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The Wonder List with Bill Weir
The Alps: Fire and Ice. Aired 9-10p ET
Aired April 12, 2015 - 21:00 ET
THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.
BILL WEIR, CNN HOST: There's an old Eskimo proverb that goes, "You never really know your friends from your enemies until the ice breaks." Well, this is a story of friends and lovers.
The top melting ice and their distant enemies who refused to believe their worries over a changing planet. The world glaciers are disappeared, climate change skeptics or not.
So, this is a quest to better understand both, to ask could this really be the last generation to climb this age-old ice, or could the fire and teamwork that drives men up mountains like this, the harness is safe to mountains like this.
My name is Bill Weir and I'm a storyteller. I reported from all over the world and I have seen so much change. So, I made list of most wonderful places to explore right before they change forever.
This is THE WONDER LIST.
All right, I'm coming up to this rope.
I probably shouldn't be up here.
They're going to at the screw (ph), I probably should tell my guide I lost one of his ice screws to no longer feel my feet.
This is where you find out how weak your left arm is. I'm glad, you're all right. Oh, men.
But no turning back now. Well, I ask you this. As to hang with real alpine adventures, as to taste their days of thin air and adrenaline, their nights, wine and glory. Because some of them wonder, how long this will last.
They see the signs of a warming planet written in glaciers above their town and in the ice beneath their boots.
I've read countless scientific warnings about climate change but I want to see it through the eyes of people who really know their ice. And for that, there are few better places in Chamonix, France.
On a map, it just looks like a boarder town up in the attic of Europe, but to mountain folk, this is the mother of valley, lying in the shadow of a giant, The White Lady, Mont Blanc and surrounding this Everest of Europe, a needles of granite, rivers of ice and possibly steep hallways of powder.
This is where the Winter Olympics where born. This is the backdrop for big skis on the big screen, from James Bond, for that Seminoles piece of 1980 snow porn (ph), the Blizzard of Oz. And connecting it all, ancient glacier that were (ph) thousands of the outward bound into the death sport capital of the word.
I'm Bill.
DOMINIC (PH): Good day. Dominic (ph).
WEIR: Dominic (ph), good to meet you.
DOMINIC (PH): Good to meet you. And this is Lily Mary (ph).
WEIR: Yes, (inaudible). Oh, I can't wait. Look at this. We've got a lot of chariots here on THE WONDER LIST but this maybe the winner, for a couple of reasons. One, we were going to the roof of Europe, Mont Blanc, and secondly for the French style.
That's what I'm talking about.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: So, you tell me when you want to open the door and we said it is OK to open.
WEIR: Is it OK, I can open the door?
DOMINIC (PH): Yes.
[21:05:45] WEIR: Where the hell are we?
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: What?
WEIR: Fancy meeting you here Seb.
Waiting for me, a strapping French man named Sebatien, bit of a demigod around this parts. He's a former member of Chamonix elite mountain rescue team and now guides on peaks around the world.
SEBASTIEN ROUGEGRE, FORMER MEMBER OF CHAMONIX ELITE MOUNTAIN RESCUE TEAM: So we are at the junction. This is the junction arise, and its same spot that's where the first guys who summit in Mont Blanc, actually to use that way. They slept just under this rock over there.
WEIR: Really?
That 1786, America was 10 (ph) when the first man to climb Mont Blanc. These days, 20,000 a year take a shot.
ROUGEGRE: Together, good grip with the front part of your crampons.
WEIR: Yeah.
ROUGEGRE: And you use ice socks to stabilize your upper body.
WEIR: And many more wandered into this range where a hundred of years, don't come home. Thanks to that melting ice, that number is certain to go up.
And what should I do if I start to fall?
ROUGERGE: You just break. You pray for me to be able to hold you.
WEIR: OK. But then many avalanches this year.
ROUGERGE: We already have one last week, and we didn't just make ignore.
WEIR: What's the closest you've ever come to mortal danger?
ROUGERGE: What do you call mortal danger?
WEIR: Death.
ROUGERGE: I climb the last four, five years ago and that's where we -- one of the risks you signed (ph).
