JANUARY 2012


From Canterbury Center Skilled Nursing, Rehabilitation, And Long Term Care


Happy New Year! Small Planet


Jerry Doesn’t Care About Polar Bears


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lar bears. He doesn’t dislike them; he’s just not moved to ac- tion by their plight. He’s simply not an emotionally driven, tree- hugging activist in the way that I, his younger brother, tend to be. He’s a scientist, a physicist to be exact. So I was surprised when, during Thanksgiving dinner, he began talking about climate change. My brother is a physics pro-


fessor at George Washington University. Last semester he taught a course called “Physics for Future Presidents.” Climate change was a central theme ex- plored. My brother, who drives a Prius more as a science ex- periment than an environmen- tal statement, whose interest in my green home barely extends beyond a fascination with the magnetics of my induction cooktop, and who doesn’t care about polar bears, was sudden- ly seeking answers on global warming. He tasked the bright


young minds of his class to ex- plore three basic questions on the topic. Is the Earth really warming?


Jerry’s class looked forward from the 1850s when the first reliable temperature record begins. The 20 warmest years on record all occurred within the last 25 years, with 2010 and 2005 tied for the hottest years ever recorded. The mid-range temperature record as revealed from tree rings, coral growth, and ice-core sampling indi- cates that global mean surface temperatures over the last 25 years have been higher than any comparable period since AD 1600, and probably since AD 900. Conclusion: It’s fair to say our Earth is experiencing a warming trend. Are human behaviors driving


global warming? On this ques- tion, the class turned to data collected on atmospheric car- bon dioxide and its relationship to global temperature fluctu-


ations. These data, going back 400,000 years, reveal a direct correlation between CO2


temperature, but not in the way you might think. The class dis- covered that historic increases in atmospheric CO2


follow tem-


perature rises, not the other way around. They didn’t un- derstand this until a visit with a chemistry professor cleared things up: Gases dissolve out of liquids as temperatures rise. In other words, as ocean tempera- tures increase due to an overall


by approximately 800 years. But that’s not what’s hap-


of temperature, and has been doing so since the 1800s with the beginning of industrializa- tion and our fossil fuel addic- tion. It is accepted that cer- tain gases building up in our atmosphere—methane, nitrous oxide, ozone as well as CO2


pening today. Today, atmo- spheric CO2


is increasing ahead


rise in global temperature, CO2 from seawater is emitted into the atmosphere. The data show that as global temperatures rise, there is a reliable echoing rise in atmospheric CO2


and


21


trailing


—


trap solar radiation resulting in a rise in Earth’s temperature. Conclusion: It’s hard to refute a cause and effect relation- ship between humans pumping more greenhouse gas into the atmosphere and the trend to- ward global warming. Can we reverse this warm-


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ing trend? Should we strive to? Here the class had to sift through volumes of propagan- da to weigh the scientific facts. Looking out for bias, exaggera- tions, distortions, and data cherry picking, they delved into the frequency of storms and se- vere weather. They examined melting polar ice caps. They projected global energy usage and they explored the pros


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