Speaker 1: I'm Alec Baldwin and you're listening to Here's the thing.
Speaker 1: How can scientists predict future climate trends? How can they
Speaker 1: know the prehistoric past? And what to do about deniers,
Speaker 1: including the President? My guests today answer those questions with
Speaker 1: humor and simplicity. Peter do Memical is the dean of
Speaker 1: science at Columbia University. Kate Marvel has a PhD in
Speaker 1: theoretical physics from Cambridge and does research at NASA. They
Speaker 1: could have had any job they wanted, but both of
Speaker 1: them chose to bring their talents to bear on climate
Speaker 1: change because, as Kate argues, if we don't fix that,
Speaker 1: not much else will matter. And yet millions of Americans
Speaker 1: still want to debate whether there's even a problem to solve.
Speaker 1: Whenever we have a cold day, people are always like, oh,
Speaker 1: where's your climate change? Now? What do you tell? Sometimes
Speaker 1: I don't respond because you know, if somebody still believes that,
Speaker 1: what what are you gonna do? Um? But it's really
Speaker 1: important to note that weather is short term and climate
Speaker 1: is these long term averages. Right. I cannot tell you
Speaker 1: what the weather in Boston next year in January is
Speaker 1: going to be like, But I can guess that it's
Speaker 1: going to be cold because I know what the climate
Speaker 1: of Boston is. I don't know if it's gonna be snowing,
Speaker 1: if it's gonna be sunny, but I know it's going
Speaker 1: to be cold in January in Boston. Where that gets
Speaker 1: complicated is that weather doesn't exist independent of climate, and
Speaker 1: by changing the climate, we're changing everything about the Earth,
Speaker 1: including the weather. Um. And I think of this kind
Speaker 1: of like bear with me here. I think it is
Speaker 1: kind of like Lance Armstrong. Right, So lands Armstrong is
Speaker 1: really good at riding his bike. He would beat me
Speaker 1: in any bike race ever. Um. But lands Armstrong was doping.
Speaker 1: And when we find out that lands Armstrong was doping,
Speaker 1: we don't go back to every single race he's ever
Speaker 1: written in and say, okay, well that one he would
Speaker 1: have come third, that one he would have been fifty seven. No, Like,
Speaker 1: we know he was doping, and we know what doping does.
Speaker 1: So a lot of times when we ask how much
Speaker 1: did climate change cause this particular flood or drought or
Speaker 1: heat wave, that's not necessarily the right question because we're
Speaker 1: doping the weather, and we know what doping does. How
Speaker 1: much of it is some cyclical geologic history. And even
Speaker 1: if the contribution we're making it just the one straw
Speaker 1: that breaks the camel's back, isn't that enough to get
Speaker 1: you don't want to curtail our behavior. I think that's
Speaker 1: actually a really good question. I'm glad you asked it
Speaker 1: because people keep telling climate scientists like, oh, the climate
Speaker 1: has always changed, and we're like, we know, we told
Speaker 1: you that. We are essentially the people who study that.
Speaker 1: We figured that out. What percentage of the warming right
Speaker 1: now are humans responsible for? Over humans are responsible for
Speaker 1: more than all of the warming, because if it wasn't
Speaker 1: for us, the Earth would be cooling very slightly. It
Speaker 1: would be because of what the Sun is doing. The
Speaker 1: Sun is getting ever so slightly weaker. So yeah, if
Speaker 1: it wasn't for us, tiny variation in the Sun's output
Speaker 1: would be making a cold. Peter I think studied geology,
Speaker 1: so he can put this really in the context of
Speaker 1: the entire Earth history and the climates that we've experienced
Speaker 1: over the entire history of the planet. And actually, many
Speaker 1: people have talked about climate cycles, and this is often
Speaker 1: one of the discounts on what's causing global warming. So
Speaker 1: as part of some natural cycle and Indeed, in the
Speaker 1: past there have been geological cycles of warming and cooling
Speaker 1: that have been driven by orbital variations, variations in the
Speaker 1: Earth's orbit around the Sun, which are very gradual. The
Speaker 1: shortest of these cycles is about twenty tho years long,
Speaker 1: and that's what's caused the pacing of the ice ages.
Speaker 1: In the past. We've had ice ages, we've had warmer times,
Speaker 1: ice ages, warmer times, and what those resulted from? What
Speaker 1: when the Earth froze and you've had an ice age
Speaker 1: that was the result of what? So, what the orbits
Speaker 1: do is they change the amount of sunlight you get
Speaker 1: during a given season. So I'll say northern hemisphere summer,
Speaker 1: where we're further from the Sun. It's the Earth's sun geometry.
Speaker 1: In other words, what causes the summer. This is great.
Speaker 1: Half of Harvard undergraduates get this wrong. What causes the
Speaker 1: seasons is the tilt of the Earth the sun towards
Speaker 1: the Sun. We're closer to the Sun in our winter
Speaker 1: exactly point the years ago. We were closer to the
Speaker 1: Sun when we were pointed toward it. And what I
Speaker 1: see now is that the fall is gone and the
Speaker 1: spring is gone. You're not wrong, um, and sort of
Speaker 1: the The earlier arrival of spring actually has implications for
Speaker 1: things like growing seasons for crops um. It also has
Speaker 1: implications for things like pestborn diseases, and so scientists have
Speaker 1: checked these things, and there's a whole rigorous area of
Speaker 1: attribution science where people look at long term trends and
Speaker 1: people do statistics to answer these questions. So is this
Speaker 1: a fluke or is this something that's really happening? And
Speaker 1: changes in the seasons, not just in New York but
Speaker 1: all around the world are something that we expect and
Speaker 1: we see actually happening. I'll ask this question to Peter.