WEIR: Have you ever fall in? Have you ever been near in avalanche?
ROUGERGE: I fell four times.
WEIR: Four times?
ROUGERGE: When I was younger -- and but I was never buried totally.
Here we are Bill, well done with reaching the junction. Let's go up on these rocks.
WEIR: OK.
ROUGERGE: So, I can show you my playground.
WEIR: Amazing.
(COMMERCIAL BREAK)
WEIR: Well, that things split. Incredible.
ROUGERGE: Here we are.
WEIR: Welcome to Alps 101 where my professor, Sebastien, is holding forth a most amazing classroom.
ROUGERGE: I was talking to you about this valley on our right, it's called Taconnaz Glacier. On the left side over there, we got Bossons. And where they've both meet, this is the junction. And in the 9th of August 1786, two guys from Chamonix called Balmat and Paccard actually summit in Mont Blanc for the first time using this route here, like we've done. The summit is actually in the clouds up there at the moment.
And most important is they had nothing to actually been carrying to the ice. They had an ice socks, that all they could did is basically their body weight to stop the cold. So, if you would be falling on the right, I would be jumping on the left, because that was the way to stop people on the mountain.
Then later, they invented this ice screws and then, with the hook I grab the end of the rock.
WEIR: Look at that, it's brilliant.
Man, you like the French MacGyver. (Inaudible).
There's something therapeutic about being forced focus on the little things, one step, one breath at a time. Then hearth-pounding stop and the focus widens.
This is so incredible. Listen to that silence. As a kid who spent most of his youth in Colorado, it pains me to say that these are most pictures as found (ph) I've ever seen. Yet, Chamonix nestled this credibly steep valley surrounded by these needles of granite.
(OFF-MIKE)
WEIR: It's Sebastien, that's my guide. Men want to be him but we would want to be with him at least that was it says on his website.
Although, he may have to change that slogan, now that he's falling head over hills from mountain girl named Fleur.
How did you two meet?
[21:15:00] FLEUR FOUQUE, SEBASTIEN ROUGERGE GIRL FRIEND: Actually, we meet in Nepal.
WEIR: Nepal.
FOUQUE: Yeah, exactly. He was there to climb Everest and I was there for trekking and we meet in the small village called Tanguche (ph).
WEIR: That's the most romantic mountaineering story I have heard. And it was love at per se. Who approach who?
FOUGUE: We are...
ROUGERGE: We have two different directions.
FOUGUE: Yeah.
ROUGERGE: My direction when I was I was working at a village and I had someone chasing me from village to village is that I turn around and she was a.
(OFF-MIKE)
FOUGUE: OK, I'm coming.
WEIR: She is one of maybe 50 women in the world able to guide at this level able to pass the toughest of certification exams.
FOUGUE: He went to prison (ph) to list of 50 a cents. WEIR: 50 a cents.
FOUGUE: Yeah. So, it takes a long time it takes between three and five years to do it and to start the formation and after its three more years.
WEIR: Right. So, nobody's paying you to do. This is just something you have to do on passion and love.
FOUGUE: Yeah.
WEIR: Yeah. How many friends or family have you lost over the years?
FOUGUE: Too much.
ROUGERGE: Too much.
FOUGUE: Too much its...
ROUGERGE: Well, (inaudible) has been tricky because our father was a mountain guide, ex-boyfriend.
FOUGUE: Also.
ROUGERGE: Also.
FOUGUE: And my best friend.
WEIR: Oh my goodness.
FOUGUE: So, yes and I saw the French face (ph), yeah.
WEIR: For many people watching this they would think well, that's the mountain is trying to tell me. That's the universe trying to tell me something maybe I should go be a life guard and live in a beach.
FOUGUE: Yeah, I've tried to but...
WEIR: Do you?
FOUGUE: Yeah, I've tried to for one year. I started sailing and all that but I couldn't -- I couldn't self maintaining (ph), I could stop climbing. Yeah, it was -- yes, stronger than me.
WEIR: Do you still worry about each other?
FOUGUE: Yeah, yeah we are.
