Speaker 1: Welcome to Stuff to Blow Your Mind from how Stuff
Speaker 1: Works dot Com. Hey you, wasn't it stuff to blow
Speaker 1: your mind? My name is Robert Lamb and I am
Speaker 1: Christian Sega. You know, I think we live all of
Speaker 1: our lives and the knowledge and or in the denial
Speaker 1: of imperments. We know that we're not going to live forever.
Speaker 1: That people we love, the people we hate, most of
Speaker 1: the things we hold dear will simply fade away. And
Speaker 1: at the same time we can be so very resistant
Speaker 1: to change and the idea of change, we wind up
Speaker 1: taking certain things for granted, even the very planet that
Speaker 1: we live on. To invoke the Goldilocks principle, our planet
Speaker 1: is just right for life. We've got the right ingredients,
Speaker 1: the right crusts, the right temperature, the right moon, the
Speaker 1: right star, the right core, the just the right celestial neighbors.
Speaker 1: We've largely lucked out when it comes to near Earth
Speaker 1: objects in five major distinction events. Later here we are
Speaker 1: thriving within and in some cases beyond the portion of
Speaker 1: the Earth's atmosphere and climate that we evolve to thrive in.
Speaker 1: But when will it all end? When will this place
Speaker 1: become uninhabitable to us? Some of the threats are so
Speaker 1: distant that they're almost impossible to really weigh. Will we
Speaker 1: even be us when our species encounters them? Others, however,
Speaker 1: are far more pressing. Yeah, So I'm going to try
Speaker 1: to give you all an example. I'm gonna take this
Speaker 1: from the personal to the macro. Okay, yesterday I had
Speaker 1: to go to a retirement planner. I didn't have to.
Speaker 1: I chose to um a human or a website. It
Speaker 1: was a huge I did the website first, and then
Speaker 1: they said, you might want to talk to a human
Speaker 1: about this, and so I went, I had a meeting.
Speaker 1: I sat down, we like looked at forms and stuff
Speaker 1: like that. But you know, it's not I'm forty. It's
Speaker 1: not the kind of thing that I've really spent a
Speaker 1: lot of time thinking about other than just having jobs
Speaker 1: that have, for one case, building up right. Uh, And
Speaker 1: I just just really, you know, haven't thought in a
Speaker 1: future oriented way like that before. And then immediately after that,
Speaker 1: I came home and I started to research for this episode,
Speaker 1: which is essentially about planning for global annihilation, right for
Speaker 1: for getting ready for the world, for Earth specifically to
Speaker 1: be uninhabitable for us as human beings. Well and hopefully.
Speaker 1: I mean the optimistic spin on that is preventing these
Speaker 1: the events and preventing the kind of cascading effects that
Speaker 1: could leave the earth uninhabitable. Yeah, but as we get
Speaker 1: as we will get into some of them are inevitable
Speaker 1: and there's literally nothing we can do about them. But
Speaker 1: those are luckily billions of years away. Yeah, some of
Speaker 1: these things are just so far off it's pointless to
Speaker 1: worry about them. But some of them are worth worrying about,
Speaker 1: and we're going to spend some time with those as well.
Speaker 1: You know what's kind of interesting is in your intro
Speaker 1: that you presented just now, you touched on the very
Speaker 1: first topic that you and I ever worked on together,
Speaker 1: which is the Goldilocks prince bole. Do you remember I
Speaker 1: wrote a script for a brain Stuff episode like four
Speaker 1: years ago that you performed, and it was you and
Speaker 1: Kristen con and it was about the gold lux principle.
Speaker 1: And then uh, then the stuff about mass extinction. My
Speaker 1: first official episode as a co host of Stuff to
Speaker 1: Blow Your Mind was about mass extinction. So this this
Speaker 1: is interesting. Yeah, that that one was interesting because I
Speaker 1: remember that the topic was great. Uh and yet even
Speaker 1: though you know, I had plenty of interactions with with
Speaker 1: Congre previously. That was when I got to realize, oh,
Speaker 1: we have no on air chemistry to get at all. Well,
Speaker 1: that was actually that That was sort of like along
Speaker 1: the lines of what we were trying to do was
Speaker 1: we were trying to test out all the various people
Speaker 1: who did on screen stuff to see who did have
Speaker 1: chemistry yea yeah. And while we were filming that, I
Speaker 1: was like, I can I can tell we don't really
Speaker 1: have we don't have a lot of it. I don't know.
Speaker 1: People can go watch it and judge for themselves. It's
Speaker 1: out there and the content is still good. It is yeah.
Speaker 1: Uh so let's yeah, and this episode we're going to
Speaker 1: discuss some long term concerns, some short term concerns regarding
Speaker 1: the habitability of the planet Earth, as well as some
Speaker 1: sort of random concerns thrown in there. Uh. I guess
Speaker 1: you can sort of think about it in terms of
Speaker 1: a really complex board game, right where you have you
Speaker 1: have sort of the early game uh opponents or early
Speaker 1: game threats you have to deal with. You have the
Speaker 1: in game stuff, you know, the real doom counter type scenarios,
Speaker 1: and then you just have random events that may pop
Speaker 1: up and just in the game. Yeah, you're using a
Speaker 1: lot of Arkham asylum phraseology here. I like it. I
Speaker 1: like it. Uh yeah. And and also, to be clear,
Speaker 1: the reason why I was really interested in covering this, uh,
Speaker 1: even though we somehow ended up pairing this together with
Speaker 1: zoophilia on the same day as topics that we're going
Speaker 1: to discuss, it's actually because I'm working on this sci
Speaker 1: fi horror story and I want it to be about
Speaker 1: trans humans returning to an uninhabitab Earth. As I started
Speaker 1: thinking to myself, like when will Earth be uninhabitable and
Speaker 1: what will it look like? Yeah? Yeah, I mean this
Speaker 1: is a This is a common trope in in science fiction,
Speaker 1: the idea of of the world becoming poisoned of humans
Speaker 1: of course moving beyond the Earth and then coming back
Speaker 1: to it. Yeah, and in some cases the Earth is gone. Um,
Speaker 1: if I remember correctly, in the in the Dune books,
Speaker 1: it's reference that the original terror, the original Earth no
Speaker 1: longer exists. Is that right? I didn't even know that
Speaker 1: they acknowledged any connection to actual like humanity. Okay, yeah, well,
Speaker 1: the like the Tradees are supposed to be um descendants
Speaker 1: of the Greeks, is that right, But but I believe
Speaker 1: it's it's what God Emperor of Dune. In one of
Speaker 1: the many lectures that the title character gives, he refers
Speaker 1: to the original Earth and how it no longer exists.
Speaker 1: It may be a reference elsewhere in the in the
Speaker 1: saga as well. But yeah, this episode is kind of like,
Speaker 1: how do we to what extent can is that unavoidable?
Speaker 1: The eventuality of Earth being gone or Earth being just
Speaker 1: there but but nothing that we could live upon, And
Speaker 1: what can we do about especially some of these random
Speaker 1: and short term threats to the habitability of Earth. Now
Speaker 1: one of the long term effects this is not something
Speaker 1: we need to worry about tomorrow or technically in the
Speaker 1: next hundred years, but it is going to be a concern.
Speaker 1: It's probably one of the first things most people think of, right,
Speaker 1: is the death of the Sun. That's right, like the
Speaker 1: Sun just eventually turning into a red giant and swallowing
Speaker 1: the planet Earth. Yeah. Again, I would say, don't don't
Speaker 1: lose any sleep over this, but it does exists as
Speaker 1: the like the late game game ending Doom counter situation totally,
Speaker 1: this is the point at which the game has to end,
Speaker 1: or may have to end. Well, we'll get into some
Speaker 1: of that presently. So I like to think of the
Speaker 1: Sun is kind of a dot com erab business. It's
Speaker 1: running on a huge influx of funding, but destined to
Speaker 1: eventually burn out. Eventually the money is gonna gonna go away,
Speaker 1: Eventually the energy is going to go away. So our
Speaker 1: son has been going strong though as a business, as
Speaker 1: a star, as the center of our solar system for
Speaker 1: four point five billion years, and by most estimates it
Speaker 1: has it has another five billion years left in the tank.
