October 2, 2013 • 41 mins
What is the difference between global warming and climate change? What's the evidence to support the anthropogenic nature of climate change? What is a scientific consensus?
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Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:00):
Brought to you by Toyota. Let's go places. Hello, I
am Lauren Vogue. Bam, this is Forward Thinking Jonathan stricklind
is going to cut him in just a moment, but
we had a quick addendum to the following episode. It's
going to be about climate change and future oriented. Though
we maybe we could not have predicted that when we
recorded this on September sevent or so, that the Intergovernmental
(00:21):
Panel on Climate Change was going to release a new
report just about a week later. Now this new report
is very much in line with the trends that we're
going to talk about in this episode. But in case
you would like the updated facts and figures, I'm going
to write a blog post about that. It is going
to go up slightly after this episode airs, so go
over to fw thinking dot com to check that out
(00:44):
and stay tuned. Thank you. Welcome to Forward Thinking Taylor
to one and welcome to Forward Thinking, the podcast that
looks at the future and says it's a cool, cruel
summer leading me here on my own. I'm Jonathan Strickland,
(01:06):
I'm Lauren Vogue Obama, and I'm Joe McCormick. And that
sound of disapproval comes from Lauren, who is shaking her
head at me. Today we're going to talk about climate change.
What is climate change? What's global warming? Are they the
same thing? What's what's the deal? Yeah? Climate change? So
I saw a movie about it, um, like convenient truth.
(01:27):
You know. It was called The Day After Tomorrow. Oh
that movie, right, it came out a few years back.
I don't know if you saw it, but it had
it had some very attractive actors in it, uh, and
they fought against the evil villain of climate change. Basically,
what I learned from it was that climate change creates
uh intelligent anthropogenic ice that chases you down hallways or
(01:50):
or Jill down hallways. Right. It's really had it in
for him. Um that that that everything happens in like
I don't remember. It was like it looked like it
was like an hour. My favorite part of that movie
is watching characters running from the cold front as it's
passing over and turning things instantly into ice, and just
(02:13):
barely slipping inside a library and shutting the door to
keep the cold front out people. It's like when people
run away from an explosion, right and they're able to
outrun it. Yeah, it made me think that there was
going to be a knock at the door, and then
you just hear cold front like, no, don't get it. Yeah,
but yeah, everything I learned from this movie, is this
(02:35):
all correct? Let's just say that the film takes some
liberties with science. Oh okay, so then climate change, global warming,
these things aren't really happening. See, as it turns out,
there's actually a middle ground between the movie The Day
After Tomorrow and the complete denial that climate change and
global warming are a thing. Well, I like to uh
(02:57):
listen to what scientists have to say. Let's so, well,
first let's let's define some terms, right, okay, because I mean,
obviously we're gonna be talking a lot about global warming
and climate change. And one thing that we notice is
that maybe in popular science reporting and in general amongst
the public, these two terms tend to be confused or
(03:18):
sometimes used interchangeably, and that's not exactly correct. Yeah. It
turns out that if you talk to scientists, how they
use these terms is that global warming refers more often
specifically to the increase in the mean surface temperature of
the Earth. It's caused specifically by human human emissions. Right,
(03:41):
that this recent trend we're talking about, right, right, whereas
climate change refers to both global warming and everything else
that causes the climate to change over a given period
of time a k a. Usually a very long period
of time, right, Yeah, So you can think of global
warming is sort of like a specific phenomenon and climate
change is like that phenomenon plus all of its effects. Right.
(04:03):
And then on top of that, you also have the
scientific literature that tends to use these these two different
terms in very specific contexts. So if you were to
actually read a paper, one paper might be about global warming,
another one might be about climate change, and those two
terms are not meant to be interchanged at all, Whereas,
like I said, with some of the in the media,
(04:24):
sometimes they just get tossed around without people really being
very aware of what right it's. It may be that
someone is unaware of the difference or that they're just misspeaking,
but at any rate, there does seem to be this
this idea that the two terms are used, or that
one was used before and now the other one is preferred.
Like there there's a there's a perception and misperception. As
(04:45):
it turns out that global warming was the term that
everyone was using in the eighties, and then once everyone
figured out, oh wait, no, no, no, it's not global warming,
it's climate change. It's switched. That's not actually true. Those
two terms are still used pretty much just as frequently
as they were before, but they're in that very specific context.
(05:06):
So it all depends upon the context of whatever research
you're reading as to which term will be used. But
the difference is actually pretty intuitive. They're what they sound like.