Speaker 1: Do you feel that people are always talking about some
Speaker 1: radical solution. I was reading online and they talk about
Speaker 1: dimming the sun was the article. The other day They're
Speaker 1: going to spray the clouds and the atmosphere with a chemical.
Speaker 1: Does that concern you that that kind of attitude and
Speaker 1: there's some quick fix that can happen. Absolutely, that concerns me.
Speaker 1: I mean, first, it just begets this kind of hubrist
Speaker 1: that humans can control everything, and we're far from that.
Speaker 1: I mean, there's nothing more humbling than trying to solve
Speaker 1: the climate problem. The work that Kate does for example,
Speaker 1: and the climate modeling. It's an incredibly hard problem and
Speaker 1: you know, the the amount of intellectual horsepower that has
Speaker 1: to go and just to pose the question to understand
Speaker 1: what the attribution story is, how much of the global
Speaker 1: warming is due to human activities and natural factors, that's
Speaker 1: a tremendously complicated problem. Describe for me, Kate, what exactly
Speaker 1: is the work you're doing now? So? I work on
Speaker 1: climate models, which are computer simulations of the climate, and
Speaker 1: those allow us to do projections into the future, but
Speaker 1: they also let us do experiments that we couldn't do
Speaker 1: in the real world. So you know, what if a
Speaker 1: volcano went off in London? What would that do? Um?
Speaker 1: What if humans didn't exist? What would the earth look like? Um?
Speaker 1: So I work with climate models. I work with an
Speaker 1: incredible amount of data that comes out of those models.
Speaker 1: And because I sit at an office of NASA, I
Speaker 1: work with satellite data sets to try to see what
Speaker 1: are the models telling us what's actually happening and are
Speaker 1: those the same thing? And what about you, Peter, what
Speaker 1: kind of work are you doing now? So? As Kate mentioned,
Speaker 1: I'm a geologist, so I'm a marine geologist, and I
Speaker 1: use ocean sediments, which are the ultimate repositories of sediment.
Speaker 1: And so they are these encyclopedias of Earth history that
Speaker 1: accumulate very quietly and in a very hidden way in
Speaker 1: the bottom of the oceans. And so we take sediment
Speaker 1: course and we can read these like a book, and
Speaker 1: so we can see how climate has changed in the past,
Speaker 1: what caused those changes, and more importantly, it allows you
Speaker 1: to put what's happening today and into the future in
Speaker 1: the context of the geological past. You go to the
Speaker 1: yield the most information. Fortunately, the Earth is mostly covered
Speaker 1: with ocean, so there's a lot of places we can
Speaker 1: do our work. Uh For me, in particular, I do
Speaker 1: work off of West in East Africa, so I study
Speaker 1: how the North African climate, the Saharan Desert has changed
Speaker 1: over time. The Sahara Desert was once completely vegetated region,
Speaker 1: filled with crocodiles and hippopotamus and people, and then it transitioned.
Speaker 1: What happened. What happened was because of this variation in
Speaker 1: the Earth orbit that I was telling you about, this
Speaker 1: wobble of the Earth that changed the intensity of the
Speaker 1: African monsoon, which brings in rainfall from the ocean. Into
Speaker 1: the interior, it got weaker, and so the place became
Speaker 1: drier and drier, and suddenly the sands took over. And
Speaker 1: one of the instinct discoveries we made was that that
Speaker 1: transition from wet dry happened within a couple of centuries,
Speaker 1: so it's just really rapid transit. And Kate, what about you.
Speaker 1: Have you always been in this field and has it
Speaker 1: always been weather and climate related for you? No? Actually? Um?
Speaker 1: So I did my PhD in cosmology, so specifically string theory,
Speaker 1: which is the physics of the entire universe. Um. And
Speaker 1: I kind of realized midway through my PhD that you know,
Speaker 1: the universe is great, but but really this is the
Speaker 1: best place, Like the Earth is by far the best planet. Um.
Speaker 1: And so I was able to use my physics background
Speaker 1: to study the physics of the Earth's climate and it's
Speaker 1: so fascinating. What would be I'll go with you first, Peter,
Speaker 1: what would be some of the things that you would
Speaker 1: do right now to address this problem? Right? So, if
Speaker 1: I was king of the world, the thing that I
Speaker 1: would do right now is support the Green New Deal,
Speaker 1: which is this investment in UH infrastructure and resupplying REPO
Speaker 1: owering the planet. It's a shift towards renewables, it's adopting
Speaker 1: wide scale battery storage. It's basically building up in this
Speaker 1: country national climate resilience as a way of addressing the
Speaker 1: climate problem, because there's, in my opinion, there's no solution
Speaker 1: towards this other than an economic market based one. We
Speaker 1: can't drive the world into poverty. We can't drive the
Speaker 1: world into uh, you know, a dramatic way of of
Speaker 1: living relative to where we are now. Certainly in the
Speaker 1: time scale we're talking about, which is my lifetime. This
Speaker 1: is not even my children's full lifetime. This is at
Speaker 1: the end of our lifetimes, we're gonna be seeing these impacts.
Speaker 1: We can see this, for example, in real estate prices,
Speaker 1: so in houses that are right next to each other.