Speaker 1: So it's got a lot of pivoting left to do. Yeah. Well, no,
Speaker 1: well the pivots are key, because the pivots are or
Speaker 1: what what we're gonna have to worry about. So when
Speaker 1: the core runs out of hydrogen fuel, it's going to
Speaker 1: contract under the weight of gravity. Uh So again, think
Speaker 1: of like a bloated business that's suddenly the money is
Speaker 1: not there to support it and it has to downsize. Um,
Speaker 1: this is where the metaphor kind of becomes more difficult
Speaker 1: to engage here, because, uh, some hydrogen infusion is still
Speaker 1: gonna occur in the upper layers at this point, and
Speaker 1: is the depleted core contracts, it heats up and this
Speaker 1: it's up the upper layers of the Sun, causing them
Speaker 1: to expand. As the outer layers expand, the radius of
Speaker 1: the Sun will increase and it will become a red giant. Now,
Speaker 1: the radius of the red giant Sun would be a
Speaker 1: hundred times what it is now, lying just beyond the
Speaker 1: Earth's orbit. Some scientists have estimated that this would vaporize
Speaker 1: our planet, but there's also a good chance that it
Speaker 1: would push Earth in its moon outward after consuming mercury
Speaker 1: and venus. Now, obviously there's there's again nothing to lose
Speaker 1: sleep over here. Um, you know, five billion years, that's
Speaker 1: longer than the Earth has existed, and the span of
Speaker 1: the human species is virtually nothing in that well of time.
Speaker 1: And of course there's a lot that can and will
Speaker 1: happen before the Sun turns into a red giant. Long
Speaker 1: before this happens, say in a mirror one point two
Speaker 1: billion years, the Earth will grow hot enough to boil
Speaker 1: the way our oceans. And then, after all this takes
Speaker 1: place after the red giant phase, in nine point five
Speaker 1: billion years, the Sun will collapse into a white dwarf
Speaker 1: and the remaining dead world will continue to orbit around it. Eventually,
Speaker 1: the white dwarf will go dark, and there'll be this
Speaker 1: inevitable collision between it and another black dwarf, and this
Speaker 1: will blast apart the remnants of our solar system. This
Speaker 1: according to an excellent article in Forbes, of all places,
Speaker 1: even Ethan seagulls how our solar system will end in
Speaker 1: the far future. I actually read the same piece, and Uh,
Speaker 1: Siegell says, when our son was newborn, this is this
Speaker 1: is good to get some perspective on it. It only
Speaker 1: had of the power that it has right now. But
Speaker 1: the properties of planet Earth, the flora, the fauna, the ocean,
Speaker 1: the atmosphere, all of that stuff has allowed us to
Speaker 1: adapt right Also, the astrophysicist Robert Smith, not to be
Speaker 1: confused with the frontman of cure Uh, says even just
Speaker 1: the aging of the Sun will accelerate global warming to
Speaker 1: a point where Earth's water just simply evaporates, as you
Speaker 1: mentioned earlier, so there's not a whole lot we can
Speaker 1: do about that. The atmosphere will be laden with water
Speaker 1: vapor at that point, Uh, And it's going to turn
Speaker 1: out like the water vapor will act like a greenhouse gas,
Speaker 1: which we're obviously going to come back to later. In
Speaker 1: this episode, the oceans will boil dry. But all right,
Speaker 1: let's think really cosmic here for a second. Okay, let's
Speaker 1: like zoom out. Let's pretend like we're Galactus from from
Speaker 1: Fantastic four Comics or something here. Okay, what if we
Speaker 1: could harness comets and asteroids so they gravitationally slingshot past Earth,
Speaker 1: but move us into a wider orbit away from the Sun.
Speaker 1: That might be possible in the future. Um, and I
Speaker 1: believe on the Kardaship scale, that's like one of the
Speaker 1: sort of ladder parts of the scale. Rights, if you
Speaker 1: can harbor harness cosmic entities, well, I mean, first of all,
Speaker 1: if you can harness all the power of the planet,
Speaker 1: and then if you can harness all the power of
Speaker 1: the Solar System. So yeah, just at that level, he
Speaker 1: would consivably have the ability to to move the planet
Speaker 1: around to find a new orbit for it in some
Speaker 1: of the the more extreme cases. You know, I've seen
Speaker 1: it argue that, you know, you could take the planet
Speaker 1: and move it beyond the Solar System. Certainly, when you
Speaker 1: get into those upper levels of K three and K four, Uh,
Speaker 1: you're talking about godlike power, where on one level it
Speaker 1: becomes easy to say, well, of course we could do
Speaker 1: this because of the amount of power that we would have.
Speaker 1: And then on the other you have you have to say,
Speaker 1: what would we be if we had that much power,
Speaker 1: if we had the power to harness uh all the
Speaker 1: power of a solar system or or or you know,
Speaker 1: scales beyond that, then what would what would our values be?
Speaker 1: What would we need? Would we care about moving the Earth?
Speaker 1: We'd just be like, well, let it burn. We've got
Speaker 1: these crazy spaceships now. Well, another theoretical way to move
Speaker 1: the Earth is to build a planetary sunshade. That would
Speaker 1: have a similar effect, and it would move it out
Speaker 1: into a further orbit. But hey, guess what, even if
Speaker 1: we can do that, the red giant phase of the
Speaker 1: sun is it's gonna get earth like. Even if we
Speaker 1: can move it far enough out that we can somehow
Speaker 1: use it to mitigate climate change, for instance, it's it's
Speaker 1: not gonna matter that red giant is eventually going to
Speaker 1: swallow us. Well, I'm not not by all. It depends
Speaker 1: on how far out I guess you move it. Yeah,
Speaker 1: but even if we escape, what's the world look like afterward?
Speaker 1: As we're slouching towards extinction. Okay, so astrobiologist Jack O'Malley
Speaker 1: James of Cornell University actually sketched out a sequence of
Speaker 1: extinctions over the course of four billion years. So here
Speaker 1: we go, all right, at five hundred million years from now,
Speaker 1: from right now, that's when the sun is going to
Speaker 1: start getting hotter and c O two will be sucked
Speaker 1: out of the Earth's atmosphere. That's gonna make all of
Speaker 1: the plants die off because they can't photosynthesize. Following that,
Speaker 1: large vertebrates will go, then the small ones because there's
Speaker 1: no plants for them to eat. Then the only remaining
Speaker 1: animals will be marine invertebrates along with microbes. Maybe some
Speaker 1: insects that can eat dead plants will still be around,
Speaker 1: but mostly the only creature, uh, the only creatures that
Speaker 1: don't need to eat plants are gonna be able to
Speaker 1: survive this. The last non microscopic remaining animals will probably
Speaker 1: be those tube worms around the deep sea hydrothermal vents.
Speaker 1: Then at one billion years out from now, that's when
Speaker 1: the oceans start to boil. Uh. And then if that
Speaker 1: doesn't kill the microbes, the actual boiling of the oceans,
Speaker 1: the CEO two levels eventually will fall so low that
Speaker 1: even microbial photosynthesis will end. Okay, then at seven point
Speaker 1: five billion years out, that's when we're talking about the
Speaker 1: Red Giant engulfing Earth and the Moon. But what if
Speaker 1: Jupiter's moon tighten suddenly became warm enough for life to evolve.
Speaker 1: So maybe that's the next place where there's going to
Speaker 1: be a habitable society. Well, it comes back around to
Speaker 1: the the frequent argument you see from from various astrophysicists
Speaker 1: and futurists, and that's just the the long long term
Speaker 1: survival of the human race depends on us UH expanding
Speaker 1: beyond Earth absolutely. Now, some additional concerns for the future
Speaker 1: in any case of the far future. One is magnetosphere loss.
Speaker 1: So Earth's magnetosphere is essentially a magnetic bubble that protects
Speaker 1: the Earth from charge particles and plasma Earth's solid intercore
Speaker 1: and liquid outer core. This generates the field. Okay, it
Speaker 1: generates the magnetosphere, and according to the dynamo theory, differences
Speaker 1: in temperature and composition in the two core regions drive
Speaker 1: this powerful dynamo UH, emitting Earth's protective electromagnetic field. Now,
Speaker 1: some scientists theorized in about two to three billion years,
Speaker 1: the dynamo MD half, leading to the decay of the magnetosphere.
Speaker 1: And remember again how essential this field is. It's absence
Speaker 1: on planets such as Mars make colonization a challenge. Like
Speaker 1: it's hard to imagine life being being able to to
Speaker 1: really take a firm um hold of a planet that
Speaker 1: does not have a magnetosphere in place to shield life. Yeah,
Speaker 1: protects us from so many of the hazards of space.
