Speaker 1: Brought to you by Toyota. Let's go places. Hello, I
Speaker 1: am Lauren Vogue. Bam, this is Forward Thinking Jonathan stricklind
Speaker 1: is going to cut him in just a moment, but
Speaker 1: we had a quick addendum to the following episode. It's
Speaker 1: going to be about climate change and future oriented. Though
Speaker 1: we maybe we could not have predicted that when we
Speaker 1: recorded this on September sevent or so, that the Intergovernmental
Speaker 1: Panel on Climate Change was going to release a new
Speaker 1: report just about a week later. Now this new report
Speaker 1: is very much in line with the trends that we're
Speaker 1: going to talk about in this episode. But in case
Speaker 1: you would like the updated facts and figures, I'm going
Speaker 1: to write a blog post about that. It is going
Speaker 1: to go up slightly after this episode airs, so go
Speaker 1: over to fw thinking dot com to check that out
Speaker 1: and stay tuned. Thank you. Welcome to Forward Thinking Taylor
Speaker 1: to one and welcome to Forward Thinking, the podcast that
Speaker 1: looks at the future and says it's a cool, cruel
Speaker 1: summer leading me here on my own. I'm Jonathan Strickland,
Speaker 1: I'm Lauren Vogue Obama, and I'm Joe McCormick. And that
Speaker 1: sound of disapproval comes from Lauren, who is shaking her
Speaker 1: head at me. Today we're going to talk about climate change.
Speaker 1: What is climate change? What's global warming? Are they the
Speaker 1: same thing? What's what's the deal? Yeah? Climate change? So
Speaker 1: I saw a movie about it, um, like convenient truth.
Speaker 1: You know. It was called The Day After Tomorrow. Oh
Speaker 1: that movie, right, it came out a few years back.
Speaker 1: I don't know if you saw it, but it had
Speaker 1: it had some very attractive actors in it, uh, and
Speaker 1: they fought against the evil villain of climate change. Basically,
Speaker 1: what I learned from it was that climate change creates
Speaker 1: uh intelligent anthropogenic ice that chases you down hallways or
Speaker 1: or Jill down hallways. Right. It's really had it in
Speaker 1: for him. Um that that that everything happens in like
Speaker 1: I don't remember. It was like it looked like it
Speaker 1: was like an hour. My favorite part of that movie
Speaker 1: is watching characters running from the cold front as it's
Speaker 1: passing over and turning things instantly into ice, and just
Speaker 1: barely slipping inside a library and shutting the door to
Speaker 1: keep the cold front out people. It's like when people
Speaker 1: run away from an explosion, right and they're able to
Speaker 1: outrun it. Yeah, it made me think that there was
Speaker 1: going to be a knock at the door, and then
Speaker 1: you just hear cold front like, no, don't get it. Yeah,
Speaker 1: but yeah, everything I learned from this movie, is this
Speaker 1: all correct? Let's just say that the film takes some
Speaker 1: liberties with science. Oh okay, so then climate change, global warming,
Speaker 1: these things aren't really happening. See, as it turns out,
Speaker 1: there's actually a middle ground between the movie The Day
Speaker 1: After Tomorrow and the complete denial that climate change and
Speaker 1: global warming are a thing. Well, I like to uh
Speaker 1: listen to what scientists have to say. Let's so, well,
Speaker 1: first let's let's define some terms, right, okay, because I mean,
Speaker 1: obviously we're gonna be talking a lot about global warming
Speaker 1: and climate change. And one thing that we notice is
Speaker 1: that maybe in popular science reporting and in general amongst
Speaker 1: the public, these two terms tend to be confused or
Speaker 1: sometimes used interchangeably, and that's not exactly correct. Yeah. It
Speaker 1: turns out that if you talk to scientists, how they
Speaker 1: use these terms is that global warming refers more often
Speaker 1: specifically to the increase in the mean surface temperature of
Speaker 1: the Earth. It's caused specifically by human human emissions. Right,
Speaker 1: that this recent trend we're talking about, right, right, whereas
Speaker 1: climate change refers to both global warming and everything else
Speaker 1: that causes the climate to change over a given period
Speaker 1: of time a k a. Usually a very long period
Speaker 1: of time, right, Yeah, So you can think of global
Speaker 1: warming is sort of like a specific phenomenon and climate
Speaker 1: change is like that phenomenon plus all of its effects. Right.
Speaker 1: And then on top of that, you also have the
Speaker 1: scientific literature that tends to use these these two different
Speaker 1: terms in very specific contexts. So if you were to
Speaker 1: actually read a paper, one paper might be about global warming,
Speaker 1: another one might be about climate change, and those two
Speaker 1: terms are not meant to be interchanged at all, Whereas,
Speaker 1: like I said, with some of the in the media,
Speaker 1: sometimes they just get tossed around without people really being
Speaker 1: very aware of what right it's. It may be that
Speaker 1: someone is unaware of the difference or that they're just misspeaking,
Speaker 1: but at any rate, there does seem to be this
Speaker 1: this idea that the two terms are used, or that
Speaker 1: one was used before and now the other one is preferred.
Speaker 1: Like there there's a there's a perception and misperception. As
Speaker 1: it turns out that global warming was the term that
Speaker 1: everyone was using in the eighties, and then once everyone
Speaker 1: figured out, oh wait, no, no, no, it's not global warming,
Speaker 1: it's climate change. It's switched. That's not actually true. Those
Speaker 1: two terms are still used pretty much just as frequently
Speaker 1: as they were before, but they're in that very specific context.
