Earth Changes TV "Radio Hour" Introduction

Battros:  Hi, and welcome to Earth Changes TV.  Welcome to this live presentation. Here we are December 1^st.  My name is Mitch Battros and I am your host.  You have reached the Number One news source for space weather and earth science.  Join us as we explore the latest breaking news which in fact affects us all.  We are live every Tuesday and Thursday from 9:00 p.m. to 10:00 p.m. Pacific Time.  You will hear the latest breaking news and research f! rom the top minds in their respective fields.  We will hear from solar- and astrophysicists, seismologists, volcanologists, paleontologists, climatologists, and the list goes on and on.  On Earth Changes TV we also explore recent and historical records spanning thousands and even millions of years.  We also invite the brightest minds in the study of ancient texts and civilizations.  We will hear from Mayan and Hopi elders who tell us of prophesy and their historical observations which have been passed down from generation to generation often telling us with stunning accuracy of today’s times.  Never before have the two worlds of science and ancient text joined together with such unity and precision outlining a pathway of discovery. 

Well, folks, I am just going to go over some very brief breaking news events because I am just as anxious as you to get my guest on and to flush out the truth of so-called global warming. But first, it is not your imagination -- two M-Class flares within the past 24 hours, the second M-Class flare a rather large one and reaching up close to an X-Class just in the last hour and a half.  It is coming from Region 826 which has grown rapidly and it is now larger than the size of Jupiter.  This one is a bit of a surprise to many of us because it started out kind of small and it grew literally overnight.  I mean ‘really’ grew.  Usually it takes a little bit longer; but it’s not unusual.  I mean we ! have seen this before no doubt.  Also Region 628, I believe, 826, oh now I am getting confused.  I better pull that up so I don’t give the wrong information.  There are three Sunspot regions that we are looking at, two of which certainly have the potential for M-Class and I would suggest that 826 has the potential for X-Class.  The other one we are watching closely is Region 824, just now heading towards the western rim of the Sun about ready to rotate behind the Sun.  There’s still a good about 24- to 48-hours activity of which still would affect some geomagnetic interference on earth. For those of you familiar with my equation published in 1997 you know of a 48- to 72-hour causal effect on our weather.  That is my! contribution to the scientific community, written about in "Solar Rain".

Alright, let’s skirt most of the rest of tonight’s news which I usually go into in a little bit more detail.  I am just going to steer you to the Earth Changes TV website.  We have it all up there.  As a matter of fact, take a look.  There’s a couple articles I haven’t had a chance to get up yet or have some of the ECTV staff post and, of course, one of them is the latest M-Class flare that we are going to watch very closely. 

Battros – Overpeck Interview

Dr. Overpeck is the director of the ISPE Institute for the Study of Planet Earth and residing Professor of Geosciences at the University of Arizona.  He recently published an article titled, "Arctic Ocean Could Be Ice-Free In Summer Within 100 Years".  Dr. Overpeck’s research focuses on global change dynamics, with the major change component aimed at understanding how and why key climate systems vary on timescales longer than seasons and years.  Current work focuses on the Asian and African Western monsoon systems, tropical Atlantic variability, and El Nino southern oscillation dynamics.  O! f course, Dr. Overpeck is also a paleoclimatologist as well.  And let’s bring him on now,

Battros: Dr. Jonathon Overpeck -- welcome to the show!

Overpeck:  Good Evening, Mitch

Battros:  Good Evening! Would you like to make any comment first on some of the preamble I was speaking of, especially Stoker’s research.  Any comment on that?

Overpeck:  Well, I could make a few comments on that, I suppose.  You know, I think our community’s very excited about the ice-core results, mainly because they extend our knowledge of polar climate and atmosphere trace gases back a couple hundred thousand years.  Pretty much a far as we’ll go.   I guess some people think we’ll go back a million if that ‘s how long the Antarctic sheet has been around.  And this is looking at trace gases, samples of the atmosphere that have been trapped in bubbles of the ice as long as that ice has been there.  So it’s a really unique way to get a view of what the "natural envelope" of a CO2 var! iability is in the atmosphere over a long period of time.  And, ah, that’s what the excitement is about.  The results aren’t perhaps as breathtaking as they were when we pushed it back the first four hundred thousand years because the new results just confirm that we haven’t seen, for example, CO2 really ever go above 300 to 310 parts per million in the atmosphere before humans were around and now we’ve pushed it up to around 380.  So when people like Brook like to make a point that CO2’s never been higher than 650,000 years, he’s right.  You know, if you go back, of course, maybe to the time of the dinosaurs, 65-100 million years ago, there’s evidence that CO2 was higher than today and there’s also evidence that it was hotter than today.

Battros:  That’s right

Overpeck:  And that’s one of the things.  And the other one, you brought up the quote by Tom Stocker

Battros:  Yes!

Overpeck:  And the guy he was referring to in previous studies was a guy named Bill Redman, he’s a professor at the University of Virginia, and he just had a book come out. And I wish I could remember the name of the book but it’s by William Redman and it’s quite an interesting book because what he said in this book -- and Redman is a senior scientist who is really well-respected.  He came out with kind of an eye-opening hypothesis that humans started to alter the composition of the atmosphere -- the CO2 and the methane -- not in just the last couple hundred years because of fossil fuel burning and agriculture and deforestation, but way before that, starting 5,000-6,000 years ago. Humans were! changing the landscape of the earth enough -- clearing land, planting rice and other crops, and cattle to start altering the composition of the atmosphere well before most scientists thought possible.  Taking that one step further, Bill said that has kept the earth from going out of virtually another glacial period.  So, there’s been this big debate spawned by these simple ideas and most scientists now -- and Stocker’s referring to this -are pointing out that there’s quite a bit of evidence that points that the earth isn’t going into another glacial period any time soon.  And Bill’s idea is probably technically right that we were altering the atmosphere’s composition earlier than people thought. But we weren’t altering it enough to make a big difference.

