Module 2
A blink of an eye in geological terms, but long enough to recognize the steady pulse of a self-regulating system.
How we got to this point
Module transcript for discussion >>>
'You see, the elephant in the room is the carbon dioxide that we already have in the atmosphere. You see what's going on around us, you see all these extreme weather events...'
'People suffering all over the world from floods, from droughts, from heat waves, this is all due to the CO2 in the atmosphere that we already have. And this CO2 in the atmosphere is not going away anywhere by itself. It's going to stay there. So if we stop emissions right now, this very moment, the series of extreme weather events will continue. That's the new norm.'
The state of our planet desperately calls for all of us to be open to new ways of approaching the climate. And to do that we have to go back 800,000 years to understand how we got to this point.
Here at the US National Ice Core Lab in Antarctica, scientists drill and retrieve ice cores to learn about how our climate has changed over thousands of years. Here at the US National Ice Core Lab in Antarctica, scientists drill and retrieve ice cores to learn about how our climate has changed over thousands of years.
It was here in Antarctica in 1988 that a joint US-Russian team of scientists took ice core samples throughout the depths of the east Antarctic ice shelf. At a depth of over 4 kilometers, it is the deepest known ice pack on the planet.
Each year, snow fall and dust deposits trap bubbles of air in the ice, providing an accurate record of climate conditions going back over 800,000 years.
What the data showed was a repeating cycle of approximately 100,000 years where the climate went from warming to cooling. As CO2 naturally increased in the atmosphere, the climate warmed. Then as CO2 was gradually absorbed, the temperature cooled.
If you look at the last 12,000 years, up to the last few decades, you'll see a time of climate stability where CO2 was at around 270 parts per million. And this is what allowed humanity to flourish.
Apart from the occasional catastrophic volcanic blast, earthquake, tsunami, or flood, life on earth was pretty good - climatically speaking.
But then around 1760 came the industrial revolution. Powered by fossil fuels, it led to the fastest increase in CO2 levels in the planet's history.
Earth's atmosphere is a delicate balance.
PPM, or parts per million, means that for every million molecules in the atmosphere, there used to be around 270 molecules of carbon dioxide. Today, we're at around 423 parts per million of CO2.
And since temperature records have been annually recorded, the average temperature has risen close to a critical 1.5 degrees of warming.
The research continues, and scientists have now drilled 1.7 miles deep into Antarctica, pulling up ice core samples dating back to more than 1.2 million years. Read here!
How has temperature change affected your community and your country?
What can be done in your community to reduce emissions that contribute to warming?
Local context >>>