Come hell or excessive water

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November 1960 From “Local weather Management and the Oceans”: With out a clear image of how the ocean overturns and with no correct time scale for interplay with the ambiance, oceanographers and meteorologists alike are at a loss to clarify adequately the overall mechanism of the earth’s local weather. Now man, together with his carbon-dioxide-producing business, has change into yet one more unknown modifying issue. The affect of this new and geologically distinctive issue could also be working in any of a number of instructions. It might be tending towards a brand new ice age or might be producing one other nice tropical epoch like that prevailing when coal and oil deposits had been laid down. The interactions are so concerned that consultants don’t but know how you can type them out. One factor they’re positive of—this affect is at work on a scale to dwarf all earlier adjustments man has made. April 1969 From “A Sterile Sea”: The modification is starting. “Man, a land organism, is influencing the chemical composition of sea water greater than any of the species that dwell throughout the marine atmosphere,” mentioned Edward D. Goldberg, Professor of Chemistry at Scripps Establishment of Oceanography. For instance, some 3,000 tons of mercury attain the oceans every year from pure continental sources and 4,000 tons from fungicides and industrial processes; the lead enter to the oceans from vehicle gas is “roughly equal” to that from sedimentary motion; pesticides, “a current and novel entry to the marine atmosphere,” now are widespread, and so are radioactive species; and man has launched two new parts: sewage outfalls and unintentional pollutions from man’s commerce. Maybe half of all these contaminants are launched into the ocean by actions within the U.S. August 1980

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