Battros:  Yeah, but you see.  That’s the whole point of what we are talking about.  These are your colleagues, Jonathon, that’s what really bugs me.  Often the scientific community, and I don’t blame them -- I’m part of it -- we jump on the journalist; unfortunately, I wear both hats…and they’ll jump on the journalists for "sensationalism" but, in fact, I’m given again and again -- and I understand the dynamics  of peer review which I think is contributing to an almost overzealous report.  Sure, he can say that humans 5,000 years ago had an influence but it’s like maybe a ‘flea on a horse’s ass’,

Overpeck:  Right, right

Battros:  meaning it’s almost immeasurable.

Overpeck:  It’s very small and yet the way the scientific community works when someone of Redman’s stature says something like that, people take it serious.  And a lot of scientists, of course, like you said the media wants to get the sound bite of it and of course the science community takes it seriously and studies the heck out of it and makes sure that it’s either right or wrong or in-between.  And I think we’re headed in the direction of it’s kind of a minor influence.  And that’s what Stocker is doing and, you know, he’s just piling on a bunch of stuff studies that have recently shown that same thing. So, you can tell that the idea’s still live in the science community.  But that is what makes Science so very interesting:  whenever anyone offers an idea, everyone and their mother is trying to test that idea. -- and that is what Science is about, testing ideas and hypotheses.

Battros:  Yes, yes and I am really glad it’s there.  Dr. Overpeck, in my business and the journey I have chosen, I am walking right down the middle.  Most of the people who know me, read my material, and listen to the show know that I definitely favor Science but I am extremely open to ancient text, in particular ancient civilizations.  I think they have a lot to tell us about history related to Science and there many in the, oh, the less trained scientific fields such as quantum and so forth, and they do not, unfortunately, implement the process of  peer review.  So what you end up having ! is just these crazy whackos publishing these ridiculous papers not being challenged.  Although I sometimes speak poorly of the peer review system, it can be, as you know, a savage nation -- but I think it’s necessary if it weeds out the more "looney" stuff.  What do you think?

Overpeck:  Yeah, peer review is pretty important.  What the average public doesn’t understand the extent to which it is a very hard-core process like you are describing and it’s very hard to get -- not impossible -- because different journals have different levels of rigor.  But it’s pretty hard to get out crazy ideas in the Science community; and if you do, it won’t last for long.  You know, a lot of other scientists will pick up on it and will point out what’s wrong about your idea.  Heh, heh, heh.  That’s what makes it fun!

Battros:  No doubt; well, Dr. Overpeck, let’s jump right into it.  I know my audience is anxious to hear what you have to say and I know they are anxious to hear what I have to say as well.  And, folks, I have done something a little different with Dr. Overpeck – I actually sent him, most anyway, most of the questions I am going to ask.  I thought it would be fair and actually make for a better show and give you more information, quite frankly.  It’s not like I’m trying to trap anybody.  Obviously, I have a differing opinion; everybody knows that.  My hypothesis suggests strongly that the ! primary source is the Sun.  But others think differently, so we’re going to flush that out.  So, Jonathon, here’s my first question -- and most of these questions, matter of fact, almost all of them are based on his recent article he published titled, "Arctic Oceans Could Be Ice-Free in Summer Within 100 Years".  I extrapolated what, in part he was saying, was that it was largely due to humans; however, we may all be surprised in finding out that Dr. Overpeck may not be suggesting necessarily that it is primarily humans.  Let’s find out.  First Question:  You state the Arctic system is into a seasonal ice-free state not seen for more than one million years.  Do you suggest! it has never been seen and if it has how often and what do you believe to be the source of the flux?

Overpeck:  Okay, the fluctuations.  The first thing to explain to all of your listeners is that right now the Arctic Ocean where the North Pole is "is ocean".  It’s covered with sea ice and in the winter pretty much the whole Arctic Ocean freezes over and then in spring it starts to melt and in summer it actually retreats somewhat around the margins.  So when you heard of the Northwest Passage, that’s one of the margins where in summer you can sort of sneak between the sea ice and land in good warm years.  What’s been happening at a rate of about three percent per decade is that! , in the summer, the ice has been retreating more and more -- three percent less area each decade.  And in the last five years that has accelerated and you’re getting almost 10-fold increase in the rate the sea ice is retreating in summer; and now, for the first time in the last year, we are actually starting to see significant retreats even in winter.  So, something’s happening up there and it’s obviously related to the dramatic warming of about three degrees centigrade or five- to six-degrees Fahrenheit that’s happened over the last fifty years in the arctic.  We got experts together for the purpose of trying to decide what this means.  You know, we have these fancy climate models that suggest that the arctic is going to keep melting, keep warming, as we add greenhouse gases to the atmosphere through! fossil-fuel burning processes.  But, what we want to do is get a number of experts from all the different fields that are relevant together to just brainstorm "is there any way this system might not melt down like the climate has suggested.  Are there some feedbacks in the climate system, some natural breaks, that could actually stop it from happening?"

Battros:  Well, Jonathon, just what’s in the news today -- I think it came out yesterday -- and again no surprise to me -- and what you are saying in my opinion does not alarm me.  I mean I cannot believe people in the scientific community, especially the geosciences, would be shocked to see this.  I don’t understand that.