Global warming refers to the warming. Climate change refers to
the overall climate. But wait a minute, Wait a minute, Joe, Joe,
I'm I'm confused. I mean, yesterday was not as hot
(05:27):
as two days ago, which in turn was hotter than
the day before that, and a few days before that
was less hot. I don't see how this climate thing
is affecting me. Am I making a mistake. You might
be making a mistake. Um, For one thing, here, your
sample size is one. It's you. Yeah, I'm a very
(05:47):
reliable narrator. It's also a very small sample of days. Okay, sure, sure.
So to understand global trends in climate, we need to
step back and look at really massive systems and averages
across a lot of different time scales and geographical location, right,
(06:08):
because climate is global, whereas weather, which is what you're
talking about, is is local. Yes, yes, weather is local.
And weather is something that we usually refer to in
terms of, well we can it can be as short
as a few minutes and as long as a few months,
but that tends to be what we're referring to when
we talk about weather. Climate is a much longer term, uh,
(06:31):
subject matter. And like you said, Joe, we're talking about
global scale with climate, not just Jonathan in the metropolitan
Atlanta area over the course of the last two weeks.
So that that but that's one of those other things
that we see get confused often as the idea between
climate and weather, and in fact, that can cause confusion
when you're discussing things like climate change and global global warming,
(06:53):
because if someone says, yeah, but you know, this summer
just didn't seem as hot as last summer, it's it's
a total different scale than what we're talking about. Basically,
if you can make small talk about it in an
elevator with someone that you don't know politely, then its weather,
not climate. That's a good rubric. Did you did you
notice that the glacial ice is two less over the
(07:15):
last twenty years than it was over the last hundred
and twenty years. I see, I have different elevator experiences
that you clearly do. Okay, Jonathan's elevator experiences are just primo.
You gotta ask him about them sometimes, Okay. Uh, So
let's talk about temperature, okay, because clearly the central feature
(07:37):
of climate change is this idea that the temperature is increasing?
Number one? Is that true? And number two? How do
we know? Uh? It is true? And we know because
we take measurements and we examine them. The acceleration of
heating that we've seen over the last century is far
greater than what we can account for using the natural
(07:59):
cycles of the Earth. So, in other words, we're seeing
a more rapid acceleration in heating than we would normally
see if, in fact, human intervention had not been a factor.
So what kind of differences are we talking about in
recent years? Is it like a hundred degrees hotter? Well? So, okay,
So over the past five thousand years or so, global
temperatures rose a total of four to seven degrees celsius,
(08:23):
depending on you know, the absolute liability of our data,
And um, that's that's what like seven point two to
twelve point six degrees fahrenheit. I didn't just make that
up off the top of my head. I wrote it
down just to have a saying. Um, but uh, in
the past century alone, um temperatures rose point seven degrees celsius.
That's one point to six degrees fahrenheit, which is about
(08:44):
ten times faster than the average rate of ice age
recovery warming. And on top of that, projection suggests that
by the end of the twenty first century, the temperature
will continue to arise between two degrees celsius and six
degrees celsius. That's kind of a range that's given. Uh.
You know, six obviously would be the worst case scenario.
(09:04):
But even if we were to quote unquote fix all
the problems, and we'll talk about fixing the problems in
the future podcast, but if we were to fix them,
we would still experience, uh, an increase in temperature because
there's a lag between addressing the problem and having the
problem actually resolve in any way, right, UM, And all
of us data is based on a whole lot of
(09:26):
figures that we are collecting about um. You know, the
the amount of radiation we're getting from the sun and
everything unhouse gases that are present in the atmosphere, uh,
everything from the cloud cover that can be a factor.
In fact, there's some people who suggest that uh, through
increased evaporation due to heat heating of the oceans, that
(09:50):
that will increase the cloud cover and that's that would
actually help help cool the earth. Uh. I'm not I'm
not a sold on that particular, on that particular interpretation.
Got I've got a bunch of information on that one.
The general answers, We're not sure yet, but we'll talk
about that in a future podcast. But but but now,
(10:10):
the kind of data that we collect is about the aerosols,
the particles in our atmosphere, atmosphere gases, the ocean surface
temperature changes, global sea level, extent of ocean, ice, plant growth, rainfall,
cloud structure, uh, ground temperature, snow depth records. I mean,
like all of this data is going into the way
(10:31):
that scientists define these estimates of global warming and UM.
