Speaker 1: Hey, everybody. Chuck here with another one of our sciencey
Speaker 1: Playlist curated podcast episodes. This one's on global warming and
Speaker 1: it's appropriately titled How global Warming Works. Please to listen
Speaker 1: to it right now.
Speaker 2: Welcome to Stuff you Should Know from HowStuffWorks dot com.
Speaker 3: Hey, and welcome to the podcast. I'm Josh Clark, and
Speaker 3: there's the Chipper Cheery, Charles w Chuck Bryant, how do you?
Speaker 3: And there's Jerry over there. Say hi, Jerry, how are
Speaker 3: you doing? Man?
Speaker 1: I'm welcher. How are you?
Speaker 3: I'm pretty well myself. I'm feeling all right. Feel a
Speaker 3: little fit? Yeah, yeah, yeah. You're a little sweaty as
Speaker 3: you can tell. But I'm all right.
Speaker 1: It's gross, it is.
Speaker 3: I don't smell, do I No? Okay?
Speaker 1: Good so friends, listeners, country men, You're gonna notice a
Speaker 1: little something different in this week's feed. Tomorrow. This bears
Speaker 1: a little explanation. We are dropping episodes one and two
Speaker 1: of my new movie interview show movie Crush Do Do
Speaker 1: Do Do? We're dropping those into the Stuff you Should
Speaker 1: Know Feed, something we've never done here at the network,
Speaker 1: but we're gonna I guess I'm the labrat on this one.
Speaker 1: The guinea pig, the guinea pig. Sure, yeah, I guess
Speaker 1: either one, right, the guinea pig doesn't die, the lab rat.
Speaker 3: Dies, Yeah, I guess, so let's go with the guinea
Speaker 3: pig for sure though.
Speaker 1: All right, well either way, we are dropping those into
Speaker 1: the stuff you should know feed uh, And we wanted
Speaker 1: to alert you so when you saw all these new things,
Speaker 1: you didn't rebel against us, like everyone hated you two
Speaker 1: when they delivered the World Free album.
Speaker 3: Right right, Yeah, I mean this is like, this is
Speaker 3: not just it's not a U two album, it's your
Speaker 3: new show. It's more important than any U two album.
Speaker 1: Oh well, you know I appreciate that. Yeah, So yeah,
Speaker 1: that's why they're there. And episode one is the great
Speaker 1: Janet Varney with we talked about the movie Tron, and
Speaker 1: that's the nature of the show as I talk to
Speaker 1: people about their favorite movie. And episode two is tig
Speaker 1: Nataro Wow, talking about the movie Mask And that one
Speaker 1: is a very special episode and I'll tease it with this.
Speaker 1: We recorded that interview or conversation rather seconds after she
Speaker 1: got the call that she was cancer free at the
Speaker 1: five year mark.
Speaker 3: Oh wow.
Speaker 1: So she started crying at the beginning and I didn't
Speaker 1: know what was going on. I gave her some time.
Speaker 1: I was freaking out, and it turned out to be
Speaker 1: good news. But and I explained that all the at
Speaker 1: the onset of the episode. But it turned out to
Speaker 1: be a very special experience.
Speaker 3: Man, Chuck, you're like Barbara Walters.
Speaker 1: I didn't get it out of her. It was just
Speaker 1: weird timing. Yeah, but anyway, those are in there, and
Speaker 1: it won't happen every week. But I would love for
Speaker 1: you to subscribe.
Speaker 3: Well, yeah, that's the way to get it, right, Yeah.
Speaker 1: Just subscribe anywhere you listen to podcasts.
Speaker 3: These are a couple of gifts, a little gems.
Speaker 1: That's right, and I appreciate your support on it.
Speaker 3: Yeah, well, way to go, man. Congratulations. I speak for
Speaker 3: me and the rest of the world when I say
Speaker 3: we are looking forward to this.
Speaker 1: Thanks dude. And you know I'm gonna have you on
Speaker 1: as a guess. It's gonna be very strange and awesome.
Speaker 2: Yeah.
Speaker 3: I think it'll be neat. I'll start crying too.
Speaker 1: Do you know what your favorite movie is that you
Speaker 1: would pick?
Speaker 3: I got a couple I think I could choose from sure, all.
Speaker 1: Right, well, hold on to that then, okay, and we'll
Speaker 1: just pick that up later.
Speaker 3: Okay, Well, congrats again man.
Speaker 1: Thanks pal. Shall we warm the globe? Yeah?
Speaker 3: All right, So, Chuck, I don't know if you've heard
Speaker 3: about this term recently, but it's been in the news lately.
Speaker 3: Global warming. Are you familiar?
Speaker 1: It does ring a bell?
Speaker 3: Okay, well, just in case you For those people who
Speaker 3: aren't aware of global warming, global warming is what we're
Speaker 3: talking about today, and a lot of people confuse it
Speaker 3: or use it interchangeably with climate change, and it turns
Speaker 3: out that's not actually fully accurate. Global warming is a
Speaker 3: symptom of climate change as a whole, and climate change
Speaker 3: is a whole bunch of differences to the Earth's climate.
Speaker 3: We'll get into what climate is in a second, and
Speaker 3: one of those is global warming. Also things like extreme
Speaker 3: weather events, increased drought, increased temperatures, sea level rises, all
Speaker 3: these things put together, that's climate change, right, or the
Speaker 3: result of climate change, and global warming is one of them.
Speaker 3: So global warming is climate change, but not all climate
Speaker 3: change is global warming. I just wanted to make sure
Speaker 3: we got that out of the way to begin with.
Speaker 1: So, like the square rectangle thing, which I can still.
Speaker 3: Never keeps straight, well, and I think the what.
Speaker 1: Like, every square is not a rectangle, but every rectangle
Speaker 1: square or the reverse of that, whichever it is.
Speaker 3: I've never heard that before. What I even aced geometry
Speaker 3: the second time I took it.
Speaker 1: Oh, it was clearly a class that didn't care about squares.
Speaker 3: Yeah, I guess not. I mean they always talked about rectangles,
Speaker 3: it squares were never brought up.
Speaker 1: Yeah. I think it's you know, I'm not going to
Speaker 1: dig myself a hole there. That's probably be so global
Speaker 1: warming if you want just a kind of a straight
Speaker 1: up definition. Is the science community defines it as this,
Speaker 1: and they should know. It's a significant increase in the
Speaker 1: climatic temperature over a short, relatively short period of time
Speaker 1: as a result of activities of humans. And by increase,
Speaker 1: in short, we're talking like one degree celsius in a
Speaker 1: couple of hundred years.
Speaker 3: Is global warming, right, because the effects of climate are
Speaker 3: so pronounced on such a like with just small incremental changes.
Speaker 3: Oh yeah, that that that that is climate change, something
Speaker 3: that if you just look at it on paper, you're like,
Speaker 3: that's nothing. Who cares about one degree? Actually, the point
Speaker 3: of global warming is that when you have these these
Speaker 3: this increase in global temperatures, a whole basket of events
Speaker 3: starts to take place. That's climate change. Like global warming
Speaker 3: is related to climate change, right, it can trigger other
Speaker 3: climate changes, that's right.
Speaker 1: And you hear a lot of people talk about you
Speaker 1: hear a lot of numbskulls talking about weather as if
Speaker 1: it is climate, right, like a very harsh winter might come,
Speaker 1: and they'll say, yeah, global warming.
Speaker 3: Right, that's a great numbskull.
Speaker 1: It's not the same thing. Weather is local, it's short term.
Speaker 1: Climate is long term. It's not even like the weather
Speaker 1: over a period of a year or even a couple
Speaker 1: of years. We're talking about predictable, generally predictable average weather
Speaker 1: conditions in a region over a long, long period of time.
Speaker 1: So you can safely say in Green Bay, Wisconsin, it
Speaker 1: is cold in the winter time. That is the climate
Speaker 1: of Green Bay in that Midwestern region as a whole. Right.
