysucks]

@altair97

Good point - Baez is not a climate scientist and is talking about things outside his area of expertise.

[TheStringtheorysucks]

@yahazif

I agree. Unfortunately, science can be used as a tool by politicians to enforce a particular agenda ( such as Lysenkoism in the old Soviet Union ).. Global warming is also such a case.

[TheStringtheorysucks]

Another physicist, Lubos Motl, disputes the reality of AGW. So it's not settled science. Also, huge variations in global temperatures can occur by natural means, such as large volcanic eruptions. Thus it's untrue that all temperature changes are caused by humans.

[manco82]

lol, AGWists have been debunked. 11 straight years of cooling. Global warmists are fucked up the ass!

[Fermatprime]

There are those of us who say that Joan is related to him...

[yahazif]

1:01 "and this is the scariest graph of all"

That graph is used by all the climate change alarmist. It is the infamous "hockystick graph" and it has now been shown to be fake.

Climate change is a political ploy being used by the Left to force their agenda on us.

[JonThm]

The world cooled from 2005

[elizabethmthomson]

They're cousins. Her late father was his uncle. He was also a physicist - first professor of physics at the OU