Speaker 1: So it all depends upon the context of whatever research
Speaker 1: you're reading as to which term will be used. But
Speaker 1: the difference is actually pretty intuitive. They're what they sound like.
Speaker 1: Global warming refers to the warming. Climate change refers to
Speaker 1: the overall climate. But wait a minute, Wait a minute, Joe, Joe,
Speaker 1: I'm I'm confused. I mean, yesterday was not as hot
Speaker 1: as two days ago, which in turn was hotter than
Speaker 1: the day before that, and a few days before that
Speaker 1: was less hot. I don't see how this climate thing
Speaker 1: is affecting me. Am I making a mistake. You might
Speaker 1: be making a mistake. Um, For one thing, here, your
Speaker 1: sample size is one. It's you. Yeah, I'm a very
Speaker 1: reliable narrator. It's also a very small sample of days. Okay, sure, sure.
Speaker 1: So to understand global trends in climate, we need to
Speaker 1: step back and look at really massive systems and averages
Speaker 1: across a lot of different time scales and geographical location, right,
Speaker 1: because climate is global, whereas weather, which is what you're
Speaker 1: talking about, is is local. Yes, yes, weather is local.
Speaker 1: And weather is something that we usually refer to in
Speaker 1: terms of, well we can it can be as short
Speaker 1: as a few minutes and as long as a few months,
Speaker 1: but that tends to be what we're referring to when
Speaker 1: we talk about weather. Climate is a much longer term, uh,
Speaker 1: subject matter. And like you said, Joe, we're talking about
Speaker 1: global scale with climate, not just Jonathan in the metropolitan
Speaker 1: Atlanta area over the course of the last two weeks.
Speaker 1: So that that but that's one of those other things
Speaker 1: that we see get confused often as the idea between
Speaker 1: climate and weather, and in fact, that can cause confusion
Speaker 1: when you're discussing things like climate change and global global warming,
Speaker 1: because if someone says, yeah, but you know, this summer
Speaker 1: just didn't seem as hot as last summer, it's it's
Speaker 1: a total different scale than what we're talking about. Basically,
Speaker 1: if you can make small talk about it in an
Speaker 1: elevator with someone that you don't know politely, then its weather,
Speaker 1: not climate. That's a good rubric. Did you did you
Speaker 1: notice that the glacial ice is two less over the
Speaker 1: last twenty years than it was over the last hundred
Speaker 1: and twenty years. I see, I have different elevator experiences
Speaker 1: that you clearly do. Okay, Jonathan's elevator experiences are just primo.
Speaker 1: You gotta ask him about them sometimes, Okay. Uh, So
Speaker 1: let's talk about temperature, okay, because clearly the central feature
Speaker 1: of climate change is this idea that the temperature is increasing?
Speaker 1: Number one? Is that true? And number two? How do
Speaker 1: we know? Uh? It is true? And we know because
Speaker 1: we take measurements and we examine them. The acceleration of
Speaker 1: heating that we've seen over the last century is far
Speaker 1: greater than what we can account for using the natural
Speaker 1: cycles of the Earth. So, in other words, we're seeing
Speaker 1: a more rapid acceleration in heating than we would normally
Speaker 1: see if, in fact, human intervention had not been a factor.
Speaker 1: So what kind of differences are we talking about in
Speaker 1: recent years? Is it like a hundred degrees hotter? Well? So, okay,
Speaker 1: So over the past five thousand years or so, global
Speaker 1: temperatures rose a total of four to seven degrees celsius,
Speaker 1: depending on you know, the absolute liability of our data,
Speaker 1: And um, that's that's what like seven point two to
Speaker 1: twelve point six degrees fahrenheit. I didn't just make that
Speaker 1: up off the top of my head. I wrote it
Speaker 1: down just to have a saying. Um, but uh, in
Speaker 1: the past century alone, um temperatures rose point seven degrees celsius.
Speaker 1: That's one point to six degrees fahrenheit, which is about
Speaker 1: ten times faster than the average rate of ice age
Speaker 1: recovery warming. And on top of that, projection suggests that
Speaker 1: by the end of the twenty first century, the temperature
Speaker 1: will continue to arise between two degrees celsius and six
Speaker 1: degrees celsius. That's kind of a range that's given. Uh.
Speaker 1: You know, six obviously would be the worst case scenario.
Speaker 1: But even if we were to quote unquote fix all
Speaker 1: the problems, and we'll talk about fixing the problems in
Speaker 1: the future podcast, but if we were to fix them,
Speaker 1: we would still experience, uh, an increase in temperature because
Speaker 1: there's a lag between addressing the problem and having the
Speaker 1: problem actually resolve in any way, right, UM, And all
Speaker 1: of us data is based on a whole lot of
Speaker 1: figures that we are collecting about um. You know, the
Speaker 1: the amount of radiation we're getting from the sun and
Speaker 1: everything unhouse gases that are present in the atmosphere, uh,
Speaker 1: everything from the cloud cover that can be a factor.
Speaker 1: In fact, there's some people who suggest that uh, through
Speaker 1: increased evaporation due to heat heating of the oceans, that
Speaker 1: that will increase the cloud cover and that's that would
Speaker 1: actually help help cool the earth. Uh. I'm not I'm
Speaker 1: not a sold on that particular, on that particular interpretation.
Speaker 1: Got I've got a bunch of information on that one.