When they take all of this data from natural events
and from human created events, they try to kind of
reverse engineer the temperature ranges that we've seen and UM,
the models that they create bork around nineteen fifty. If
(10:53):
you don't take into account human intervention. Right, So in
other words, when you if you were to say this
is only based this is just part of the Earth's
natural cycle, like this is exactly the same sort of
thing that's happened in the past. You can't account for
the amount of change we're seeing now in the in
the time span. That's the really important part is that
these are changes that we would see happen to the
(11:16):
Earth in a natural warming trend, but we would see
them stretched out over a much longer time span than
half a century. Okay, so the Earth is definitely warming recently,
and basically nobody denies this, right, And dude, that's well, well, basically,
I think most people who look at the science say no,
there's there's plenty of evidence here, pretty straightforward data. It's
(11:39):
just getting hotter. It's not like a question about that,
although there are people who will say that, no, it's
not getting warmer because look, the Arctic ice has recovered
from ice recovered compared to Therefore the worth the Earth
is not warming, or it's warming at a slower pace,
or it's declining. Again, a single year of data isn't
(12:02):
enough to base a trend upon, and the trends that
we are talking about have lasted since um at least
nine Yeah. So, so there are people who do deny
that the Earth is warming, but they are not as
numerous as those who deny the larger question of climate
change in general. Okay, Um, so the Earth is warming,
(12:25):
what's causing it? Well, that's where not some more the
argument comes in? Right? Yeah, so have y'all heard of
the greenhouse effect? Wait? What have you ever been inside
a greenhouse? I have? Or have you ever been inside
just a parked car out in the sunlight. My wife
leaves me there all the time. When into the story,
(12:48):
I beg her to crack a window, she just takes
the key out and it's power windows. So I'm just stuck. Seriously,
people don't leave your animals. No, no, no, it's bad,
very bad. Um. And it's bad because in a way
of the green house effect. Okay, so the greenhouse effect
happens when, um, there is sort of a differential in
the two way transportation of energy through a medium. So
(13:11):
it happens in a greenhouse when the sunlight comes through
the glass comes in and allows that that UV radiation,
all the sun's energy to come through one way, but
then it traps heat inside. Um. The Earth actually works
in a very similar way in the atmosphere, right. Yeah,
the atmosphere is kind of like the glass in a greenhouse.
(13:32):
And this is totally natural and in fact, if it
didn't happen, there wouldn't really be life as we know it. No,
if it didn't happen, the Earth would basically be the moon. Um. Right.
The the the heat trapped by the atmosphere keeps the
Earth at a habitable temperature. Right, that's exactly right. And
um So the greenhouse effect is not a bad thing,
and it's caused by multiple types of gases in the atmosphere.
(13:55):
Um So, the biggest one actually is water vapor, right,
that one. That one ends up trapping heat at an
efficiency far greater than that of other greenhouse gasses. Yeah,
so water vapor, UM, cloud particles, carbon dioxide uh CFCs
so chlorofluoro carbons um in O two I believe, and
(14:15):
methane gases like this. Um. They hover up in the
atmosphere and what happens is the sunlight passes through them
on the way to the Earth, bringing energy with it.
That sunlight hits the Earth's crust and gets absorbed, and
when it radiates back upward it is heat. That heat
gets trapped under those gases and does not pass backward
(14:36):
out of the Earth, so we get sort of a
net gain of heat on the planet. Um. A certain
amount of this of this, like we've said, is good
because it allows us to not freeze to death. But um,
if you have too much greenhouse effect from an overconcentration
of greenhouse gasses, you can trap more heat than you're
(14:58):
used to, which is is what most scientists agree is
going on right now to cause this heating trend we've
observed recently, which in turn is driving climate change. So
what can we do about this? Well, we can't really
mess with water vapor much because there's a water cycle
on Earth that we need. It turns out water is
(15:19):
pretty important. Rain is kind of critical, so we don't
want to mess with the water. Um. But there are
these other gases that are non condensing gases as opposed
to water. Because water vapor condenses, it forms clouds. These
non condensing gases, and mainly most scientists degree carbon dioxide
are responsible for a huge part of the trend in
(15:40):
global warming. And the reason this is happening is because
we've increased the amount of carbon dioxide in our atmosphere
since the Industrial Revolution. So what you can do is
you can you can drill a cylinder of ancient ice
out of a glacier and pull that up and look
at it. And it turns out when ice freezes, it
traps little air bubbles in it, and those air bubbles
(16:02):
are like little time capsules of what the atmosphere was
like in throughout history. Yeah, and so we can look
at these, and this is one type of evidence we
have for the historical presence of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere.
