I?m not making this up. Duke University professor William Schlesinger, dean of the Nicholas School of the Environment, spoke to a crowd in Salisbury recently about global warming.
And defended the science behind the film The Day After.
OK, scratch that one off the college list for my kids ? I?d like them to get a real education:
Since the mid-1800s, when industry took hold and man began mining and burning fossil fuels in a big way, Schlesinger told a few dozen people, carbon dioxide levels and global temperatures have risen “hand in hand.”
As a result, average temperatures have crept up a few degrees around the planet, an observation borne out, he said, by weather station data that show deviations from “normal” temperatures overwhelmingly on the high side in the past several decades, where before most deviations were below normal.
Nowhere are the changing temperatures more evident than the polar ice cap, where satellite photos show ice sheets breaking up, he said.
“The northern polar regions are also telling us, even without thermometers,” Schlesinger said.
And that leads to still another model that says as ice slips into the sea and melts, the influx of cold, fresh water could have a decidedly chilling effect on the climate of large portions of the Earth.
The fresh water disrupts the constant circulation of saltwater throughout the oceans, Schlesinger said, causing seas to rise and cool, and the climate to cool, too.
That’s what happened in the summer movie “The Day After Tomorrow,” though in a much shorter time than scientists say is possible.
Still, Schlesinger said the movie is “based on some interesting and pretty solid facts … If you shut down that conveyer belt (of constantly moving ocean water), you plunge North America and Europe into a deep freeze.”
Either model — rampant global warming or a new ice age — would drastically affect life and the ability to produce food, Schlesinger said.
My non-falsifiable premise is that Karl Popper is turning over in his grave yet again.