Speaker 1: The general answers, We're not sure yet, but we'll talk
Speaker 1: about that in a future podcast. But but but now,
Speaker 1: the kind of data that we collect is about the aerosols,
Speaker 1: the particles in our atmosphere, atmosphere gases, the ocean surface
Speaker 1: temperature changes, global sea level, extent of ocean, ice, plant growth, rainfall,
Speaker 1: cloud structure, uh, ground temperature, snow depth records. I mean,
Speaker 1: like all of this data is going into the way
Speaker 1: that scientists define these estimates of global warming and UM.
Speaker 1: When they take all of this data from natural events
Speaker 1: and from human created events, they try to kind of
Speaker 1: reverse engineer the temperature ranges that we've seen and UM,
Speaker 1: the models that they create bork around nineteen fifty. If
Speaker 1: you don't take into account human intervention. Right, So in
Speaker 1: other words, when you if you were to say this
Speaker 1: is only based this is just part of the Earth's
Speaker 1: natural cycle, like this is exactly the same sort of
Speaker 1: thing that's happened in the past. You can't account for
Speaker 1: the amount of change we're seeing now in the in
Speaker 1: the time span. That's the really important part is that
Speaker 1: these are changes that we would see happen to the
Speaker 1: Earth in a natural warming trend, but we would see
Speaker 1: them stretched out over a much longer time span than
Speaker 1: half a century. Okay, so the Earth is definitely warming recently,
Speaker 1: and basically nobody denies this, right, And dude, that's well, well, basically,
Speaker 1: I think most people who look at the science say no,
Speaker 1: there's there's plenty of evidence here, pretty straightforward data. It's
Speaker 1: just getting hotter. It's not like a question about that,
Speaker 1: although there are people who will say that, no, it's
Speaker 1: not getting warmer because look, the Arctic ice has recovered
Speaker 1: from ice recovered compared to Therefore the worth the Earth
Speaker 1: is not warming, or it's warming at a slower pace,
Speaker 1: or it's declining. Again, a single year of data isn't
Speaker 1: enough to base a trend upon, and the trends that
Speaker 1: we are talking about have lasted since um at least
Speaker 1: nine Yeah. So, so there are people who do deny
Speaker 1: that the Earth is warming, but they are not as
Speaker 1: numerous as those who deny the larger question of climate
Speaker 1: change in general. Okay, Um, so the Earth is warming,
Speaker 1: what's causing it? Well, that's where not some more the
Speaker 1: argument comes in? Right? Yeah, so have y'all heard of
Speaker 1: the greenhouse effect? Wait? What have you ever been inside
Speaker 1: a greenhouse? I have? Or have you ever been inside
Speaker 1: just a parked car out in the sunlight. My wife
Speaker 1: leaves me there all the time. When into the story,
Speaker 1: I beg her to crack a window, she just takes
Speaker 1: the key out and it's power windows. So I'm just stuck. Seriously,
Speaker 1: people don't leave your animals. No, no, no, it's bad,
Speaker 1: very bad. Um. And it's bad because in a way
Speaker 1: of the green house effect. Okay, so the greenhouse effect
Speaker 1: happens when, um, there is sort of a differential in
Speaker 1: the two way transportation of energy through a medium. So
Speaker 1: it happens in a greenhouse when the sunlight comes through
Speaker 1: the glass comes in and allows that that UV radiation,
Speaker 1: all the sun's energy to come through one way, but
Speaker 1: then it traps heat inside. Um. The Earth actually works
Speaker 1: in a very similar way in the atmosphere, right. Yeah,
Speaker 1: the atmosphere is kind of like the glass in a greenhouse.
Speaker 1: And this is totally natural and in fact, if it
Speaker 1: didn't happen, there wouldn't really be life as we know it. No,
Speaker 1: if it didn't happen, the Earth would basically be the moon. Um. Right.
Speaker 1: The the the heat trapped by the atmosphere keeps the
Speaker 1: Earth at a habitable temperature. Right, that's exactly right. And
Speaker 1: um So the greenhouse effect is not a bad thing,
Speaker 1: and it's caused by multiple types of gases in the atmosphere.
Speaker 1: Um So, the biggest one actually is water vapor, right,
Speaker 1: that one. That one ends up trapping heat at an
Speaker 1: efficiency far greater than that of other greenhouse gasses. Yeah,
Speaker 1: so water vapor, UM, cloud particles, carbon dioxide uh CFCs
Speaker 1: so chlorofluoro carbons um in O two I believe, and
Speaker 1: methane gases like this. Um. They hover up in the
Speaker 1: atmosphere and what happens is the sunlight passes through them
Speaker 1: on the way to the Earth, bringing energy with it.