Overpeck:  Well, they’re not shocked.  But, you know, I think it is really eye-opening because I went to a meeting and presented this people were like, "what about the clouds",  and I sort of explained that the clouds, despite what you think, will not stop this from happening.  "Oh well, what about if the ocean circulation changes -- well that won’t work".  So we pretty much exhaust all the possibilities; and a million years is a pretty long period of time.  That’s probably the last time or even longer that the Arctic Ocean was seasonally ice-free in summer.  Of course there were periods in earlier earth history when we were warmer and, the reason for that, you asked -- the reason for that is because we have more CO2 in the atmosphere and greater greenhouse effects.  You know, this greenhouse effect is not just humans -- it’s a natural thing that has changed through time. And if, indeed, we did not have the greenhouse effect, we would be as cold

Battros:  Yeah, ice cold

Overpeck:  well, as cold as Mars.  We wouldn’t be around talking.

Battros:  Exactly.  Speaking of Mars, Dr. Overpeck, now this is a question or statement I did not send you but, since you mentioned Mars, I wasn’t going to bring this up til later; but let me go with it now.  An article came out not that long ago, in March (2005), showing that Mars is showing clear evidence of global warming.  Data gathered by NASA’s Mars Global Surveyor Spacecraft suggests that the Martian climate may have changed significantly in the past and may be changing quickly even now and may happen over a much shorter time-scale than scientists previously thought.  It goes on to state that "on Mars the glacial areas are enlarging so quickly that the entire upper lay! er of the ice cap is likely to be sublimated to gas within a Martian decade or two because carbon dioxide, the greenhouse gas, the pressure, and temperature of the Martian atmosphere may change dramatically over a short period of time" and it goes on and on.  But the point is, Dr. Overpeck, (hah hah hah) unless you have a secret knowingness of the little green men driving SUV’s and car manufacturing up there.  It really puts a dent in the idea that humans are the primary cause of so-called global warming.

Overpeck:  Well, I don’t think so.  You now, I’m not familiar with that study and I don’t study the climate of Mars; but I do know that, like Earth, Mars’ climate is changing in  response to changes in its orbit, for example.  That’s a big factor, for example, and brings us the Ice Ages and the Interglacial’s on a hundred thousand year time-scale.  That’s purely natural and on that same natural cycle we get fairly large changes of CO2.  You see, the Earth system -- and probably Mars is the same way -- the climate and the CO2 change with time.  And what’s happening on Earth is we’re taking ! the CO2 concentrations of the atmosphere way outside of those bounds.  We are doing the same thing with other important greenhouse gases like methane and nitrous oxide and we know that those are produced from fossil-fuel burning.  And we know how much fossil fuel we are burning and how much diesel pollution we’re creating and we can actually calculate how much CO2 should be going up into the atmosphere, into the oceans and -- lo and behold -- that’s what we see occurring. So, it’s not at all a mystery to the scientists who study this that humans are doing this.  We understand very clearly how humans are doing this.  What we worry about is what it means for the future.  We know the Earth is warming, the whole Earth is warming; there are a few places that are n! ot, but almost the whole Earth is warming.  We know the oceans are warming and they’re warming down to 2,000 meters which is probably more that what people thought would happen this fast. But we don’t know if the Earth will warm another five degrees or another ten degrees by the end of this century.  That’s where the rubber really hits the road.

Battros:  I want to get this Mars article to you.  It comes directly from the Goddard Space Center and just this little paragraph to emphasize to you the significance of the warming, quote, "if enough carbon dioxide is present in the Mars south polar ice cap, it could potentially raise surface pressures enough to raise temperatures sufficiently warm for surface water to exist".  There is another study that is suggesting that the whole Solar System is going through a so-called global warming.  Now, have any of your colleagues or have you ever heard of the study that ! might suggest the whole Solar System is cyclical in warming and cooling trends?

Overpeck:  I haven’t.  But, you know, it wouldn’t surprise me just because of the changing in the orbits.  As you know, most of the energy of the Solar System is coming from the Sun so all you have to do is change the distribution of the radiation reaching from the Sun reaching the various planets.  My guess is that we wouldn’t be getting the exact same patterns of change on every planet or within every body within the Solar System at the same time.  But, you’d expect to get quite a change on other planets just like you do on Planet Earth.

Global Warming on Mars: http://www.geotimes.org/jan02/WebExtra0111.html

Battros:  OK

Overpeck:  And the thing that’s interesting about the study you’re mentioning -- and I’ve not read it -- but what you’re talking about is probably very small levels of CO2 and the thing that people have to realize is that we’re talking about what’s called "trace gases".  You know most of the atmosphere is nitrogen and oxygen, we’re down to very small amounts when we’re talking about these greenhouse gases; and these very small amounts can cause the Earth to change temperature by significant amounts.  And so that’s why, even though the fossil-fuel burning is producing only a small amount of these "trace gases", it can have a big effect because of taking the Earth outside the natural balance of atmospheric composition.  !

Battros:  Okay; going back to your article, the question is:  you state in your article, a team of researchers were unable to identify any natural processes that might slow down the icing of the arctic.  You mentioned that earlier and then you excluded or, excuse me, included the conveyor belt which they’re talking about the last couple of days -- they call the conveyor belt stream, the Gulf Stream.  Do you suggest, excuse me, are you suggesting every cooling period, such as the Little Ice Age in the beginning of the 14^th Century is not caused by a natural cyclical event?  I’ll stop with th! at.

