By Kaleb Lay
Renowned climate scientist Richard B. Alley, sets the record straight on climate change in his speech delivered Mon.
“You will meet the person who asks, ‘oh, do you believe in global warming?’” Alley said. “It’s sorta kinda like asking if you believe in gravity…It’s physics, it’s observed fact.”
Known for his work in determining the state of the earth’s climate through history, Alley discussed at length the processes and procedures he and others in his field use to determine the history of Earth’s climate. Some of those processes include drilling into ice sheets in places like Greenland and Antarctica.
When snow falls, it traps bubbles of air in the snowpack. The weight of snow added every year afterward compresses the snowpack into layers of ice, keeping those air bubbles trapped for thousands of years. When scientists like Alley drill into the ice pack and extract samples of this ancient ice, they can examine those air bubbles to gain insight into what the air was like in the past.
“There are bubbles and those bubbles are really samples of old air,” said Alley. “So you have how much it snowed, what the temperature was, what was the atmosphere, what was going on in space, what was going on with the sun, what was going on with the wind, what was going on in the ocean all sitting in this record for more than 100,000 years.”
Ice core drilling was one of many tools Alley spoke about that climate scientists use to paint a picture of Earth’s climate history. What that picture tells scientists, Alley said, is that change in the planet’s climate is directly tied to the amount of carbon dioxide in the air.
“If you leave out the carbon dioxide and try to explain [global warming], nobody has ever succeeded,” said Alley. “The truth is that when you work through the history, you keep seeing carbon dioxide over and over and over again.”
Alley’s presentation illustrated a cyclical pattern of warming and cooling in Earth’s history. That pattern is often used as an argument that the climate change Earth is currently experiencing is natural and no cause for concern. Alley condemned that argument.
“When you actually look, we learn about climate change by seeing what it did to living things. It flattened the reefs and it caused extinctions and it dwarfed the large critters,” he said. “Climate change has always affected life, and that shows that it matters.”
Alley argued human activity is driving an accelerated change in Earth’s climate that will have devastating effects on the planet. He said there is evidence that current climate change models “are too conservative” and current students should expect to see at least three feet of sea level rise in their lifetimes.
Though Alley presented some dire projections, he remained optimistic, saying that the problem can be solved. He quoted an Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change recommendation to world leaders that states that climate solutions would boost economic growth and global security. That recommendation has been echoed by a recent report by the Director of National Intelligence.
While Alley said he believes the current climate situation is dire, he stresses that people can still come together to find a solution.
“A whole lot of Americans… may not agree that there’s a problem, but they think we can solve it,” said Alley. “We don’t like problems, but we like solutions.”
