[ad_1]
November 1960
From “Climate Control and the Oceans”: Without a clear picture of how the ocean is tipping and without a precise time scale for interacting with the atmosphere, oceanographers and meteorologists alike find it difficult to adequately explain the overall mechanism of the world’s climate. Now, with its carbon dioxide producing industry, man has become another unknown modifier. The impact of this new and geologically unique factor could be working in any of several directions. It may be advancing into a new ice age, or it may be producing another major tropical age similar to the time when coal and oil deposits were being laid. The interactions are so involved that experts don’t yet know how to unravel them. One thing they are sure of – this effect is at work on a scale that will dwarf all previous human changes.
April 1969
From “A Sterile Sea”: Change begins. “Man, a land organism, influences the chemical composition of seawater more than any of the species that live in the marine environment,” said Edward D. Goldberg, Professor of Chemistry at the Scripps Institution of Oceanography. For example, about 3,000 tons of mercury reaches the oceans each year from natural continental sources and 4,000 tons from fungicides and industrial processes; lead entry into the oceans from automobile fuel is “roughly equivalent” to that from sedimentary action; Pesticides, a “new and new entry into the marine environment”, are now common and radioactive types as well; and man introduced two new elements: sewage leaks and incidental pollution from human trafficking. Perhaps half of all these pollutants end up in the ocean through activities in the United States.
August 1980
[ad_2]
Source link