From the Middle East we moved to Japan, with their new concerns surrounding the Fukushima nuclear power plant. It’s the site of one of the world’s worst nuclear disasters. Yesterday, the Japanese government was getting ready to classify a toxic water leak at Fukushima as a serious incident. The plant’s owner, TEPCO has been trying to manage contaminated water at Fukushima since 2011. That’s when a massive earthquake struck off the coast of Japan. It triggered a tsunami, a giant ocean wave that hit Fukushima. Three reactors went into meltdown. Regarding the current concerns, TEPCO says it’s moved radioactive water from a leaky tank to a better one. The nuclear engineer described this leak as extremely radioactive water. He said it could pose a significant health risk to workers trying to clean it up. But TEPCO says, the workers have protective clothing that will prevent exposure to radiation.

 

 

 

From the Golden State to the Gulf Coast with a volunteer stop in between. It’s time for today’s roll call. We’re going to bust it right out with the Bruins from Riverbank High in Riverbank, California. Then we’re jumping over to Germantown, Tennessee, home of the Owls from Our Lady of Perpetual Help. And Florida makes today’s roll call with the Wolf Pack from South Fort Myers High. Go Pack!

 

 

 

Next up today, the issue of climate change - global temperatures indicate that Earth has been getting warmer in recent decades. But there’s been debate about what’s causing the increase. A new report says many scientists are more certain than ever that the culprit is human activity. Tom Foreman examines the potential effects.

 

 

 

You know about climate change, the idea that basically greenhouses gases are trapping heat from outside, and you’re correct, they are now well over 90 percent saying that human activity is responsible for the preponderance of this, important to know, they’re saying there are other factors, but the preponderance of it is coming as a result of humans doing this. So, what is making - what is the result of all this? Rising oceans. 

 

Why? Because we have warmer oceans, and those warmer oceans are causing melting ice caps, and beyond that, melting of glaciers and other large ice areas in the world, for example, Greenland. And I want you to watch this amazing piece of animation from NASA here. Tracking over the past few years what’s been happening to ice up in Greenland. You see all these light blue areas around the edge there - that’s where the ice has been steadily melting and retreating, in this entire country of Greenland. And as you go on through the years, this is about to 2005 here, as it moves forwards, you start seeing even the middle of the country here as it starts warming up, and they are losing even more and more ice. By the time you get through this entire animation, what you see is that NASA has captured how basically this entire area has seen significant loss in ice, all of which goes out into the oceans and that’s the real key here to concern about what’s that’s going to add up to in the long run.

 

We move on beyond this, if you look at Miami down here. This is where Miami is right now. Everglades National Park, it’s a little bit hard to see, but I want you to watch - as this progresses, what they are predicting is that over the next 80 or 90 years, if nothing changes, what you would see is a real encroachment. Areas like this down here, where you have the Florida Keys, they would basically go completely under water and a lot of areas would also be affected by much, much higher water levels. And even if you go to major cities, like New York City, for example - look at this. This is the island of Manhattan right here. Right now this is the edge of it, and you can see, that’s where the new edge would be. All of this out in here would be lost. What would that include? Well, the simple truth is if you had it lost all the way out there, you would see things like Wall Street essentially starting to go under water, you would see the Statue of Liberty, the island that supports it out here starting to go under water. Does that mean it will happen? No, we have a lot of time, in which people could build levees and that sort of thing to keep it back, but it does mean it would become a genuine problem if this goes on unabated, and that’s what this whole debate is about, and now there’s an even greater agreement among all these climate scientists from around the world that, in fact, humans are making some of this happen, and only humans can stop it from happening worse.