Speaker 1: That sunlight hits the Earth's crust and gets absorbed, and
Speaker 1: when it radiates back upward it is heat. That heat
Speaker 1: gets trapped under those gases and does not pass backward
Speaker 1: out of the Earth, so we get sort of a
Speaker 1: net gain of heat on the planet. Um. A certain
Speaker 1: amount of this of this, like we've said, is good
Speaker 1: because it allows us to not freeze to death. But um,
Speaker 1: if you have too much greenhouse effect from an overconcentration
Speaker 1: of greenhouse gasses, you can trap more heat than you're
Speaker 1: used to, which is is what most scientists agree is
Speaker 1: going on right now to cause this heating trend we've
Speaker 1: observed recently, which in turn is driving climate change. So
Speaker 1: what can we do about this? Well, we can't really
Speaker 1: mess with water vapor much because there's a water cycle
Speaker 1: on Earth that we need. It turns out water is
Speaker 1: pretty important. Rain is kind of critical, so we don't
Speaker 1: want to mess with the water. Um. But there are
Speaker 1: these other gases that are non condensing gases as opposed
Speaker 1: to water. Because water vapor condenses, it forms clouds. These
Speaker 1: non condensing gases, and mainly most scientists degree carbon dioxide
Speaker 1: are responsible for a huge part of the trend in
Speaker 1: global warming. And the reason this is happening is because
Speaker 1: we've increased the amount of carbon dioxide in our atmosphere
Speaker 1: since the Industrial Revolution. So what you can do is
Speaker 1: you can you can drill a cylinder of ancient ice
Speaker 1: out of a glacier and pull that up and look
Speaker 1: at it. And it turns out when ice freezes, it
Speaker 1: traps little air bubbles in it, and those air bubbles
Speaker 1: are like little time capsules of what the atmosphere was
Speaker 1: like in throughout history. Yeah, and so we can look
Speaker 1: at these, and this is one type of evidence we
Speaker 1: have for the historical presence of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere.
Speaker 1: What these ice cores tend to show is that pre
Speaker 1: industrial air had about two hundred and eighty parts per
Speaker 1: million of C O two um. This year we hit
Speaker 1: four hundred parts per million, so we uh, not nearly doubled,
Speaker 1: but we but half a yeah, yeah that's true, half
Speaker 1: again as much. And that's a big deal earlier. And
Speaker 1: so there are questions about exactly how much carbon needs
Speaker 1: to be in the atmosphere to cause a significant increase
Speaker 1: in the greenhouse effect. Um, what I've heard some people
Speaker 1: say is like, well, we really need to get down
Speaker 1: to three d and fifty parts per million for a
Speaker 1: stable climate. UM four hundred was sort of like some
Speaker 1: people have said, that's like a sort of turning point
Speaker 1: or a point of stability that that really cannot be exceeded.
Speaker 1: And now it's like, well, we already hit that, and
Speaker 1: so there's sort of this smoothing scale of what can
Speaker 1: feasibly be tolerated UM. The point is that is that
Speaker 1: there's a correlation between the amount of carbon in the
Speaker 1: atmosphere and the and the temperature the or the sorry
Speaker 1: the climate. So you can look at look at this.
Speaker 1: I think you mentioned earlier that these ice cores, for example,
Speaker 1: you can look at dates um in the strata of
Speaker 1: the ice and it turns out that times when there
Speaker 1: was less carbon in the atmosphere or less carbon dioxide,
Speaker 1: there were ice ages or colder periods, and time when
Speaker 1: the carbon dioxide and the atmosphere spiked there were warmer periods,
Speaker 1: just like we're seeing now. And you can argue that
Speaker 1: part of this is due to U volcanic activity. Even today,
Speaker 1: there have been a couple of large volcanoes that have
Speaker 1: erupted UM over the past few decades that have caused
Speaker 1: a significant amount of carbon dioxide to be released into
Speaker 1: the air. They also tend to release a lot of
Speaker 1: sulfur dioxide, which tends to lower it has a cooling
Speaker 1: effect from cloud creation. Yeah. From what I've read, it
Speaker 1: seems to be that they think that the volcanoes are
Speaker 1: not a significant contributor, certainly not compared to cars. As
Speaker 1: it turns out there are more cars and there are
Speaker 1: volcanoes or factory power facilities. Yeah. Um, And so there
Speaker 1: are a few questions. Okay, so we're we're seeing this
Speaker 1: correlation between temperature and the concentration of CO two in
Speaker 1: the atmosphere. Um, but are there other things that might
Speaker 1: be causing it instead. Well, we don't know for sure,
Speaker 1: but most scientists think not. Um. Well, you know, I mean,
Speaker 1: you know, alterations in them in the Earth's orbit and
Speaker 1: the Sun's orbit can change change the climate over a
Speaker 1: given period of time, but not the drastic way that
Speaker 1: we seen it in the past couple decades. Yeah. Like
Speaker 1: some objections you might see sometimes people who say like, oh,
Speaker 1: the Sun is just hotter, like it's warming the Earth
Speaker 1: more than before. But we can actually test that hypothesis
Speaker 1: and that doesn't really stand up apparently, right, the Sun's
Speaker 1: energy varies on about an eleven year cycle. Um, it
Speaker 1: might vary also on a on a greater cycle, but
Speaker 1: we haven't had enough data yet to tell whether that's true.
Speaker 1: And um, as of early the solar brightness since two
Speaker 1: thousand five has actually been slightly lower yeah than in
Speaker 1: the past, So yet we have a warming trend during
Speaker 1: that time. The bottom line is, uh, we're pretty sure
Speaker 1: that there is a substantial link between the amount of
Speaker 1: C O two especially, but other greenhouse gases like methane,
Speaker 1: chlor flora carbons and stuff like that, and the greenhouse
Speaker 1: effect that is causing the global warming trend we see, right,
Speaker 1: So let's um, I guess then we need to talk
Speaker 1: about some of the effects here, and we've touched on
Speaker 1: these obviously, because if you're talking about global warming, a
Speaker 1: lot of effects become fairly self evident, but some of
Speaker 1: them you might not realize at first because they're kind
Speaker 1: of a it's kind of like a domino effect. Right, So,
Speaker 1: what's global warming going to do in the future? All right? Well,
Speaker 1: first of all, I sounded so, yeah, here's a trend
Speaker 1: that we're observing. What's it really going to do in
Speaker 1: the future? Okay, Well, um, there's there are a lot
Speaker 1: of a lot of disagreements, well, maybe not disagreements. There's
Speaker 1: a lot of debate and conversation around this because frankly,
Speaker 1: climate is an incredibly complex thing. There are a lot
Speaker 1: of different factors that all influence one another in different ways,
Speaker 1: and changing the temperature of the Earth is definitely changing climates.