Speaker 1: It's one of the key aspects of the Goldilocks principle,
Speaker 1: you know, one of the things that makes this planet
Speaker 1: just right. And it's uh, it can be kind of
Speaker 1: frightening or sobering to think about the fact that this
Speaker 1: is not something that will last forever. But what about
Speaker 1: the Moon. I've seen a lot of people talk about
Speaker 1: the moon is being like, well, if we could go
Speaker 1: anywhere if climate change gets too bad, let's just go
Speaker 1: to the Moon. Well, um, yeah, that well, the Moon
Speaker 1: is probably not a great option for for living on either. Uh.
Speaker 1: But but it does play into another long term concern,
Speaker 1: and that has to do with the perturbation effects. So
Speaker 1: our large moon ensures climate stability by minimizing changes in
Speaker 1: planetary tilt. If our planet didn't have a tilt, it
Speaker 1: wouldn't have seasons. Likewise, a severe tilt would result in
Speaker 1: extreme seasons. As we've discussed on the show before, the
Speaker 1: Moon is drifting away from Earth. Eventually, given you know,
Speaker 1: enough time, it will be just far enough away to
Speaker 1: make a total solar eclipse impossible. Yeah, I've actually got
Speaker 1: some stats on that the Moon is moving away from
Speaker 1: us at three point seven eight centimeters a year. Between
Speaker 1: one point five and four point five billion years from
Speaker 1: now is when it's going to stop stabilizing our tilt. Yeah.
Speaker 1: The so the Moon pulls on the Earth, and the
Speaker 1: Earth orbits the Sun, resulting in a torque that causes
Speaker 1: the Moon to move a little bit farther away from
Speaker 1: the Earth and slow the planet's rotation. Rotation slows by
Speaker 1: one point four milliseconds per century. But in fifty billion
Speaker 1: years time, the Moon will orbit in forties, you know,
Speaker 1: at a rate of forty seven days as opposed to
Speaker 1: the twenty seven point three days we know today, and
Speaker 1: the twenty four hour Earth day will be forty seven
Speaker 1: days long, and the Moon and Earth will then become
Speaker 1: tidally locked as well. Luckily, we've already established that well
Speaker 1: before that fifty billion year mark, the Sun is gonna
Speaker 1: eat both of them, so it doesn't really matter. Yeah,
Speaker 1: and so the idea here is that, uh, once the
Speaker 1: stabilizing of the Earth's tilt stops, the poles are gonna
Speaker 1: tip to a point where like the North and South
Speaker 1: poles are going to be where the equator would have been.
Speaker 1: And this is going to cause obviously extraordinary climactic effects.
Speaker 1: But it goes back to what we were talking about earlier.
Speaker 1: I mean, we have just the right moon for life
Speaker 1: to be able to thrive here on Earth. So how
Speaker 1: does this explain Transformers five? Then? Because in that movie,
Speaker 1: the planet Cybertron just parks itself right next to Earth
Speaker 1: and I think destroys the Moon. So I mean, clearly
Speaker 1: they thought through the science on them. I assume they
Speaker 1: brought um just being silly here. Obviously those don't make
Speaker 1: a like a sense. But when this whole thing happens
Speaker 1: with the tilt, some regions of the planet and it
Speaker 1: will still be protected by the Sun, So it would
Speaker 1: be possible to still live on the planet after this
Speaker 1: perturbation effect. So h What would be bad though, is
Speaker 1: that some parts would dip to below a hundred degrees
Speaker 1: celsius for part of the year. The only thing that
Speaker 1: would be able to survive would be microbes inside these
Speaker 1: cold trap caves. And then even two point two billion
Speaker 1: years after that, those caves then will suddenly become too hot.
Speaker 1: So yeah, it's no win scenario. You have to This
Speaker 1: is when humans have to start living in the big pyramids.
Speaker 1: The last re doubt of William Hope Hodgens The Night Lands.
Speaker 1: Maybe that's what that hidden vault inside the pyramid was
Speaker 1: that they just found recently. It's it's specifically designed for
Speaker 1: when the moon's moon stops affecting her tilt. I do
Speaker 1: recommend any anyone who is interested in sort of uninhabitable
Speaker 1: earth sci fi. William Hope Hodgins The Night Lands is
Speaker 1: fabulous of kind of challenging to read because it depicts
Speaker 1: uh an age in which humans will have to live
Speaker 1: in these artificial structures UH on a dark earth like
Speaker 1: everything else is just cold and dark, but they're I
Speaker 1: believe they're using thermo thermal energy to to maintain themselves.
Speaker 1: In the book, Hodge and stuff is just fascinating, especially
Speaker 1: when you consider the era that he lived and how
Speaker 1: far ahead. He was thinking, why don't we take a
Speaker 1: break and then we come back. We can talk about
Speaker 1: some just random concerns, things that we can't particularly track
Speaker 1: for how they might end life on Earth. Thank, alright,
Speaker 1: we're back. So this first one is is a major threat.
Speaker 1: Uh and it is a proven major threat to life
Speaker 1: on Earth. We're talking about near Earth objects or ane os,
Speaker 1: So impact events are possible factors in three out of
Speaker 1: five major extinction events here on Earth. Space collisions occur
Speaker 1: all the time, and most of them don't make too
Speaker 1: much noise, or at least those that have occurred during
Speaker 1: human history haven't. That's because in space no one can
Speaker 1: hear you scream. Well, of course, the thing is Earth
Speaker 1: is in space too, so we're counting the Earth colliding
Speaker 1: with things, we're accounting the moon called lighting with things, etcetera.
Speaker 1: But even when they do make noise, we've been very lucky.
Speaker 1: For instance, consider Night to Munguska event, which hit a
Speaker 1: sparsely populated corner of Siberia rather than a major population center,
Speaker 1: and it's it's been pointed out that a mere four
Speaker 1: hours of planetary rotation would have placed the bull's eye
Speaker 1: on densely populated St. Petersburg instead, So instead of having
Speaker 1: this just this devastating crater in this blast you know,
Speaker 1: heard over vast distances, instead of it occurring in the
Speaker 1: middle of nowhere, what if it had occurred in in St. Petersburg?
Speaker 1: What have it occurred in a major center of human population.
Speaker 1: And you like to think, like in these big budget
Speaker 1: blockbuster disaster movies that like we'll be able to chart
Speaker 1: the course of these things, will know that when they're coming,
Speaker 1: and we'll evacuate cities. Right, But well, I mean this
Speaker 1: is this is this is where he gets into something
Speaker 1: I've talked about before, Like this is one of those
Speaker 1: one of the few areas where where you can conceivably
Speaker 1: save the world. Um, because the odds are that a
Speaker 1: large INEO will come into play in the future and
Speaker 1: humans will hopefully be in the technological and cultural position
Speaker 1: to identify it, to track it and mitigate the situation.
Speaker 1: There are a number of different um methods that have
Speaker 1: been proposed for deflecting an incoming INEO, and they range
Speaker 1: from you know, blowing it up to just sort of
Speaker 1: nudging it out of the way, to you know, harvesting it,
Speaker 1: et cetera. You send Bruce Willis and Steve BUSHEMI up there, Uh, Peter,
Speaker 1: storm are and problem solved. Well, hopefully, I think we're
Speaker 1: getting to the stage we realize we only need to
Speaker 1: send UM. But yeah, this is one of those few
Speaker 1: areas where the work of NASA and other space agencies
Speaker 1: their work to track ineos and and and eventually mitigate them.
Speaker 1: This is one of the few areas where concentrated human
Speaker 1: efforts can actually save the world. And of particular interest
Speaker 1: here are asteroids that are six point two miles or
Speaker 1: ten kilometers in diameter or larger. The These are extinction
Speaker 1: class ineos. So here's some stats that I found on this.
Speaker 1: A third of those thousand mile wide asteroids that are
Speaker 1: hurtling across Earth's orbital path will eventually strike us. But luckily,
Speaker 1: the rate of which that they will strike us is
Speaker 1: one in every three hundred thousand years. Now. For instance,
Speaker 1: similar to the Tunguska event in nine, a small one
Speaker 1: way smaller than that crossed our orbit just six hours
Speaker 1: after Earth had passed through. Uh. This thing had the
Speaker 1: kinetic impact force equivalent to a thousand nuclear bombs. So
Speaker 1: we've talked before, UH, specifically in our rods from God
Speaker 1: episode about dropping basically like metal telephone polls from outer
Speaker 1: space as weapons. Uh, the impact, just the basic kinetic
Speaker 1: impact of something from outer space hitting the planet is considerable.
