Al Gore: Alarming new slides of the worsening climate crisis

52,059 views ・ 2009-05-07

TED


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00:12
Last year I showed these two slides so that
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demonstrate that the arctic ice cap,
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which for most of the last three million years
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has been the size of the lower 48 states,
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has shrunk by 40 percent.
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But this understates the seriousness of this particular problem
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because it doesn't show the thickness of the ice.
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The arctic ice cap is, in a sense,
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the beating heart of the global climate system.
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It expands in winter and contracts in summer.
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The next slide I show you will be
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a rapid fast-forward of what's happened over the last 25 years.
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The permanent ice is marked in red.
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As you see, it expands to the dark blue --
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that's the annual ice in winter,
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and it contracts in summer.
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The so-called permanent ice, five years old or older,
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you can see is almost like blood,
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spilling out of the body here.
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In 25 years it's gone from this, to this.
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This is a problem because the warming
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heats up the frozen ground around the Arctic Ocean,
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where there is a massive amount of frozen carbon
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which, when it thaws, is turned into methane by microbes.
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Compared to the total amount of global warming pollution in the atmosphere,
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that amount could double if we cross this tipping point.
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Already in some shallow lakes in Alaska,
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methane is actively bubbling up out of the water.
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Professor Katey Walter from the University of Alaska
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went out with another team to another shallow lake last winter.
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Video: Whoa! (Laughter)
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Al Gore: She's okay. The question is whether we will be.
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And one reason is, this enormous heat sink
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heats up Greenland from the north.
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This is an annual melting river.
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But the volumes are much larger than ever.
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This is the Kangerlussuaq River in southwest Greenland.
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If you want to know how sea level rises
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from land-base ice melting
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this is where it reaches the sea.
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These flows are increasing very rapidly.
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At the other end of the planet, Antarctica
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the largest mass of ice on the planet.
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Last month scientists reported the entire continent
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is now in negative ice balance.
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And west Antarctica cropped up on top some under-sea islands,
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is particularly rapid in its melting.
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That's equal to 20 feet of sea level, as is Greenland.
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In the Himalayas, the third largest mass of ice:
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at the top you see new lakes, which a few years ago were glaciers.
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40 percent of all the people in the world
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get half of their drinking water from that melting flow.
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In the Andes, this glacier is the
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source of drinking water for this city.
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The flows have increased.
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But when they go away, so does much of the drinking water.
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In California there has been a 40 percent
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decline in the Sierra snowpack.
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This is hitting the reservoirs.
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And the predictions, as you've read, are serious.
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This drying around the world has lead to
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a dramatic increase in fires.
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And the disasters around the world
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have been increasing at an absolutely extraordinary
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and unprecedented rate.
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Four times as many in the last 30 years
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as in the previous 75.
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This is a completely unsustainable pattern.
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If you look at in the context of history
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you can see what this is doing.
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In the last five years
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we've added 70 million tons of CO2
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every 24 hours --
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25 million tons every day to the oceans.
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Look carefully at the area of the eastern Pacific,
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from the Americas, extending westward,
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and on either side of the Indian subcontinent,
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where there is a radical depletion of oxygen in the oceans.
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The biggest single cause of global warming,
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along with deforestation, which is 20 percent of it, is the burning of fossil fuels.
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Oil is a problem, and coal is the most serious problem.
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The United States is one of the two
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largest emitters, along with China.
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And the proposal has been to build a lot more coal plants.
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But we're beginning to see a sea change.
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Here are the ones that have been cancelled in the last few years
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with some green alternatives proposed.
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(Applause)
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However there is a political battle
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in our country.
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And the coal industries and the oil industries
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spent a quarter of a billion dollars in the last calendar year
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promoting clean coal,
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which is an oxymoron.
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That image reminded me of something.
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(Laughter)
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Around Christmas, in my home in Tennessee,
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a billion gallons of coal sludge was spilled.
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You probably saw it on the news.
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This, all over the country, is the second largest waste stream in America.
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This happened around Christmas.
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One of the coal industry's ads around Christmas was this one.
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Video: ♪♫ Frosty the coal man is a jolly, happy soul.
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He's abundant here in America,
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and he helps our economy grow.
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Frosty the coal man is getting cleaner everyday.
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He's affordable and adorable, and workers keep their pay.
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Al Gore: This is the source of much of the coal in West Virginia.
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The largest mountaintop miner is the head of Massey Coal.
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Video: Don Blankenship: Let me be clear about it. Al Gore,
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Nancy Pelosi, Harry Reid, they don't know what they're talking about.
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Al Gore: So the Alliance for Climate Protection
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has launched two campaigns.
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This is one of them, part of one of them.
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Video: Actor: At COALergy we view climate change as a very serious
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threat to our business.
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That's why we've made it our primary goal
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to spend a large sum of money
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on an advertising effort to help bring out and complicate
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the truth about coal.
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The fact is, coal isn't dirty.
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We think it's clean --
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smells good, too.
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So don't worry about climate change.
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Leave that up to us.
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05:50
(Laughter)
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Video: Actor: Clean coal -- you've heard a lot about it.
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So let's take a tour of this state-of-the-art clean coal facility.
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Amazing! The machinery is kind of loud.
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06:02
But that's the sound of clean coal technology.
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And while burning coal is one of the leading causes of global warming,
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the remarkable clean coal technology you see here
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changes everything.
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Take a good long look: this is today's clean coal technology.
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Al Gore: Finally, the positive alternative
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meshes with our economic challenge
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and our national security challenge.
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Video: Narrator: America is in crisis -- the economy,
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national security, the climate crisis.
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The thread that links them all:
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our addiction to carbon based fuels,
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like dirty coal and foreign oil.
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But now there is a bold new solution to get us out of this mess.
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Repower America with 100 percent clean electricity
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within 10 years.
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A plan to put America back to work,
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make us more secure, and help stop global warming.
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Finally, a solution that's big enough to solve our problems.
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Repower America. Find out more.
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Al Gore: This is the last one.
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Video: Narrator: It's about repowering America.
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One of the fastest ways to cut our dependence
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on old dirty fuels that are killing our planet.
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Man: Future's over here. Wind, sun, a new energy grid.
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Man #2: New investments to create high-paying jobs.
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Narrator: Repower America. It's time to get real.
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Al Gore: There is an old African proverb that says,
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"If you want to go quickly, go alone.
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If you want to go far, go together."
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We need to go far, quickly.
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Thank you very much.
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(Applause)
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