Speaker 3: But if it snows in February February of you know,
Speaker 3: next year, on a Tuesday, then that's just the weather.
Speaker 1: Yeah. Or if it snows in Miami once, then that's
Speaker 1: not a refutation of what climate change means. That is
Speaker 1: a weird anomaly. And those happen.
Speaker 3: Yeah, and this is a this is a grabster and
Speaker 3: strickling code joint, by the way, So that's why heavy
Speaker 3: it popped off the page if you noticed. But one
Speaker 3: of the things they wisely picked point out is what
Speaker 3: you just said that, Yes, some weather anomaly happens like that,
Speaker 3: even if it happened three years in a row. I
Speaker 3: think a lot of scientists would pay attention to why
Speaker 3: it snowed in Miami three years in a row. Right,
Speaker 3: But if it went back to normal or something like
Speaker 3: that like that, that would not necessarily be climate change.
Speaker 3: It's just a weird occurrence. Right. Climate change is this
Speaker 3: change in predictable changes.
Speaker 1: Yeah, and that can take like thousands and ten thousands
Speaker 1: of years sometimes.
Speaker 3: Right normost times under natural circumstances. And here is where
Speaker 3: we come to the current use for global warming. Right.
Speaker 3: Global warming can happen by itself naturally. The Earth, basically
Speaker 3: as in its current presence state, swings back and forth
Speaker 3: between glacial periods and interglacial periods, so cool periods and
Speaker 3: warm periods, and for an ice age to occur, the
Speaker 3: global temperature only needs to drop by about five degrees
Speaker 3: celsius on average, and all of a sudden, we're in
Speaker 3: an ice age.
Speaker 1: Right, Yeah, that doesn't mean the entire Earth is a
Speaker 1: big round cube, round cube.
Speaker 3: Wow, that's like a square rectangle, but not at all
Speaker 3: the same.
Speaker 1: Well, you know when you go to a fancy cocktail
Speaker 1: bar and they have those awesome round I want to
Speaker 1: say ice cubes again, ice spheres. Yep, that's not what
Speaker 1: the Earth looks like necessarily during an ice age.
Speaker 3: No, no, no, it's just much cooler, and like, because it's
Speaker 3: cooler by say, five degrees celsius. Like, a lot of
Speaker 3: stuff changes. It's the same thing as global warming, but
Speaker 3: on the opposite end, right, Like you have changes in
Speaker 3: migration patterns, you have changes in habitat for animals, some
Speaker 3: things go extinct during the transition, sea levels change, A
Speaker 3: lot of stuff happens, right, So this is part of
Speaker 3: the normal process of the Earth. But the Earth's kind
Speaker 3: of got it, like, hey, hey, I've got this under control.
Speaker 3: I don't need any help from you humans. Sure, And
Speaker 3: when I do do this, this is the Earth talking
Speaker 3: and first person. When I do change from a glacial
Speaker 3: period to a warm period, it takes many tens and
Speaker 3: tens of thousands of years, right, yeah, you humans here again,
Speaker 3: this is still me the Earth. Humans are really messing
Speaker 3: with my program here and accelerating the process. And you
Speaker 3: know what, I'll even give you a clue as to
Speaker 3: what you're doing that's making it so bad carbon dioxide emissions. Bam,
Speaker 3: said the Earth and dropped its microphone and walked away.
Speaker 1: Yeah, and then it went back and picked up as
Speaker 1: mic and said, and maybe stop littering, yeah, and then
Speaker 1: dropped the mic again. Yeah, we should talk a minute
Speaker 1: about a wonderful group called the IPCC, the Intergovernmental Panel
Speaker 1: on Climate Change. Yes, a lot of very smart people there.
Speaker 3: Oh man, can I just say it's to me, the
Speaker 3: IPCC is one of the coolest things humanity's ever come
Speaker 3: up with. Yeah, cause it's the world coming together saying
Speaker 3: we got a real problem on our hands. Let's get
Speaker 3: our smartest people together and create a database here of
Speaker 3: good science.
Speaker 1: Yeah. And those people are specifically about twenty five hundred,
Speaker 1: actually more twenty five hundred scientists from around the world
Speaker 1: meeting together like Paris, because why not, right, Sure, they
Speaker 1: did this about ten years ago and came up with
Speaker 1: a lot of well, sort of a lot of distressing observations.
Speaker 1: We'll just tick through a few of these as far
Speaker 1: as temperature goes, and you know, like we said, like
Speaker 1: one degree celsias can make a big swing, and what
Speaker 1: kind of changes we see on the planet. Between nineteen
Speaker 1: oh one and two thousand, the Earth warmed point six degrees,
Speaker 1: so that's you. If you adjust that to nineteen oh
Speaker 1: six to two thousand and six, it climbs up to
Speaker 1: point seventy four degrees, So about three quarters of a
Speaker 1: degree in temperature rise during that one hundred year period, right.
Speaker 3: And there's a lot, It is a lot, And so
Speaker 3: a lot of people say, well, you guys just said
Speaker 3: the Earth tends to do this on its own, maybe
Speaker 3: that's it. Well, actually, no, there's a lot of science
Speaker 3: that the IPCC has been able to come up with
Speaker 3: that shows pretty clearly that this is human cause stuff
Speaker 3: that's actually creating this increase in temperature. And again it
Speaker 3: seems to come back to carbon dioxide.
Speaker 1: Yeah, should we took over a few of these other observations, Yeah,
Speaker 1: for sure. Let me see. Here's a good one. The
Speaker 1: ocean's temperature has increased to at least depths of almost
Speaker 1: ten thousand feet down. The ocean's temperature has increased.
Speaker 3: Yep, not a good thing, because that's how like what
Speaker 3: glaciers tend to melt is from underneath, That's right.
Speaker 1: What else, Chuck, Westerly winds have been growing stronger. Yeah,
Speaker 1: Droughts have become more intense, lasted longer, covered bigger swaths
Speaker 1: of land. What else Here, Precipitation has increased in the
Speaker 1: Eastern Americas or the Europe parts of Asia.
Speaker 3: But it's decreased elsewhere.
Speaker 1: Yeah, And that's I mean, we'll get into this a
Speaker 1: little bit. A little bit of global warming can mean
Speaker 1: longer growing and better growing seasons in some parts of
Speaker 1: the world, but devastating to other parts of the world.
Speaker 3: Exactly.
Speaker 1: I guess I let the cat out of the bag there,
Speaker 1: But we'll go over that again later. And how about
Speaker 1: this on the warming trend of the last fifty years
Speaker 1: is about double of the last one hundred years. So
Speaker 1: what that means is the rate is increasing. The rate
Speaker 1: of warming is increasing.
Speaker 3: Yeah, actually so, I think the IPCC has determined that
Speaker 3: each of the past forty years has been warmer than
Speaker 3: the average temperature of the twentieth century, and that twenty
Speaker 3: sixteen was the hottest year on record, and the twelve
Speaker 3: warmest years on record have occurred since nineteen ninety eight. Dude,
Speaker 3: you should see the we'll get into it some of
Speaker 3: the charts that you can find. And again, like if
Speaker 3: you're even remotely interested in this, like just go look
Speaker 3: up the IPCC's stuff in some of it, like you
Speaker 3: have to be a climatologist to understand what in the
Speaker 3: name of God they're talking about. But other stuff, especially
Speaker 3: if you read like executive summaries of studies and reports
Speaker 3: and stuff like that's meant to for like a non
Speaker 3: scientist specifically often like policy makers to read and understand, right,
Speaker 3: so the average person can understand that. And they have
Speaker 3: some really great stuff that's showing like all of the
Speaker 3: changes that the world is going through thanks to these
Speaker 3: increases in the global temperature. And again, some of the
Speaker 3: charts that they have are just stunning when you see them,
Speaker 3: because it's like going along fine, going along fine, everything's fine,
Speaker 3: and they oh, my god, what the hell just happened?