Speaker 1: So something that small would be the equivalent of a
Speaker 1: thousand US. Yeah. I remember in our Inner Interplanetary War
Speaker 1: episode we talked about that a bit like having having
Speaker 1: orbital superiority over a planet. It gives you just tremendous
Speaker 1: power without even having any explosives or nuclear devices, just
Speaker 1: the ability to drop things if you have those things
Speaker 1: with you. I think we we concluded in that episode,
Speaker 1: if you have a ship that is capable of interplanetary travel,
Speaker 1: that alone is enough of a weapon to destroy an
Speaker 1: entire planet. Yeah, just by crashing it into it. Yeah,
Speaker 1: it's not like Star Trek where the Enterprise like just
Speaker 1: like you know, like a like lands in the lake
Speaker 1: or whatever. Now, another area to concern getting away from
Speaker 1: d e O s um it comes. It gets downd
Speaker 1: to the issue of Near Earth supernova. So this is
Speaker 1: another concern that's even more insidious in some ways because
Speaker 1: there's not much of a way to stop them. Other
Speaker 1: other cosmic threats include gamma ray bursts caused by the
Speaker 1: birth of a black hole or the collusion of two
Speaker 1: neutron stars. It's been estimated did a ten second burst
Speaker 1: originating within six thousand light years could deplete up to
Speaker 1: half the planets ozone layer, and such an event might
Speaker 1: have played in the Ordovician mass extinction. Okay, Well, another
Speaker 1: figure that I read in the various articles that we
Speaker 1: looked up for this Supposedly the Andromeda Galaxy is on
Speaker 1: a multi billion year collision course with the Milky Way
Speaker 1: as well. So not only are we worrying about the planet,
Speaker 1: but our entire galaxy is in trouble too. Yeah. Yeah, things,
Speaker 1: things fall apart, and things have a way of colliding
Speaker 1: together as well. But all of this stuff is either
Speaker 1: random or a long way out, right, Like we've established,
Speaker 1: like the asteroids, there's a pretty low percentage chance or
Speaker 1: hopefully we'll be able to track it. And and that's
Speaker 1: not random, but but it's it's it's not something that
Speaker 1: like we know for sure is going to happen the
Speaker 1: Sun we know for sure, that's super far away. Yeah,
Speaker 1: Like the long term issues are long term issues that
Speaker 1: made be unavoidable, and we can't lose much sleep as
Speaker 1: far as the random issues go. I do believe there
Speaker 1: is a real need to focus on ineos, and I
Speaker 1: think that like basic planetary protection is essential there. But
Speaker 1: still it's the kind of thing where, yes, someone could
Speaker 1: make an argument for well, we'll just let the next
Speaker 1: generation figure that out. You know, you remember when we
Speaker 1: were kids in the eighties and the Reggae administration developed
Speaker 1: the Star Wars system. My first reaction was I confused
Speaker 1: it with the movie Star Wars. My second was that
Speaker 1: I assumed that it was about asteroids, that it was
Speaker 1: the whole defense system was designed to protect us from asteroids.
Speaker 1: Turns out, no, not at all, to perfect us from us. Yes,
Speaker 1: it turns out, and we'll get to that threat. So
Speaker 1: what about shorter term concerns, Like, let's narrow this down right,
Speaker 1: like when are we going to have to get off Earth? Basically?
Speaker 1: So here's some good news. Uh, Mammal species tend to
Speaker 1: only last about a million years on average anyway, So
Speaker 1: we as human beings have already had two hundred thousand years,
Speaker 1: So we've got eight hundred thousand years left. That's pretty good, right,
Speaker 1: That's more than we've already had. So yeah, well that
Speaker 1: of course is not counting in counting on the various
Speaker 1: ways that we are working at our own destruction exactly. Uh.
Speaker 1: Stephen Hawking, though recently he actually gave an interview in
Speaker 1: the last couple of years talking about this stuff. He
Speaker 1: is a proponent of us freeing ourselves from other Earth,
Speaker 1: as he calls it. And he says, quote, it will
Speaker 1: be difficult enough to avoid disaster on planet Earth in
Speaker 1: the next hundred years, let alone the next thousand or million.
Speaker 1: All right, So we all of a sudden went from
Speaker 1: like billions of years to the next hundred years as
Speaker 1: being like potential problem. And he says, this is either
Speaker 1: nuclear weapons or the aging sun acceleration and and this
Speaker 1: isn't the Sun swallowing the Earth. We're talking about global
Speaker 1: warming here. And as we've already discussed, Hawking says, if
Speaker 1: man doesn't make the planet uninhabitable or the sun, then
Speaker 1: we're going to encounter a supernova or an asteroid or
Speaker 1: even a black hole. We didn't even touch on black holes.
Speaker 1: So all right, let's talk about it. Climate change. Some
Speaker 1: starter facts here. I didn't know this. Eighteen eight is
Speaker 1: when scientists first started keeping track of global temperature logs.
Speaker 1: Last year two thousand sixteen. We're recording this in two
Speaker 1: thousand seventeen. Last year was the hottest year the world
Speaker 1: has seen since scientists started recording global temperature logs. Now. Overall,
Speaker 1: the planet has warmed two point three degrees fahrenheit or
Speaker 1: one point to six degrees celsius in that time. Let's
Speaker 1: try to keep those numbers in mind as like a
Speaker 1: point of perspective as we're looking towards the future. And
Speaker 1: I want to talk briefly to as we get into
Speaker 1: this about climate change. As I guess I would define
Speaker 1: it as like a rhetorical communication problem. Is this article
Speaker 1: in the Atlantic where Robinson Meyer argues there's three shifts
Speaker 1: that are going on right now, primarily here in the USA,
Speaker 1: but globally as well with climate change that make it
Speaker 1: hard to communicate. The first is that the consequences of
Speaker 1: climate change are severe and devastating. We've got a lot
Speaker 1: of examples that we've given so many examples on this
Speaker 1: show before. Uh we're talking about mega droughts, We're talking
Speaker 1: about sweltering summers, or the destruction of the Great Barrier reef,
Speaker 1: among others. Secondly, some people are trying to address climate
Speaker 1: change with things like solar and wind as energy or
Speaker 1: say electric cars as a way to attempt to stabilize
Speaker 1: the amount of carbon that's released in the atmosphere. But
Speaker 1: we have to acknowledge that, as of this recording, the
Speaker 1: country that Robert and I live in, the United States
Speaker 1: of America is undermining climate policy because we've abandoned the
Speaker 1: Paris Agreement. Yeah, there's a there's an episode that Joe
Speaker 1: and I recorded few months back back titled Science Communication Breakdown.
Speaker 1: And now we get into into this topic a fair amount,
Speaker 1: like getting into the idea of like, Okay, we have
Speaker 1: we we have the science of climate change, and yet
Speaker 1: we have a large portion of the population that that
Speaker 1: denies it or or is an opposition to it. Why
Speaker 1: does that occur? Why has this topic become politicized when
Speaker 1: it is a matter of scientific consensus. So I would
Speaker 1: I would refer listeners back to that episode if if
Speaker 1: you want a more like in depth tackling of that
Speaker 1: of that issue. Yeah, I think so, what we're facing
Speaker 1: here are two opposed visions of the future, right, and
Speaker 1: neither are really scientific in nature. One is economic, one
Speaker 1: is political in there in opposition to one another. So
Speaker 1: all of this leads us to this article that actually,
Speaker 1: you know, we talked at the beginning about the impetus
Speaker 1: for doing this episode. I was unaware of this, but
Speaker 1: it just came out this July in New York magazine.
Speaker 1: It was written by David Wallace Wells, and the articles
Speaker 1: type was the Uninhabitable Earth, and in this he argued
Speaker 1: that parts of Earth will become uninhabitable by the end
Speaker 1: of this century. Many climate scientists and science communicators strongly
Speaker 1: disagreed with him on this, and they said that this
Speaker 1: was a doomsday scenario, it wasn't realistic, and that it
Speaker 1: wasn't supported by evidence. They also said that his article
Speaker 1: doesn't identify his sources either. Now I want to step
Speaker 1: back for a second. I read through his whole article
Speaker 1: and a number of rebuttals to his article. Okay, I'll
Speaker 1: provide my thoughts later, but he definitely cites sources, and
Speaker 1: he provides links to a lot of statistics that he
Speaker 1: uses throughout the piece. Now, either he added those after
Speaker 1: the criticism, or his detractors are exaggerating their complaints. Uh.