ROUGERGE: I don't know if I am worry or if I try to ignore it.
WEIR: Yeah.
ROUGERGE: And then I'm meet her in the evening.
WEIR: Do you block it out....
FOUGUE: Yeah.
WEIR: ... while she's up there?
ROUGERGE: Yeah.
FOUGUE: Yeah because we -- you cannot live with fear, not possible.
ROUGERGE: It's more worrying when we climb together because obviously you can see what's going on and if a rock comes down then, you know, that she's below me or above me so I can I have very excite of what's happening so.
WEIR: Yeah. They say a good mountaineer is a life mountaineer. So, in addition to strong legs and lungs, people like this must carry just the right amount of a worry, concern helps keep control. But lately there is another kind of worry totally out of their control.
ROUGERGE: We should feel lucky to be the last one to actually see this. If we have kids we better tell them to enjoy the glaciers now because in 40, 50 years, we won't be able to see some glaciers up there and all of this will be gone.
(COMMERCIAL BREAK)
WEIR: Mark twain (ph) routes the Alps and the glaciers together are able to take every bit of consist out of a man.
ROUGERGE: We're almost there.
WEIR: And reduce his self-importance to zero. Oh my, gosh.
Maybe that's why it's so hard to battle that human activity could fundamentally alter place like this. Wow, look at the light. They call it (inaudible) the big melts since those first climbers top Mont Blanc, this Bosson glacier we've been climbing has retreated nearly a mile. Dozens of others are steadily disappearing, some of the link of a football field every year. Of course, glaciers have been growing and shrinking for ages but never so many so fast.
I guess I have eaten so much of bacon. Oh, that's fantastic.
A wheezing first timer would have notice the changes but the lifers certainly do.
ROUGERE: First time I came Chamonix when I was 12 and now I'm 34. These glaciers used to be like 500, 600 meter below and they keep going up as you can see. Now, this one it used to be Chamonix all the way down.
WEIR: Seb is also worried about snowfall trends. This is been one of the driest years in memory. It's almost Christmas and the ski resorts don't have enough snow to open. But Seb pull some strings and gets us a ride to a spot where we hike up and slide down. First turns of the year, first turn in the Alps, first turns.
(OFF-MIKE) WEIR: And being film my three cameras, no pressure.
And leading the down is a man who understands ice and change and lost better than anyone.
So this is you, this is you.
He's name is Anselme Baud and he is a living legend. And the days before helmets or avalanche, beacon (ph). He was making some of the first runs in the most impossible corners of the Alps. And he summed up is early philosophy beautifully in the film Stiff.
(FOREIGN LANGUAGE)
[21:25:02] WEIR: Wow. My goodness, that's like you're on the side of a wall, gees.
BAUD: Reference is about 45 -- between 45 and 55 degrees. It's real here but here, of course, it's a little steeper.
WEIR: You have literally written a book or four books on every possible run around Mont Blanc. Is there ever fear here? Is a little bit of fear or not?
BAUD: Fear.
WEIR: Fear, terror.
BAUD: Out of control?
WEIR: Yeah.
BAUD: No.
WEIR: No.
BAUD: No. Because...
WEIR: You're always in control even in...
BAUD: No, the main thing is also to control ourselves and the technique and the head. So, it's a kind of Alpinist view. You know, solo climbing, solo climber without rope, they have no mistake possible. Here the same thing.
WEIR: You cannot...
BAUD: We know if we have any -- if we get any mistake, its finish.
WEIR: But all a bad day, all the control and technique in the world doesn't matter. Had a faith worst than death is watching that bad day happen to your kid.
BAUD: My first boy was a very good skier, very sportif, very famous and he get killed. Not because he fall down but because part of ice serac fall down and push him down and was killed. WEIR: It's been 10 years since Anselme held his boy waiting for the rescuers.
BAUD: He's in a picture everywhere.
WEIR: Yeah.
BAUD: And it's a big problem and my second son is full guide now since three months. He's always -- he's also a very good skier. And I'm afraid everywhere, every time about him because when he says "Oh, now, I can go there because there is a good situation, there is a good condition." OK. OK and paragliding -- oh, yes, OK, but be careful.
