"Six Degrees Could Change the World" premieres Sunday, February 10, at 8:00 PM ET/PT on the National Geographic Channel (2-Hour World Premiere).
Alec Baldwin - © Lee Roth / RothStock / PR Photos
You know about six degrees of separation. But what about six degrees to extinction?
Scientists predict that global temperatures will rise by between one and six degrees over the course of this century and author Mark Lynas paints a chilling, degree-by- degree picture of the devastation likely to ensue unless we act now.
A new show on National Geographic Channel, "Six Degrees Could Change the World" narrated by Alec Baldwin, investigates the startling theory that earth’s average temperature could rise six degrees Celsius by the year 2100.
"Six Degrees Could Change the World" explores the potential impacts of global warming degree-by-degree—through six degrees over the next hundred years. Filmed on five continents, the program tracks the world's top climate researchers and follows ranchers, photographers, and everyday people to uncover climate trends.
Utilizing cutting-edge CGI and hard-hitting scientific data, the HD special will reveal how each potential degree affects us on all levels – from the bottom of our deepest oceans to the tops of our highest mountains.
The show will discuss many contributing factors to the ecological disaster that awaits us all.
A 1991 eruption of Mount Pinatubo in the Philippines sent an estimated 20 million tons of sulfur dioxide high into the stratosphere. Winds proceeded to spread it all over the planet, forming a high-level haze that reflected back light from the sun and reduced global temperature by 0.5 degrees Celsius.
Nobel prize-winning atmospheric chemist Paul Crutzen has proposed simulating the Pinatubo effect by using artillery guns or balloons to inject sulfur into the atmosphere. (Rockets filled with sulfur could also do the trick).
Crutzen calculates that the cooling effect would begin within six months and last for up to two years. Artificially duplicating Mount Pinatubo’s effects each year might cost $250 billion, though Crutzen says a relatively affordable $25-$50 billion worth would be enough to make a difference.
A major downside is the possibility of creating acid rain or wreaking havoc with global weather patterns, as the eruption of the Indonesian volcanic island of Krakatoa did in the 1880s.
University of Arizona astronomer Roger Angel has suggested using non-polluting, magnetically-powered vehicles—a concept that NASA is already exploring—to transport trillions of lenses made of silicon nitride film into space and deposit them near inner Lagrange point 1, an area where the combined effect of gravity of the Earth and the Sun would keep them in the same place relative to Earth’s rotation.
The lenses would be about three feet across but incredibly thin, weighing about a gram. Rather than blocking sunlight, they would bend some of it slightly away from Earth, reducing the amount of energy transmitted by about 2 percent.
Manufacturing the immense quantity of lenses and putting them into space—some 20 million launches would be required—make Angel’s idea a lengthy and pricey one, but he has estimated that the cost would average out to $100 billion annually over the lenses’ 50 year lifetime. The lenses would also be difficult to turn “off” if necessary, and could lead to uneven cooling effects.
Trees and plants are a major bulwark against climate change as they consume carbon dioxide during photosynthesis.
The United Nation’s Food and Agriculture Organization estimates that forests have the potential to absorb into their biomass up to 15 percent of global carbon emissions in the first half of the 21st Century—assuming we still have forests by then.
About half of the world’s forests already have been cut or burned down to harvest timber or clear land for building or farming, and by 2030, only 20 percent might remain. The destruction of forests, in fact, pumps 1.6 billion tons of carbon into the atmosphere, accounting for 25 to 30 percent of the planet’s greenhouse gas emissions. Reforestation projects could undo some of this damage and help reduce the rate of climate change.
Carbon offset trading firms already are planting trees on a modest scale, and governments in developing countries have launched larger efforts.
Ethiopia, for example, planted 700 million trees in 2007, and Indonesia planted 79 million trees in a single day last November as part of a global campaign to plant one billion trees. But making a major dent in global warming would require an even bigger multinational push.
The Six Degrees Could Change the World website, here , features an interactive element that allows users to choose a temperature degree increase from 1° to 6°, and zoom in on areas around the globe. The microsite will also link to its sister website – here – a NGC initiative created to shed light on the importance of conservation, recycling and sustainability.
Lynas
According to Lynas' research, scientists have established that the current episode of global warming of about 0.7 degrees Celsius (1.2 degrees Fahrenheit) in the last century has pushed Earth’s temperatures up to levels unprecedented in recent history.
A 2007 report by the Nobel Peace Prize-winning UN Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) states that at no time in the past 1,300 years has our planet been as warm as it is now, while records from the deep sea suggest that temperatures are now within a degree of their highest levels in 1 million years.
According to the IPCC, Earth will warm up between 1.4 degrees Celsius and 5.8 degrees Celsius (roughly 2 degrees Fahrenheit to 10 degrees Fahrenheit) by the end of this century.
Six degrees may not sound like much, but as this sobering and Lynas' engrossing book contends such a rise in average temperature would be enough to destroy much of life and reshape our world almost beyond recognition.
The National Geographic series presents findings in his research, and claims that global warming is already a fact: the snows of Kilimanjaro are melting away; massive boulders on the Matterhorn, snowbound for centuries, have begun to plunge in dramatic and dangerous rockfalls; and atoll nations of the Pacific are disappearing inch by inch under the waves.
Basing Lynas' conclusions on peer-reviewed articles in leading climatology, geophysics, biology, and Earth system science journals, he explains in unflinching detail the processes and effects of this unprecedented phenomenon, degree by degree.
The National Geographic special takes Lynas' book and illustrates through advanced post-production and filming techniques that demonstrate the latest research and sophisticated computer models as well as paleoclimatic reconstructions of the past that show conclusively that today’s climate change is a new and different challenge, not the routine swing of a slow climatic pendulum.
Lynas is a frequent contributor to New Statesman, Ecologist, Granta, and Geographical and other periodicals as well as the Guardian and Observer newspapers in the United Kingdom.
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