Speaker 1: I didn't fact check every one of his sources, but
Speaker 1: it looks like he at least attempted to provide some
Speaker 1: kind of logical evidence for his claims. Well basic Based
Speaker 1: on what I was looking at, it seems like a
Speaker 1: lot of the complaints were basically making the charge that
Speaker 1: you were you're presenting this a is U is a
Speaker 1: scare piece that you're and that that is not how
Speaker 1: one needs to communicate the topic. Uh. And and based
Speaker 1: on previous research for the Communicy Science Communication Breakdown episode,
Speaker 1: I mean, I I can agree with that, like that
Speaker 1: does not seem to necessarily be the way to reach
Speaker 1: new minds about the topic. Uh, it's just I mean,
Speaker 1: it could be useful, I guess as a rallying cry
Speaker 1: for people who are already convinced. And and maybe that's
Speaker 1: the prime purpose of the peace I mean, one has
Speaker 1: to take the readership into mind here, like where where
Speaker 1: was the article published? And who are the the intended
Speaker 1: readers of the piece? Yeah, so the article itself is
Speaker 1: problematic for climate scientists, and and you know, because of
Speaker 1: the reasons we outlined above, obviously, but also because they're
Speaker 1: trying to be very very careful about how they communicate
Speaker 1: climate change with the public. They want to make sure
Speaker 1: that the facts that are resented are absolutely indisputable. And
Speaker 1: they also have research that shows that we respond better
Speaker 1: to hopeful messages instead of fatalistic messages. So that's along
Speaker 1: the lines of I think what you and Joe covered
Speaker 1: in Communication Breakdown. This is my take on it. Okay,
Speaker 1: I would argue that climate change communicators they're facing a
Speaker 1: branding problem. And this is just from my experience working
Speaker 1: on this show and doing science communication. There's so much
Speaker 1: evidence for climate change that we've encountered just while we've
Speaker 1: been researching other topics on this show, not even intending
Speaker 1: to talk about climate show. Yeah, when we did our
Speaker 1: small Barred episode, it was all over the place. And
Speaker 1: there when we've talked tomorrow Heart about coral reef biology,
Speaker 1: it was all over there. It's it just it keeps
Speaker 1: coming up every time I'm presented with that evidence. It's
Speaker 1: even more convincing. Some people that just have a knee
Speaker 1: jerk response the minute they heard they hear this terminology
Speaker 1: climate change, right, they just assume that it's automatically disinformation
Speaker 1: for some reason. Now, if you just present the evidence
Speaker 1: of the impact, they seem to believe that, but you
Speaker 1: don't attach those terms to it. It's like, for some
Speaker 1: reason it has a branding problem in rhetoric. This is
Speaker 1: what might be called an ethos problem. There seems to
Speaker 1: be a negative connection between the terminology and the quality
Speaker 1: of its character. And that might be because of doomsayers
Speaker 1: like Wallace Wells, right, because of scare pieces like this,
Speaker 1: which which again I can see where a scare piece
Speaker 1: would be would be beneficial to people who are you
Speaker 1: know who who don't deny the scientific consensus, that that
Speaker 1: just needs something that maybe to is a rallying cry,
Speaker 1: you know, as a reminder of what's at stake. Um.
Speaker 1: You know, I don't think we should sugarcoat topics. But again,
Speaker 1: the argument is there that if you're looking to reach
Speaker 1: new minds, if you're looking to to connect with people
Speaker 1: who are in a state of denial or doubt, then
Speaker 1: this is not the best tactic. Well, let's go through
Speaker 1: his piece. Uh and well, I'm I've outlined his claims
Speaker 1: here along with the counter arguments against them. I do
Speaker 1: want to cite him specifically here. This is a quote
Speaker 1: from the article. He says. This article is the result
Speaker 1: of dozens of interviews in exchanges with climatologists and researchers
Speaker 1: in related fields, and reflects hundreds of scientific papers on
Speaker 1: the subject of climate change. Later on, he says, it
Speaker 1: is a portrait of our best understanding of where the
Speaker 1: planet is heading absent aggressive action. Again, my personal take
Speaker 1: on this, I read through the whole piece. I'll say
Speaker 1: that outside of the problems that we're going to outline
Speaker 1: with his evidence, the pros itself reads like a rant.
Speaker 1: So along the lines of like just saying like, oh,
Speaker 1: this seems like a scare piece, it sort of reads
Speaker 1: like that, it's it's difficult to understand it, and he
Speaker 1: bombards you with information in this way that just isn't persuasive,
Speaker 1: And I think that in and of itself is problematic
Speaker 1: if the goal is to change reader's minds. So he says,
Speaker 1: the likely warming expectation from a scenario is presented by
Speaker 1: the United Nations inter Governmental Panel on Climate Change, and
Speaker 1: this was in now. They say we're looking at somewhere
Speaker 1: between a two point six and a four point eight
Speaker 1: degrees celsiust shift by the time we reach one somewhere
Speaker 1: between that period of time. Now, I think it's worth
Speaker 1: noting that Wallace Wells argues the upper end of the
Speaker 1: probability curve actually runs as high as eight degrees. So
Speaker 1: he goes way higher than this. This study that he cites,
Speaker 1: they say highest is four point eight. He goes all
Speaker 1: the way up to eight degrees. That's way higher than
Speaker 1: their prediction the Paris Climate Accords. Just to give you,
Speaker 1: like again, like some perspective here. All they're trying to
Speaker 1: do is get us to the point where we only
Speaker 1: go up by two degrees in that period of time.
Speaker 1: So you see just how much of a difference there
Speaker 1: is in these seem like relatively small numbers, right, two
Speaker 1: for eight, But there's a lot. There's a lot there now.
Speaker 1: Wallace Wells also starts by saying that the sea level
Speaker 1: rise isn't the worst of our concerns with global warming.
Speaker 1: This is because there there's a lot of attention paid
Speaker 1: to sea level rise earlier in this year in scientific articles.
Speaker 1: He says, yes, cities will drown, but other parts of
Speaker 1: the world will become uninhabitable by the end of the century. Quote,
Speaker 1: most of the scientists I spoke with assume we're gonna
Speaker 1: lose Miami and Bangladesh within the century, even if we
Speaker 1: stop burning fossil fuels within the next decade. He also
Speaker 1: says that cities like Karachi and Kolkata would be so
Speaker 1: hot that they would be close to inhabitable, and he
Speaker 1: wonders if this is why we have this obsession with
Speaker 1: apocalyptic fiction, right all the zombie movies or Mad Max
Speaker 1: movies and the world scenarios. He says, maybe this is
Speaker 1: a collective result of displaced climate anxiety. Okay, I know
Speaker 1: we're hitting you with a lot of heavy stuff. So
Speaker 1: here's a fun aside. I'm doing the research on this yesterday,
Speaker 1: and I've been listening to a lot of led Zeppelin
Speaker 1: in the last week because I saw that Thor Ragnarok
Speaker 1: movie and they play immigrant song and yeah, yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: it's it's it's prime. So I'm listening to led Zeppelin
Speaker 1: and while I'm prepping these notes here when the levy
Speaker 1: breaks comes on. That was that was pretty eerie, like
Speaker 1: worrying about flooding and all that. Uh, and then like
Speaker 1: the soundtrack just kicked in there. All right. Back to
Speaker 1: the study, he also says the world's perma frost is
Speaker 1: going to send its methane into our atmosphere as it melts,
Speaker 1: and that is going to accelerate the planet's warming in
Speaker 1: the in just the next couple of decades to come.