What these ice cores tend to show is that pre
industrial air had about two hundred and eighty parts per
million of C O two um. This year we hit
(16:27):
four hundred parts per million, so we uh, not nearly doubled,
but we but half a yeah, yeah that's true, half
again as much. And that's a big deal earlier. And
so there are questions about exactly how much carbon needs
to be in the atmosphere to cause a significant increase
(16:50):
in the greenhouse effect. Um, what I've heard some people
say is like, well, we really need to get down
to three d and fifty parts per million for a
stable climate. UM four hundred was sort of like some
people have said, that's like a sort of turning point
or a point of stability that that really cannot be exceeded.
And now it's like, well, we already hit that, and
(17:12):
so there's sort of this smoothing scale of what can
feasibly be tolerated UM. The point is that is that
there's a correlation between the amount of carbon in the
atmosphere and the and the temperature the or the sorry
the climate. So you can look at look at this.
I think you mentioned earlier that these ice cores, for example,
(17:35):
you can look at dates um in the strata of
the ice and it turns out that times when there
was less carbon in the atmosphere or less carbon dioxide,
there were ice ages or colder periods, and time when
the carbon dioxide and the atmosphere spiked there were warmer periods,
just like we're seeing now. And you can argue that
(17:57):
part of this is due to U volcanic activity. Even today,
there have been a couple of large volcanoes that have
erupted UM over the past few decades that have caused
a significant amount of carbon dioxide to be released into
the air. They also tend to release a lot of
sulfur dioxide, which tends to lower it has a cooling
effect from cloud creation. Yeah. From what I've read, it
(18:19):
seems to be that they think that the volcanoes are
not a significant contributor, certainly not compared to cars. As
it turns out there are more cars and there are
volcanoes or factory power facilities. Yeah. Um, And so there
are a few questions. Okay, so we're we're seeing this
correlation between temperature and the concentration of CO two in
(18:41):
the atmosphere. Um, but are there other things that might
be causing it instead. Well, we don't know for sure,
but most scientists think not. Um. Well, you know, I mean,
you know, alterations in them in the Earth's orbit and
the Sun's orbit can change change the climate over a
given period of time, but not the drastic way that
we seen it in the past couple decades. Yeah. Like
(19:02):
some objections you might see sometimes people who say like, oh,
the Sun is just hotter, like it's warming the Earth
more than before. But we can actually test that hypothesis
and that doesn't really stand up apparently, right, the Sun's
energy varies on about an eleven year cycle. Um, it
might vary also on a on a greater cycle, but
(19:22):
we haven't had enough data yet to tell whether that's true.
And um, as of early the solar brightness since two
thousand five has actually been slightly lower yeah than in
the past, So yet we have a warming trend during
that time. The bottom line is, uh, we're pretty sure
that there is a substantial link between the amount of
(19:43):
C O two especially, but other greenhouse gases like methane,
chlor flora carbons and stuff like that, and the greenhouse
effect that is causing the global warming trend we see, right,
So let's um, I guess then we need to talk
about some of the effects here, and we've touched on
these obviously, because if you're talking about global warming, a
lot of effects become fairly self evident, but some of
(20:06):
them you might not realize at first because they're kind
of a it's kind of like a domino effect. Right, So,
what's global warming going to do in the future? All right? Well,
first of all, I sounded so, yeah, here's a trend
that we're observing. What's it really going to do in
the future? Okay, Well, um, there's there are a lot
(20:28):
of a lot of disagreements, well, maybe not disagreements. There's
a lot of debate and conversation around this because frankly,
climate is an incredibly complex thing. There are a lot
of different factors that all influence one another in different ways,
and changing the temperature of the Earth is definitely changing climates.
It's just a question of how drastically are certain climates
(20:50):
going to change. And you know, once you get to
a point where you're trying to predict what's happening in
a particular region, it really gets tricky, right, right, So,
in other words, saying this is exactly how it's going
to affect the northeastern United States would be probably an
irresponsible thing to say as a scientist, unless you were
able to couch that in probabilities, making probabilistic models, where
(21:13):
you say there's a certain percentage of likelihood that this
is going to happen. But keep in mind that's a
percentage of likelihood, right, and there are just too many,
too many factors, too many points of data to really
be certain about that kind of thing. Yeah, and anytime
we're dealing in um future projections, instead of just say
I don't know, basic empirical observations. We're talking in terms
(21:34):
of likelihood certainty. Seeing even with these things that were
very sure about if it's future speculation, it's like, we're
not actually positive. And in fact, there there are percentages
that are like that, there's essentially certainty that we're going
to see uh increased heat waves in the future. So
(21:57):
that's scientists have put that uh a near certainty. Other
ones are you know, at different ranges. But for instance, ice,
we can we're gonna see less of it. Yeah, there's
gonna be a lot of melting. So we're gonna see
a loss of sea ice. We're gonna see reduction in
glacier sizes. We're gonna see ice breaking up and melting
(22:19):
earlier in the year on lakes and rivers and places
where it does freeze over right. That's because every year
um ice will will reform in the winter and then
melting down in the summer. And when they talk about
the glaciers melting, it's not that they're all doing it
all at once. Forever's um it's it's just that less
ice is being recaptured in the winter than it was
(22:39):
the previous So the overall trend is that the glaciers
are getting smaller in size and over time. And then
you also we see decrease decreases in snow packs, which
means you're going to see some actual ecosystems change as
a result. And by the way, all of this ice
melting and decreases in snow winds up creating warmer temper
(23:00):
cheers overall, because ice and snow are reflective, whereas um
warm ground or warm water or even I mean, you know,
room temperature ground or water are darker and therefore absorb
more of that heat coming down from the sun. Ye uh.