Speaker 1: Basically that was the Industrial Revolution?
Speaker 3: It was. But also one of the things that they
Speaker 3: found recently, especially in the last like three four years,
Speaker 3: I believe, is that it is that I think you,
Speaker 3: like you were saying the increase in global temperatures, but
Speaker 3: also again the increase in carbon dioxide has really shot
Speaker 3: up over the last like fifty years, like from from
Speaker 3: the beginning of the Industrial Revolution. I think they usually
Speaker 3: start that about seventeen fifty to maybe eighteen hundred at
Speaker 3: the latest, up to like nineteen fifty or so nineteen sixty,
Speaker 3: Like there's a pretty surprising increase, but it is just
Speaker 3: skyrocketed in the last like fifty or sixty years. So
Speaker 3: they're seeing like this, the science is bearing out the
Speaker 3: kind of the general theory of global warming, which we
Speaker 3: should probably talk about this theory of global warming, right, because,
Speaker 3: like we said, it's not just human caused a human
Speaker 3: cause mechanism, Like basically, it's an already existing natural mechanism
Speaker 3: that basically keeps the earth nice and toasty for life
Speaker 3: and water.
Speaker 1: It keeps us from being Mars.
Speaker 3: But we have started messing with it big time because
Speaker 3: of our our contributions to this normal cycle.
Speaker 1: Yeah, so should we talk about the greenhouse effect a
Speaker 1: little bit?
Speaker 3: Yeah?
Speaker 1: The greenhouse effect is literally what keeps us from being Mars.
Speaker 1: It is a good thing when it occurs naturally because
Speaker 1: like you said, it keeps us on. You know, it
Speaker 1: makes earth habitable and lovely and nice for the best part,
Speaker 1: So they strickling in the grabster. I'm not sure who
Speaker 1: came up with the car analogy, but it's a pretty
Speaker 1: good one.
Speaker 3: I agree.
Speaker 1: If you go into your car on a hot summer
Speaker 1: day and you get in your car, it's been sitting
Speaker 1: out the sun for a little while, it's a lot
Speaker 1: hotter than it is outside. It's kind of a no brainer,
Speaker 1: but you might not have thought about why that happens.
Speaker 1: It's not magic. What's happening is the sun that's coming
Speaker 1: in through your car windows gets absorbed by the interior
Speaker 1: of your car, whether it's your seats or the dashboard
Speaker 1: or basically kind of everything in the car absorbs that heat,
Speaker 1: and that heat is then eventually emitted back out and
Speaker 1: radiated out from the seats and things like that. But
Speaker 1: it's at a different wavelength than that initial sunlight that
Speaker 1: came in, so some of it might get back out
Speaker 1: of the window, but most of it stays kind of
Speaker 1: trapped in that car. So the end result of the
Speaker 1: net net, as they would say in a corporate meeting,
Speaker 1: is that there's less energy going out than coming in.
Speaker 1: Right so your car is going to get hotter.
Speaker 3: So pretend your car is the planet Earth basically, which
Speaker 3: would be great, and the windshield is the atmosphere, right. Yeah,
Speaker 3: So that's the greenhouse effect in a nutshell, as it
Speaker 3: relates to the actual Earth. About seventy percent of the
Speaker 3: solar energy that is directed toward Earth right, stays on
Speaker 3: the planet, right, And instead of it being absorbed by
Speaker 3: car seats and floor mats and stuff like that, it
Speaker 3: gets absorbed by the ocean or land, or plants or
Speaker 3: you right, right. And so about thirty percent of that
Speaker 3: stuff that didn't make it through it was reflected back
Speaker 3: by clouds, particles in the atmosphere, a bunch of other stuff. Right.
Speaker 3: But as you're sitting there getting warm by the sun,
Speaker 3: you actually have the potential to re emit that heat,
Speaker 3: and so that stuff starts to go back through the
Speaker 3: atmosphere out of space. Some of that stuff makes it
Speaker 3: out into space, but there are other particles that take
Speaker 3: that solar energy, usually in the form of heat, and
Speaker 3: absorb it. And when they absorb it, they re emit
Speaker 3: heat and then they direct it back down at Earth
Speaker 3: and the process continues, and in some of that some
Speaker 3: cases some of the stuff that they re emit, they
Speaker 3: end up reabsorbing themselves, so that there is more heat
Speaker 3: that's being trapped and sustained on Earth than is being
Speaker 3: allowed to escape back into space at any given time. Yeah,
Speaker 3: just like your car, right, And again, this is what
Speaker 3: this is, like a positive feedback cycle that creates the atmosphere.
Speaker 3: It also sustains the atmosphere. It also keeps water here
Speaker 3: on Earth because water tends to heat up and rise,
Speaker 3: but then it will it will cool off in the
Speaker 3: atmosphere and fall back down as precipitation. And as long
Speaker 3: as it can fall back down in the atmosphere and
Speaker 3: nucleate around some of these particles that are trapped in
Speaker 3: the atmosphere, we've got water here on Earth, that's right.
Speaker 3: So it's all thanks to the wonderful, glorious greenhouse effect.
Speaker 1: Yeah, so that feels like a good place to pause.
Speaker 1: Let people let that soak in a minute, like a
Speaker 1: hot sun on a black car seat.
Speaker 3: Like a warm chutney on your forehead.
Speaker 1: My god. And we'll be back a little bit to
Speaker 1: talk about the these gases in the atmosphere that we're
Speaker 1: talking about here, all right, So we're back I think
Speaker 1: everyone probably understands the greenhouse effect if you remember your
Speaker 1: hot car. Yeah, it's kind of a nice easy way
Speaker 1: to think about it. So, when you were explaining the
Speaker 1: more like the Earth's version of that with getting absorbed
Speaker 1: hitting things in the atmosphere, we're talking largely about three
Speaker 1: things carbon dioxide, methane gas, actually four things, nitrous oxide,
Speaker 1: and water vapor.
Speaker 3: And there are a lot of others, but as far
Speaker 3: as stuff that really has the biggest impact on global warming,
Speaker 3: it's these guys.
Speaker 1: Yeah, so we'll start with CO two excess. The when
Speaker 1: you hear about most often carbon emissions gets all the
Speaker 1: glory in the headlines these days. Carbon CO two is colorless,
Speaker 1: it's gas. It is a byproduct of the combustion of
Speaker 1: organic stuff, and it makes up a very small part
Speaker 1: of the arth atmosphere point zero four percent, and most
Speaker 1: of it that's up there has been there for a
Speaker 1: long long time. It's from volcanic activity. However, we are
Speaker 1: pumping lots and lots of CO two, additional CO two,
Speaker 1: and remember there's a delicate balance going on there as
Speaker 1: it is. So like you said, mother Earth doesn't need
Speaker 1: us adding to this, and we have been adding CO
Speaker 1: two like it's Gangbusters. Yeah.
Speaker 3: So like that, you remember when I was talking about
Speaker 3: how water turns into vapor and rises and falls back down.
Speaker 3: That's the rain cycle. There's also a carbon cycle where
Speaker 3: carbon molecules just kind of go back and forth between
Speaker 3: the atmosphere and the earth. And apparently every year two
Speaker 3: hundred and thirty gigatons of carbon are released into the
Speaker 3: atmosphere from the Earth, from plants, from rocks, from us,
Speaker 3: and then about the same amount another two hundred and
Speaker 3: thirty gigatons comes back down and is locked into Earth
Speaker 3: from the atmosphere. Right, And this is, like you said, Chuck,
Speaker 3: like a pretty nice balance. The Earth has got this,
Speaker 3: Please don't mess with it. But when we take carbon
Speaker 3: and unlock it from these carbon sinks, like you know,
Speaker 3: we bust up rocks and mining operations, we burn fossil
Speaker 3: fuels that have carbon locked into them, we cut down
Speaker 3: trees and burn those things. Is fuel that releases more carbon,
Speaker 3: and it messes up that delicate pretty much even exchange
Speaker 3: between the atmosphere and the Earth.