Speaker 1: He uses the thawing of the ground around this fall
Speaker 1: barred vault as an example. We talked about this in
Speaker 1: our small part example. Now he also says that perma
Speaker 1: frost contains one point eight trillion tons of carbon. That
Speaker 1: is more than twice as much as what is currently
Speaker 1: suspended in Earth's atmosphere. Okay, so that's his argument about
Speaker 1: the perma frost. His detractors say, alright, yes, perma frost
Speaker 1: will emit methane, and yes, methane is a potent greenhouse gas,
Speaker 1: but scientists don't actually think that that much is going
Speaker 1: to escape in this century. There was a study that
Speaker 1: was published in twenty that found that perma frost melt
Speaker 1: would only release about five to fift pent of its carbon,
Speaker 1: and that that would be in the form of carbon
Speaker 1: dioxide and not methane. So that's substantial. It's still something
Speaker 1: we need to worry about. It's not as dire. Wallace
Speaker 1: Wells says, Actually, methane is thirty four times as powerful
Speaker 1: as c O two, so we should keep that in mind.
Speaker 1: Another example that he brings up in his piece. Do
Speaker 1: you remember earlier this year when the um there was
Speaker 1: that crack in the ice shelf. I think it started
Speaker 1: in May and then it broke off and calved off
Speaker 1: into this like massive iceberg. He used that as an
Speaker 1: example as well, along the lines of the perma frost um.
Speaker 1: He also said that satellite data shows that the planet
Speaker 1: has warmed twice as fast as we thought it would.
Speaker 1: He adds a qualifier though afterwards he says that quote
Speaker 1: the underlying story was considerably less alarming than the headlines.
Speaker 1: This was one of the things that he had to
Speaker 1: update in his article afterwards after so many people complained.
Speaker 1: There's a footnote at the end of the article that
Speaker 1: lets you know all the things that were changed afterwards.
Speaker 1: So while he warns us about the satellite data, he
Speaker 1: also kind of backs up and he says, I know,
Speaker 1: like that was kind of scaremongering. Uh. In actuality, it
Speaker 1: seems like those satellite models have tracked closer to what
Speaker 1: we predicted. He also says carbon dioxide levels, so remember
Speaker 1: earlier they said, oh, it's gonna be carbon dioxide instead
Speaker 1: of methane. Well, he said, carbon dioxide levels, if they
Speaker 1: go up, they're actually going to depress our brain functions
Speaker 1: on a global level. Other scientists argue back and they say,
Speaker 1: this seems like it will only be an indoor problem,
Speaker 1: not an outdoor problem. I don't know. I'm not a climatologist. Now,
Speaker 1: in his own defense, Wallace Wells argues he didn't want
Speaker 1: to be misleading in his portrayal of the research, but
Speaker 1: he ran his peace by climate experts, and he wanted
Speaker 1: the piece to survey worst case scenarios because he believes quote,
Speaker 1: the public does not appreciate the unlikely but still possible
Speaker 1: dangers of climate change. So that seems like he's he's
Speaker 1: making his sort of rhetorical purpose clear here, right, Like
Speaker 1: he he acknowledges that he was, uh somewhat being extremist. Right.
Speaker 1: His main concerns in the conclusion of the piece are
Speaker 1: that climate change is going to lead to a threat
Speaker 1: to our food supplies in the next hundred years. There's
Speaker 1: going to be a risk of increased violence as temperature
Speaker 1: goes up, and that fears of long dormant viruses awakening
Speaker 1: from the Arctic permafrost will come true. This is a
Speaker 1: plot of Fortitude, the TV show that I keep talking
Speaker 1: about on here, that that's one of the things that
Speaker 1: happens there. Because they're on small bard. Uh He also
Speaker 1: mentions unbreathable air and the danger of extreme heat combined
Speaker 1: with high humidity. Now, this is something I've never heard
Speaker 1: of before, but it's related to climate change, something called
Speaker 1: the wet bulb temperature concept. Have you heard of this?
Speaker 1: What it relates to the human body's ability to cool itself? Right, Yeah,
Speaker 1: exactly so. Uh. The idea here is that we cool
Speaker 1: our skin by sweating, right, which is how we stay
Speaker 1: alive in the worst heat. I can tell you, Uh.
Speaker 1: Here in Atlanta it was like almost eighty agrees yesterday
Speaker 1: in November, and I walked home two miles. I swept
Speaker 1: quite a bit. Okay, that was me staying alive in
Speaker 1: that heat. When you get above thirty three degrees celsius
Speaker 1: or nine degrees fahrenheit, our threshold for heat stroke comes up,
Speaker 1: and that can be fatal. Based on that I p
Speaker 1: c c worst case scenario that he's citing, a third
Speaker 1: of the US population would be facing a day or
Speaker 1: more of such dangerous conditions. The typical summer day would
Speaker 1: exceed this heat stroke threshold. So that's concerning, Yeah, I mean,
Speaker 1: especially when you take into account the limited ability of
Speaker 1: of various people, great portions of the population to stay cool. Yeah, exactly. Now,
Speaker 1: the terms weird, right, wet bulb temperature will it turns
Speaker 1: out that it comes from wrapping a thermometer in a
Speaker 1: damp sock. The idea there is that that will actually
Speaker 1: reflect both heat and humidity simultaneously, and Wallace Wells argues
Speaker 1: in his peace that the resulting dehydration that comes as
Speaker 1: an effect of all of this is going to cause
Speaker 1: chronic kidney disease across our entire culture. So we're just
Speaker 1: in cascading effects here as Yeah, okay, a little bit
Speaker 1: more about this. His detractors say that the post climate
Speaker 1: change world is actually gonna look a lot like the
Speaker 1: world currently looks like, except it's going to be more
Speaker 1: unequal and more impoverished. So essentially they're saying, we're not
Speaker 1: you know, a hundred years from now, the world isn't
Speaker 1: going to be uninhabitable, it's just gonna be less equitable. Uh.
Speaker 1: They argue that he glosses over reasons why climate advocates
Speaker 1: actually have some hope. They also make one important point
Speaker 1: his articles citation of those I P c C numbers.
Speaker 1: Not only are they like way higher, but he also
Speaker 1: doesn't necessarily clarify between celsius and fahrenheit in his story,
Speaker 1: and there's huge discrepancies there. More likely, though, because of
Speaker 1: trends like the Paris Climate Agreement, human society will bend
Speaker 1: emissions downward without hitting these worst case scenarios that he's outlined.
Speaker 1: Even in an email with The Washington Post, Wallace Wells
Speaker 1: conceded the most likely scenario is about a two point
Speaker 1: five to three degree celsius change by the end of
Speaker 1: the century. Since eighteen eighty we've only seen a one
Speaker 1: point to six degree celsius changed, so that's still pretty
Speaker 1: significant if you think about it. So even if we're
Speaker 1: able to drop carbon emissions to zero tomorrow, like if
Speaker 1: we made waived a magic wand right and all of
Speaker 1: a sudden, all cars, all all of our technologies stopped
Speaker 1: emitting carbon, that's obviously not going to happen. We would
Speaker 1: still be dealing with climate change for centuries afterward. So
Speaker 1: our only option at this point is to adapt to
Speaker 1: it as painlessly as possible. And how do we address
Speaker 1: this well. One proposal is to develop technology that takes
Speaker 1: CEO two out of our atmosphere to dampen the greenhouse
Speaker 1: effect that seems interesting but also problematic to me. Right,
Speaker 1: It's like the technology got us in this problem in
Speaker 1: the first place, right, and it will build more of
Speaker 1: it and we'll use that to sap out the bad stuff.
Speaker 1: But then what will be the repercussions of that, Well,
Speaker 1: it's one of those scenarios where you imagine that a
Speaker 1: little more hot water because the bath is too cold,
Speaker 1: a little more cold water because the bath is too hot,
Speaker 1: and then eventually the bath is overflown. So let's try
Speaker 1: to ground this in some more recent studies that are
Speaker 1: maybe a little more closer how things are going to
Speaker 1: shake out in the next hundred years. A study published
Speaker 1: in the June issue of Science by the Climate Impact Lab.
Speaker 1: They argued that actually, climate change is going to have
Speaker 1: an economic impact. First, the poor are going to get
Speaker 1: poorer and the rich are going to get richer. Great, uh,
Speaker 1: this will impoverish the poorest communities in the United States first,
Speaker 1: and the outline that the south, the Southwest, and communities
Speaker 1: along the Gulf coasts are going to be the ones
Speaker 1: that are hit the hardest. Cities and coastal suburbs, however,
Speaker 1: are going to just get richer. Contributing to this is
Speaker 1: that ocean rise that he addressed at the beginning. We're
Speaker 1: looking at an ocean rise of two to three feet
Speaker 1: by the year twenty one. That could displace up to
Speaker 1: four million people around the world. So essentially, sell your
Speaker 1: beachfront property right because it's gonna be underwater soon. Another
Speaker 1: study out of Columbia University's Program on Climate Science, Awareness
Speaker 1: and Solutions finds that summers in general are becoming hotter
Speaker 1: than the average recorded between nineteen fifty one in nineteen eighty.