NASA says that the green Land and Antarctic ice sheets
have decreased in mass UH from two thousand two to
(23:21):
two thousand and six. They estimate that Greenland lost between
a hundred fifty cubic kilometers or thirty six to sixty
cubic miles of ice per year, and an Arcticle lost
about a hundred fifty two cubic kilometers or thirty six
cubic miles of ice between two thousand two and two
thousand five. So an Arctica is not losing it at
the same rate as Greenland, but it's still losing ice
(23:44):
on top of that we're seeing the possibility of of
drastically shifting weather patterns. We're talking massive changes in precipitation levels,
so the day after tomorrow, not that dramatic in that
quick Not not this this flip flopping effect where you
suddenly have temperatures dropped to thirty below zero in a
(24:04):
blink of an eye, but rather that you're going to
see areas get more rain than they normally would, while
other areas become get less rain and end up having
severe droughts. Um but not intelligent droughts, not not as
far as I can determine. They might still chase Jake
Jillen Hall, because wouldn't we all? I would like to
have an intelligent drought on this podcast to replace a
(24:27):
certain co host who's getting a little, little, little little
beans in the system. I'm just kidding too. He can
sit next to you. So yeah, we're changes in precipitation levels. Also,
projections suggest that there's a possibility that will see more
rainfall in high latitudes and less rainfall in subtropical climates.
So that's going to dramatically change those ecosystems, which brings
(24:50):
me to other ecosystem changes, plant and animal ranges are
going to shift as environments become less suitable for over time.
We've already started to see that where we're seeing animal
popular lations move from where they traditionally would range because
those areas are no longer suitable for them. That's going
to continue. In Latin America, UH rainforests are starting to
(25:10):
change over into savannah's now. That means that there's also
been a decrease in precipitation there, which means that there's
uh greater strain on fresh water resources, so people are
having to work harder to get fresh water in those areas.
Also means that because the rainforest is converting over to
a different kind of ecosystem, you're seeing a real risk
(25:32):
to bio diversity. Lots of species that are put at
risk because of that loss of their environment. In Europe,
there's been an increase in flash floods and coastal flooding.
Projections for Africa indicate that severe droughts and larger strain
of water resources will be in the near future. That
of course, will also affect food resources. We've discussed this
in the past, how water and food are so closely related.
(25:55):
Asia is also going to experience increased flooding and decreased
access to fresh water, so lots of rough things. They're
on top of that, the ocean is being affected in
a couple of different ways. A salinity is changing, that's
the amount of salt concentration in the oceans um that changes,
and drawing on observations from nineteen fifty five to two
(26:16):
thousand four, researchers found that the ocean sealinity changed throughout
the study period, and that the changes were independent of
known natural variability, and that the shifts were consistent with
the expected effects of anthropogenic climate change. So, in other words,
this is not due to some sort of undersea activity
or natural cycle. This is something means caused by by humankind.
(26:42):
The pH of oceans is changing. This is because when
carbon dioxide reacts with seawater, it lowers the pH of
the sea water. Uh so that means it makes it
more acidic um, which if you've ever had a a
fish tank at home, and that could be a bad thing.
That thing. Yeah, so it absorbs a lot of carbon
(27:03):
dioxide and it that kind of does that, you know,
it just does that naturally over over a long period
of time. It would absorb like if we were to
stop producing CO two today and and only natural sources
were producing it. Uh, the ocean would end up absorbing
that CEO two over the course of you know, a
couple of thousand years. Um. But uh, it's and that
(27:26):
would dramatically change that ocean over that time. But we're
also talking about using the ocean as a possible sink
for carbon dioxide, which we'll talk more about in another podcast.