Overpeck:  Uh, yeah.  The only thing that worries me a little about what you are saying there is "cyclical".  You know, I think that the Little Ice Age which theoretically came after a slightly warmer event which is often called the Medieval Warm Period really doesn’t look like it was a global warm period, but it was a warm period in the Northern Hemisphere.  We transitioned out of that into a colder Northern Hemisphere and that was due to natural processes.  Whether they are cyclical, it’s much harder to tell.  One component of that -- which is probably near and dear to your heart -- is variations in the Sun’s irradiance.  And, I’m one of many scientists who feel that probably the Sun, in changing its irradiance by small amounts, contributed to that cooling in the Little Ice Age.  The other factor is volcanic eruptions.

Battros:  Ah, you’ve got it; go ahead.

Overpeck:  And so, whereas the Sun appears to work in a cyclical manner, at least in some frequency bands, there’s not a lot of evidence that you get cyclical behavior in volcanic eruptions.  They are more random.  So, in the Eos paper, if we wanted to say it we could say that there are some natural things that could slow this -- a huge eruption (hah hah hah) -- much bigger than Pinatubo -- could cool things down a bit for at least a few years.  But, you know an average volcanic eruption like Pinatubo usually only lasts with a noticeable effect on the climate system three to four years at the most.

Battros:  Now, Dr. Overpeck.  I’d have to disagree with you on your statement that volcanoes are not cyclical.  I’ve seen several research from credible sources that would suggest otherwise, the most noted, of course, is Yellowstone Park -- and that appears to be on a 600-year er a

Overpeck:  600,000-year

Battros:  Yes, 600,000-year cycle.  And the suggestion is that we are due.  And again, I would think they would get these from lake-bottom samples, tree rings, and so forth, to suggest cyclical events of locations of volcanoes.

Overpeck:  You know, my specialty is paleoclimate -- using tree rings and lake sediments and things -- and, boy, you know

Battros:  Have you heard this about Yellowstone

Overpeck:  I’m a scientist, so if you could prove what you said.

Battros:  Have you heard about this study?

Overpeck:  I’ve not.

Battros:  You have not heard that Yellowstone is on a 600,000-year cycle?

Overpeck:  Right off the bat, that’s hard for me to believe that the data is pretty good because it’s very hard to date things that well when you are going back that far in time and, I can’t imagine where there is a continuous record of volcanic activity in Yellowstone going back tens of millions of which is what you need to

Battros:  You wouldn’t see it in lava sediments?

Overpeck: It may be episodic; but to prove it cyclical you really need to have at least five to six cycles represented and I don’t of any record that would give you that, that would be that well-dated.

Battros:  All right.

Overpeck:  See, that’s a problem.  But, you know, it’s certainly the nature of science and that’s a good hypothesis.  The other thing gong on is in talking with the volcanologists, it’s hard to get out of them -- you know any of the mainstream ones anyhow that I’ve talked to -- any natural geophysical mechanism that would give rise to a "cyclical" . . .

Battros:  Well I’ll tell you what it is.

Overpeck:  You can get a rough, quasi-periodic or something over short periods of time; but the real "cyclical" thing is hard.  That means it’s, you know . . .

Yellowstone Cyclical History: http://volcanoes.usgs.gov/yvo/history.html

Battros:  Dr. Gary Glatzmaier, who’s probably the best know well-known studying the Earth’s core -- and I think one of the reasons he became so popular is because of PBS or the Discovery Channel.  He was involved in the big production of that study.  Also, Dr. Peter Olson, both well-established colleagues, focused on the study of the Earth’s core.  Their suggestion is that it is the cyclical events -- again going back to the science of cycles -- the Earth’s core -- part of which speaking of cycles would be the magnetic pole reversal that, in their opinion, is cyclical.  It’s not 50,000 years every time; it does differ.  But the! y are showing that there does appear to be some repeating cycles involved.  Then we have -- are you familiar with the "Precession"?

Overpeck:  Right; yeah, that’s heavily involved in long-term climate changes.

Battros:  Ok, so wouldn’t the precession also perhaps be an element to consider in the warming trends?  Well, I guess as well as cooling trends.

Overpeck:  True.  But the problem with that is that the precession is part of the Earth’s orbit that changes on a quasi-periodic cycle of about 20,000 years.  So, the amount of change that could occur over a century or two is teeny.  And it also doesn’t affect in a low synchronous manner -- it only affects the latitudinal distribution of radiation on the Earth; so, in other words, you can get a lot of warming due to precession at a high northern latitude but at the same time you could get cooling at high southern latitudes.  So, it’s not a good effective way to get global warming.  But the main thing is the amount of irradiation cha! nge that you get out of it in a few centuries is negligible. 

Battros:  What about oscillation and, in particular, are you familiar with what’s known as the South Atlantic Anomaly?

Overpeck:  No

Battros:  No!  That happens to be a place off the coast of Brazil where a magnetic flip is occurring as I speak.  But it’s not the magnetic pole flip, it’s the magnetic field that’s at the Earth’s core, the liquid core.  And, in this area -- this very large area -- that the radiation is so high that airlines have been warned off flying over this because of the radiation levels.

Overpeck:  Hmmmm:  You know, in lake sediments and ocean sediments, and in ocean sediments you can have literally have a record that’s a hundred million years long, we have good measurements of -- we can have good measurements of -- volcanic activity by looking at….

Battros:  Hello -- oh no, we lost him.  Well, I hope he hung up because I am calling back…

Overpeck:  You there?

Battros:  Oh, don’t scare me like that.

Overpeck:  I don’t know what happened.  I could hear you after you lost me.

Battros:  It must be the Government -- they’re after us.

Overpeck:  Yeah, either that or it’s a solar flare.