Speaker 1: This will lead to increased heat in the subtropics, it's
Speaker 1: going to cause more droughts, increased floods, and it's going
Speaker 1: to start impacting our human health. You know, like when
Speaker 1: you you look up the weather and you see like
Speaker 1: those those warnings it's like extreme air quality or something
Speaker 1: like that, those orange air quality warnings a lot here. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I think we're going to be looking at more of
Speaker 1: those from what this sounds like, and then conservative estimates,
Speaker 1: even like the most conservative estimates about climate changers, saying
Speaker 1: we're looking at more droughts across our land, as well
Speaker 1: as more natural disasters things like storm surges, wildfires, and
Speaker 1: heat waves. So in terms of our larger question here,
Speaker 1: when will the Earth become uninhabitable? From a climate change perspective,
Speaker 1: it all seems to come down to how high the
Speaker 1: temperature will rise and how quickly within the next hundred years.
Speaker 1: But it does seem like there are current parts of
Speaker 1: the world that are inhabited that will no longer be habitable.
Speaker 1: But the good news again is that there are efforts
Speaker 1: in place. There are plans in place that can mitigate
Speaker 1: the effects, that can slow it down if we have
Speaker 1: the willingness to stick to them and to and to
Speaker 1: insist that they be inactive. Yeah, exactly. So there's a
Speaker 1: matter of policy involved here. There's a matter of communication.
Speaker 1: I I definitely think go back and listen to the
Speaker 1: episode that Robert and Joe did on Science Communication Breakdowns,
Speaker 1: because I think that is crucial right now with this stuff,
Speaker 1: because hey, the sun thing, that's a billion plus years
Speaker 1: off right this we're talking about a hundred years. All right,
Speaker 1: We're gonna take one last break, and when we come back,
Speaker 1: we're going to discuss one final threat to the habitability
Speaker 1: of the planet. And I imagine you can guess what
Speaker 1: it is. Thank Alright, we're back. So there, of course,
Speaker 1: a number a number of other scenarios to consider here,
Speaker 1: various technological threats. AI is certainly a crucial one and
Speaker 1: one that we're hoping to explore in a future episode
Speaker 1: of Stuff to Blow Your Mind. But then there's there's
Speaker 1: also good old nuclear war to consider. So okay, combined,
Speaker 1: we're talking about Skynet and Judgment Day. Yeah, but but
Speaker 1: let's let's just focus on on just the sheer destructive
Speaker 1: power of nuclear weapons for a minute, and the sheer
Speaker 1: number of nuclear weapons. This brings us back to our
Speaker 1: earlier episode from this year about the doomsday clubs. Yes,
Speaker 1: indeed it does so. According to the Federation of American Scientists,
Speaker 1: as of early two thousand seventeen, there are still fourteen thousand,
Speaker 1: nine hundred nuclear weapons in the world. Now you can
Speaker 1: compare that to the maximum number we've ever had, and
Speaker 1: that was six where there's we're seventy thousand, three hundred.
Speaker 1: But even because Superman threw them all into the sun down. Um.
Speaker 1: So The important thing, though, is no matter how many
Speaker 1: nuclear weapons you have, even a small scale nuclear war
Speaker 1: would have intense effects on climate. So NASA scientist Luke
Speaker 1: omen He's predicted that the detonation of one hundred hiroshiumist
Speaker 1: sized bombs would inject upwards of five mega tons of
Speaker 1: black carbon into the upper tropic sphere and result in
Speaker 1: a one degree celsius or one point eight degree fare
Speaker 1: kneit fall over the three years to follow, and for
Speaker 1: two to four years afterward, rainfall would decrease around the
Speaker 1: world by ten percent, and then larger exchanges it gets
Speaker 1: even more terrifying. So this is this is this is interesting.
Speaker 1: In Lost Alamos Laboratory, scientists they predicted that the detonation
Speaker 1: of a mere ten to one hundred super bombs what
Speaker 1: we'd call a hydrogen bomb today or a thermonuclear weapon. Uh,
Speaker 1: they said that that would be enough to to do
Speaker 1: just significant um irreparable damage to the planet. Um. So
Speaker 1: not only like as we're recording this, like we're in
Speaker 1: the middle of again like heated rhetoric with North Korea
Speaker 1: about nuclear weapons, right, and like not only are we
Speaker 1: worrying here about the fear of nuclear threat, but we're
Speaker 1: also like we we need to worry about like the
Speaker 1: effect that this is going to have on the planet afterwards,
Speaker 1: Like what what's the world gonna look like? Afterwards? And
Speaker 1: this has been this has been all a longstanding uh
Speaker 1: warn from scientists. So one issue here is that you
Speaker 1: have so you have one hundred mega tons of fission
Speaker 1: per bomb, you have one hundred bombs. That's enough to
Speaker 1: generate ten thousand mega tons necessary to raise the background
Speaker 1: radioactivity level to dangerous levels. According to the nineteen fifty
Speaker 1: three Project Sunshine study, the exact predictions as to how
Speaker 1: a nuclear war would impact the environment these have varied
Speaker 1: over the years. Using modern climate models, scientist Brian Tune
Speaker 1: and Alan Roebok, they theorized that even a regional nuclear
Speaker 1: war would cause a marginal nuclear winter for everyone nuclear winner.
Speaker 1: To remind everybody this, the idea here is that the
Speaker 1: the the mass the burnt carbon ejected into the atmosphere
Speaker 1: by these explosions, by that by the burnings of cities
Speaker 1: and forests, that this would have essentially shroud the Earth
Speaker 1: and reduced the amount of sunlight reaching the earth. You
Speaker 1: know that this is an aside just to bring a
Speaker 1: little levity, I guess to the but so stranger things.
Speaker 1: We've talked a lot about it on the show before.
Speaker 1: Everybody's talking about it right now because the second season
Speaker 1: just came out. The upside down is essentially like a
Speaker 1: nightmare scenario of of post fallout, right, because you're looking
Speaker 1: at everything's blacked out, there's constant it looks like Dan
Speaker 1: Driff is kind of falling from the sky. But it
Speaker 1: does have a nuclear waste land kind of feel to it. Yeah.
Speaker 1: According to the two thousand seven findings from Robot and Tune,
Speaker 1: they said they did Indian Pakistan, for example, where did
Speaker 1: each launch fifty nuclear weapons at each other. The entire
Speaker 1: globe would experience ten years of smoke clouds and a
Speaker 1: three year temperature drop of approximately uh two point five
Speaker 1: degrees fahrenheit one celsius. What this is like real gallows
Speaker 1: humor here. But like, so is that going to counteract
Speaker 1: climate change? Then? Um, you know, I've I've seen people
Speaker 1: make that joke in the past, and I'm and you
Speaker 1: can make the argument, yeah, that it's like one bad
Speaker 1: thing counts the other bad thing. But but but then
Speaker 1: you have all these other effects too. I mean, obviously
Speaker 1: the loss of life involved the radio active pollution. Uh
Speaker 1: So I think it's very it's very difficult to make
Speaker 1: up a straight faced case for that. But this study,
Speaker 1: this two thousand and seven study, uh, this was one
Speaker 1: of the factors that the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientist
Speaker 1: took into account when they advanced the doomsday clock two
Speaker 1: minutes closer to midnight at the time. Yeah, which is,
Speaker 1: you know, part of what we were talking about earlier
Speaker 1: this year. All right, So we've just presented you with
Speaker 1: all the scenarios we could think of, from the sun
Speaker 1: to asteroids hitting us, to climate change in nuclear war. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I know, Grant, there are a lot of a lot
Speaker 1: of possibilities that we didn't get into. We didn't get
Speaker 1: into your gray goose scenario, your green goose scenario, or
Speaker 1: some of the more exotic ideas. Uh, you know, destruction
Speaker 1: by an alien force which is a planet, things of
Speaker 1: that nature. Uh. And there are other there are also
Speaker 1: a hope there are a number of other cosmic scenarios
Speaker 1: as well that have been thrown out. But I feel
Speaker 1: like this gives us a nice overview of the long
Speaker 1: torrent term, the short term, uh, and the random events,
Speaker 1: the sort of irreversible cosmic threats, as well as the
Speaker 1: the man made of threats of nuclear war and climate change.
