World

Ailing American geophysicist and climate scientist Wallace Smith Broecker recorded a video of himself in mid-February, days before his death. The video was a final message for his colleagues and fellow top ranking scientists in the world, insisting that something has to be done to protect the Earth.

Broecker was labeled the ‘Grandfather’ of Climate Science and was contributed to creating the phrase ‘Global Warming’. Broecker highly believed that the circulation of the global ocean is the cause of the rising level of carbon in the atmosphere, he was able to scientifically link isotope dating and the carbon cycle together to somewhat prove his theories. Broecker dedicated his life to finding a solution to stop global warming and slow down its effects.

Broeckers feels his work fell upon deaf ears. The current generation has not taken the proper measures to save the planet in time.

Feb. 11 Broecker’s live streaming image was casted onto screen at Arizona State University. Leading scientist and researchers had met up to discuss untested solutions to global warming.

He believed that humankind and the world’s scientific community needed to begin studying more extreme solutions to the increasingly changing and worsening climate crisis.

Broecker suggested creating a massive solar shield in the Earth’s atmosphere, much like a massive volcanic eruption would cause. This type of shield could be made by releasing massive amounts of sulfur dioxide into the atmosphere 70,000 feet above the face of the Earth.

Within a year of the release of the sulfur dioxide, the Earth should cool down relatively 1 degree Fahrenheit. Which does not seem like much but surface temperature would significantly decrease due to the lack of sunlight.

This would be a doomsday type scenario, as this solution pushes many ethical, legal and political standpoints.

Many errors could occur in the process of cooling the Earth down. Drastic and immediate changes are one thing to be scared of. The possible extinction of wildlife, lack of crops and food outsourcing, human death due to inhalation of foreign materials, so on and so forth. But most of those things are already accounted for in the process of finding a solution.

It is the things that scientists cannot account for that is truly terrifying. Of course there is the possibility that the Earth does cool down, but what is to stop future generations from continuing the burning of fossil fuels and wreaking havoc on the newly altered Earth.

Or maybe the plume of sulfur dioxide mixes with a new gas found in the atmosphere created by the steadily increasing heat. Then the Earth explodes or mass extinction of all races takes place.

Or the lack of sunlight kills off the ocean life, in turn causing algae to go extinct, limiting oxygen resources.

Maybe the tides will change due to the moon being shadowed, or the currents are shifted because the sun is not able to create wind. We cannot cut down trees to burn because our oxygen resources are low, the water has turned toxic and can no longer be used to harness energy, solar power is obsolete due to the lack of sunlight, and turbines lay dormant in fields like the graves of those who died due to errors in the precise arithmetic sequences used to calculate the equations of saving the world.

Wallace Smith Broecker spent his life trying to find a way to save this planet, and even after his death he is working harder than this generation to prevent the end of the world.