An Inconvenient Truth Page #5

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in the Arctic,

the Ward Hunt Ice Shelf.

It just cracked in half three years ago.

The scientists were astonished.

These are called drunken trees

just going every which way.

This is not caused by wind damage

or alcohol consumption.

These trees put their roots down

in the permafrost,

and the permafrost is thawing.

And so they just go

every which way now.

This building was built

on the permafrost

and has collapsed

as the permafrost thaws.

This woman's house has had

to be abandoned.

The pipeline is suffering

a great deal of structural damage.

And incidentally, the oil that they want

to produce in that protected area

in Northern Alaska,

which I hope they don't,

they have to depend on trucks

to go in and out of there.

And the trucks go over

the frozen ground.

This shows the number of days

that the tundra in Alaska is

frozen enough to drive on it.

Thirty-five years ago, 225 days a year.

Now it's below 75 days a year

because the spring comes earlier

and the fall comes later

and the temperatures

just keep on going up.

I went up to the North Pole.

I went under that ice cap

in a nuclear submarine

that surfaced through the ice like this.

Since they started patrolling in 1957,

they have gone under the ice

and measured

with their radar looking upwards

to measure how thick it is

because they can only surface in areas

where it's three and a half feet thick

or less.

So they have kept a meticulous record

and they wouldn't release it

because it was national security.

I went up there in order to persuade

them to release it, and they did.

And here's what that record shows.

Starting in 1970,

there was a precipitous drop-off

in the amount and extent and thickness

of the Arctic ice cap.

It has diminished by 40% in 40 years.

And there are now

two major studies showing

that within the next 50 to 70 years,

in summertime

it will be completely gone.

Now, you might say,

"Why is that a problem?"

And "How could the Arctic ice cap

actually melt so quickly?"

When the sun's rays hit the ice,

more than 90% of it bounces off

right back into space like a mirror.

But when it hits the open ocean,

more than 90% of it is absorbed.

And so, as the surrounding water

gets warmer,

it speeds up the melting of the ice.

Right now, the Arctic ice cap acts

like a giant mirror.

All the sun's rays bounce off,

more than 90%.

It keeps the Earth cooler.

But as it melts

and the open ocean receives

that sun's energy instead,

more than 90% is absorbed.

So there is

a faster buildup of heat here,

at the North Pole, in the Arctic Ocean,

and the Arctic generally

than anywhere else on the planet.

That's not good for creatures like

polar bears who depend on the ice.

A new scientific study shows that

for the first time they're finding

polar bears that have actually drowned,

swimming long distances,

up to 60 miles, to find the ice.

And they didn't find that before.

But what does it mean to us?

To look at a vast expanse of open water

at the top of our world

that used to be covered by ice.

We ought to care a lot

because it has planetary effects.

The Earth's climate is like a big engine

for redistributing heat

from the equator to the poles.

And it does that by means

of ocean currents and wind currents.

They tell us, the scientists do, that the

Earth's climate is a nonlinear system.

Just a fancy way they have of saying

that the changes are not

all just gradual.

Some of them come suddenly,

in big jumps.

On a worldwide basis,

the annual average temperature is

about 58 degrees Fahrenheit.

If we have an increase of five degrees,

which is on the low end

of the projections,

look at how that translates globally.

That means an increase of only

one degree at the equator,

but more than 12 degrees at the pole.

And so all those wind

and ocean current patterns

that have formed since the last ice age

and have been relatively stable,

they're all up in the air and they change.

And one of the ones

they're most worried about,

where they've spent a lot of time

studying the problem,

is in the North Atlantic

where the Gulf Stream comes up

and meets the cold winds

coming off the Arctic over Greenland.

And that evaporates so that the heat

out of the Gulf Stream

and the steam is carried over

to Western Europe

by the prevailing winds

and the Earth's rotation.

But isn't it interesting that

the whole ocean current system

is all linked together in this loop?

They call it the ocean conveyor.

And the red are

the warm surface currents.

The Gulf Stream is

the best known of them.

But the blue represent the cold currents

running in the opposite direction,

and we don't see them at all because

they run along the bottom of the ocean.

Up in the North Atlantic,

after that heat is pulled out,

what's left behind is

colder water and saltier water

because the salt doesn't go anywhere.

And so that makes it

denser and heavier.

And so that cold, dense,

heavy water sinks

at the rate of five billion

gallons per second.

And then that pulls that current

back south.

At the end of the last ice age,

as the last glacier was receding

from North America,

as the last glacier was receding

from North America,

the ice melted

and a giant pool of fresh water

formed in North America.

And the Great Lakes are the remnants

of that huge lake.

An ice dam on the eastern border

formed and one day it broke.

And all that fresh water

came rushing out,

ripping open the St. Lawrence there,

and it diluted the salty, dense,

cold water,

made it fresher and lighter,

so it stopped sinking.

And that pump shut off.

And the heat transfer stopped.

And Europe went back into an ice age

for another 900 to 1,000 years.

And the change from conditions

like we have here today

to an ice age

took place in perhaps

as little as 10 years' time.

So that's a sudden jump.

Now, of course that's

not gonna happen again

because the glaciers of North America

are not there, and...

Is there any other big chunk of ice

anywhere near there?

Oh, yeah.

We'll come back to that one.

It's extremely frustrating to me

to communicate over and over again,

as clearly as I can.

And we are still, by far,

the worst contributor to the problem.

And I look around

and look for really meaningful signs

that we're about to really change.

I don't see it right now.

A number of very reputable scientists

have said that one factor of air pollution

is oxides of nitrogen

from decaying vegetation.

This is what causes the haze that gave

the big Smoky Mountains their name.

Thank you very much, okay.

This guy is so far off

in the environmental extreme,

we'll be up to our neck in owls

and out of work for every American.

This guy is crazy.

Even if humans were causing

global warming, and we are not,

this could be maybe the greatest hoax

ever perpetrated

on the American people.

We're dealing with something

that's highly emotional.

If an issue is not

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