As the UN Climate Conference winds down in Paris, advocates for cutting the use of fossil fuels world-wide are still looking for action from the earth’s major polluters.
Climate scientists say we are already experiencing climate change — more extreme weather, longer droughts, worse flooding, warmer average ocean and surface temperatures.
With this comes disappearing glaciers, melting ice caps, expanding deserts, rising sea levels, ocean acidification, and the mass extinction of animal species.
Scientists warn us, we need to bring CO2 levels in our atmosphere back down to 350 parts per million. We are currently at 400 — and rising by 2-3 parts per million annually. It makes an insulating blanket on our atmosphere that forces the climate to warm. And because oceans absorb a large amount of this CO2, they are becoming more acidic. That threatens seafood stocks and, indeed, a collapse of marine ecosystems.
Will the world’s leaders get serious in time to avert climate catastrophe? Climate scientist James Hansen told Amy Goodman of Democracy Now last week that “as long as fuels are dirt cheap, people will keep burning them.”
The Citizens Climate Lobby is a nation-wide organization that has a plan they say will fix the problem and they have proposed legislation to address it.
Tony Ernst spoke with power generation engineer Tip Brolin, a local member of Citizens Climate Lobby and the Southampton Town Sustainability Committee at his home in Water Mill last month.
Brolin, trained at Tufts University and George Washington University.
As a Navy officer and later as a civilian he worked in Washington DC on nuclear propulsion with Admiral Hyman Rickover.
Brolin worked in industry designing both coal and nuclear power generation systems and he helped manage the Department of Energy’s nuclear power and nuclear fusion programs.
No comments:
Post a Comment