Speaker 1: It's just a question of how drastically are certain climates
Speaker 1: going to change. And you know, once you get to
Speaker 1: a point where you're trying to predict what's happening in
Speaker 1: a particular region, it really gets tricky, right, right, So,
Speaker 1: in other words, saying this is exactly how it's going
Speaker 1: to affect the northeastern United States would be probably an
Speaker 1: irresponsible thing to say as a scientist, unless you were
Speaker 1: able to couch that in probabilities, making probabilistic models, where
Speaker 1: you say there's a certain percentage of likelihood that this
Speaker 1: is going to happen. But keep in mind that's a
Speaker 1: percentage of likelihood, right, and there are just too many,
Speaker 1: too many factors, too many points of data to really
Speaker 1: be certain about that kind of thing. Yeah, and anytime
Speaker 1: we're dealing in um future projections, instead of just say
Speaker 1: I don't know, basic empirical observations. We're talking in terms
Speaker 1: of likelihood certainty. Seeing even with these things that were
Speaker 1: very sure about if it's future speculation, it's like, we're
Speaker 1: not actually positive. And in fact, there there are percentages
Speaker 1: that are like that, there's essentially certainty that we're going
Speaker 1: to see uh increased heat waves in the future. So
Speaker 1: that's scientists have put that uh a near certainty. Other
Speaker 1: ones are you know, at different ranges. But for instance, ice,
Speaker 1: we can we're gonna see less of it. Yeah, there's
Speaker 1: gonna be a lot of melting. So we're gonna see
Speaker 1: a loss of sea ice. We're gonna see reduction in
Speaker 1: glacier sizes. We're gonna see ice breaking up and melting
Speaker 1: earlier in the year on lakes and rivers and places
Speaker 1: where it does freeze over right. That's because every year
Speaker 1: um ice will will reform in the winter and then
Speaker 1: melting down in the summer. And when they talk about
Speaker 1: the glaciers melting, it's not that they're all doing it
Speaker 1: all at once. Forever's um it's it's just that less
Speaker 1: ice is being recaptured in the winter than it was
Speaker 1: the previous So the overall trend is that the glaciers
Speaker 1: are getting smaller in size and over time. And then
Speaker 1: you also we see decrease decreases in snow packs, which
Speaker 1: means you're going to see some actual ecosystems change as
Speaker 1: a result. And by the way, all of this ice
Speaker 1: melting and decreases in snow winds up creating warmer temper
Speaker 1: cheers overall, because ice and snow are reflective, whereas um
Speaker 1: warm ground or warm water or even I mean, you know,
Speaker 1: room temperature ground or water are darker and therefore absorb
Speaker 1: more of that heat coming down from the sun. Ye uh.
Speaker 1: NASA says that the green Land and Antarctic ice sheets
Speaker 1: have decreased in mass UH from two thousand two to
Speaker 1: two thousand and six. They estimate that Greenland lost between
Speaker 1: a hundred fifty cubic kilometers or thirty six to sixty
Speaker 1: cubic miles of ice per year, and an Arcticle lost
Speaker 1: about a hundred fifty two cubic kilometers or thirty six
Speaker 1: cubic miles of ice between two thousand two and two
Speaker 1: thousand five. So an Arctica is not losing it at
Speaker 1: the same rate as Greenland, but it's still losing ice
Speaker 1: on top of that we're seeing the possibility of of
Speaker 1: drastically shifting weather patterns. We're talking massive changes in precipitation levels,
Speaker 1: so the day after tomorrow, not that dramatic in that
Speaker 1: quick Not not this this flip flopping effect where you
Speaker 1: suddenly have temperatures dropped to thirty below zero in a
Speaker 1: blink of an eye, but rather that you're going to
Speaker 1: see areas get more rain than they normally would, while
Speaker 1: other areas become get less rain and end up having
Speaker 1: severe droughts. Um but not intelligent droughts, not not as
Speaker 1: far as I can determine. They might still chase Jake
Speaker 1: Jillen Hall, because wouldn't we all? I would like to
Speaker 1: have an intelligent drought on this podcast to replace a
Speaker 1: certain co host who's getting a little, little, little little
Speaker 1: beans in the system. I'm just kidding too. He can
Speaker 1: sit next to you. So yeah, we're changes in precipitation levels. Also,
Speaker 1: projections suggest that there's a possibility that will see more
Speaker 1: rainfall in high latitudes and less rainfall in subtropical climates.
Speaker 1: So that's going to dramatically change those ecosystems, which brings
Speaker 1: me to other ecosystem changes, plant and animal ranges are
Speaker 1: going to shift as environments become less suitable for over time.
Speaker 1: We've already started to see that where we're seeing animal
Speaker 1: popular lations move from where they traditionally would range because
Speaker 1: those areas are no longer suitable for them. That's going
Speaker 1: to continue. In Latin America, UH rainforests are starting to
Speaker 1: change over into savannah's now. That means that there's also
Speaker 1: been a decrease in precipitation there, which means that there's
Speaker 1: uh greater strain on fresh water resources, so people are
Speaker 1: having to work harder to get fresh water in those areas.
