10-11-2006 - Human World

_DB:_ This is “Earth & Sky”:/, on the relationship between the scientific predictions of future climate change . . .

_JB:_ And what people do to affect climate. “Scott Doney”:scott-doney-interview-climate-change at the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution said scientists mostly agree on measurements in the last half of the 20th century showing rising sea level, warming sea water and changing ocean chemistry.

_DB:_ But he said there’s less consensus on what we’ll see a century from now. In the end, Doney said, it’s not all about ocean physics. On a world with six billion humans, with nine billion expected by the year 2050, you have to consider what humanity will or won’t do in the coming decades about human-caused climate change.

_Scott Doney:_ It’s a very tricky business because as climate changes – and we’ve already seen this – people will change their behavior. This brings in issues of economics and politics and social dynamics that make it a very complicated but interesting problem. We’ve already committed ourselves to a fairly substantial change in the ocean. What I worry about is not as much the developed world, because I think the developed world has to opportunity to adapt, as the poorer countries, where they just don’t have the resources.

_JB:_ For more, come to earthsky.org. Our thanks today to “NOAA, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration”:http://www.noaa.gov/. We’re Block and Byrd for “Earth & Sky”:/http://208.96.63.114/.

Written by EarthSky