Climate change

View Climate change

Presenter: Sherwood Rowland

Published: March 2009

Age: 14-19 and upwards

Views: 1657 views

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Type: Interviews

Source/institution: Vega


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This presentation gives Rowland’s current (2006) opinion/impression of Global Warming. He says that the first legislated discussion that he remembers in the US senate on the Global Warming was in 1986 and the looming problem and whether governments should be active in this area was discussed. The IPPC (International Panel on Climate Change) in 1990 had the view that Global Warming was a problem that we would certainly encounter in the future. In 1995 he said it looked like we could see a signal showing Global Warming, in 2001 the signal was more intense and in 2006 the IPPC said that Global Warming is not a problem for the future it was already happening in the Polar North, where as predicted by modeling in around 1990 there could be a feedback problem. Rowland explains that sunlight should be reflected by large amounts of ice without having an effect on the atmosphere but if the ice melts the radiation is absorbed instead of being reflected giving positive feedback and this increases the temperature of the earth by the absorption heat. Rowland says that we are now seeing this happen.