"CLIMATE OF UNCERTAINTY": PUBLIC RADIO PROJECT EXAMINES THE IMPACT OF GLOBAL WARMING

Contact:  Suzanne Perry
(651) 290-1276
sperry@americanpublicmedia.us
www.americanpublicmedia.us

"CLIMATE OF UNCERTAINTY":PUBLIC RADIO PROJECT
EXAMINES THE IMPACT OF GLOBAL WARMING

A documentary and Web site produced by American Public Media's national documentary unit, American RadioWorks, asks if we are heading for an abrupt climate shift.

(St. Paul, Minn.) August11, 2004 — Not long ago, scientists discovered that the Earth’sclimate is capable of changing abruptly, as if a switch were flipped.In the past, this kind of abrupt change may have caused droughts, floodsand even regional cooling.

Some scientists warnthat we could be heading for another sudden, massive climate shift— thisone triggered by the human actions that cause global warming.

American RadioWorks(ARW), the national documentary unit of American Public Media, has produceda radio documentary and a Web Site that examine the potential impactof global warming, which is caused by carbon dioxide produced when fossilfuels like oil or coal are burned. Although the available informationis imperfect, scientists tell ARW the phenomenon could cause drasticchanges to the Earth’s climate — and that we must make toughdecisions about whether and how to act.

TUNE IN: Hostedby National Public Radio's Ira Flatow, the one-hour ARW documentary, "Climateof Uncertainty," will air on public radio stations across thecountry in mid-August.

WEB SITE: www.americanradioworks.org/features/climate featuresaudio of the documentary, along with a transcript and links to otherresources on global warming.

"Climate of Uncertainty" featuresinterviews with scientists and researchers who are studying ice caps,glaciers, snowfields, seas, wildlife movements and computer models forsigns of climate change. They include:

• James Hansen,a climate expert for the National Aeronautics and Space Administration,who notes that carbon dioxide emissions have increased by 30 percentover the last 150 years. This is like adding two tiny Christmas treebulbs to each of the 150 trillion square meters that make up the Earth'ssurface.
• Will Steger,an adventurer who is collecting impressions of Inuit hunters and eldersabout climate change in the Arctic. One hunter tells him that previouslypermanent snowfields now melt by late summer and that ground squirrels,foxes and other animals are migrating further north every year.
• Paul Mayewski,a glacier expert who led a U.S. team that collected glacial core samplesin Greenland during the 1980s and early 1990s. "What we discoveredin that record…is that there are responses to climate changethat can be extremely abrupt," he says.
• Archeologist HarveyWeiss, who has been excavating a northern outpost of the once-greatempire of Akkad in Mesopotamia (now northeastern Syria and northernIraq). The civilization collapsed suddenly, which scientists nowattribute to the advent of a 300-year drought that toppled societiesfrom present-day Crete to India.
• Climatologist WallyBroecker, who has developed a theory about the cause of abruptclimate changes in Greenland some 8,000 years ago that has gainedwidespread scientific acceptance. He has proposed that a massiveocean current known as the Great Ocean Conveyor Belt — whosetropical heat warms western Europe — was shut down due to aninflux of fresh water, leading to a dramatic cooling. Global warming,he says, could also flip the conveyor's off switch, by causingmore water to evaporate in the warm parts of the planet. That wouldcreate extra rain and snow in the regions around the north Atlanticthat would add enough fresh water to kill the conveyor.
• Canadian climateresearcher David Keith, who says: "The key question is,are we willing as a species ultimately to spend a couple percent ofglobal economic productivity over the next century to avoid makingmajor climatic changes that lead to really quite substantial changesand extinctions and so on throughout the global environment?"

"Climate ofUncertainty" is produced by Daniel Grossman and John Rudolph.

AmericanPublic Mediaô is the national production and distribution unit of MinnesotaPublic Radio. It is the nation's second-biggest producer of nationalpublic radio programs, reaching 11.9 million listeners nationwide eachweek. National programs include A Prairie Home Companion^®, Saint Paul Sunday^®, Marketplace^®, Sound Money^®, The Splendid Table^®, Being^® and special reports produced by its documentary unit, American RadioWorks^®. Minnesota Public Radio, along with its sister company Southern California Public Radio, belongs to a larger family of companies within American Public Media Group, a national nonprofit organization whose purpose is to develop resources, services and systems to support public media for public service. A complete list of stations, programs and additional services can be obtained at www.americanpublicmedia.us.

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Source: Data are copyright Arbitron, Inc. Arbitron data are estimates only.
Fall 2003