Speaker 1: I let's say the Long Island Coast or in Florida,
Speaker 1: and which is to most recent examples, these are neighboring houses.
Speaker 1: One is more susceptible to flooding because it's slightly lower,
Speaker 1: the other one is less. The one that is more
Speaker 1: susceptible to flooding and selling at a five to fift
Speaker 1: discount relative to its neighbor. So this is happening Now,
Speaker 1: this is not the economic really, yeah, you know, this
Speaker 1: is billions of dollars that are moving, that are evaporating
Speaker 1: from the economy as we speak. The fires in California.
Speaker 1: There's a paper that just came out just just a
Speaker 1: couple of days ago that estimates the economic impact of
Speaker 1: the California fires alone at four billion dollars. Just put
Speaker 1: that in context, that's half of that's a little bit
Speaker 1: more than half of the U. S Military budget per year. Um,
Speaker 1: what about you? What would you do if you were
Speaker 1: the I don't want to. I want to get it
Speaker 1: right gender wise. If you were the king, I can
Speaker 1: be whatever I want. Um. Right now, emitting carbon dioxide
Speaker 1: is free. We don't charge anybody to do that, And
Speaker 1: I don't think it should be free because there is
Speaker 1: a cost to it. We're all paying that price. And
Speaker 1: so I would put a price on carbon dioxide. I
Speaker 1: would say, you cannot do this for free. You actually
Speaker 1: have to pay the social costs. And friends of mine
Speaker 1: who work in related fields teach me that domestic usage,
Speaker 1: all the cars we drive round that even those are
Speaker 1: significantly less than what industry does that causes air pollution.
Speaker 1: That industry itself is a far greater polluter than individuals.
Speaker 1: Do you agree with that or no? That's true, but
Speaker 1: I think it's important to keep in mind that industry
Speaker 1: is making products that we then consume. Um. So there's
Speaker 1: This is why climate change is such a hard problem
Speaker 1: to talk about, because it's an individual problem, but it's
Speaker 1: also a social problem. So you can lower your personal
Speaker 1: carbon footprint. You can eat less meat, you can make
Speaker 1: your home more energy efficient, you can drive less, you
Speaker 1: can fly less, and that up your appliances in your home,
Speaker 1: upgrade your appliances. You can do all these things and
Speaker 1: that will lower your personal carbon footprint. But if everybody
Speaker 1: only does a little, will only do a little. And
Speaker 1: that's because climate change is fundamentally a large scale problem.
Speaker 1: We need action at a very large scale to address
Speaker 1: this problem. And so when people ask me what's the
Speaker 1: number one thing I can do to combat climb to change,
Speaker 1: it's a vote. Is there anything the two of you
Speaker 1: disagree about? Almost certainly. I mean this is the thing.
Speaker 1: Scientists don't agree on anything. We fight all the time.
Speaker 1: If you go to a scientific conference, you will just
Speaker 1: see knockdown, drag out fights about stuff like how fast
Speaker 1: dirt drives out on the sun. You would not believe
Speaker 1: it's a really big problem. It's a huge Maybe we
Speaker 1: can start a fight about this right now. Um. And
Speaker 1: so for science, for there to be a scientific consensus
Speaker 1: on something that's a really big deal. And I think
Speaker 1: it's also important to not confuse the word consensus with
Speaker 1: meaning that everyone agrees on exactly the same thing. The
Speaker 1: consensus is on the fundamental question of whether the observed
Speaker 1: warming we're seeing today, the weird weather we're seeing today,
Speaker 1: can be linked to human activity, specifically carbon emissions, and
Speaker 1: the vast majority of the scientists, basically everyone agrees on
Speaker 1: that central topic. Does it infuriate you the major oil
Speaker 1: manufacturers have been obscuring the facts of climate change so
Speaker 1: that they can make money. What do you say to them?
Speaker 1: I mean, what do you say to their scientists that
Speaker 1: are on their payroll? Well, they know, Um, you know,
Speaker 1: the scientists who work for Exxon know that climate change
Speaker 1: is real. They know that it's happening, and they know
Speaker 1: that it poses a major threat to their business. Um.
Speaker 1: What I would say to not necessarily an oil industry executive,
Speaker 1: but you know your uncle who doesn't believe in climate change? Um,
Speaker 1: I'm a scientist right. So I'm tempted to show graphs
Speaker 1: and charts and be like, read this paper and and
Speaker 1: that doesn't work. That never works because a lot of
Speaker 1: this isn't about the facts. It's not about the science,
Speaker 1: and if we just give people more facts, that almost
Speaker 1: never changes their mind. Something that has a narrative that
Speaker 1: has really worked for some of my conservative family members
Speaker 1: has been first, the military. The military takes climate change
Speaker 1: extremely seriously. They view it as a threat multiplier and
Speaker 1: all of the naval bases are at sea level, so
Speaker 1: they are very very concerned about this. Um. The insurance industry. Um,
Speaker 1: if you were an insurance executive or reinsurance executive, so
Speaker 1: the insurers of the insurance industry, and you didn't believe
Speaker 1: in climate change, you could undercut everybody else by coming
Speaker 1: along and offering lower rates. And if climate change isn't real,
Speaker 1: there's no incentive to take it into consideration. And yet
Speaker 1: the entire reinsurance industry takes this really seriously. So people
Speaker 1: with an economic motivation to take this seriously take it seriously. UM.
