\u201cWe will drill, baby, drill.\u201d<\/p>\n
When Professor of Earth Sciences Francine McCarthy heard these words spoken by U.S. President Donald Trump during his inauguration speech, she was stunned.<\/p>\n
On Jan. 20, Trump announced a number of measures including the Unleashing American Energy Executive Order<\/a>, which calls for massive oil, gas and mineral extraction to boost the U.S. economy. Trump also eliminated or revised earlier policies<\/a> addressing climate change and environmental protections.<\/p>\n Active resource exploration poses further threats to Arctic environments, where melting permafrost dramatically changes landscape and water flows, says Professor of Earth Sciences Martin Head.<\/p>\n \u201cThe construction of pipelines, drilling sites and all the infrastructure that needs to go into supporting these activities \u2014 and any oil spillage \u2014 will have long term consequences for the environment,\u201d he says.<\/p>\n 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.<\/p>\n \u201cThat increased heat energy has to be dissipated somehow,\u201d says McCarthy. \u201cIt\u2019s dissipated in more intense storms, more devastating floods, more extreme changes in the climate.\u201d<\/p>\n In their internationally renowned research at Crawford Lake<\/a> in Milton, Ont., McCarthy, Head and their team uncovered physical evidence of lead, fly ash and other pollutants that continue to be trapped in the annually distinct sediment layers of the lakebed.<\/p>\n 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.<\/p>\n The Crawford Lake site was among locations around the globe showing human activities impacting earth systems so profoundly<\/a> that scientists worldwide are calling for a new epoch \u2013 called the Anthropocene \u2013 to be added to the Earth\u2019s geologic time scale.<\/p>\n Head says the Crawford Lake sediment layers document the \u201cGreat Acceleration,\u201d a mid-20th century phenomenon associated with global industrialization, commercialization and a significant increase in energy use.<\/p>\n \u201cIt\u2019s troubling that the Trump administration is not abiding by the clarion calls from the global scientific community globally that greenhouse gas emissions are leading to bigger problems now and down the road,\u201d says Head of the President\u2019s executive order pulling the U.S. out of the Paris Agreement<\/a>.<\/p>\n The United Nations\u2019 Paris Agreement<\/a>, which came into force in 2016, is a legally binding international treaty signed by 194 countries to reduce global greenhouse gas emissions so that the earth\u2019s long-term average temperature doesn\u2019t rise more than 1.5 C above pre-industrial levels.<\/p>\n The U.N. set the 1.5 C limit<\/a> because anything above that raises the risks of multiple tipping points. On Jan. 10, the journal Nature<\/em><\/a> reported the earth exceeded the 1.5 C limit in 2024.<\/p>\n \u201cSlow changes ramp up and then get faster and faster and become more intense and more devastating,\u201d says McCarthy. \u201cThe tipping points suddenly alter how the planet works, how it operates, shifts.\u201d<\/p>\n 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.<\/p>\n She notes that freshwater flowing into the North Atlantic from a rapidly melting Greenland Ice Sheet is diluting the ocean\u2019s salinity, which is progressively weakening the current.<\/p>\n