Speaker 1: So what should we believe the worst case scenarios that
Speaker 1: are prevented in front of us, or the hopeful messages
Speaker 1: that will get human beings to hopefully be more proactive
Speaker 1: about their part in this. I mean, the big takeaway
Speaker 1: I've got from this is that we need to be
Speaker 1: even more proactive about climate change than even the Paris Accords.
Speaker 1: And nuclear weapons are a much bigger problem than in
Speaker 1: terms of just uh war, right, Like they're they're going
Speaker 1: to have like an overall horrible effect on the entire planet. Well,
Speaker 1: I think one way to look at it is to
Speaker 1: think of it in terms of per and all human health.
Speaker 1: And this is an example that I think gives hope
Speaker 1: and also is um concerning too, because you could think
Speaker 1: about all, right, so worst case scenarios are presented for
Speaker 1: human health all the time. You know, if you if
Speaker 1: you drink NonStop or and or smoke NonStop, then this
Speaker 1: is what will happen to your body. Here are some
Speaker 1: examples of what has happened to other bodies, and in
Speaker 1: some cases those can be helpful. They can say, oh, well,
Speaker 1: I better not do that that I'm gonna I'm gonna
Speaker 1: cut it off. I'm gonna cut this level of my
Speaker 1: destructive behavior off at this point so that I don't
Speaker 1: get to there. And you know, that that can that
Speaker 1: could be helpful for for human society if we realize, yeah,
Speaker 1: we definitely don't want to get to this point, so
Speaker 1: let's figure let's figure out a way to at least
Speaker 1: scale back and uh, you know we've seen that, say
Speaker 1: with with the with the reduction of nuclear warheads in
Speaker 1: the world, even though we still have way too many,
Speaker 1: especially when you think like the relative short amount of
Speaker 1: time that it's actually been in which we got rid
Speaker 1: of like uh doing this off to the top of
Speaker 1: my head, but basically sixty warheads. Yeah, yeah, I mean,
Speaker 1: it's it's it's impressive, even though there's a lot more
Speaker 1: work to do. I mean, but the other side of
Speaker 1: the coin is that we see countless examples of human
Speaker 1: health where when presented with the data, we still don't
Speaker 1: do anything, you know, because we're still so shortsighted in
Speaker 1: how we interact with our lives and that applies to
Speaker 1: our personal lives as well as as globally. So we
Speaker 1: could think, yeah, climate climate change is a threat, nuclear
Speaker 1: weapons are a threat. I hope somebody does something about
Speaker 1: that one day. It's kind of like saying, yeah, one
Speaker 1: of these days, I'll get into shape and start eating
Speaker 1: right right, Yeah, that's what it makes me think of
Speaker 1: from personal perspective. You know, maybe I need to lay
Speaker 1: off the pizza. Also, maybe I need to lay off
Speaker 1: the carbon emissions. All of this reminds me of that
Speaker 1: episode I'm gonna circle back around the one that we
Speaker 1: did way back in May on mass extinctions. Uh. In
Speaker 1: that episode, I talked a lot about this book by
Speaker 1: Anneleine Knew. It's called Scatter adapt and remember how humans
Speaker 1: will survive mass extinction, And her argument there is that
Speaker 1: we need to a scatter from Earth in the long term,
Speaker 1: be adapt to climate change and see remember our history
Speaker 1: so that we can ensure our species survival. This reminds
Speaker 1: me of the Expanse, which we've done episodes on as well. Right,
Speaker 1: So where do we go? Well, NASA conducted a two
Speaker 1: hundred million dollar study in the year two thousand that
Speaker 1: reported a colony could be dug under the Moon's surface
Speaker 1: and covered to protect its residents. Now we're talking about
Speaker 1: short term here. Remember we talked about way in the future,
Speaker 1: the Moon isn't going to be an ideal place for
Speaker 1: us to go to. But if not our Moon, then
Speaker 1: there's other possibilities such as the moons of Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus,
Speaker 1: Neptune or Mars might be a possibility, or even more possible,
Speaker 1: an orbital habitat that's constructed from resources that we extract
Speaker 1: from near Earth asteroids. But again, you're getting closer and
Speaker 1: closer to Kardashio of scale level that we just don't
Speaker 1: have that kind of technology right now. Yeah, I mean again,
Speaker 1: it comes back to the Goldilocks UH conundrum though, where
Speaker 1: you have all these things that are just right on Earth,
Speaker 1: and when we start expanding outward and trying to imagine
Speaker 1: ourselves establishing humanity on other planets or other cosmic bodies,
Speaker 1: we're faced with just how imperfect all of our options
Speaker 1: are compared to what we evolve to thrive in. How
Speaker 1: much more work it's going to be too, and then
Speaker 1: and and how how does that work stack up with
Speaker 1: the work we're faced with now to just add some
Speaker 1: more years to the planet shelf life? You know, like,
Speaker 1: what is what? What's what's easier? I mean, granted, neither
Speaker 1: of these things are are easy. Both all these things
Speaker 1: are hard. But is it easier to to reduce the
Speaker 1: number of nuclear warheads in the planet to uh, to
Speaker 1: admitigate the effects of climate change, or to figure out
Speaker 1: how to establish a new Earth on it, like a
Speaker 1: radiation scathed planet elsewhere in our solar system. Yeah, that
Speaker 1: is a very good point. Yeah, when you weigh the
Speaker 1: cost benefit analysis there, it really, you know, from a
Speaker 1: capitalist perspective, becomes obvious what the answer is. There's also
Speaker 1: the question which we always bring up on the show,
Speaker 1: what if we've become transhuman? You know, we could develop
Speaker 1: technology or genetics that could change us into another species
Speaker 1: that could totally survive these changes. Well, okay, Wallace Wells,
Speaker 1: though this is interesting. This is an interesting one to
Speaker 1: leave you with, he said in that piece, And again
Speaker 1: remember his piece was a little scaremongery. He spoke to
Speaker 1: some scientists with a point about the Fermi paradox, which
Speaker 1: is another thing we talked about on the show a lot,
Speaker 1: and they said, maybe the reason we have an encountered
Speaker 1: intelligent life yet is because the natural lifespan of a
Speaker 1: civilization is only several thousand years old. Remember I started
Speaker 1: this off by telling uh the stats on how long
Speaker 1: mammals are known to survive for. That's not talking about civilization.
Speaker 1: Civilization brings with it its own complications that namely the
Speaker 1: risk of self destruction. Yeah, so maybe civilizations have emerged,
Speaker 1: developed and then burned up, but it's all been too
Speaker 1: fast for them to ever find one another. Uh So,
Speaker 1: while we can start seeing the devastating effects from climate
Speaker 1: change and as soon as the next one hundred years,
Speaker 1: it seems like the actual planet won't be uninhabitable to
Speaker 1: us for five hundred million years, right, Like, the climate
Speaker 1: change effects are going to be bad, but there will
Speaker 1: be parts of the planet we can live on. It's
Speaker 1: just going to be a matter of even more disparity
Speaker 1: than we're already looking at here, right because the rich
Speaker 1: are obviously gonna want to live in those parts that
Speaker 1: are nicer. So it's the it's less the prospect of
Speaker 1: an uninhabitable earth in the prospect of a less habitable earth,
Speaker 1: I think so, And that can be pretty, uh pretty
Speaker 1: terrifying in its own way. Absolutely, Okay, I hope we
Speaker 1: did this topic some justice. It was a little bit rough.
Speaker 1: They're going through all of those statistics and just kind
Speaker 1: of looking looking at the sort of damocles hanging over
Speaker 1: all of our heads. But I'm glad we did it.
Speaker 1: I think I think I learned something. Yeah, Yeah, so
Speaker 1: we'd love to hear from everyone out there. What are
Speaker 1: your thoughts on these various threats to the planet we
Speaker 1: call home. You can get in touch with us a
Speaker 1: number of different ways. Find us on social media. We
Speaker 1: are on Facebook, Twitter, Tumbler, Instagram, uh who knows where else,
Speaker 1: but on Facebook. We also have a discussion group called
Speaker 1: the Discussion Module. You can find that, join it, interact
Speaker 1: with other listeners as well as the host as the selves,
Speaker 1: and uh hey, stuff to blow your Mind dot com.
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