Speaker 1: Yeah, and that's a big problem because carbon has a
Speaker 1: knack for absorbing infrared radiation, so that energy that escapes
Speaker 1: the atmosphere. That's the form that it comes in. So
Speaker 1: all this extra CO two means basically, like your card,
Speaker 1: just an overall increase in temperature.
Speaker 3: Right, And so not only does it absorb infrared heat,
Speaker 3: hang on to it it, there's a lot of it
Speaker 3: that we just finally, in the first time in the
Speaker 3: history of the human race, all of humanity, not since
Speaker 3: the Industrial Revolution, but ever since humans have been around,
Speaker 3: the Earth reached four hundred parts per million, meaning that
Speaker 3: out of every million molecules that you just snatched out
Speaker 3: of the air and count, you're going to come up
Speaker 3: with four hundred of those as carbon atoms, right, or
Speaker 3: carbon dioxide molecules. So that's new. That's a big deal.
Speaker 3: And the problem with that is is not just that
Speaker 3: there's a lot of carbon dioxide in there, but it's
Speaker 3: like you said, the more carbon dioxide there is, the
Speaker 3: more radiative heat that comes back down to Earth that
Speaker 3: doesn't escape into space, and the higher the global temperature gets.
Speaker 1: Yeah, and just to and a perspective, four hundred parts
Speaker 1: per million now, and that's twenty seventeen numbers, I guess.
Speaker 3: I think in twenty fifteen we hit four hundred and
Speaker 3: more up to like four hundred and four now.
Speaker 1: So that pre Industrial Revolution was about two hundred and
Speaker 1: eighty parts per million, so it has swelled by about
Speaker 1: one hundred and twenty four parts per million since the
Speaker 1: Industrial Revolution, which is pretty staggering.
Speaker 3: Yeah, and there's apparently a way that you can tell
Speaker 3: when you're actually measuring the carbon dioxide molecules themselves where
Speaker 3: they came from, and ones that are introduced into the
Speaker 3: atmosphere from burning fossil fuels have a specific signature that
Speaker 3: we can detect, and we have seen that as the
Speaker 3: global temperature has increased and more and more carbon dioxide
Speaker 3: has been introduced into the atmosphere since the Industrial Revolution,
Speaker 3: so too has the concentration of that specific type of
Speaker 3: carbon dioxide. So there's a strong correlation between the fossil
Speaker 3: fuel burned carbon dioxide that we humans have put in
Speaker 3: the air with rising global temperatures.
Speaker 1: All right, moving on to nitrous oxide into which we
Speaker 1: did a whole podcast on this right. Yeah, that was
Speaker 1: a good one. That was a great one, mainly because
Speaker 1: of that tank that we had here in the in
Speaker 1: the studio, I.
Speaker 3: Know, like we're method podcasters. That was that definitely enhanced
Speaker 3: the whole thing.
Speaker 1: So intwo oh is another greenhouse gas, super important, and
Speaker 1: we are not releasing like human activity is not releasing
Speaker 1: nearly as much as we are CO two, But no
Speaker 1: two or I'm sorry, into absorbs a lot more energy,
Speaker 1: like two hundred and seventy times as much as CO two,
Speaker 1: So that makes it something we really need to pay
Speaker 1: attention to, and we are paying attention to it. It
Speaker 1: just doesn't get all the headlines.
Speaker 3: No, it definitely doesn't, just because there's so so much
Speaker 3: less of it, right, And whereas it takes like tens
Speaker 3: of thousands of years for you know, the twenty percent
Speaker 3: of any given carbon dioxide emission to leave the atmosphere,
Speaker 3: it takes about one hundred and fourteen years for a
Speaker 3: full emission of nitrous oxide to leave the atmosphere.
Speaker 1: Yeah, as far as man made it's it is also
Speaker 1: a byproduct of combustion and a lot of fertilizer. Nitrogen
Speaker 1: fertilizer that they use on crops as releases the in
Speaker 1: to oh into the atmosphere as well.
Speaker 3: See to me, all you have to do is like
Speaker 3: seed the atmosphere with a bunch of hippies and let
Speaker 3: them huff all the nitrous oxide right out of it.
Speaker 3: Problem solved.
Speaker 1: That's right, because you've also gotten rid of a concert
Speaker 1: in the sky. Exactly what else do we have methane?
Speaker 3: Methane's a big one, and this is super overlooked, but
Speaker 3: I remember hearing about this when people first started realizing, like, oh,
Speaker 3: that's a really big problem. It's it's there's very little
Speaker 3: amount of it, whereas like there's four hundred and four
Speaker 3: parts per million of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere. These
Speaker 3: days we can measure about one point even parts per
Speaker 3: million of methane. But it absorbs and amidst thermal energy
Speaker 3: like Gangbusters as well, far more than CO two. I
Speaker 3: think about twenty times more. And there's there's a lot
Speaker 3: of different places where it comes from. Like when we
Speaker 3: mine coal, it releases methane. When are ample herds of
Speaker 3: livestock fart yep, they release methane. No joke. That's actually
Speaker 3: a huge contributor of greenhouse gases.
Speaker 1: Oh yeah, we talked about that, like I feel like
Speaker 1: years ago in another episode.
Speaker 3: Surely we have another one, Chuck was do you remember
Speaker 3: our plasma waste incineration?
Speaker 1: Yeah?
Speaker 3: Episode, sure, well, remember one of the things we talked
Speaker 3: about was that the average landfill gives off methane, and
Speaker 3: that's a huge problem too. So like if you go
Speaker 3: to a landfill and you see that there's flames around it,
Speaker 3: they're actually burning that stuff off because the co two
Speaker 3: it released is after it's burned, is actually preferable in
Speaker 3: that case to the methane just being allowed to escape.
Speaker 1: Yeah, and that's bad news. It is bad news. And
Speaker 1: there are scientists who have even posited that maybe, like
Speaker 1: you know, tens and hundreds of thousands of years ago,
Speaker 1: that large scale venting of methane into the atmosphere, like
Speaker 1: if a big block of ice cracked open and unlocked
Speaker 1: a big methane bubble from under the ocean, that could
Speaker 1: have caused like maybe a mass extinction, right, like because
Speaker 1: it was released so quickly into the atmosphere.
Speaker 3: Yeah, like like we're doing now basically.
Speaker 1: Yeah, on a slower basis. I don't think anyone's saying
Speaker 1: that's going to.
Speaker 3: Happen now, I don't. I don't know. I think like
Speaker 3: that is a concern that as arctis Arctic ice melts,
Speaker 3: that methane bubbles could be released, which would just be
Speaker 3: a nightmare on top of a catastrophe.
Speaker 1: That's right.
Speaker 3: There's another problem with methane too, that in the atmosphere
Speaker 3: it frequently converts to CO two, so it just not
Speaker 3: only contributes itself, it also contributes to the CO two
Speaker 3: emission problem. There's also chuck another thing called short lived
Speaker 3: climate pollutants slcps. They don't get a lot of press either,
Speaker 3: but a lot of people think that if we focused
Speaker 3: on these we could really see some real results in
Speaker 3: the short term. Supposedly slcps account for something like thirty
Speaker 3: to forty percent of global warming. But they are particles
Speaker 3: like black carbon methane counts as one of them, hydro
Speaker 3: chloroflorocarbons nice, and they can live in the atmosphere from
Speaker 3: say like days to tens of years, and then they
Speaker 3: go away. And if we really cut down on some
Speaker 3: of those emissions, it would we would see the effects
Speaker 3: of that very quickly.
Speaker 1: Wow. Yeah, So speaking of effects, I guess we should
Speaker 1: kind of talk about what this all could mean and
Speaker 1: does mean. Yep, and is meaning sure. Number one, we
Speaker 1: can talk a little bit about sea level or sea levels.