Battros:  Oh my gosh, that’s right.  I like your answer better.

Overpeck:  Alright.  So, I was just saying that we have these long records of volcanic activity and we also have long records of magnetic activity -- both the dipole and non-dipole field the magnetic field and then we have the climate records --- so we can actually look at the relationship of climate and these other factors.  And, to date, a lot of scientists it’s a good hypothesis that there’s changes in the magnetic field that affect the climate and its also an excellent proven hypothesis that volcanoes do. But there’s good hypothesis that there is some cyclical behavior but to date I don’t know of any well-confirmed studies --well, even non-confirmed studies -- that shows a good correspondence between cyclical volcanic eruptions.

Battros:  I’ve got to send you the material -- I’ve got it right here.

Overpeck:  Well, I look forward to looking at that.

South Atlantic Anomaly: http://www.ll.mit.edu/ST/sbv/saa.html

Battros:  OK, and I will get it to you.  Okay, let’s keep going here.  Another question:  your study says "melting sea ice has already resulted in dramatic impacts for indigenous people and animals in the an…   Yeah, we saw the articles, we saw the photo ops with a Hillary Clinton, we saw all that stuff; however, there are other reports that come from the indigenous tribes themselves that say that, man, that was nothing but a circus act.  So, the question to you, Jonathon, is -- are you suggesting "dramatic impacts for these regions have never occurred before".

Overpeck:  Absolutely not.. And you know what we did not mention in my intro was that I spent a lot of my time doing research on arctic climate and arctic systems in general.  Moreover, my family lives in the arctic and, so, I know first-hand what’s going on up there.  And, a lot of the impacts going on up there now are indeed dramatic.  I didn’t even see the photo ops but I know that as we move the sea ice off the coast you are getting much larger wave action on the coast and that’s doing a lot of damage.  A lot of the systems hunting practices and being put in jeopardy because of the animals being moved offshore and a lot of other things are happening upon land as well.  But, to answer your question:  I agree with you 100%.  There have been some dramatic changes up there before and that the people of the arctic had experienced this before, the Indian people.

Battros:  And that is why I embellish the study of ancient text and civilizations.  You know, Jonathon, it’s not . . . so many people write it off as folk-lore and story-telling.  But, no.  Perhaps some of it is, of course, but much of it is -- I am finding -- to be quite accurate; and I think worthy of the scientific community to take a closer look.

Overpeck:  I agree with you.  And, you know, even in my work where I can use information from historical documents and even native lore that’s been passed down

Battros:  Uh huh

Overpeck:  I am happy to use it.  You now, it has to be cross-checked with data just like any of my other data will have to be cross-checked against other data.  But, I agree you --

I think it’s rather interesting and you find out things that you wouldn’t find out otherwise.

Battros:  Alright.  Going back to your study -- by studying natural data, loggers such as ice cores and marine sediments -- scientists have a good idea (quote) "what the natural envelope" for arctic climate variation has been for the past million years.  Dr. Overpeck says that’s what he stated.  So my question to you is:  can you tell us, what is the "natural envelope"?

Overpeck:  Well, this is a term I think I coined a bunch of years ago and it really focuses on how climate varied over the last million years or whatever interval you’re talking about and how does that compare with what we’re doing now.  And, it’s kind of an important concept because, for example, the Earth’s climate involved in the "natural envelope"  And so, one example of the "natural envelope" is the range of CO2 in the atmosphere.  It turns out that if you go back a million years, we never had less than 180 parts per million CO2 in the atmosphere.  We never had more than about 300 parts per million.  Ever.  And, we’ve had a lit of oscillations between those two bounds but we never got outside that. Whenever we had high CO2 we had warmer temperatures, so there’s an envelope of temperatures as well.  Whenever we had lower CO2, we had colder temperatures, glacial conditions when we have really low CO2.  So, what we are doing now with human activity putting excess gases in the atmosphere is we are driving the natural system out of that envelope and we’re getting different trace gas concentrations outside the envelope and correspondingly different temperatures outside the natural envelope.  And when I first coined….

Battros:  Hold, hold on, Dr. Overpeck.  I have an issue with that and maybe you can explain it -- the so-called natural envelope.  Here’s the problem with that.  In your study did you say that the extreme volcanic period of the Cretaceous was part of the natural envelope? -- would you say when the dinosaurs were roaming and suggesting….

Dr. Overpeck:  Ah, that’s a good question, Mitch, because really our definition of the "envelope" is contingent on one of the sort of the big Earth system boundary conditions.  If you go back to the Cretaceous when the dinosaurs were roaming, you’re right, the CO2 was probably quite high compared to the last million years and temperatures were higher, too.  But the configuration of the continents was quite different than today and the rates of tectonic activity and weathering on Earth were quite different that today.  And those two factors, tectonic activity and volcanic activity primarily are those two main factors that, you know, the hundred million year time-scale are controlling the CO2 concentration in the atmosph! ere.  So what we are doing when we talk about "natural envelope", we’re talking about the Earth in its present-day configuration -- present day tectonic and continental configuration.

Battros:  Okay; alright, I’m just going to leave it at because of time but believe me, I could spend an hour just on that alone.  But, let’s move on.  Again, going back to your article, quote -- this is your quote or statement in the article -- "in the past, researchers have tended to look at individual components of the arctic.  What we did for the first time is really look at how all of those components work together".  My question to you is: Does this include solar influence???

Overpeck:  Absolutely!

Battros:  And what have you found?

Overpeck:  Well, you know, I think at that workshop -- well is really was a week-long retreat followed by a lot of other interactions -- solar came in and, of course, we were all interested in the extent to which change in solar radiance could either exacerbate the warming or retard it.