WEIR: Spite the constant tragedy, Anselme can't imagine any other life. Seb and Fleur are the same way. But there are forced to imagine a different life for the family they are just starting to plan.
What do people, what do your neighbors, what is your family think about this? What do you think about the future?
FOUQUE: Yeah. We are a little bit -- how do you say sad and not also sad but we are a little bit revolted.
WEIR: Revolted?
FOUQUE: Yeah, exactly. Yeah, maybe in several years, it will be no more glacier and we won't be mountain guys. We will biking guide or I don' know.
WEIR: So, our people in Chamonix worried about their livelihoods? Do they worry that maybe one day, won't even be enough snow to ski?
ROUGEGRE: Well, before in Chamonix, first of all, they all mountain lovers and they love the nature. So, we worried more wide for the humans, for the (inaudible), more in selfish points of view, well, massively worried about activities. We love climbing and skiing. We get less and less snow. And the ice is actually retrieving.
Well, half of our customers will never come back to Chamonix because they come here for this.
BAUD: I was maybe 15 years old. We climbed in a part down of the Bossons Glacier. Ten years after, the glacier begin to go up and after up and more and more and more and now it's finished, even this one.
WEIR: That's part of a glacier is gone.
BAUD: No, it gone already up.
ROUGEGRE: At the moment, we can still enjoy but what are we going to our next generations? I was great.
WEIR: Yeah, you should have been here.
ROUGEGRE: You should have been here.
(COMMERCIAL BREAK)
WEIR: For centuries, people of Chamonix loved this ice and feared this ice. Six hundred years ago when the glacier was growing, local bishops were called to exorcise the demons in the ice to keep it from devouring forests and crops.
Well, now that it is going away, they turned to scientists like renowned glaciologist, Atsumu Ohmura.
So, what is that about ice that intrigues you? Why that this part of science?
ATSUMU OHMURA, GLACIOLOGIST: Well, first, it's beautiful and also water molecule is a very complicated material which is very interesting to study.
WEIR: Yeah.
OHMURA: In addition to that, we are made of water.
WEIR: That's true. That's true.
(OFF-MIKE)
WEIR: So, yesterday, we were up on Bossons Glacier.
OHMURA: Yes.
WEIR: And you talked all of the mountaineer's lifetime...
OHMURA: Yeah.
WEIR:... residence of Chamonix who say it is moving at alarming rate. But are other glaciers around the world expanding at the same rate some skeptics would say, yeah. These glaciers are shrinking but others are growing in different hemispheres, is that true?
OHMURA: Yeah. Well, I can say that more than 95 percent of glaciers which are monitored currently are retreating.
WEIR: Ninety-five percent of the world's glaciers are retreating?
OHMURA: Yeah.
WEIR: For over century, this train has been taking folks up to the Mer de Glace, the longest glacier in France. But the first visitors wouldn't recognize the place today.
OHMURA: Yeah. That's right. One hundred fifty years ago, even to the edge of the village of Chamonix where we came from this morning.
[21:35:00] WEIR: But I could see this glacier from town?
OHMURA: Yeah, that's right. So, the changing front of the glaciers which is happening did not need any precise survey. The farmers could see that...
WEIR: Yeah.
OHMURA: ... in daily life.
WEIR: They don't need thermometers here, right?
OHMURA: Not at all. Because glaciers are probably one of the most sensitive indicators of climate change.
WEIR: Right. So roughly, I mean it's a rough approximation but at the time the United States was born we could almost step out.
OHMURA: Yeah, that's right.
WEIR: And in the year 1800 we walked on top of it but now obviously, it is not only shrunken below but the way up there.
OHMURA: But even 20 years ago, 30 years ago more precisely, the size of this glacier was 60 meters higher.
So I can see with naked eyes that this glacier sunk by more than 50 meters.
WEIR: In your lifetime.
OHMURA: Yeah. And it is so fast now and the speed with which climate is changing. It's 20 times faster than any natural temperature change which happened before human being became so active.