Speaker 1: Glaciers and ice shelves are melting all around the world
Speaker 1: and losing large chunks of ice like this can accelerate
Speaker 1: this warming because there's less of the Sun's energy. You know,
Speaker 1: we talked earlier about it being reflected by ice sheets
Speaker 1: and things like that, these reflective surfaces. Less reflective surface
Speaker 1: means less is getting reflected away. So just at like
Speaker 1: the very base level, that's gonna be an increase in temperature.
Speaker 3: Yes, Also, depending on where the glacier is, it could
Speaker 3: contribute to sea level increases too, as we'll talk about.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I mean we might as well hit that, huh.
Speaker 3: Okay. So if one of the things that I learned
Speaker 3: from this that I just absolutely did not know, what
Speaker 3: makes total sense, is that the Arctic sea ice, if
Speaker 3: it melts, it will contribute zero to a sea level increase.
Speaker 1: Yeah. Interesting, I had no idea.
Speaker 3: But it makes total sense because it turns out that
Speaker 3: Arctic sea ice in particular floats on the sea, so
Speaker 3: it's already in the sea and it's already contributed to
Speaker 3: the sea level rise. If anything, If that stuff, if
Speaker 3: we went through an ice age and all that stuff
Speaker 3: froze into basically a frozen land mass, then you'd see
Speaker 3: a sea level decrease. But the way it is right now,
Speaker 3: there wouldn't be a sea level rise if it melts completely.
Speaker 3: There are other places around Earth where the glaciers and
Speaker 3: ice caps are basically land masses, and if they did melt,
Speaker 3: then you would see a sea level rise just from
Speaker 3: that melted water, right.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I mean we're talking about Antarctica there, and the
Speaker 1: likelihood of Antarctica thawing out is not great, which is good.
Speaker 3: Well, not all of it, but there's certainly parts of
Speaker 3: it could, yeah for sure. And then same with Greenland too.
Speaker 1: We had Greenlands because it is much closer to the equator,
Speaker 1: so temperatures are higher there anyway, It's not like negative
Speaker 1: thirty seven degrees on average like it is in Antarctica. Right,
Speaker 1: So I feel like I have to say that so specifically,
Speaker 1: and the Arctica c Yeah.
Speaker 3: And the other problem too with with this this loss
Speaker 3: of ice, like people might say, like, no, it's crazy,
Speaker 3: Like there's I see plenty of glaciers, there's still but
Speaker 3: if every season a little more melts off than is
Speaker 3: replenished by snowfall in the winter, you have a net
Speaker 3: loss of ice. And then over time, if you look
Speaker 3: at it on a scale of a decade or two
Speaker 3: decades or three decades. That's a substantial amount of lost ice,
Speaker 3: and that is what increases the sea level that leads
Speaker 3: to sea level rise.
Speaker 1: Yeah, so, as far as the IPCC is concerned, they
Speaker 1: estimate that sea levels rose about a little over six
Speaker 1: and a half inches in the twentieth century. Doesn't sound
Speaker 1: like much, but it is a lot. Like sea level
Speaker 1: rise in low lying coastal areas can mean pretty bad
Speaker 1: flooding at just mere inches. They propose that if things
Speaker 1: continue to go this way, they could rise by as
Speaker 1: much as twenty two inches almost two feet by the
Speaker 1: year of twenty one hundred and brother, if that happens,
Speaker 1: we're gonna have to redraw the world map.
Speaker 3: That's true. I was looking, I was like, how high
Speaker 3: is Miami Beach. Miami Beach is apparently just under four
Speaker 3: feet above sea level. Yeah, New Orleans is like zero feet.
Speaker 3: I think it's maybe at two feet basically. Yeah, there's
Speaker 3: a lot of coastal city Singapore, I think Copenhagen, they're
Speaker 3: all like very very close to sea level or just
Speaker 3: slightly above sea level, and so yeah, two feet rise.
Speaker 3: I know. The Maldives is frequently mentioned as like being
Speaker 3: under real threat from sea level rise. But even if
Speaker 3: you don't necessarily live in a coastal area that's two feet,
Speaker 3: you know, just two feet above sea level, consider this,
Speaker 3: If the sea level rose just six inches, like they
Speaker 3: were saying, that means that when you have extreme weather
Speaker 3: events which go hand in hand with global warming and
Speaker 3: are part of climate change, where it rains really hard
Speaker 3: and there's more like more major flooding than before, then
Speaker 3: it's already working with an extra six inches than any
Speaker 3: flood that you've been used to before. So the floods
Speaker 3: are much more extensive. And that's a really good example
Speaker 3: of how interconnected the global climate system is, where if
Speaker 3: one thing gets messed up a little bit, it has
Speaker 3: all these other widespread effects around the world on regions too.
Speaker 1: Yeah, because I think they found that there are not
Speaker 1: necessarily more frequent like tropical storms and hurricanes and things,
Speaker 1: but they are becoming much more intense, and that's the
Speaker 1: issue at hand.
Speaker 3: Yeah, And that one in particular has to do with
Speaker 3: the surface temperature of the oceans increasing as the temperature
Speaker 3: of the world increases, because that's where those storms, hurricanes
Speaker 3: and cyclones get their their energy from, is from the
Speaker 3: warm surface of the sea.
Speaker 1: Yeah.
Speaker 3: So if it's warm. That's like you'll see them like
Speaker 3: hit land and like lose steam, and then when they
Speaker 3: go back over the ocean, they'll start to like regather
Speaker 3: their strength. That's because they're over warm water again and
Speaker 3: that's where that's where they get it all from.
Speaker 1: Yeah, plus there is uh. I don't think we mentioned
Speaker 1: this yet about the density of water.
Speaker 3: No, no, I don't want to go anywhere near it.
Speaker 3: You take this.
Speaker 1: One, well, very simply, water is most dense at four
Speaker 1: degrees celsius. So that's its kind of a homeostasis of
Speaker 1: where it needs to be. Anything above or below that
Speaker 1: temperature and the density is going to decrease, So the
Speaker 1: overall temperature of the water is going to increase naturally
Speaker 1: and this is not like human cause. But that will
Speaker 1: also cause the oceans to rise some and that's just
Speaker 1: a natural thing, right. Well said, all right, let's leave
Speaker 1: that one market right there.
Speaker 3: I'm glad you mentioned that though, because you don't see
Speaker 3: that really ever, Like no one ever mentions like, oh yeah,
Speaker 3: water is just gonna expand as it warms. I've never
Speaker 3: thought about that one either.
Speaker 1: Or Cools, I think, right, yeah, or Cools.
Speaker 3: It's a weird weird thing, weird weird material. So let's
Speaker 3: take another break and we'll get back to explaining why
Speaker 3: global warming is a real pain, all right, Chuck. So
Speaker 3: we talked about the ice caps melting, we talked about
Speaker 3: glaciers melting, we talked about sea level rise. Correct, there's
Speaker 3: also I mean people are out there saying like that's great,
Speaker 3: but how does it impact may Yeah, a human that's
Speaker 3: what I want to know about. Well, there's tons of ways.
Speaker 3: Because as technologically clever as we humans are, we are
Speaker 3: extraordinarily dependent on the earth. So as these this climate
Speaker 3: change happens due to global warming, we're going to see
Speaker 3: all sorts of problems. And we already are starting to
Speaker 3: see problems.
Speaker 1: Yeah. So we did mention earlier that if you live
Speaker 1: in a temperate area, if you've got like four kind
Speaker 1: of lovely seasons, like let's say Atlanta, Georgia, for instance,
Speaker 1: you may have a longer growing season, you might have
Speaker 1: a bit more rain. It might be actually good for
Speaker 1: the crops here in Georgia in some ways. But other
Speaker 1: parts of the world, less temperate zones are going to
Speaker 1: see big temperature increases, way less rain, and longer droughts,
Speaker 1: worse drouts, bigger deserts. It's not going to be so
Speaker 1: good of those places.