Battros:  Yes;

Overpeck:  And so we talked quite a bit about that and, fortunately, there are some good studies out there that talk about the influence that the Sun has had on climate.  We’re talking decadal to century time-scales now.  In the past the consensus was clear, the evidence was clear, that although the Sun does appear to have an impact, it doesn’t have a large enough impact to, you know, outweigh what these greenhouse gases are doing to the atmosphere and are likely to do to Earth’s climate.

Battros:  Now when you say that, Dr. Overpeck, are you not including -- and that may be a question I have in here somewhere, but if not, I am going to ask you (and, yes it is in here) -- so, let me just ask you now:  Did you not correlate the heating of the Earth via solar activity, warming the oceans, melting the ice; no, let me rephrase -- let me just read  my question:  Isn’t it also true that the vast majority of today’s carbon count is in fact emitted from the oceans and melting ice stored over thousands of millions of years?  Now connected to that question is that part of the cause of that warming is solar.  So, during these h! igh solar periods, what we call solar maximums, and the temperatures do rise and the oceans are heating and the ice is melting, doesn’t that through carbon into the air.

Overpeck:  It does and, in fact, it helps us constrain how large the solar influence has been in the past because we actually have very good measurements in these ice cores of how much CO2 is buried in the past.  So, even during some of these solar maxima, the influence on temperature and on CO2 has been very small. You know, we talking a very few parts per million of CO2 compared to pushing a hundred parts per million already since the industrial era.  The other thing we can do is, we can now use our climate models and when you are using a climate model you have to put in to the climate model what you think is the source of the variation in climate.  So, in this case, it would be for natural variation it would be volc! anoes and changes in solar radiance.  And we can put those into the climate model and reconstruct or simulate very nicely the observed climate that’s occurred over this past century, but even going back many centuries.  And what we find is that, up until 1960, it works pretty well; but starting in 1960, you just can’t seem to simulate what is happening to the Earth; i.e., the big warming unless you include the human greenhouse gases and  also the human aerosol.

Battros:  I don’t understand that, Dr. Overpeck.  How do you explain -- I don’t know if you are old enough -- I wasn’t there either, but my parents talked about it quite often -- The 1930’s Dust Bowl.  Explain the Dust Bowl to us.

Overpeck:  Explain the Dust Bowl!  Fortunately, I can explain that.-- part way, okay.  We now know thanks to a study published I think in the last year-and-a-half by people at NASA that the Dust Bowl was caused by anomalous sea surface temperatures in primarily the tropical Pacific and Atlantic oceans.

Battros:  What was the cause!

Overpeck:  The cause of the anomalous SST -- sea surface temperatures --  right now people think was a natural internal variation in the climate system.  I personally

Battros:  What the hell does that mean???  (laughingly)

Overpeck:  Hold on, hold on, Mitch.  I personally think it was related the anomalously warm temperatures that we had during the Dust Bowl years.   And anomalously warm temperatures during the Dust Bowl years were generated primarily by high solar radiance and low volcanic activity.

Battros:  You know, I half agree with you.  Obviously, on the solar part, but lots of new studies coming out about underwater volcanoes -- undersea volcanoes.  I mean, huge numbers. 

Overpeck:  Well, you now (heh heh) if that was a big effect, you would see the warming coming from the sea floor and propagating up into the ocean.

Battros:  Yea, that’s true

Overpeck:  And this is reverse.  You are seeing the warming propagating from the surface of the ocean down into the ocean and it hasn’t reached the sea floor anywhere in the ocean. But nonetheless, the warming is dramatic and it takes a long time for that warming to propagate through the ocean -- on the order of a thousand years even.

Battros:  Is it possible to have an undersea current that we’re not even well familiar with?

Overpeck:  Hard to believe; yeah, I have been on ocean cruises and just so many of them now that we’ll continue to find things, discover things on the ocean bottom that are as exciting as outer space, but I don’t think we are missing a major ocean current.

Battros:  Would it be possible for hot water to stay at the bottom -- to stay low -- in some type of low, deep current?

Overpeck:  Well probably not.  I mean ‘cause what’s happening is two things:  1) in order to have any influence on Earth’s climate has to get to the surface and the second thing is what the oceanographers do is go out and they drop their sensors overboard and they go down to the bottom; so they actually get a very detailed, very accurate temperature measurements from surface to bottom.  And, moreover, now the U.S. is leading this, we’re deploying these robotic instruments that automatically are out there, just diving into the ocean and coming back up and bringing the data back via satellite.  ! You now, it would just be very hard to believe that we’re missing something like that.

Battros: OK,  Dr. Overpeck, are you familiar with Dr. Paul Brekke?

Overpeck:  Uh, no!

Battros:  He is the Deputy Director -- I mean you can’t get much higher than this guy -- of the SOHO project.  Are you familiar with the SOHO, the SOHO satellite?

Overpeck:  You know, I’m not a big satellite guy.  I’ve heard of SOHO but I really

Battros:  Okay, all the photos you see of the Sun and the solar flares, and the CME’s and all those beautiful photographs of the Sun, that’s the SOHO.  He is the Deputy Director of that.  This is what he has to say regarding what you are suggesting as the Sun’s ever-so-small influence on our weather and atmosphere.  Let me just premise this with or begin this with -- are you aware of the ozone depletion that we experienced in January (2005)

Overpeck:  Well

Battros:  Excuse me, it was reported in January - it actually occurred in the Spring of 2004.

Overpeck:  Now you’re talking Northern Hemisphere, no doubt.