Speaker 1: Also means that because the rainforest is converting over to
Speaker 1: a different kind of ecosystem, you're seeing a real risk
Speaker 1: to bio diversity. Lots of species that are put at
Speaker 1: risk because of that loss of their environment. In Europe,
Speaker 1: there's been an increase in flash floods and coastal flooding.
Speaker 1: Projections for Africa indicate that severe droughts and larger strain
Speaker 1: of water resources will be in the near future. That
Speaker 1: of course, will also affect food resources. We've discussed this
Speaker 1: in the past, how water and food are so closely related.
Speaker 1: Asia is also going to experience increased flooding and decreased
Speaker 1: access to fresh water, so lots of rough things. They're
Speaker 1: on top of that, the ocean is being affected in
Speaker 1: a couple of different ways. A salinity is changing, that's
Speaker 1: the amount of salt concentration in the oceans um that changes,
Speaker 1: and drawing on observations from nineteen fifty five to two
Speaker 1: thousand four, researchers found that the ocean sealinity changed throughout
Speaker 1: the study period, and that the changes were independent of
Speaker 1: known natural variability, and that the shifts were consistent with
Speaker 1: the expected effects of anthropogenic climate change. So, in other words,
Speaker 1: this is not due to some sort of undersea activity
Speaker 1: or natural cycle. This is something means caused by by humankind.
Speaker 1: The pH of oceans is changing. This is because when
Speaker 1: carbon dioxide reacts with seawater, it lowers the pH of
Speaker 1: the sea water. Uh so that means it makes it
Speaker 1: more acidic um, which if you've ever had a a
Speaker 1: fish tank at home, and that could be a bad thing.
Speaker 1: That thing. Yeah, so it absorbs a lot of carbon
Speaker 1: dioxide and it that kind of does that, you know,
Speaker 1: it just does that naturally over over a long period
Speaker 1: of time. It would absorb like if we were to
Speaker 1: stop producing CO two today and and only natural sources
Speaker 1: were producing it. Uh, the ocean would end up absorbing
Speaker 1: that CEO two over the course of you know, a
Speaker 1: couple of thousand years. Um. But uh, it's and that
Speaker 1: would dramatically change that ocean over that time. But we're
Speaker 1: also talking about using the ocean as a possible sink
Speaker 1: for carbon dioxide, which we'll talk more about in another podcast.
Speaker 1: But that would mean pumping up the acidity level of
Speaker 1: the oceans, at least in a regional area wherever the
Speaker 1: pumping was being done. Uh, in a in a time
Speaker 1: scale that would be much shorter than what we would
Speaker 1: see naturally. So in other words, we'd be seeing something
Speaker 1: happening in the oceans that is akin to what we're
Speaker 1: seeing in our atmosphere right now. It would be the
Speaker 1: the effects would be different, but it's the same sort
Speaker 1: of thing where you know, it's not necessarily a solution
Speaker 1: to a problem, it's creating a different problem. It's it's
Speaker 1: it's sort of a lateral shift. On top of that,
Speaker 1: we're talking about the complexity of climate. You know, It's
Speaker 1: like we said, it's it's complicated stuff. There's so many
Speaker 1: different things to bring into consideration that it is very
Speaker 1: difficult for us to say for sure what is going
Speaker 1: to happen in the future. It's just, uh, we know
Speaker 1: that these basic things are very likely to happen. When
Speaker 1: you get more specific, like, well we see greater cyclone
Speaker 1: activity and intensity in the future, that's a possibility, but
Speaker 1: it's not a certainty. And I think that's r rated
Speaker 1: about the sixty six percent level of certainty, which is
Speaker 1: still over more certain than not, but still a pretty
Speaker 1: huge But then when it comes to things like you know,
Speaker 1: there'll be more heat waves and there will be less
Speaker 1: rain in some areas and more rain in other areas,
Speaker 1: the certainty level is way higher like or above. So
Speaker 1: so there are some things that we just cannot know
Speaker 1: right now because we don't have all the information we
Speaker 1: would need to project an accurate model. And it's just
Speaker 1: so hard to project in this realm because you're not
Speaker 1: talking about, say, predicting a chemical reaction and a beaker
Speaker 1: that's isolated. The climate is something that creates feedback loops
Speaker 1: within itself, so lots of different climate variables influence the
Speaker 1: other ones. Uh, it influences whether weather influences ecosystems which
Speaker 1: affect the climate, and so there's just it's it's incredibly
Speaker 1: complex system and only that, but we can't even be
Speaker 1: certain how much greenhouse gas we're emitting on any given day,
Speaker 1: let alone. Like we can make estimates, but those estimates
Speaker 1: are based upon information that researchers can gather. And when
Speaker 1: you think about it, that the world's a big place. Yeah,
Speaker 1: the UM So, like the estimates I was using earlier,
Speaker 1: they come from the Manoloa Observatory in Hawaii, and that
Speaker 1: that consistently has been collecting uh data on the atmospheric
Speaker 1: concentration of carbon dioxide for a while now, and so
Speaker 1: that can pretty steadily track what's going on. But the
Speaker 1: concentration might not be UM. Actually don't know the answer
Speaker 1: to this, whether it's concentrated more in some places than others,
Speaker 1: or if it's pretty well dispersed. Yeah. Well, I mean
Speaker 1: the point being that even you know, even if if
Speaker 1: one nation were to cut out all carbon emissions, unless
Speaker 1: every other nation did so as well, Uh, you know,
Speaker 1: the the effect might be small at least in the
Speaker 1: short term. Maybe in the long term it would make
Speaker 1: a pretty big difference, But in the short term it
Speaker 1: would be negligible. We would have to have a much
Speaker 1: larger effort to really make a huge impact. Okay, So
Speaker 1: looking forward into the future, we are certain that the
Speaker 1: Earth is warming, and the trend is that it's going
Speaker 1: to continue warming. We're very confident that human activity has
Speaker 1: caused this, and there are predictions we've made about lots
Speaker 1: of possibly very negative consequences of this, with varying degrees
Speaker 1: of certainty with each of those predictions. Um, what what
Speaker 1: do we do next? Well? First, uh, I mean a
Speaker 1: lot of that we're going to address in our next episode.