Speaker 3: No. They apparently have found that every trillion tons of
Speaker 3: CO two it contributed to that atmosphere raises the global
Speaker 3: temperature average by about three quarters of a degree celsius.
Speaker 3: And then they went and correlated that each one degree
Speaker 3: celsius increase in temperature equals an evaporative increase of about
Speaker 3: seven to fifteen percent here on planet Earth in the soil. Right,
Speaker 3: so as temperatures increase, there's going to be less water
Speaker 3: in the soil, which affects crops and leads to things
Speaker 3: like droughts and even desertification as well. But and man,
Speaker 3: every time I throw out one of these terms, I'm like,
Speaker 3: we did an episode on that, We did an episode
Speaker 3: on that and droughts.
Speaker 1: Yeah, we've been dancing around this one for a while.
Speaker 3: We have. I'm glad we finally tackle that. Man, agreed,
Speaker 3: you're doing great, by the way, Well, hold on, hold on.
Speaker 3: So as the water evaporates from the soil and go
Speaker 3: up and is locked into the atmosphere again, it's eventually
Speaker 3: going to come down, and when it does, you're going
Speaker 3: to have a far more severe flooding and precipitation than
Speaker 3: you would have normally when it was just going up
Speaker 3: and coming down and going up and coming down like
Speaker 3: on its normal cycle. Yeah, so that's one way that
Speaker 3: it can affect you, because while it's turning to droughts,
Speaker 3: you got wildfires, and then when the soil gets degraded
Speaker 3: and there's suddenly a lot of rain, you've got flooding.
Speaker 3: And people get carried away in their cars because they
Speaker 3: think it can drive across a flowing river.
Speaker 1: That's not funny at all, by the way, I guess,
Speaker 1: not just the way you put it was. So one
Speaker 1: of the other devastating effects. And this one is kind
Speaker 1: of tougher to predict because we've don't haven't really seen
Speaker 1: what can happen with our living human eyeballs, but ecosystems,
Speaker 1: And I think we did we do on ecosystems as
Speaker 1: a whole, or just have we talked about it forever
Speaker 1: and everything.
Speaker 3: I think it's just popped up in so many of them,
Speaker 3: it seems like that.
Speaker 1: Yeah, we've definitely covered coral reefs and things like that.
Speaker 1: We're talking about living ecosystems, and we all know they're
Speaker 1: very delicate and the delicate balance of the ecosystem is
Speaker 1: what makes it worse. And we've talked ad nauseum over
Speaker 1: the past nine years about how little, just little things
Speaker 1: can happen in an ecosystem that will create this chain reaction.
Speaker 1: It's all interconnected, and we don't know what might happen
Speaker 1: in terms of global warming in our living ecosystem. Sure,
Speaker 1: some animals might adapt, some might move, but there would
Speaker 1: also be you know, massive amounts of extinction. Coral reefs
Speaker 1: are already dying. We're seeing that with our eyeballs. Forests
Speaker 1: are dying off and turning to grassland. And it's not
Speaker 1: just like, oh, well, there they go. Now we have
Speaker 1: grassland instead of a forest.
Speaker 3: Let's make some houlus kirts.
Speaker 1: Yeah. Again, it's just it's that that domino effect that
Speaker 1: we're going to see. It's just no one knows what
Speaker 1: it's going to mean in the end. It's really troubling.
Speaker 3: Yeah, And I was, I was, I was like, well,
Speaker 3: how are ecosystems interconnected? I know they are, but how
Speaker 3: so I looked up a good example and found salmon.
Speaker 3: So salmon are born in like little streams and they
Speaker 3: end up like traveling down into bigger streams and eventually
Speaker 3: rivers and then estuaries, and then they actually go and
Speaker 3: mature out in the ocean, which I hadn't really thought of,
Speaker 3: And then when it's time for them to go breed,
Speaker 3: they swim back upstream, back into the rivers, back back
Speaker 3: into the streams themselves. Actually they go back to where
Speaker 3: they were born to breed and then die. And as
Speaker 3: they're doing it, they're basically acting as nutrient transport systems
Speaker 3: between all these different ecosystems each step of the way.
Speaker 1: Yeah, it's like a seed being scattered in the wind.
Speaker 3: Yeah, very much so, but a seed that can actually
Speaker 3: come back home and bring all the nutrients that it gathered,
Speaker 3: like out in the ocean back into its home ecosystem
Speaker 3: where it was born.
Speaker 1: Yeah.
Speaker 3: So it's pretty interesting. And I mean, like that's just
Speaker 3: a great example. Let's just salmon, you know. So, Yeah,
Speaker 3: the ecosystems are very much connected, so if something happens
Speaker 3: with one, it's going to have an effect on all
Speaker 3: the other ones. And like you said, some things will survive,
Speaker 3: some things won't.
Speaker 1: But the.
Speaker 3: Thing that I think most of us here on Earth
Speaker 3: are agreeing to agree about is we should probably do
Speaker 3: something to stop those extinctions as best we can, even
Speaker 3: if we'll probably survive, you.
Speaker 1: Know, yeah, And you know we're this is a very
Speaker 1: USA centric show for the most part. That's where we're based.
Speaker 1: We try to think outside that that box as much
Speaker 1: as we can. And in the case of global warming,
Speaker 1: it is the poorest nations of the world are the
Speaker 1: ones that are going to be hit the hardest. They're
Speaker 1: the ones in a lot of times, in the less
Speaker 1: temperate zones that are going to be hit with more
Speaker 1: devastating crop loss. But crop loss is going to be
Speaker 1: a big deal all over the world. That already there's
Speaker 1: something called the Carnegie Institution that estimates about five billion
Speaker 1: dollars in crop losses per year due to global warming
Speaker 1: is already going on right now, and farmers are seeing
Speaker 1: a decrease of about forty million metric tons of wheat, barley, corn,
Speaker 1: other cereal greens every year. So just one degree fahrenheit
Speaker 1: an average temper of an increase could result in three
Speaker 1: to five percent drop in crop yields. So it's a
Speaker 1: global issue. Sure, some of the poorest nations might be
Speaker 1: affected earliest in the worst, but it is going to
Speaker 1: touch every nation.
Speaker 3: It definitely will. It doesn't necessarily have to be the
Speaker 3: poorest nations. It can be the poorest people of rich nations.
Speaker 3: Well yeah, true, and it can be people who are
Speaker 3: very rich who end up living in areas that are
Speaker 3: hit Like Houston saw a lot of increase in water
Speaker 3: borne illnesses because of the flooding from Hurricane Harvey. That's
Speaker 3: something that they otherwise wouldn't have had to have done with. Yeah,
Speaker 3: there's there's like that whole crop loss thing and starvation
Speaker 3: that it leads to. Like, there's a lot of ways
Speaker 3: people can be affected. And just like salmon, like, we're
Speaker 3: connected to other people as well, even if they're on
Speaker 3: the other side of the world, and you know, we're
Speaker 3: not really talking to them or don't really know them personally,
Speaker 3: we're still connected to them. So if they suffer a
Speaker 3: crop loss, it'll affect us all. And if they die
Speaker 3: of starvation, it ends up affecting us all.
Speaker 1: Yeah. This I really like this computer model thing. Did
Speaker 1: you see that? Yes, that was pretty pretty cut and dried,
Speaker 1: you know.
Speaker 3: Yes.
Speaker 1: So the IPCC they used a computer model and what
Speaker 1: they did was they tried to simulate climate change and
Speaker 1: what they found was the only models, the only models
Speaker 1: that looked like today's climate that equalled, hey, well, this
Speaker 1: looks like what's going on today, were models that included
Speaker 1: the human contribution to global warming. When they did not
Speaker 1: plug in the here human contribution. The answer that it
Speaker 1: spit out was no, that climate doesn't look like what's
Speaker 1: going on right now, right, So that is basically proof
Speaker 1: that humans are contributing to this, right exactly. Yep.
