NEWS RELEASE
BROCK UNIVERSITY
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U.S. President Donald Trump’s stance on the environment has Francine McCarthy worried.
The Brock University Professor of Earth Sciences is especially concerned about the impacts of increased fossil fuel exploration and use on the Earth system, particularly in the Arctic and other fragile environments.
On Jan. 20, Trump announced the Unleashing American Energy Executive Order, which calls for massive oil, gas and mineral extraction to boost the U.S. economy. He also eliminated or revised earlier policies addressing climate change and environmental protections.
When burned, oil, gas and other fossil fuels release large amounts of carbon dioxide into the air. Carbon dioxide, a primary greenhouse gas, also traps heat in the atmosphere.
“That increased heat energy has to be dissipated somehow,” says McCarthy. “It’s dissipated in more intense storms, more devastating floods, more extreme changes in the climate.”
In her internationally renowned research at Crawford Lake in Milton, Ont., McCarthy and her team uncovered physical evidence of lead, fly ash and other pollutants trapped in the annually distinct sediment layers of the lakebed.
While some of these declined in concentration following the enactment of Clean Air legislation in the 1970s, greenhouse gases continue to increase, mainly due to fossil fuel combustion. Deforestation and cement production are also significant sources.
The Crawford Lake site was among locations around the globe showing human activities impacting earth systems so profoundly that scientists worldwide are calling for a new epoch — called the Anthropocene — to be added to the Earth’s geologic time scale.
“Slow changes ramp up and then get faster and faster and become more intense and more devastating,” says McCarthy. “The tipping points suddenly alter how the planet works, operates and shifts.”
McCarthy gives the example of the Gulf Stream, a strong current transporting warm water from the Gulf of Mexico into the Atlantic Ocean and up to Northwest Europe. This current regulates temperatures and weather patterns along the North American coast and Europe.
She notes that freshwater flowing into the North Atlantic from a rapidly melting Greenland Ice Sheet is diluting the ocean’s salinity, which is progressively weakening the current.
If the current becomes weak enough and ceases to function the way it’s supposed to, it will result in very cold European temperatures and other major impacts that will be felt around the world, she says.
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