Battros:  Yeah!

Overpeck:  OK

Battros:  Well, Ok  We often talk about the ozone layer, right?  -- The humans are killing the ozone, right?  I think you hear that all the time, right?  Certainly you’re familiar with…

Overpeck:  There are multiple influences on ozone but, you know, the big debate that you are talking about is the Southern Hemisphere ozone hole and ozone depletion that is without any doubt due to human activities.  What we are seeing in the Northern Hemisphere is an interesting phenomenon that is actually the global warming which warms the lower atmosphere at the expense of the upper or stratosphere atmosphere.

Battros:  Actually, you are wrong again.

Overpeck:  heh, heh, heh

Battros:  Let me just read this here:  According to research analyst Randall at Colorado University Boulder Laboratory for Atmospheric and Space says nitrous oxide, nitrogen dioxide in the upper atmosphere climbed to the highest levels ever.  "The increases led to ozone depletion by 60%  -- and the cause was charged particles from the Sun".  That’s how little the Sun has an effect on us –

Ozone Depletion Caused by Sun: http://www.nasa.gov/vision/earth/environment/ozone-solarstorms.html

Overpeck:  Uh-hmmm

Battros:  60% depletion caused by solar activity.

Overpeck:  OK

Battros:  And that’s in many, many journals.

Overpeck:  What does that have to do with climate??

Battros:  Well, we’re talking about greenhouse, right?, greenhouse gases, we’re talking about ozone -- oh, excuse me, so we are talking about, so the ozone has no

Overpeck:  Up in the stratosphere what is going on as the Earth’s climate is a tropospheric phenomenon.

Battros:  So, you are suggesting that the solar influence stops at the stratosphere.

Overpeck:  Well, I think the stratosphere has influences on the lower atmosphere, the troposphere, but what you are talking about, I don’t understand what the connection is with . . .

Battros:  My suggestion to you is that the Sun goes far beyond the stratosphere and comes down directly to our lower atmosphere.

Overpeck:  And which I readily acknowledge does occur, but I don’t think it’s a huge effect.

Battros:  Would you suggest that, would you agree that a 60% depletion caused by the Sun is significant?

Overpeck:  Yeah, but that’s not climate, that’s the change in the stratosphere ozone.

Battros:  My point is that the Sun has a heavy influence on the Earth.

Overpeck:  That I have no problem with.

Battros:  Alright, we’ll move on.

Overpeck:  You know, the Sun has more influence on the Earth than any other factor -- I will happily say that!

Battros:  (Joyous laughter)

Overpeck:  We wouldn’t have any (heh heh heh), but what I am really talking about  and you want to make a connection to the climate change I don’t think there’s very little, there is no evidence that the Sun is causing the global warming we are getting now.

Battros:  Oh, really!  I would love to provide you with material that suggests otherwise.  But, let’s continue on here.  Staying with your study, let’s keep you on familiar grounds, you state in your study, "while the scientists identified one feedback loop that could slow the changes, they did not see any natural mechanisms that could stop the dramatic loss of ice".  My question to you is:  Does this mean if we were somehow magically able to stop all man-made pollution tomorrow, nothing would happen regarding the current warming trend and ice cap melting?

Overpeck:  No; there are a couple things you have to realize:  the CO2 that we are putting up into the atmosphere -- this is not true for the methane and some of the other gases -- but the CO2 is there to stay for decades and centuries.  It’s not going away.  The natural cycle that takes CO2 out of the atmosphere requires long, very long timescales of ocean dynamics picking up the CO2 and weathering.  So, the Earth will continue to warm and if we were magically just able to stop our emissions of CO2 today, we’d probably get about as much warming as we already as we already had -- that’s the current best estimate.  So, another degree! or so.-- degree-and-a-half Fahrenheit of global warming would result.

Battros:  Do you believe that one degree Fahrenheit is an extraordinary, alarming event to occur -- the increase of 1%?

Overpeck:  Of one degree!

Battros:  Of one degree!

Overpeck:  Yeah, you know, I don’t know about -- for scientists it’s hard -- whenever I write, I tell my grad students to never use words like even "very" let alone extraordinary because, you know, those are kind of vague terms; they mean different things to different people.  I think it’s significant

Battros:  You would acknowledge that many of the reports coming out use those words wouldn’t you.

Overpeck:  Yeah, I know, but I try not to.  But, here’s why I think another degree would be pretty important -- at least for the people in the Western United States.  We are in a drought now and those of your listeners who live in the west know that the west has been warming up pretty dramatically and the drought we are in now got a little better last winter -- we got a lot of snow and rain.  But, nonetheless, we’re in the drought and in 2004, this drought wasn’t any worse that the 1950’s drought which was bad in the west in terms of the precipitation or rainfall deficit;  but, because it was a degree warmer than it was in the 1950’s on averag! e over several years, the impact of the drought was more substantial.  For example, we had about 12,000 square miles/uh, kilometers of forest -- the pinion juniper forest across the Four Corners area die because  the drought was just too high.  So, if you raise the temperature another degree, the droughts when we get them are going to be a lot more effective at damaging vegetation and drawing down our water resources.  The other thing that’s happening just the result of a small amount of warming we’ve had already is that the Spring snowpack is diminishing, is getting less, and is moving the kind of peak runoff in the west that’s moving further into the winter.  That doesn’t sound like a big deal unless you live out west and re! alize that runoff is what gets us through the dry periods between the winter and the summer.

Battros:  Yeah, but I notice what you’re missing here.  You’re not balancing that out with what many have reported to have a more than average harsh winter on the east coast.  Would that not balance?  I mean there’s always going to be geographical fluctuations, is there not?