Speaker 3: That combined with you know the signature of the carbon
Speaker 3: dioxide from fossil fuel burning, all that jazz, Yes, you're
Speaker 3: we and we should probably get to this part. Like,
Speaker 3: there's there's a there's a tendency among naysayers to be like,
Speaker 3: you know, there's not even like scientific consensus. They're not
Speaker 3: one hundred percent certain that it's it's it's us creating
Speaker 3: this global warming, right, and so science has really kind
Speaker 3: of taken it upon itself in the last like decade
Speaker 3: or so to address this and say, yes, that's true.
Speaker 3: There's basically no such thing as settled science. But there
Speaker 3: has so been so much like we've made it our
Speaker 3: business to create and conduct so much research and study
Speaker 3: all of this so closely over the last like ten
Speaker 3: to fifteen twenty years that we have basically come up
Speaker 3: with a scientific consensus that basically, if you take any
Speaker 3: scientist on the street, there is pretty close to one
Speaker 3: hundred percent chance that that person is going to say, yes,
Speaker 3: climate change is real, Yes, global warming is happening, and
Speaker 3: yes humans are causing it.
Speaker 1: Right, yeah, Because they use words differently than we use words.
Speaker 1: And you sent this great article certainty versus uncertainty colon
Speaker 1: understanding scientific terms about climate change.
Speaker 3: You know, it's smart when there's a colon.
Speaker 1: And for the average Joe or Jane walking around on
Speaker 1: the street, if you say the word uncertain that means, well,
Speaker 1: you just don't know. Scientists when they use the word
Speaker 1: uncertain they mean how well you might know something or not.
Speaker 1: So that's a big difference. It sounds like word games,
Speaker 1: but there is no, very rarely is there absolute certainty
Speaker 1: in sciencience. So their job is to research and research
Speaker 1: and limit that uncertainty as much as possible.
Speaker 3: No, and that uncertainty in their public broadcasting of that
Speaker 3: uncertainty has been used against them. It's been hijacked and
Speaker 3: used against them to fight doing anything about climate change. Right,
Speaker 3: So so they have started to use especially if you
Speaker 3: go through like the ipccs like policymaker executive summaries. Everything
Speaker 3: that they're stating, they will put like how confident they
Speaker 3: are that what they're they're saying is true.
Speaker 1: They have a structure to that now, right.
Speaker 3: And so most of the stuff that they're releasing as
Speaker 3: in their reports has something like a ninety percent chance
Speaker 3: or greater of being correct. So they call it like
Speaker 3: a very likely outcome or a very high confidence. And
Speaker 3: I've even seen something called an extremely high confidence which
Speaker 3: indicates ninety five percent or greater, and then the come
Speaker 3: on which is ninety nine per cent greater.
Speaker 1: Yeah, so they're the there are five points which they
Speaker 1: have quote very high confidence end quote about or even greater.
Speaker 1: So at least ninety percent or greater certainty that the
Speaker 1: following human induced warming influences physical and biological systems everywhere.
Speaker 1: Sea levels are rising, glaciers and permafrost are shrinking, oceans
Speaker 1: are becoming more acidic, and ranges of plants and animals
Speaker 1: are shifting. So that's between ninety and one hundred percent
Speaker 1: certainty on those things.
Speaker 3: Yeah, they also say they're comfortable saying with certainty that
Speaker 3: the burning of fossil fuels and the clearing of forests
Speaker 3: release carbon dioxide into the atmosphere. They say, there is
Speaker 3: no uncertainty about that. They also say that they've learned
Speaker 3: that carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gases in the atmosphere
Speaker 3: trap heat through the greenhouse effect. They say, again there
Speaker 3: is no uncertainty about this, and that the Earth is
Speaker 3: warming because these gases are being released faster than the
Speaker 3: k can be or by natural processes. And then they
Speaker 3: say it's very likely greater than ninety percent probability that
Speaker 3: human activities are the main reason for the world's temperature
Speaker 3: increase in the past fifty years in particular. And so
Speaker 3: they're saying, like, we are scientists, we're the ones who
Speaker 3: are studying this. No, we're not a hot we can't
Speaker 3: say with unequivocal certainty that this is the case. But
Speaker 3: what really, people, what more do you need? Like we
Speaker 3: have studied this so closely, we are so close to
Speaker 3: one hundred percent certainty that like, what's the problem here,
Speaker 3: Let's just get on board. And there was actually a
Speaker 3: study done in two thousand and seven by this economist.
Speaker 3: It made the news, made the news cycle. The same
Speaker 3: is doctor Peter Cigaris, and he basically said if you
Speaker 3: look at the cost of doing something and the cost
Speaker 3: of doing nothing, statistically speaking, it makes way more sense
Speaker 3: to you take steps to mitigate climate change and be
Speaker 3: wrong about the fact that it was us humans.
Speaker 1: Yea, then it.
Speaker 3: Would to take no steps at all and be wrong
Speaker 3: about it. Actually, no, it actually was us humans.
Speaker 1: Yeah. I mean that's where I get. I don't want
Speaker 1: to get too much on a soapbox, but I get
Speaker 1: angry that there are people out there that say, well,
Speaker 1: you're not there's that ten percent or less chance. So
Speaker 1: let's just gamble humanity, the future of humankind on that
Speaker 1: ten percent or less chance, because we don't want to
Speaker 1: get with the program and get behind green initiatives because
Speaker 1: there's a chance you're not one hundred percent certain. I
Speaker 1: I don't know that short sight, and it's just it's
Speaker 1: staggering to me.
Speaker 3: Well, plus also that it's been proven I've mentioned that
Speaker 3: book before, the Merchants of Doubt that think tanks have
Speaker 3: been set up to basically influence public thought and point
Speaker 3: out like scientists aren't a hundred percent so in sciences
Speaker 3: are one hundred percent certain, and they're not looking out
Speaker 3: for you or the earth or your family they're looking
Speaker 3: out for their business interests because it's the fossil fuel industry.
Speaker 3: They're they're the ones who are who benefit the most
Speaker 3: from not taking steps against climate change. But even if
Speaker 3: you look at some of the some of these fossil
Speaker 3: fuel industry companies, they're like, no, we should probably do something.
Speaker 3: We can figure this out. Even some of them are
Speaker 3: saying this now as of twenty fourteen.
Speaker 1: Amazing.
Speaker 3: So, Chuck, speaking of twenty fourteen, there was something big
Speaker 3: that happened, the Paris Accords. Yes, and in twenty fourteen,
Speaker 3: I think one hundred and ninety five countries came together
Speaker 3: and said, you know what, we're going to do something.
Speaker 3: We're going to do everything we can to keep the
Speaker 3: global average temperature from increasing two degrees above normal two
Speaker 3: degrees celsius. I should say, because that was kind of
Speaker 3: a largely agreed upon tipping point that there would be
Speaker 3: a lot more extreme weather, sea level rise, we would
Speaker 3: feel the effects of climate change from a two degree
Speaker 3: celsius increase in global temperature. And so they took this
Speaker 3: really interesting approach where they said, instead of us coming
Speaker 3: up with a multi government group that decrease stuff, we're
Speaker 3: going to just decentralize the whole thing, and how about
Speaker 3: every country come up with what their country can do
Speaker 3: on their own to fight to fight global warming, and
Speaker 3: then we'll bring them all together and everybody will take
Speaker 3: a pledge and we'll go do it. And it was
Speaker 3: hugely successful, like out of one hundred and ninety five countries,
Speaker 3: one hundred and sixty eight have ratified it. And the
Speaker 3: US had had a pretty good plan as well. I
Speaker 3: think we were going to we were going to pledge
Speaker 3: that we would reduce our climate emissions something like twenty
Speaker 3: six twenty eight percent by twenty twenty five, which would
Speaker 3: be a huge significant contribution to fighting global warming. But
Speaker 3: we got pulled out of that one, I think in
Speaker 3: twenty seventeen.