WEIR: Without the benefit of time travel, it's hard to imagine such massive changes but when the years are compressed into seconds, here is what that retreat really looks like.
Photographer, James Balog has dozens of cameras in the glaciers around the globe each snapping a few frames a day.
As you can see in this film chasing ice, when stitched together, this frozen mountains, thousands of years old deflates like tired balloons, but for some, even in Chamonix, this means nothing.
YAN GIEZENDANNER, FORECASTER: So media, the newspapers or TV, they speak each day. This is global warming. But it's not true. For me, not.
WEIR: You're not convinced.
GIEZENDANNER: No. For me, no.
WEIR: Yan has been forecasting for France's national whether service for 40 years. And while his bosses like Gilles believed man is changing the climate.
(FOREIGN LANGUAGE)
WEIR: Yan remains skeptic. So the glaciologists who say that 95 percent of the world's glaciers are retreating, you don't believe that?
GIEZENDANNER: Yes, this is the job of the glaciologists.
WEIR: This is their job.
GIEZENDANNER: Yes.
WEIR: Their job depends on them saying...
GIEZENDANNER: Of course, but they have a lot of money to research, for the research, but it's not sure. No, because I am an old man, I can say, in the end, it's not important.
WEIR: He says the warming is natural. The fear manufactured by politicians and the wind industry.
I know some people back in America who are going to love this guy, generals in the climate war. And since they believe melting glaciers are nothing to worry about.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Why change global in their government in action (ph).
WEIR: I should probably go meet them.
(COMMERCIAL BREAK)
WEIR: But chopper ride over Mont Blanc at sunset brings a heavy dose of wonder, amazing at the creation of nature and man.
Look at that. It looks like the layer of a bond village (ph) somehow built up here as the warm climbers and down there the end of the world's deepest tunnel which cached for seven miles beneath Mont Blanc.
It brings thousands of cars and trucks into this valley and for Seb and his friends, and thousands of earth scientists around the world that is part of the problem. They say that fuel that we use to power our lives to move our goods, to heat our homes and yes to fly our helicopters over the Alps is warming the planet in dangerous ways.
They say the more carbon we burn, the more heat from the sun gets trapped in our atmosphere just like a greenhouse.
Every year, they reveal new bits of evidence like no Noah's animation of the lost of perennial ice in the arctic. The old ice is almost gone.
NASA points to a 97 percent consensus among climate scientists a human activity is heating up the planet 100s of respective universities and scientific organizations agreed but some still don't buy it.
At every year, the conservative think tank known as the Heartland Institute holds a conference of climate change skeptics. One of their leading voices is a former T.V. weather man named John Coleman. He is one of the founders of the weather channel though they have since disowned him.
What was the event where you decided climate change this in. Would you call it a scam?
JOHN COLEMAN, NEWS WEATHERCASTER: I remember the week that NBC declared a green week and they turned off the lights on the pre-game NFL show on a Sunday and the half-time show to save the world from global warming. And I thought now that is the height ridiculousness.
WEIR: And all of the scientists are corrupt, they are all on that thing.
COLEMAN: All is a big word.
WEIR: But...
COLEMAN: But vast majority of the -- there is a corruption that has gone through the scientific community that's paid for by our federal dollars (ph) and it's too bad but it's knowledge, it's real. It's money talks. The power of money is huge.
[21:45:04] WEIR: Money talks on both sides.
COLEMAN: You don't (ph) have any money on the other side.
WEIR: OK. That one threw me a bit given the immense wealth of the energy industry.
COLEMAN: Excuse me (ph).
WEIR: These are people that want...
COLEMAN: That is all talk. In fact, the big oil companies have bought into the global warming because they find tip to their advance to play that game. There's no money. Look at me, I've been a global warming skeptic and gone to this international conferences and done speeches and preferred videos and write blogs, never got a nickel.
LORD CHRISTOPHER MONCKTON: There is no doubt but if you want to get money as scientist, getting a really (inaudible) going meant to a profitable activity.
WEIR: But that cuts both well. This is a pretty good rocket to, right, be on this side.
MONCKTON: ... it isn't, nobody pays me anything.
