October 16, 2002: Climate Change - Dr. Paul Mayewski

Art Bell speaks with Dr. Paul Mayewski, a world leader in ice core collection and analysis who has led more than 50 Antarctic and high mountain expeditions. Dr. Mayewski explains how ice cores function as a year-by-year record of Earth's climate history, capturing gas content, dissolved chemistry, dust particles, and volcanic signatures spanning tens of thousands of years. He describes the dramatic 100,000-year glacial cycles driven by Earth's orbital position relative to the sun and the smaller but still significant climate shifts occurring within interglacial periods like the present one.

The conversation turns to evidence of accelerating climate instability, including increased El Nino frequency during the 1990s, melting permafrost in Alaska, and measurable changes in ocean salinity that could disrupt the North Atlantic current carrying heat to Europe. Dr. Mayewski confirms that greenhouse gas levels have risen faster in the last 100 years than at any point in tens of thousands of years, potentially pushing the climate system toward a threshold event with rapid and unpredictable consequences.

Earlier in the program, Art discusses North Korea's acknowledged nuclear weapons program, the ongoing D.C. sniper case, and interviews entrepreneur Stan Abrams about his thermal combustor technology that converts waste tires into clean electricity and marketable byproducts in Nye County, Nevada.