But that would mean pumping up the acidity level of
the oceans, at least in a regional area wherever the
pumping was being done. Uh, in a in a time
scale that would be much shorter than what we would
(27:49):
see naturally. So in other words, we'd be seeing something
happening in the oceans that is akin to what we're
seeing in our atmosphere right now. It would be the
the effects would be different, but it's the same sort
of thing where you know, it's not necessarily a solution
to a problem, it's creating a different problem. It's it's
it's sort of a lateral shift. On top of that,
we're talking about the complexity of climate. You know, It's
(28:11):
like we said, it's it's complicated stuff. There's so many
different things to bring into consideration that it is very
difficult for us to say for sure what is going
to happen in the future. It's just, uh, we know
that these basic things are very likely to happen. When
you get more specific, like, well we see greater cyclone
activity and intensity in the future, that's a possibility, but
(28:33):
it's not a certainty. And I think that's r rated
about the sixty six percent level of certainty, which is
still over more certain than not, but still a pretty
huge But then when it comes to things like you know,
there'll be more heat waves and there will be less
rain in some areas and more rain in other areas,
the certainty level is way higher like or above. So
(28:57):
so there are some things that we just cannot know
right now because we don't have all the information we
would need to project an accurate model. And it's just
so hard to project in this realm because you're not
talking about, say, predicting a chemical reaction and a beaker
that's isolated. The climate is something that creates feedback loops
(29:18):
within itself, so lots of different climate variables influence the
other ones. Uh, it influences whether weather influences ecosystems which
affect the climate, and so there's just it's it's incredibly
complex system and only that, but we can't even be
certain how much greenhouse gas we're emitting on any given day,
(29:39):
let alone. Like we can make estimates, but those estimates
are based upon information that researchers can gather. And when
you think about it, that the world's a big place. Yeah,
the UM So, like the estimates I was using earlier,
they come from the Manoloa Observatory in Hawaii, and that
that consistently has been collecting uh data on the atmospheric
(30:00):
concentration of carbon dioxide for a while now, and so
that can pretty steadily track what's going on. But the
concentration might not be UM. Actually don't know the answer
to this, whether it's concentrated more in some places than others,
or if it's pretty well dispersed. Yeah. Well, I mean
the point being that even you know, even if if
(30:20):
one nation were to cut out all carbon emissions, unless
every other nation did so as well, Uh, you know,
the the effect might be small at least in the
short term. Maybe in the long term it would make
a pretty big difference, But in the short term it
would be negligible. We would have to have a much
larger effort to really make a huge impact. Okay, So
(30:44):
looking forward into the future, we are certain that the
Earth is warming, and the trend is that it's going
to continue warming. We're very confident that human activity has
caused this, and there are predictions we've made about lots
of possibly very negative consequences of this, with varying degrees
(31:06):
of certainty with each of those predictions. Um, what what
do we do next? Well? First, uh, I mean a
lot of that we're going to address in our next episode.
But first I think we need to talk a little
bit about the concept of a scientific consensus. Yeah, there's
sort of a public conversation going on about global warming.
(31:26):
In case you haven't noticed change you're not on Twitter
or something. Uh, So the scientific consensus is one of
those terms that I think, uh, gets thrown around a lot,
and there's not a full understanding and in the general
public about what that means. Yeah. Okay, Well let's just
do a little experiment here. Imagine I am a lay person,
(31:49):
uh that doesn't have a lot of expertise on climate science.
That's not hard to imagine. Um, But go on, but
I recognize that there's this public to eight about climate change,
and specifically, I think the most contentious part of the
debate is the anthropogenic part, whether humans are causing this um,
(32:11):
which I guess affects the idea of whether or not
we can we have the power to stop it, or
if we should, if we should take any efforts to
stop it because of the potential impact that would have
on economy, lifestyle side. Um. So, I am a lay person.
I have no expertise in this area, and I noticed
that there are people who both seem to know more
(32:32):
than me about it arguing about it. So how do
I make a decision? How do I form an opinion
about this that's over my head? Well, the scientific consensus
in this case, when we talk about consensus, you're talking
about a a large group of people who have all
uh kind of come to the same conclusions, uh perhaps independently,
(32:52):
and they are presenting a united front at least on
some level on the issue. Well, what is the consensus? What? Like?