WEIR: Lord Christopher Monckton is another rock star among skeptics with claims that man can burn every drop of oil in the planet to no real effect.
MONCKTON: It's not going to harm the planet after all CO2 is planet food. WEIR: He is a proud libertarian who was fought against bans on everything from second hand smoke to DDT to, of course, a cap on carbon.
What you're trying to expose is a global conspiracy for as power graph, governmental power graph.
MONCKTON: There is a small group that would like to exploit the general scientific of ignorance at the population. And force this on them as an excuse for imposing taxes regulation and eventually a global administration on some form.
WEIR: If you believe on the greenhouse theory.
MONCKTON: Well, the greenhouse effect is well demonstrated and experiment and understood in theory to anyone who trust to say there isn't such a thing as a greenhouse effect need they had example.
WEIR: So, reject the greenhouse theory?
COLEMAN: Absolutely.
WEIR: Really.
COLEMAN: If you look at this magnificent weather system of earth, you will realize that at some little face gas sending if off and to oblivion is just very cockeyed theory.
WEIR: But you must surely understand that traced gas is what's keeping earth from becoming a giant ice cube. There's a little bit out there.
COLEMAN: I don't know, not at all. Volcanoes will produce more CO2. Cows have produced more CO2 than of burning of fossil fuel.
WEIR: No. That's not true.
COLEMAN: That's true.
WEIR: Are you kidding me?
COLEMAN: No, I'm not kidding you. I'm telling you the true.
WEIR: OK, how many tons of carbon from volcanoes a year do you think?
COLEMAN: Well, if you look at the average of earth it is -- I can't tell you. I don't remember the figure.
WEIR: It's about half of the billion. Whereas oil and gas and coal is about 35 billion a year, so it's not even three percent.
COLEMAN: No, what percent of the atmosphere are we talking about? You're taking about tiny fractions.
WEIR: But three particles of carbon dioxide in a room of 10,000 molecules of other gases. COLEMAN: Has not impact of significant whatsoever.
WEIR: That's what keeping earth from freezing.
COLEMAN: Not at all, not -- no, hardly are you a scientist?
WEIR: No.
COLEMAN: OK, but then wait a minute, listen to me. I spend 60 years forecasting the weather and I have study this with great passion.
WEIR: Skeptics like to dismiss a lot of this science as part of grand conspiracy that you're a big government socialist and you want to change politics or that you're all in on it because you need more funding to consider your research. What's reaction when you accused of such things.
OHMURA: Nothing is better than presenting the accurate information. And this glacier is one of the best examples of that. Skeptics don't look at the reality. Skeptics close their eyes while tell the others people to close eyes from the reality. And second one must use simple thinking. So think. Open eyes and think. It may sounds a bit insulting, but there's no other suggestion I can use.
WEIR: Do you have grand kids or?
COLEMAN: Oh, yeah.
WEIR: Yeah.
COLEMAN: You bet.
WEIR: Do you ever like in the midnight of your soul look at them and say man what if I'm wrong.
COLEMAN: No, because I know I'm highly confident. I'm highly confident. I have.
WEIR: Your minds made up.
COLEMAN: If there were evidence came along, I would accept it but at this moment I'm seeing a thing. Not a thing, nothing at all.
WEIR: Good to meet you. Thank you for you time. I hope you're right.
COLEMAN: It wasn't a pleasure. But we got through it.
(COMMERCIAL BREAK)
WEIR: That's good, that's better.
Behold the exuberant of a glacier climbing rookie.
I'm (inaudible). But providing trills to goofball and Gore-Tex is far from the most important role of glaciers like the Bosson. These Alps are the water tower of Europe and around the globe, glaciers provide drinking water, irrigation for hundreds of millions. So, the thought of losing them is what animates people like Anne.
So, when that last time you were here?
ANNE LASSMAN-TRAPPIER, DIRECTOR AT SOCIETE NATIONALE DES CHEMINS DE FER FRANCAIS: This place about 20 years ago.
WEIR: Really.
LASSMAN-TRAPPIER: So, been a little while.