Speaker 1: And that's something that's worked for my family members, Like
Speaker 1: you won't listen to your daughter who is a scientist,
Speaker 1: but you'll listen to the reinsurance industry. Um, And I
Speaker 1: think it's just it's about the messenger, it's about the narrative,
Speaker 1: it's about the language that we use. And there's no
Speaker 1: one thing that's going to work on everybody. Not to
Speaker 1: pile on to you know who. But it's safe to
Speaker 1: assume that the voice that would collate all this information
Speaker 1: and present two disparate sections of society should be the
Speaker 1: President of the United States, as far as you're concerned
Speaker 1: in an ideal or LEAs, so that that's correct, I think, um,
Speaker 1: you know, it does need that kind of leadership. Indeed,
Speaker 1: the kind of transition we're envisioning for the future that
Speaker 1: will happen in our lifetimes requires that kind of leadership. Now,
Speaker 1: in the absence of that leadership, and there's this great
Speaker 1: expression that's called we're still in, which is that the
Speaker 1: United States is still part of Paris. The United States
Speaker 1: still committed, committed to the goals of pairs despite the
Speaker 1: right So yeah, so despite what you know who has
Speaker 1: said about pulling out of pairs, that's that's that's just artifice.
Speaker 1: The reality is that the large industries, statewide coalitions, large
Speaker 1: emitters have gotten together and said we can do. Was
Speaker 1: there something in your community where when Trump was elected
Speaker 1: you just thought, oh god, this, it couldn't be any
Speaker 1: worse in terms of political leadership for this issue. The
Speaker 1: guy that comes up in cit because we're gonna bring
Speaker 1: that coal. We know so much coal, he said, so
Speaker 1: many jobs in coal, And you're like, uh huh, really
Speaker 1: what you know? Yeah, exactly, And that's um, well, it's
Speaker 1: amazing is that I think certainly. I'll speak for myself.
Speaker 1: I mean I was. I was shocked at the implications
Speaker 1: I thought it would have for me at that point,
Speaker 1: and I am just so much more shocked now. Um,
Speaker 1: just in terms of the multiplication of the problem as
Speaker 1: times as progressed. I mean, beyond the president who said
Speaker 1: we're all in for Paris and we're all in with
Speaker 1: these goals, do we need to look like, for one example,
Speaker 1: I'm someone who's thinking we have to have real action
Speaker 1: on a number of levels, so that we would have
Speaker 1: a federal order that all fleet vehicles that would be
Speaker 1: used by institutions in the country had to be hybrid
Speaker 1: cars and electric cars every school. Where's the government program?
Speaker 1: When you just order that, you just make that? So
Speaker 1: is that an answer as far as your concerned. So
Speaker 1: here's the problem with talking to scientists. Um, okay, my
Speaker 1: dream is to be completely irrelevant to the climate conversation.
Speaker 1: Um my dream is just to to do science and
Speaker 1: to learn about the planet. But all the fights we're
Speaker 1: having are about policies, are about should the government just
Speaker 1: mandate this or is there another way to do this?
Speaker 1: And I feel like that's an issue that reasonable people
Speaker 1: can disagree on. But we're stuck in this conversation where
Speaker 1: it's is climate change real? Yes, it's real? Is that
Speaker 1: us more than is us? And so you know, what
Speaker 1: you say sounds like a great idea. I'm on board.
Speaker 1: I'd vote for you. But I think reasonable people could
Speaker 1: probably disagree with that. But I don't think reasonable people
Speaker 1: can disagree that that this is happening and that this
Speaker 1: is a problem. I would agree. I mean, I would
Speaker 1: love it if I became obsolete. I really think that's Uh,
Speaker 1: that's really my life's ambition is to have made a
Speaker 1: difference to the same way about my Trump impression. Yeah, so, um,
Speaker 1: you know, I do think you know, one of the
Speaker 1: things that society can really galvanize around, or at least
Speaker 1: American society can galvanize around. Is that climate change is
Speaker 1: costing us. Now it's real dollars. I mean last year
Speaker 1: it was roughly three billion dollars in climate and weather
Speaker 1: related damages. This year, with with the California fires, it
Speaker 1: looks like it's maybe even more than that. These are
Speaker 1: real dollars. This is, and this is so regardless of
Speaker 1: whether you believe in climate change or not. Imagine you're
Speaker 1: in some deeply read state and a deeply red county
Speaker 1: in that state. You are paying for this. You may
Speaker 1: not like it, you don't want to call it climate
Speaker 1: change or whatever, but you for sure someone is paying
Speaker 1: that bill, and it's us. Well more of California experience
Speaker 1: longer droughts and therefore be susceptible to what happened what
Speaker 1: was happening there now on our current traductory, the answer,
Speaker 1: unfortunately as yes, that we're just getting a taste. How
Speaker 1: can be about to use film analogy, I'd like to
Speaker 1: pan left to another world where we've adopted a much
Speaker 1: more widespread uh sourcing of let's say, renewable power. We've
Speaker 1: come up with ways of of storing that power and
Speaker 1: allowing capacitance to the grid when you imagine a United
Speaker 1: States that's generating much more of its electricity supply from
Speaker 1: non fossil fuel related sources. There's been this quiet revolution
Speaker 1: that no one knows about, which is called grid parity,
Speaker 1: which is at state by state, there's been this toppling
Speaker 1: of renewables becoming cheaper per unit of what created than
Speaker 1: fossil fuel sources. And so now there's a majority of
Speaker 1: states where it's cheaper to build out renewables and and
Speaker 1: deploy that energy than it is to build a fossil
Speaker 1: fuel plant. If you look at the price of solar panels,
Speaker 1: they're getting cheaper and cheaper and cheaper every year, um.