Speaker 1: But first I think we need to talk a little
Speaker 1: bit about the concept of a scientific consensus. Yeah, there's
Speaker 1: sort of a public conversation going on about global warming.
Speaker 1: In case you haven't noticed change you're not on Twitter
Speaker 1: or something. Uh, So the scientific consensus is one of
Speaker 1: those terms that I think, uh, gets thrown around a lot,
Speaker 1: and there's not a full understanding and in the general
Speaker 1: public about what that means. Yeah. Okay, Well let's just
Speaker 1: do a little experiment here. Imagine I am a lay person,
Speaker 1: uh that doesn't have a lot of expertise on climate science.
Speaker 1: That's not hard to imagine. Um, But go on, but
Speaker 1: I recognize that there's this public to eight about climate change,
Speaker 1: and specifically, I think the most contentious part of the
Speaker 1: debate is the anthropogenic part, whether humans are causing this um,
Speaker 1: which I guess affects the idea of whether or not
Speaker 1: we can we have the power to stop it, or
Speaker 1: if we should, if we should take any efforts to
Speaker 1: stop it because of the potential impact that would have
Speaker 1: on economy, lifestyle side. Um. So, I am a lay person.
Speaker 1: I have no expertise in this area, and I noticed
Speaker 1: that there are people who both seem to know more
Speaker 1: than me about it arguing about it. So how do
Speaker 1: I make a decision? How do I form an opinion
Speaker 1: about this that's over my head? Well, the scientific consensus
Speaker 1: in this case, when we talk about consensus, you're talking
Speaker 1: about a a large group of people who have all
Speaker 1: uh kind of come to the same conclusions, uh perhaps independently,
Speaker 1: and they are presenting a united front at least on
Speaker 1: some level on the issue. Well, what is the consensus? What? Like?
Speaker 1: How many people agree about this? In In a study
Speaker 1: of papers that were expressing a position on um anthropogenic
Speaker 1: global warming, point one percent endorsed the consensus that humans
Speaker 1: are in fact causing it. Yeah, that's a that's a
Speaker 1: huge scientific consensus there. This is from a literature review
Speaker 1: that was published in called Quantifying the Consensus on Intropogenic
Speaker 1: Global Warming in the Scientific Literature, that the one in
Speaker 1: Environmental Research letters. That is indeed. Um. So, the way
Speaker 1: this the study progressed, as I understand it is they
Speaker 1: looked at all these different reports and they looked for
Speaker 1: any mention of the causation for whatever the warming or
Speaker 1: climate change effect was, right, reports in fact and so
Speaker 1: eleven correct. Well, let's us read from the abstract to
Speaker 1: have some clarity here. Sure, they say, we analyze the
Speaker 1: evolution of the scientific consensus on anthropogenic global warming and
Speaker 1: the peer reviewed scientific literature. Examining eleven forty four climate
Speaker 1: abstracts from two eleven matching the topics global climate change
Speaker 1: or global warming, we find that sixty six point four
Speaker 1: percent of abstracts expressed no position on a GW, thirty
Speaker 1: two point six percent endorsed it, points seven percent rejected it,
Speaker 1: and point three percent were uncertain about it. So, in
Speaker 1: other words, out of the ones that actually addressed what
Speaker 1: the cause was, point one percent said it was anthropogenic.
Speaker 1: And then the but I understand that some people are
Speaker 1: framing this in a different way. Well, yeah, actually this
Speaker 1: is a good example of how, um, sometimes it can
Speaker 1: be difficult to interpret scientific literature. I was just looking
Speaker 1: around about this paper. I found one blog post on
Speaker 1: the internet that was like, look, you know, out of
Speaker 1: all these scientists, so thirty two point six percent endorsed it,
Speaker 1: So that's the minority. Um, ignoring the fact that, Yeah,
Speaker 1: so sixty percent of the papers examined in this study
Speaker 1: didn't express an opinion. They didn't address about what caused it,
Speaker 1: whether it was anthropogenic or not. Um, they were you know,
Speaker 1: they just didn't address that issue. But so they looked
Speaker 1: at that and said like, oh, look it's it's the
Speaker 1: minority now. Um, of course it's not the minority in fact.
Speaker 1: On between, Yeah, as we've just been pointing out of
Speaker 1: the papers that did express an opinion whether it was
Speaker 1: caused by humans or not, said that it was right.
Speaker 1: So that is a pretty that's a pretty uh big
Speaker 1: consensus there. Yeah, and only that, But beyond that, there
Speaker 1: have been plenty of of climatologist gatherings where more and
Speaker 1: more people are just saying like, no, that the scientific
Speaker 1: community at at large says that this is something that's happening.