WEIR: And you notice changes, this (inaudible)?
LASSMAN-TRAPPIER: Oh, my God, it's unbelievable. I mean it still very beautiful but the glacier was right in front of us all this rock face (ph) was covered with snow and ice. Now it's retreated not only in length but also in thickness, you know, you can see that if this was covered in ice how much volume of ice has been lost.
WEIR: She grew up playing at the edge of this glacier and the Alpine love never faded, even after losing both of her parents to an avalanche.
[21:55:06] LASSMAN-TRAPPIER: When my parents died I live in London at the time and I just couldn't get wait to get back. I just wanted to be here where people understand why you go up mountains and you ski beautiful faces and sometimes you lose your life here yet. It's not by not being careful. It's just nature is much stronger than us.
WEIR: Right into this glacier is this huge artery of semi-truck traffic. What are your thoughts on that?
LASSMAN-TRAPPIER: I think that this is a symptom of what's not likely well today. We haven't really given too much thoughts about what we are doing into the human race, you know, we want to produce more, keep more deeply far away but this means that we have to get goods through barrios like the others.
WEIR: It's over simplistic to blame this lot directly, right?
LASSMAN-TRAPPIER: Yes. Yes. Obviously it's a global issue.
WEIR: Right.
LASSMAN-TRAPPIER: It's all the emissions we are emitting in the world.
WEIR: Should I feel guilty for flying around in the helicopter here last night?
LASSMAN-TRAPPIER: I would.
WEIR: You would.
LASSMAN-TRAPPIER: Sorry I would...
WEIR: That's contributing to the problem using helicopter.
LASSMAN-TRAPPIER: Yes, helicopters, trucks, cars, planes, everything we do are creating energy from those fossil fuels. Other things we should try and do better in the future, in the near future, we should really start doing it now.
WEIR: But there's a lot of mouths to feed in this planet and those business minded folks who say we can't go back in time. What is your solution?
LASSMAN-TRAPPIER: It is going back in time to produce more goods locally and to give jobs to the local people and to the local economy South Pole and we can you know not just going around somewhere cycle when we can. Next time we buy a car buy a smaller car that is less consuming in fuel.
Insulation house is better, so we actually don't need so much energy, government owned businesses also need to do something but if we people don't stop well we have no hope of every seeing a change. We have to all take step and it doesn't means sacrificing our quality of life.
WEIR: Save the earth goes the tired rallying cry, the truth is the earth has survived much worst than us. The earth will be fine but what about us? Well, that seems to depend on a shift unlike any in human history, a sudden universal awareness that all our insignificant little choices add up a big way and that's a big ask for those countries just now enjoying their industrial revolutions which means rich countries like France and America. Let it come to grips with Luke 12:48, "To whom much is given, much will be required."
So, if somehow magically the world would stop burning carbon tomorrow would the change still be happening? How long would it take for the earth to respond to our activity?
OHMURA: Well, it would take more than 200 years.
WEIR: So then, bottom line, do you believe it's too late to stop this?
OHMURA: Not yet. Not yet, so bad. It may become that bad soon, but if we start taking action now and I should allow a bit more generous time, between now and 2030, we can mitigate the change. We cannot stop it. We lost that chance.
WEIR: But we can make it less horrible.
OHMURA: That's right, yes. So we should really make effort. We shouldn't be pessimistic.
WEIR: OK. Let's try to be optimist. Let's say that human engineering where we can alter the chemistry of the atmosphere and the oceans. If it can raise sea levels and drive creatures to extinction an alarming race, and human ingenuity can fix these things, after all we can feed 7 billion people everyday. We can lift thousands out of poverty everyday.
But for human ingenuity to work on this problem, 7 billion people have to agree there is a problem.
NASA and NOAA, Coke and Pepsi, Google and Apple, the Pentagon and the Pope, all agree there is a problem. Thousands of scientists like Professor Ohmura agreed, there is a problem, but half of the U.S. Senate voted recently, there is no problem.
If that proverb is right and you don't know your friends from your enemies and so the ice quakes, there almost there. Here is the making more friends as soon as human may possible.