How many people agree about this? In In a study
of papers that were expressing a position on um anthropogenic
global warming, point one percent endorsed the consensus that humans
(33:17):
are in fact causing it. Yeah, that's a that's a
huge scientific consensus there. This is from a literature review
that was published in called Quantifying the Consensus on Intropogenic
Global Warming in the Scientific Literature, that the one in
Environmental Research letters. That is indeed. Um. So, the way
(33:38):
this the study progressed, as I understand it is they
looked at all these different reports and they looked for
any mention of the causation for whatever the warming or
climate change effect was, right, reports in fact and so
(33:58):
eleven correct. Well, let's us read from the abstract to
have some clarity here. Sure, they say, we analyze the
evolution of the scientific consensus on anthropogenic global warming and
the peer reviewed scientific literature. Examining eleven forty four climate
abstracts from two eleven matching the topics global climate change
or global warming, we find that sixty six point four
(34:20):
percent of abstracts expressed no position on a GW, thirty
two point six percent endorsed it, points seven percent rejected it,
and point three percent were uncertain about it. So, in
other words, out of the ones that actually addressed what
the cause was, point one percent said it was anthropogenic.
(34:40):
And then the but I understand that some people are
framing this in a different way. Well, yeah, actually this
is a good example of how, um, sometimes it can
be difficult to interpret scientific literature. I was just looking
around about this paper. I found one blog post on
the internet that was like, look, you know, out of
all these scientists, so thirty two point six percent endorsed it,
(35:02):
So that's the minority. Um, ignoring the fact that, Yeah,
so sixty percent of the papers examined in this study
didn't express an opinion. They didn't address about what caused it,
whether it was anthropogenic or not. Um, they were you know,
they just didn't address that issue. But so they looked
(35:23):
at that and said like, oh, look it's it's the
minority now. Um, of course it's not the minority in fact.
On between, Yeah, as we've just been pointing out of
the papers that did express an opinion whether it was
caused by humans or not, said that it was right.
So that is a pretty that's a pretty uh big
(35:44):
consensus there. Yeah, and only that, But beyond that, there
have been plenty of of climatologist gatherings where more and
more people are just saying like, no, that the scientific
community at at large says that this is something that's happening.
That doesn't mean that there aren't people who disagree, but
(36:04):
they are in a very tiny sliver, right. And we
do want to say that we absolutely support skepticism. I
think all three of us are are pretty big skeptics
in general. We really appreciate the rigor of scientific research.
You know, we want questions to be asked. That questions
being asked is the entire point of science. But if
you aren't asking questions, if you're simply dissenting, then if
(36:29):
you're simply denying something, then you're not really being scientific.
And you know so. In other words, what I would
tell the lay person is that the majority of scientists
who have devoted their their professional lives to studying this
say that one, it's a thing, to it's it's being caused,
(36:49):
at least in part by human activity, and that therefore
we could do something that would reduce that um that
those far outnumber the dissenting of and that it's not
to say the scientists is smarter than you are, but
rather that here's all the research that they have done
that has been reviewed and replicated. Well, it's not just
(37:13):
that scientists are smart in fact, it's not even just
that scientists are the people who spend a lot of
time studying this, though both of those things tend to
be true. Um, it's you're trusted when you trust in
the scientific consensus. You trust not just in a person,
but in a process. You're you're trusting in the fact
that the way, um, the scientific community works is that
(37:36):
everybody's trying to prove each other wrong. Right, there's huge
rewards for proving someone wrong with math. The way you
would get accolades and attract a lot of uh, you
know money, essentially is to um, look to say, actually,
everybody's wrong about this, and here's why. And if you
(37:57):
produce a good argument, people look at and they say,
oh wait a minute, yeah, we do need to review
our our opinions. Um, that's how you become famous as
a scientist. Well, it's also think about most of the
most famous scientists are people who changed opinions in their field. Sure, sure,
and it's but I mean, the the thing we're looking
(38:19):
at here, and I mean I completely agree, but the
thing is for the scientific consensus here is that I
want to make sure that our listeners know we're not
advocating you fall into the rhetorical fallacy of argument from authority,
which is one of those ideas where you say, because
this person is an authority in this place, everything they
say is right. But we're really saying is that there's
(38:41):
been a massive amount of research. It all points to
the same way. The scientific community at large agrees upon it.
We're giving authority to their to their numbers and their methodology,
not them themselves exactly well, And the fact that even
this consensus doesn't mean that it's right. It just gives
you a more greater confidence that's right. Because in any case,
(39:05):
if you don't know exactly for yourself, and nobody really
does on these issues, you are making a value judgment.