Speaker 1: And that gives me a lot of hope that eventually
Speaker 1: it will just be nuts to use fossil fuels, and
Speaker 1: we can do things to make that day come way sooner.
Speaker 1: But eventually maybe it'll be a hobby, right, like riding
Speaker 1: a horse. It's it's not the way you get to work.
Speaker 1: That's crazy. The coal industry in the US employs fewer
Speaker 1: people than Arby's, and you wouldn't destroy the planet to
Speaker 1: save Arby's. World renowned Columbia climate researchers Peter Domenical and
Speaker 1: Cape Marvel. One thing climate scientists, environmentalists, indigenous activists, and
Speaker 1: tourists all agree on is the importance of protecting forests.
Speaker 1: A pioneer on the business side of that effort is
Speaker 1: conservation biologist Charles Mutton. I'm a big believer in creating
Speaker 1: parks and Indian reserves and as and protecting them. Tom
Speaker 1: Ecotourism has to be part of the mix, because you
Speaker 1: only need to have one lodge in partnership with local
Speaker 1: Indians at the mouth of the river of a million
Speaker 1: acre rainforest park. And yet that one small lodge can
Speaker 1: have turnover maybe one or two million dollars a year,
Speaker 1: and it protects a million acres behind it because it
Speaker 1: keeps people from getting in behind it. So it's a
Speaker 1: It's a very inexpensive way to protect enormous pieces of forest,
Speaker 1: and anything you can do that can slow down deforestation
Speaker 1: will help slow down climate change. The rest of my
Speaker 1: conversation with eco tourism innovator Charles Munn can be found
Speaker 1: in our archive that Here's the Thing dot org. When
Speaker 1: we returned Peter Domenico and Kate Marvel on having kids
Speaker 1: in a warming world and on walking the line between
Speaker 1: despair and complacence. This is Alec Baldwin and you're listening
Speaker 1: to here's the thing this week. I'm talking to climate
Speaker 1: science researchers Kate Marvel and Peter Domenico. When you really
Speaker 1: understand the implications of climate change, some common life decisions
Speaker 1: take on extra weight. Do you have kids? Twin girls?
Speaker 1: You have kids, Kate, I have a child? How old? Three?
Speaker 1: So you had your kid more recently, you had your
Speaker 1: kid fully inside the consciousness bubble of global warming. When
Speaker 1: you were having a kid that you where you're like,
Speaker 1: you know, bringing a kid into the warmed world. I
Speaker 1: mean absolutely, um, And there's nothing that kind of makes
Speaker 1: those projections concrete like having a kid. You know, I
Speaker 1: used to think about um. You know, like you you
Speaker 1: run your computer model, you look at what it says,
Speaker 1: you look at the conditions of the planet in and
Speaker 1: you're like, oh, that looks bad. But then you realize like,
Speaker 1: oh my gosh, like that's when my child is going
Speaker 1: to be an adult, that's when he might be deciding
Speaker 1: whether to have kids of his own. And that really
Speaker 1: personalizes it, that that makes it not an abstract thing anymore.
Speaker 1: I remember years ago the New York Times Science section
Speaker 1: had an article about this topic, and they had bands
Speaker 1: going to south and northward on the North American continent,
Speaker 1: and they basically said that these bands of meteorology are
Speaker 1: going to shift northward, so that the weather in Miami
Speaker 1: will become the weather in Atlanta, and the weather Atlanta
Speaker 1: will become the weather in Washington, and Washington will become
Speaker 1: New York and so forth. Is that what you're seeing? Yeah? Um,
Speaker 1: And the scary thing is that in the tropics, in
Speaker 1: the countries that are already really hot, they're moving into
Speaker 1: a climate that we don't have an analog for. So,
Speaker 1: you know, a country on the equator, you know, what's
Speaker 1: what's that climate going to look like. It's not gonna
Speaker 1: look like anything we've seen before. The thing that really
Speaker 1: freaks me out, the thing that really scares me is
Speaker 1: this combination of heat and humidity. So there's something called
Speaker 1: the wet Balb temperature, which is literally just you take
Speaker 1: a thermometer and you put a wet washcloth on it
Speaker 1: and you see what it measures. And that measures a
Speaker 1: combination of heat and humidity. And that is a really
Speaker 1: critical thing for human health because that reflects your bill
Speaker 1: city to cool yourself off by sweating, and if that
Speaker 1: gets too high, then a healthy young person who's naked
Speaker 1: in the shade will be dead because you cannot regulate
Speaker 1: your body temperature by sweating. And we expect this to
Speaker 1: reach dangerous levels, especially in South Asia regions of India, Bangladesh,
Speaker 1: UM by the by the middle or the end of
Speaker 1: the century, and that has major implications for people who
Speaker 1: work outside. Could climate change lead to actual adaptive changes
Speaker 1: in the human genome and what might that look like? Oh,
Speaker 1: my god, I am not. That's a perfect question for you.