Speaker 1: It's correct.
Speaker 3: So now the rest of the world seems to be
Speaker 3: carrying on without us, fighting climate change through their own
Speaker 3: decentralized plans. But that's where the United States stands right now.
Speaker 3: We have said we're not going to be taking part
Speaker 3: in that.
Speaker 1: That's right, But that's not to say that the citizens
Speaker 1: of the United States can't do everything they can on
Speaker 1: their own in their own lives by doing some of
Speaker 1: the following things. First and foremost, decreasing your carbon footprint.
Speaker 1: And I'm going to put out a call for us
Speaker 1: right now to go ahead and do one soonish on
Speaker 1: carbon offsets, because we're a few years into a few
Speaker 1: years down the road from when carbon offsets first became
Speaker 1: a thing and it's much more understood now.
Speaker 3: Didn't we do one on the I don't think so
Speaker 3: we've done them on some week Oh I know what
Speaker 3: it was. We talked about that kind of cap and
Speaker 3: trade scheme in the Acid Rain, right, Yeah.
Speaker 1: Yeah, we should do on a carbon offsets, so because
Speaker 1: they're much better understood now and then you it's pretty
Speaker 1: clear now like the best ways to go about doing
Speaker 1: something like that.
Speaker 3: Cool.
Speaker 1: So we're not going to cover it too much here,
Speaker 1: but you can buy carbon offsets look for future podcasts.
Speaker 1: But reducing your carbon footprint is the biggest thing. I mean,
Speaker 1: it's really simple. The stuff that generates the greenhouse gases,
Speaker 1: if we create less of it, that's a good thing.
Speaker 1: So you doing that on a local level can make
Speaker 1: a big impact of a lot of people are doing that.
Speaker 1: Using less energy obviously is just a sort of a
Speaker 1: no brainer. And this is just period in life, like
Speaker 1: just being less wasteful Yeah, whether it's water or your
Speaker 1: lights that you're turning on, or riding your bike instead
Speaker 1: of driving your car, like, all of that makes a
Speaker 1: big difference.
Speaker 3: But and with electricity in particular, one thing we always mentioned,
Speaker 3: always mentioned is that even though it seems like your
Speaker 3: light bulb is fine, it's getting its power most likely
Speaker 3: from burning coal.
Speaker 1: So is that electric car that you bought that's plug
Speaker 1: in for sure? Yeah, And your electric car is only
Speaker 1: as good as the energy that it's where it gets
Speaker 1: its energy from. Yeah, and we can that's a whole
Speaker 1: rabbit hole into itself hybrids and electric cars and how
Speaker 1: green they are. But the research I did today roundly
Speaker 1: says that in the end, a hybrid and an electric
Speaker 1: car is has a much smaller carbon footprint than a
Speaker 1: combustion engine. Sure, and I know about the batteries, and
Speaker 1: I know where they get the stuff. And this is
Speaker 1: considering all the costs that go into making these cars
Speaker 1: and what happens these cars over the years. There are
Speaker 1: a lot of smart people that put this all together,
Speaker 1: and it's still a better option than you know, a
Speaker 1: combustion gas engine. Right, But that's you know, I'm not
Speaker 1: here to say go out and get a hybrid or
Speaker 1: an electric car that's up to you.
Speaker 3: Well, that kind of raises one of the issues too,
Speaker 3: is like it can be expensive to be eco friendly,
Speaker 3: you know, which really sucks.
Speaker 1: But you can also save money though.
Speaker 3: Yeah, in the end, it's just the upfront costs or
Speaker 3: sometimes you know, greater which is the problem for you know,
Speaker 3: for people who can't afford like a more expensive car.
Speaker 3: Is the same thing with like food, you know, like
Speaker 3: the better your food, the more expensive it is, which
Speaker 3: sucks too.
Speaker 1: Yeah, but you can use less energy in your home
Speaker 1: and pay less of an energy bill.
Speaker 3: Yeah, no, No, there's plenty of things of other things
Speaker 3: you can do, Like it doesn't cost anything to recycle,
Speaker 3: you know.
Speaker 1: Yeah, exactly. And all this stuff like recycling, you think, well,
Speaker 1: I mean, I know that's good because there's no trash,
Speaker 1: but no trash means it's not going to that landfill
Speaker 1: and that means it's not releasing bad gases into the atmosphere.
Speaker 1: So yep, this all affects your carbon footprint. Recycling to
Speaker 1: how long you take a shower because you're using hot
Speaker 1: water and that water has to be heated somehow, yep.
Speaker 3: And I mean if this has become like an issue
Speaker 3: for you. Then then make it one of the things
Speaker 3: you vote on too, Like vote for people who care
Speaker 3: about this, and we'll make sure that that regulations are
Speaker 3: put into place that fight climate change. Yeah, it's a
Speaker 3: big one.
Speaker 1: There are politicians out there that care very much about this.
Speaker 3: Yeah. I remember after we pulled out of the Paris Accord,
Speaker 3: like a few cities said we're still doing this. We're
Speaker 3: going to stick to it regardless.
Speaker 1: Yeah.
Speaker 3: Yeah, you can do it. Your city can do it,
Speaker 3: other people can do it. The rest of the world
Speaker 3: doing it except for Nicaragua and Syria, I remember correctly,
Speaker 3: you remember, Yeah, if you want to know more about
Speaker 3: global warming, just step outside. And since I said that,
Speaker 3: it's time for listener mate.
Speaker 1: I'm going to call this so smart. I don't get it.
Speaker 1: But remember during the Buildering podcast we read a listener
Speaker 1: mail about We asked why you get sleepy when you
Speaker 1: read Yes, Well, we hit a chiropractor right in and
Speaker 1: he says he has the answer. And I don't know
Speaker 1: if this is right or not, but it certainly sounds
Speaker 1: good to me. So he's a chiropractor, and he studied
Speaker 1: functional neurology in school, and he said. The answer is
Speaker 1: that when you're reading, your eyes move laterally as they
Speaker 1: scan the page. This involves the lateral rectus muscle of
Speaker 1: the eye, which is innervated by the six cranial nerve
Speaker 1: the abductionins Hey, So the abduction's originates in the ponds
Speaker 1: and the brainstem. And what happens is that as you
Speaker 1: activate this nerve through reading, you also activate the ponto
Speaker 1: medullary reticular formation or PMRF. One job of the PRF
Speaker 1: is to dampen the sympathetic response of the intero medio
Speaker 1: lateral cell column in the spinal chord, which activates the
Speaker 1: sympathetic nervous system. In short reading, dampens the sympathetic response
Speaker 1: and relaxes you. Nice, I think that's the takeaway. I
Speaker 1: hope you find this interesting. I love your podcast. Use
Speaker 1: a lot of your knowledge to you teach for Trivia
Speaker 1: Tuesday that my coworkers and I play at my clinic.
Speaker 1: And that is from doctor Michael Hilton in good old Washington, DC.
Speaker 1: Nice or the district.
Speaker 3: Thanks doctor Michael, the chiropractor from DC.
Speaker 1: That's right.
Speaker 3: If you want to get in touch with us, like
Speaker 3: doctor Michael did, you can tweet to us at Josh
Speaker 3: M Clark or s YSK podcast. Both me and Chucker
Speaker 3: on Facebook, and you can go to our official page
Speaker 3: at Facebook dot com slash stuff you Should Know. You
Speaker 3: can send us an email of the Stuff podcast at
Speaker 3: house stuffworks dot com and as always, joined us at
Speaker 3: our home on the web, Stuff you Should Know dot com.
Speaker 2: For more on this and thats of other topics, visit
Speaker 2: HowStuffWorks dot com.
Speaker 3: M h m hmm