Show Date: November 29 , 2004

GLOBAL WARMING AND FROZEN MOONS
Pam Eastlick for the Marianas Variety

Greetings and welcome to The Deep column and the deepest radio show on Earth. The science talk radio program that takes you from the depths of the ocean to the farthest reaches of the universe. This week on The Deep aired at 6:00 each Wednesday evening on K-57, we’ll tackle one of the deepest ecological issues, Global Warming.

In a late-breaking news story with direct local impact, native people of the Arctic want to team up with tropical islanders in a campaign against global warming. They argue that polar bears and palm-fringed beaches stand to suffer most when Arctic ice melts and sea levels rise.
This proposed alliance between some of the hottest and coldest places on the planet would lobby industrial nations like the United States to sign the Kyoto protocol on global warming. With their homes under threat, many indigenous peoples in the Arctic and islanders say the United States, the world's biggest polluter, bears much of the blame for global warming after Washington rejected caps on emissions under the 128-nation Kyoto protocol. One of the prime requirements of the protocol is that participating nations cut emissions of heat-trapping gases. The Arctic is warming twice as fast as the rest of the planet because of a build-up of gases from fossil fuels burned in cars, factories and power plants, according to a recent report authored by 250 scientists from eight countries. That could make the North Pole ice-free in summer by 2100, driving species like polar bears toward extinction and undermining indigenous hunting cultures, the report says. In turn, a global thaw could push up sea levels by almost a meter (3 ft) by 2100, according to U.N. projections, threatening to sink low-lying Pacific island states like Tuvalu, the Marshall Islands and some of the islands of the Federated States of Micronesia. The threat of rising sea levels plus intensified hurricane activity is of prime importance here in the Pacific and people want to know what can be done to reverse the polar meltdown and overall climatic deterioration.

Our guest this week on The Deep is Don Weaver co-author (with John Hamaker) of the book The Survival of Civilization and author of To Love and Regenerate the Earth. These books are regarded by a growing movement worldwide as a blueprint for the survival of the Earth by restoring ecological balance.
Mr. Weaver feels, as do many other scientists that the ultimate danger in global warming is that it will trigger the end of the current interglacial period and ultimately and possibly very rapidly plunge us back into another glacial period within the current Ice Age. The warm periods between the last four great Ice Ages have each lasted about 10,000 years and it’s been 10,000 years since the ice last retreated.
Many people want to know what they can do to help balance the climate and prevent catastrophes like polar meltdown or a new glacial period. Mr. Weaver and his colleagues say that remineralization of our soils with finely ground rock dust, and a “re-greening” of the Biosphere is the foundation for restoring ecological health and balance. He’ll talk about this and many other issues relating to global warming on this week’s show.

And in Deep Space news, the Cassini spacecraft has taken a stunning close-up of one of Saturn’s ice moons, Dione (Dee-OH-nee). Dione is 700 miles in diameter, about one-third our Moon’s diameter. This picture was taken from roughly 750,000 miles away, about three times the distance from the Earth to the Moon.

Dione is covered with craters and strange wispy markings. All moons are ‘phase-locked’ with their planets. This means that, like our moon, they keep the same side turned toward the planet all the time. The wispy markings are on Dione’s trailing hemisphere, the side turned away from the direction of orbit. Scientists don’t know what made the markings and they hope a close fly-by in December will help them learn more about this strange moon.

Join us this week on The Deep for global warming and frozen moons. Don’t miss it!