Speaker 1: The thing about climate change is that, as you pointed out,
Speaker 1: natural climate change has happened before. We've seen little wobbles
Speaker 1: in the Earth's orbit, and that happens on the time
Speaker 1: scale of hundreds and thousands of years. And what we're
Speaker 1: seeing right now is climate change that is quicker than
Speaker 1: anything that we have ever seen. And that it's not
Speaker 1: the wobbles, it's not the sun, it's us, and it's
Speaker 1: so quick. It's not even quick and geologic time. It's
Speaker 1: quick and actual time, like we have seen changes in
Speaker 1: our lifetimes. Um And so I don't even know how
Speaker 1: the human genome can keep up with that because if
Speaker 1: you look at the time scales over which evolution operates
Speaker 1: and the time scales over which climate change is happening,
Speaker 1: climate change is just happening so so quickly. It's happening
Speaker 1: much much faster than something like evolution. You think God
Speaker 1: wants to evict us, he wants us out of here. No,
Speaker 1: I believe. I believe that the Earth is some self policing,
Speaker 1: self maintaining system. So human beings are going to get
Speaker 1: killed off. So the animals get they'll build their birdeness
Speaker 1: inside the Chrysler building and it's Disneyland and everything, and
Speaker 1: then they'll take over the world again and it'll be
Speaker 1: fine and we'll be gone. I mean, like, the Earth's
Speaker 1: a rock, right, It's it's a really special rock. But
Speaker 1: the Earth doesn't care about climate change. It's still going
Speaker 1: to be here. Um. And I actually I'm not sure
Speaker 1: that climate change is an immediate threat to human existence,
Speaker 1: but I know that it is an immediate threat to
Speaker 1: human happiness and human civilization and so a lot of
Speaker 1: times an immediate threat to the way we live now
Speaker 1: for sure. Um. And a lot of times people ask
Speaker 1: me like, oh, our human is going to be extinct?
Speaker 1: Are we doomed, and I kind of feel like, I mean,
Speaker 1: we're probably not doomed, but like I have higher standards,
Speaker 1: you know what I mean, Like, if that's the best
Speaker 1: thing you can say after a day, you're like, I
Speaker 1: didn't go extinct today, then it wasn't a good day.
Speaker 1: That I mean that. That's what sometimes people say is that, well,
Speaker 1: it's not really a problem unless it's going to kill everybody.
Speaker 1: But if your community offers evidence says we're at the
Speaker 1: point now where we are actually seeing the possibility of
Speaker 1: human extinction, are you going to have the Trumps of
Speaker 1: the world and his support turn and go, no, we're not,
Speaker 1: like do do do? Do? Do? Do? People you know
Speaker 1: who are opposed Give me an example. If you have
Speaker 1: one of people that you knew, scientists who quote unquote
Speaker 1: worked for the other side, They helped to tell the
Speaker 1: side of the story of the major petroleum companies. They
Speaker 1: were on the other side, who then changed and came
Speaker 1: over to your side. Have you seen any of those?
Speaker 1: Richard Mueller at Berkeley was someone who was in charge
Speaker 1: of the best program that Berkeley Earth Surface temperature program.
Speaker 1: So this was actually a project funded in part by
Speaker 1: Koch Brothers and others as a way to go through
Speaker 1: all of the Earth's weather data and say, is this
Speaker 1: hockey stick of warming that's been spoken about so abundantly
Speaker 1: in the I p c C Reports, is that just
Speaker 1: a manufactured curve by these leftist scientists. And so they
Speaker 1: established this group, and Richard is somebody I've known for
Speaker 1: a long time, and he's a very good scientist. He's
Speaker 1: a physicist, and he brought on a very good team
Speaker 1: of statistician and they went through this one i think,
Speaker 1: with a billion points of weather data and put together
Speaker 1: their own temperature record to great fanfare, and they said,
Speaker 1: we've got the new gold standard. We've you know, where
Speaker 1: this unbiased group and such a great fanfare. They announced
Speaker 1: this saying it was a cover of the wall of
Speaker 1: the Wall Street Journal in the New York Times. Match
Speaker 1: the record that Kate generates the one from NASA to it,
Speaker 1: then a hundredth of a degree, it's exactly the same thing.
Speaker 1: And so in the process of this they were asking him,
Speaker 1: so what do you feel about climate change? Said oh, yes,
Speaker 1: going on. So it was you know, we wasted though
Speaker 1: five years for this guy to get his funding, to
Speaker 1: get his team together to reanalyze all the data to
Speaker 1: build this whole story to only end up with the
Speaker 1: exact same story that four other groups around the world
Speaker 1: have done. So it's you know, we're back right where
Speaker 1: we started, but we've lost ten years. You have this
Speaker 1: program where you bring climate scientists and to talk to
Speaker 1: investors at the Columbia Business School. What were you hoping
Speaker 1: the outcome of that would be. So, as Kate mentioned,
Speaker 1: there are things that we can do as individuals, but
Speaker 1: what really matters is a societal shift in behavior. And
Speaker 1: in my opinion, the only way that's going to happen,
Speaker 1: both in the developed world and the developing world, is
Speaker 1: if it's led by the wealthy nations and in particular
Speaker 1: wealthy individuals wealthy companies. So one of the biggest challenges
Speaker 1: is how do we move to a world where we
Speaker 1: have embraced more renewables, where we have sufficient battery storage
Speaker 1: on the grid. That involves see changes in investments that
Speaker 1: are way beyond what any individual can do. I really
Speaker 1: believe in the power of institutions to effect change, and
Speaker 1: you just have to look at um genomic technology, for example,
Speaker 1: that was largely led by venture capital folks investing in
Speaker 1: in university research for example. So imagine now if we
Speaker 1: look at this energy problem, which is essentially what the
Speaker 1: global warming problem is, how do you repower the planet? Well,
Speaker 1: you come up with a way of developing developing this
Speaker 1: so that there are investible projects, that there are things
Speaker 1: that can be done tomorrow. Um aggre culture for example,
Speaker 1: one of the biggest risks of climate change is that
Speaker 1: agricultural yields for the four main commodity crops decline with
Speaker 1: every degree of warming, on the order of about five
Speaker 1: depending on the commodity crop. That's a huge thing is
Speaker 1: you're trying to feed a growing world. Your ability to
Speaker 1: do that with known crop strains available today, that's a
Speaker 1: challenge that's going to require investment. And you're only going
Speaker 1: to get that investment when you get large finance institutions
Speaker 1: to recognize and see the opportunity in there for them.
