MSNBC Guest: Global Warming to Cause the Oceans to Shut Down in 20 Years

On Tuesday’s broadcast of MSNBC’s “The ED Show,” on the heels of President Barack Obama’s climate change speech in New York City earlier in the day, Dr. Reese Halter, conservation biologist for the MUSE School in Calabasas CA, offered a dire warning of consequences if nothing is done to limit greenhouse gas emissions.

Halter said over the next 20 years, the oceans would shut down and leave the planet uninhabitable if the current pace continues.

Partial transcript as follows:

SCHULTZ: Dr. Halter, what happens over the next 20 years if we as a country do nothing?

HALTER: Good evening Ed and Michael. It is an unimaginable scenario — spending over 36 billion tons of greenhouse gases this past year, if we continue at this rate sometime soon after 2030 we will have spent the entire carbon budget for this century. We will then be in the realm of eclipsing 7 degrees Fahrenheit, and it will be an uninhabitable planet for our children. The oceans will shut down. The forests globally will shut down. Ed, that is a scenario that we are not going near.

SCHULTZ: And you have fellow scientists and there are studies that say in the next 20 years the temperature of the earth could go up 7 degrees?

HALTER: Soon thereafter, absolutely right, soon thereafter, because here’s the thing. The carbon storage capacity of our forests around the world begins to shut down with another degree and a half from where we are now. So if you ramp it up that much more, it is an untenable situation.

But let us not dwell on doom. Let us look to the future as the biggest challenge for the entrepreneurs of United States of America to innovate, to provide solutions for green energies. Look, we just passed a moment last month with super critical steam from solar thermal in Australia, which is a game changer. This is analogous to the late 1940s and mock one when we broke the sound barrier. There’s a lot to be excited, and at the same time we need to protect all of the standing forests now.

Follow Jeff Poor on Twitter @jeff_poor