Nexus - 0105 - New Times Magazine-pages

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Global Greenhouse Living he thing that most people tend to | the summer it reforms and the hole re- ask about the climatic changes af- | pairs itself. It’s a seasonal occurrence. It fecting the planet concerns the time | may well have existed in different de- frames involved. The thermal - heat - | grees in the past long before we knew expansion of the océans means a greater | about it or before we could record it. The amount of crustal movement. The weight | data has increased to a great level since of the water affects spin, itaffects balance, | the early 1980s. As soon as the scientists it affects the Earth’s axis, it affects the | had knowledge about it, they had con- Earth’s magnetism... It could take a | cerns about it. hundred years to settle down. It’s more There have been reports of fluctua- likely to take several hundred. tions in the ozone levels over New Zeal- We are at the culmination of what | and ata particular time each year for the would normally be a 10,000 year-long in- | last three years. The scientists think they terglacial period. Theoretically it should | havea “trend” in the data. They’ve got so be occurring within a short geolngical | much data it is just trend analysis. And time from now. There’s no real under- | there was a report recently that there standing of why the Ice Ages come and | were ozone fluctuations in the upper go. From what we know about the | atmosphere above Scandinavia. rhythm of the previous Ice Ages, we should be on the verge of another one. The Polar Platform Why it happens is unknown, so how the Greenhouse Effect will impact on it is Only two yearsago nooneeven thought completely open to speculation. of looking at ozone with the billions of Ice Age or Greenhouse? dollars worth of telemetry and communi- : t cations satellites - everyone was looking From the research of Dr Felgenhauer in | for oil, coal and gold. Now there is an 4 Canberra, there does seem to be a slight | enormous shift that has taken placein the ~ oe re, - decrease at the moment inthe amountof | space industry because of the ozone- As Ng . » radiation being emitted by the Sun-this | Greenhouse effects. They expect to have may be a rhythmic event. This may well | real-time modelling by about 1992, when fF A PY be the cycle which is the trigger for our | they will have enough accurate remote THQUAKES cyclical Ice Ages. If this is so, then the | sensing to pumptheinformation down to Greenhouse Effect may effectively | the ground, so that they can getaday-to- | Between the years 1897 and 1946, the counter that cooling of the Sun. We may | day computer model running. average number of observed earthquakes be counteracting what is traditionally an Their state-of-the-art polar platform | over Richter 6 was three per decade [from Ice Age period - but we are completely | is a four tonne configuration of remote | 1897 we have been able to detect a Richter haphazard in our management. . sensing and information gathering mod- | 6 intensity earthquake anywhere in the The CSIRO has a computer program | ules which will be geostationary, some- | earth]. which models theclimatic movementsin | where between Australiaand Antarctica. Between 1946 and 1956 the average the upper atmosphere of the northern | It will be able to monitor every conceiv- | jumped toseven. Inthe following decade, and southern hemispheres, but at this | able vegetative, oceanic and meteorol- | it jumped to 17 earthquakes over Richter stage it is not air-sea interactive. The | ogic change. 6. Then, in 1967, the yearly earthquake model is based on the chemical composi- Seeing the effects of the global Green- | figure for richter 6 or better was seven- tion of different layers. They're modelling | house is causing a major shiftin financial | teen! all the Greenhouse gases, including | and industrial institutions. The re-insur- In 1968 in was 19: in 1969 it was 21:in ozone. ance companies - the enormous Euro- | 1970 it was 24: and in 1971 it was 34. CFCs interact with ozone in different | peanand North American financial insti- However, during the decade of 1967- meteorological conditions, explaining | tutions thatinsureinsurancecompanies- | 1976, there were 180 earthquakes over the hole in the ozone layer. The chemical are becoming nervous. The hurricane | Richter 7 on the scale! i interaction of the CFCs and the ozone | that ripped through southern England Note that in the recorded history of takes place at a certain gradient of tem- | and France last year cost them $8 billion. | humanity, an estimated 74 million people perature. The CFCs do the most damage | Holland's records go back 800 years, but | havebeen killed either by earthquakes, or at the end of winter when the radiation _ don’t show any hurricane like that. | indirectly by their attendant fires, floods, from the Sun is hitting the Antarctic | They're beginning to put the pressure on | landslides and disease. atmosphereata specificangle. Assoonas | to get the atmospheric act together... -The Cosmic conspiracy the direct solar radiation hits the ozone in - Our Canberra Correspondent by Stan Deyo NEXUS New Times Five - Winter 1988 EARTHQUAKES Biosphere The Polar Platform