Speaker 1: I work with the United Nations Environmental Program and I
Speaker 1: went to Paris to host the Equator Prize for them.
Speaker 1: You know, one of the things we talked about is
Speaker 1: is about indigenous peoples in the stewardship of rainforest and everything.
Speaker 1: Do you think that that's a factor planting trees to
Speaker 1: remove carbon dioxy from the atmosphere is a factor that
Speaker 1: that's going to make a difference. Absolutely vegetation around the world. Absolutely.
Speaker 1: I mean, trees provide so many valuable services for you
Speaker 1: can't plant enough trees? Um. Well, I mean we can
Speaker 1: stop cutting them down, um, and we should plant more. Um.
Speaker 1: We're not going to be able to keep on as
Speaker 1: we are and just plant our way out of this problem. Um.
Speaker 1: But just because it won't solve everything doesn't mean it's
Speaker 1: not part of the solution. What is your opinion? Each
Speaker 1: of you have nuclear power? Because when I've been a
Speaker 1: very uh carry me out in a box anti nuclear.
Speaker 1: In terms of the utility reactors, the military application is
Speaker 1: a separate one as far as I'm concerned. But the
Speaker 1: utility reactors I fought, you know, um, Millstone and Oyster
Speaker 1: Creek and all these ones are the closing BNL on
Speaker 1: Long Island and so forth, and uh, you know, beyond
Speaker 1: the latest in the last couple of decades issues about
Speaker 1: terrorism and the vulnerability of Indian Point Proximate to New
Speaker 1: York City in terms of terrorism. I just think that
Speaker 1: first of all, they're they're not as cost efficient as
Speaker 1: they were advertised years ago, there are these monsters in
Speaker 1: terms of cost fracking, killing them and putting them all
Speaker 1: out of business. But my other biggest argument was the
Speaker 1: lie that the nuclear industry would tell habitually about it
Speaker 1: being a clean source of power, as if nuclear fuel
Speaker 1: rods came off the nuclear fuel rod tree. And you know,
Speaker 1: mining urmanium and processing uranium is one of the dirtiest
Speaker 1: and most fouling processes in the industrial world. So you know,
Speaker 1: other than that, they were like, well, other than the
Speaker 1: way we make these rods, this things, this stuff is great.
Speaker 1: It just isn't polluted anything. Do you agree? Do you
Speaker 1: think nuclear we need to maintain nuclear? Do we need
Speaker 1: more nuclear? I am agnostic on nuclear power. I'm actually
Speaker 1: willing to be convinced one way or the other because
Speaker 1: it is true that in the course of generating electricity,
Speaker 1: nuclear does not produce carbon dioxide emissions. UM. I think
Speaker 1: you're absolutely right that you have to take into account
Speaker 1: mining and enriching the uranium, both of which our energy
Speaker 1: intensive processes. And then the fact that once you turn
Speaker 1: on a nuclear reactor you have a ten thousand, hundred
Speaker 1: thousand year nuclear waste problem. Um. And you have that too,
Speaker 1: and you have to figure out what to do with
Speaker 1: that decontamination, decommissioning. All those companies are going to turn around.
Speaker 1: They're gonna sit there and they go, Wow. You know,
Speaker 1: we thought we had set aside enough money, and we
Speaker 1: thought we had government supervised supervised funds where we set
Speaker 1: uside enough money, but we really don't. And then we
Speaker 1: can wonder. We can have a lot of handfords all
Speaker 1: around the country. One thing I do want to point
Speaker 1: out is there hasn't been a nuclear reactor built in
Speaker 1: this country in my lifetime. Um, and that is not
Speaker 1: because environmentalists have been mean to nuclear. That's because it's
Speaker 1: not cost of it. It's not if it made money,
Speaker 1: people would do this. And so I kind of think
Speaker 1: that how I feel about nuclear doesn't matter. What about you, Peter.
Speaker 1: My My viewpoints are not that different than yours. But
Speaker 1: actually I'd like to also ride this, uh, this middle ground,
Speaker 1: which is that let's put it on the table. Let's
Speaker 1: put it on the table and and have people decide
Speaker 1: and what, and the decision inevitably comes to don't build
Speaker 1: it near me, and then it comes to where we're
Speaker 1: gonna put the storage. I actually got a master's degree
Speaker 1: in nuclear waste management and and you know, one of
Speaker 1: the results of my study was that we had no
Speaker 1: place to bury these you know, the idea was to
Speaker 1: try to do pursue underseas stories, leaving in in the tanks,
Speaker 1: in the water on the site exactly. And so it's
Speaker 1: a mess that's not cleaned up. And you know, are
Speaker 1: the failed Yuckum mountain Um storage facility is a classic
Speaker 1: back right exactly. So here we gave our absolute best effort.