Overpeck:  There’s always going to be geographical fluctuations but all I am saying is as soon as you start talking about a degree even, let alone 10 degrees which we could be talking about by the end of this century, because we are not going to magically stop emitting these greenhouse gases that you were talking about in our hypothetical idea here. And a degree is still going to have some big effect for some people in the Unites States.  Will it melt the ice sheet?  Will it cause the melting of the glacial ice sheet?, probably not; so, we would be much better off, you know, capping the greenhouse gas emissions as soon as we can.

Battros:  And, again, the question is:  Has this not happened hundreds if not thousands if not millions of times before again and again and again.

Overpeck:  Yes, it’s probably happened before.  I mean one thing that we see is that whenever you have high CO2 in the atmosphere, you have warm temperatures.  When you have a lot more CO2, you have a lot more warmth.  So, it’s definitely happened before.  The big deal now is we got people on Earth -- a lot of them --

Battros:  That’s right, that’s right.  Why don’t you guys put that in your reports?  I mean you leave these little things out that I believe are much more significant.  Look, the bottom line, Dr. Overpeck, is this is where we agree 100% and really delve into the solution; and that is, the globe is warmer and this thing is going to be a cooling trend and people are going to be affected.  The question should be how are we going -- what should we do with it?

Overpeck:  There’s not going to be a cooling trend, Mitch, that’s the problem.  You know, if we continue on the course we are, we could put off the next glaciation perhaps another million years.  I mean, we are talking huge change in the Earth.

Battros:  Alright, so you immediately laugh at all these people and I don’t disagree with you, by the way, especially the way they talk about it.  I mean in the news again and again and again how Europe is turning into an icicle.

Overpeck:  Europe is turning into an icicle?  They’re actually having a real rough time with heat.

Battros:  Then you haven’t heard this?  You haven’t heard these reports coming out on the news now

Overpeck:  Well, I mean, they have a cold winter, but I don’t think -- although I don’t think they are -- but, you now, I am not talking about weather, I am talking about climate.  

Battros:  Oh, I’m talking …

Overpeck:  Their climate in 2003, these guys in France and Germany -- I mean these guys had a wicked hot summer.

Battros:  Oh, I know.  Thousands died.

Overpeck:  It’s probably the warmest summer they had in several centuries.

Battros:  That’s true.

Overpeck:  And in Southern Europe they are not getting, they are getting dry conditions so you combine the really warm summers with the lack of precipitation in the winter and, you know, all the glaciers in Switzerland are disappearing.  I mean they would love to get some cold weather.

Battros:  Alright, so you are suggesting -- and we will be able to monitor that for this season -- your suggestion is that there’ll be no significant changes in the weather in Europe and certainly not a colder Europe.

Overpeck:  Well, I am not talking weather, so we are not talking year-to-year stuff, we’re talking decade

Battros:  OK

Overpeck:  So, it’ll get warmer and warmer and I think the reasons the Europeans are onboard Kyoto and a lot more serious about this that the United States is because the felt, in part, the effects more dramatically than we have.  With the hurricanes and the droughts, you know, we might start to feel that way in the United States as well.

Battros:  Why did Europe feel it more?

Overpeck: Because they had those really record-breaking warm temperatures in summer

-- I mean 10 . . .

Battros:  Yeah, but I would argue that they had them before.  Yeah, well we’re over our time limit now, but I have to get in this last question in and its really a good question to wrap all this up in a nice package, oh more or less.  Your statement out of your article, you say humans could step on the brakes by reducing carbon dioxide emissions; the trouble is we really don’t know where the threshold is.  My question, can you qualify your statement by telling us what percentage humans contribute?  Is it 1%, 3% 20%, 50%, what the heck are you talking about?  I mean just how significant are you saying us human pollutants are?

Overpeck:  OK, the humans right now, the best estimates is that we are driving about 80% of the warming

Battros:  80%!!!  You’ve got to be kidding!!

Overpeck:  And that is going to go up with time

Battros:  That’s unbelievable.

Overpeck:  And completely overwhelming on the system.  And where the threshold is; the threshold we’re talking about is between the effects being not so dangerous and the effects being a little more serious like melting an ice sheet and getting several meters or literally tons of sea-level rise.  That’s the kind of thing we were talking about in our paper.

Battros:  Alright. 

Overpeck:  And we just don’t know if we’ll cross that threshold half-way through the century or by the end of the century.  But the safe thing to do would be to not get close to it.

Battros:  OK, let me get you on record here.  So what I am going to put down for the record, folks, is that Dr. Jonathon Overpeck is stating to us today that he believes and his team believes that 80% of so-called global warming is caused by human pollutants.  Well, we’ll put that down and we’ll see what future research holds for us.

Overpeck:  That sounds reasonable.

Battros:  It is reasonable.  Well, Dr. Overpeck, you have been a champion.  I thank you so much for being willing to come on and flush out so many things and take maybe one or two challenging questions because we all get educated when you do this.  So, I thank you so much.  I appreciate your willingness.

Overpeck:  I enjoyed this, Mitch.  Thank you.

Battros: Well there you are folks, I do appreciate him coming on and saying what he said.  I mean I certainly didn’t expect it would be anything other than that. How the global-warming advocates try to push their agenda without their nose growing is beyond me. I guess Dr. Overpeck’s answer to my question about the Sun and SOHO says it all. Overpeck: What’s SOHO?  Oh well…But a good interview.  I hope you learned something.  I’ll see you next week with more shows.  This is Mitch Battros for a Earth Changes TV "Radio Hour".