Speaker 1: That doesn't mean that there aren't people who disagree, but
Speaker 1: they are in a very tiny sliver, right. And we
Speaker 1: do want to say that we absolutely support skepticism. I
Speaker 1: think all three of us are are pretty big skeptics
Speaker 1: in general. We really appreciate the rigor of scientific research.
Speaker 1: You know, we want questions to be asked. That questions
Speaker 1: being asked is the entire point of science. But if
Speaker 1: you aren't asking questions, if you're simply dissenting, then if
Speaker 1: you're simply denying something, then you're not really being scientific.
Speaker 1: And you know so. In other words, what I would
Speaker 1: tell the lay person is that the majority of scientists
Speaker 1: who have devoted their their professional lives to studying this
Speaker 1: say that one, it's a thing, to it's it's being caused,
Speaker 1: at least in part by human activity, and that therefore
Speaker 1: we could do something that would reduce that um that
Speaker 1: those far outnumber the dissenting of and that it's not
Speaker 1: to say the scientists is smarter than you are, but
Speaker 1: rather that here's all the research that they have done
Speaker 1: that has been reviewed and replicated. Well, it's not just
Speaker 1: that scientists are smart in fact, it's not even just
Speaker 1: that scientists are the people who spend a lot of
Speaker 1: time studying this, though both of those things tend to
Speaker 1: be true. Um, it's you're trusted when you trust in
Speaker 1: the scientific consensus. You trust not just in a person,
Speaker 1: but in a process. You're you're trusting in the fact
Speaker 1: that the way, um, the scientific community works is that
Speaker 1: everybody's trying to prove each other wrong. Right, there's huge
Speaker 1: rewards for proving someone wrong with math. The way you
Speaker 1: would get accolades and attract a lot of uh, you
Speaker 1: know money, essentially is to um, look to say, actually,
Speaker 1: everybody's wrong about this, and here's why. And if you
Speaker 1: produce a good argument, people look at and they say,
Speaker 1: oh wait a minute, yeah, we do need to review
Speaker 1: our our opinions. Um, that's how you become famous as
Speaker 1: a scientist. Well, it's also think about most of the
Speaker 1: most famous scientists are people who changed opinions in their field. Sure, sure,
Speaker 1: and it's but I mean, the the thing we're looking
Speaker 1: at here, and I mean I completely agree, but the
Speaker 1: thing is for the scientific consensus here is that I
Speaker 1: want to make sure that our listeners know we're not
Speaker 1: advocating you fall into the rhetorical fallacy of argument from authority,
Speaker 1: which is one of those ideas where you say, because
Speaker 1: this person is an authority in this place, everything they
Speaker 1: say is right. But we're really saying is that there's
Speaker 1: been a massive amount of research. It all points to
Speaker 1: the same way. The scientific community at large agrees upon it.
Speaker 1: We're giving authority to their to their numbers and their methodology,
Speaker 1: not them themselves exactly well, And the fact that even
Speaker 1: this consensus doesn't mean that it's right. It just gives
Speaker 1: you a more greater confidence that's right. Because in any case,
Speaker 1: if you don't know exactly for yourself, and nobody really
Speaker 1: does on these issues, you are making a value judgment.
Speaker 1: You know, you're sure you're estimating probability. Right. As more
Speaker 1: people who know a whole lot about this kind of
Speaker 1: thing agree, the probability that they're wrong is probably is decreasing, right, exactly,
Speaker 1: So could a lone voice of descent be correct and
Speaker 1: say that all of these studies are wrong and in
Speaker 1: fact they were all misinterpreted. But that but that possibility
Speaker 1: is smaller, incredibly tiny, I mean very very tiny. Doesn't
Speaker 1: mean that it's impossible. It just means it's not plausible. Um,
Speaker 1: you know, it's it's something that could turn out to
Speaker 1: be the case. I seriously doubt it, just based upon
Speaker 1: the massive amounts of research and time that has been
Speaker 1: dedicated to studying this already. It could be caused by
Speaker 1: interdimensional reptiles. Okay, Tilly, sorry, so ignoring ignoring my co
Speaker 1: hosts for the time being. Well, no, it's it's a
Speaker 1: hoax they came up with to fund their war against
Speaker 1: the Zeta reticulum. Attempting to continue to ignore my co hosts.
Speaker 1: All right, So anyway, it'll be our next episode. We're
Speaker 1: really going to be focusing on how best to address this,
Speaker 1: you know, assuming that all of the science is right,
Speaker 1: which I think is well within our rights to assume,
Speaker 1: because of the mass of probability that it is right.
Speaker 1: What can we do to reduce our impact on the
Speaker 1: environment and try and mitigate climate change. We're gonna talk
Speaker 1: about that in our next episode. Now, I'm sure some
Speaker 1: of you listeners out there have a lot that you
Speaker 1: want to say about this topic. I recommend you go
Speaker 1: to fw thinking dot com. That's our website where all
Speaker 1: of our stuff lives. We're talking the videos, the blogs, podcasts, articles,
Speaker 1: join in the conversation. You can follow us on Twitter, Facebook,
Speaker 1: Google Plus just look for f W thinking We are
Speaker 1: there as well. And meanwhile, we're gonna take a little break.
Speaker 1: Let this room cool down a bit. It's been warming up.
Speaker 1: I don't know if that's climate or whether or it's
Speaker 1: just you don't Oh well, you know it's so sweet
Speaker 1: and we will talk to you again. Really sorry. For
Speaker 1: more on this topic in the future of technology, visit
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