Speaker 1: Our top sciences is trying to figure out where to
Speaker 1: put this stuff and they couldn't agree. But if you
Speaker 1: asked me, do you want a nuclear plant built next
Speaker 1: door to you or a coal plant? Um, I'd choose
Speaker 1: the nuclear plant every day, because if if you are
Speaker 1: interested in harming people, killing people, the best way to
Speaker 1: do that is to build a coal plant. Under the
Speaker 1: umbrella of this idea of how much power do we
Speaker 1: need and how we're gonna where we're gonna get it from.
Speaker 1: Aren't there parts of the world and aren't there even
Speaker 1: big European countries where they consumption of powers going down?
Speaker 1: It's correct? Yeah, I mean, well, certainly an emissions and
Speaker 1: you know the UK is actually now emitting less carbon
Speaker 1: than it was during Queen Victoria's reign. It's incredible. Uh.
Speaker 1: And there are other you know, countries that are are
Speaker 1: producing more electricity with much less emissions. And so this
Speaker 1: um per, this per capita emissions trend is decreasing for
Speaker 1: a lot of the um What did they do that
Speaker 1: we should be doing well? So, for example, in Germany,
Speaker 1: there's this widespread adoption of solar and wind to the
Speaker 1: extent that's really unthinkable here. I mean, it's just a
Speaker 1: fraction of our energy, or of electricity supply in the
Speaker 1: United States is provided by renewables. You know, it's amazing
Speaker 1: to think about this. If if you want to power
Speaker 1: the entire nation of the United States with solar, for example,
Speaker 1: you need to cover an area roughly the size of Delaware,
Speaker 1: a little bit smaller than the solar power for the
Speaker 1: entire nation. I have this analogy, and it's like we're
Speaker 1: in a lifeboat and there's somebody on the lifeboat who's
Speaker 1: having a panic attack, who like, while we're sleeping, Larry
Speaker 1: over there is drilling a hole in the bottom of
Speaker 1: a lifeboat. And the question becomes, in the lifeboat, what
Speaker 1: do we do about Larry? What do we do in
Speaker 1: our society about people who don't get it, And I'm
Speaker 1: wondering what your thoughts are on that. I think, first off,
Speaker 1: we don't let Larry be the president. That would be
Speaker 1: That would be a good first thing, UM. But I
Speaker 1: think very few people care deeply where their electricity comes from.
Speaker 1: You flip the lights, which you want the lights to
Speaker 1: come on, You're not like, oh, I really want that
Speaker 1: to be from coal. Another thing that gives me hope is, UM,
Speaker 1: if you look at the generations, if you look at
Speaker 1: what younger people think about climate change, the incidence of
Speaker 1: climate denial or climate quote unquote skepticism is so much
Speaker 1: smaller in the sort of eight group among the students
Speaker 1: that we work with, the young people that we talked to.
Speaker 1: Young people understand that this is going to be a
Speaker 1: problem for future generations. And young people have ordinary, normal,
Speaker 1: healthy instincts which they don't learn how to kill to
Speaker 1: the end of their thirties. Where that's all about denying reality.
Speaker 1: Who were some of the heroes in government preferably so.
Speaker 1: Right after the election, the Big Conference and Earth Sciences
Speaker 1: was in San Francisco and UM the featured speaker was
Speaker 1: Jerry Brown UM and he took the time to come
Speaker 1: and talk to an audience of climate scientists and tell
Speaker 1: us that California takes this very seriously. California is going
Speaker 1: to be at the forefront of not only research science. Okay, um,
Speaker 1: I've never been pandered too before as a scientist. It
Speaker 1: was amazing. I loved it. That was something that gave
Speaker 1: me hope and what was kind of a dark time,
Speaker 1: what California doing is kind of thrilling where they've always
Speaker 1: been ahead of the curve in terms of all kinds
Speaker 1: of things, you know, auto emissions and stuff with what
Speaker 1: about you? That would have been my choice as well, Jerry.
Speaker 1: I mean, he's an absolute hero, absolute leader. And Sheldon
Speaker 1: white House is really very strong as a Senator from
Speaker 1: Rhode Island, very brave in terms of getting his voice out.
Speaker 1: He's taking on the administration and but he's a lone
Speaker 1: voice out there. And I think so much of what
Speaker 1: needs to be communicated to the American people right now
Speaker 1: as unity, it's really missing in all of our discussions
Speaker 1: as we are one country. What is the language, what
Speaker 1: is the narrative that's required to bring us together? And
Speaker 1: that's why I like this Green New Deal articulation, which
Speaker 1: is that it's something that really embraces the combined wealth,
Speaker 1: the combined goodwill, the common purpose that exists in this country.
Speaker 1: That did for FDR. The same week as we recorded
Speaker 1: this interview, The New York Times ran this headline, Trump
Speaker 1: Administration's strategy on climate try to bury its own scientific report.
Speaker 1: That report discussed the huge human tragedy facing us if
Speaker 1: we don't take action, poverty, starvation, and even more refugee crises.
Speaker 1: We owe a debt of gratitude to people who dedicate
Speaker 1: their lives to preventing these tragedies. So thank you to
Speaker 1: my guests Peter Domenical of Columbia's Earth Institute, and Kate
Speaker 1: Marvel of Columbia and NASA's Goddard Institute for Space Studies.
Speaker 1: This is Alec Baldwin, and you were listening to Here's
Speaker 1: the thing