You know, you're sure you're estimating probability. Right. As more
people who know a whole lot about this kind of
thing agree, the probability that they're wrong is probably is decreasing, right, exactly,
(39:25):
So could a lone voice of descent be correct and
say that all of these studies are wrong and in
fact they were all misinterpreted. But that but that possibility
is smaller, incredibly tiny, I mean very very tiny. Doesn't
mean that it's impossible. It just means it's not plausible. Um,
you know, it's it's something that could turn out to
(39:48):
be the case. I seriously doubt it, just based upon
the massive amounts of research and time that has been
dedicated to studying this already. It could be caused by
interdimensional reptiles. Okay, Tilly, sorry, so ignoring ignoring my co
hosts for the time being. Well, no, it's it's a
hoax they came up with to fund their war against
(40:09):
the Zeta reticulum. Attempting to continue to ignore my co hosts.
All right, So anyway, it'll be our next episode. We're
really going to be focusing on how best to address this,
you know, assuming that all of the science is right,
which I think is well within our rights to assume,
(40:29):
because of the mass of probability that it is right.
What can we do to reduce our impact on the
environment and try and mitigate climate change. We're gonna talk
about that in our next episode. Now, I'm sure some
of you listeners out there have a lot that you
want to say about this topic. I recommend you go
to fw thinking dot com. That's our website where all
(40:51):
of our stuff lives. We're talking the videos, the blogs, podcasts, articles,
join in the conversation. You can follow us on Twitter, Facebook,
Google Plus just look for f W thinking We are
there as well. And meanwhile, we're gonna take a little break.
Let this room cool down a bit. It's been warming up.
I don't know if that's climate or whether or it's
just you don't Oh well, you know it's so sweet
(41:14):
and we will talk to you again. Really sorry. For
more on this topic in the future of technology, visit
forward thinking dot Com, brought to you by Toyota. Let's
(41:38):
Go Places
Brought to you by Toyota. Let's go places. Hello, I
am Lauren Vogue. Bam, this is Forward Thinking Jonathan stricklind
is going to cut him in just a moment, but
we had a quick addendum to the following episode. It's
going to be about climate change and future oriented. Though
we maybe we could not have predicted that when we
recorded this on September sevent or so, that the Intergovernmental
(00:21):
Panel on Climate Change was going to release a new
report just about a week later. Now this new report
is very much in line with the trends that we're
going to talk about in this episode. But in case
you would like the updated facts and figures, I'm going
to write a blog post about that. It is going
to go up slightly after this episode airs, so go
over to fw thinking dot com to check that out
(00:44):
and stay tuned. Thank you. Welcome to Forward Thinking Taylor
to one and welcome to Forward Thinking, the podcast that
looks at the future and says it's a cool, cruel
summer leading me here on my own. I'm Jonathan Strickland,
(01:06):
I'm Lauren Vogue Obama, and I'm Joe McCormick. And that
sound of disapproval comes from Lauren, who is shaking her
head at me. Today we're going to talk about climate change.
What is climate change? What's global warming? Are they the
same thing? What's what's the deal? Yeah? Climate change? So
I saw a movie about it, um, like convenient truth.
(01:27):
You know. It was called The Day After Tomorrow. Oh
that movie, right, it came out a few years back.
I don't know if you saw it, but it had
it had some very attractive actors in it, uh, and
they fought against the evil villain of climate change. Basically,
what I learned from it was that climate change creates
uh intelligent anthropogenic ice that chases you down hallways or
(01:50):
or Jill down hallways. Right. It's really had it in
for him. Um that that that everything happens in like
I don't remember. It was like it looked like it
was like an hour. My favorite part of that movie
is watching characters running from the cold front as it's
passing over and turning things instantly into ice, and just
(02:13):
barely slipping inside a library and shutting the door to
keep the cold front out people. It's like when people
run away from an explosion, right and they're able to
outrun it. Yeah, it made me think that there was
going to be a knock at the door, and then
you just hear cold front like, no, don't get it. Yeah,
but yeah, everything I learned from this movie, is this
(02:35):
all correct? Let's just say that the film takes some
liberties with science. Oh okay, so then climate change, global warming,
these things aren't really happening. See, as it turns out,
there's actually a middle ground between the movie The Day
After Tomorrow and the complete denial that climate change and
global warming are a thing. Well, I like to uh
(02:57):
listen to what scientists have to say. Let's so, well,
first let's let's define some terms, right, okay, because I mean,
obviously we're gonna be talking a lot about global warming
and climate change. And one thing that we notice is
that maybe in popular science reporting and in general amongst
the public, these two terms tend to be confused or
(03:18):
sometimes used interchangeably, and that's not exactly correct. Yeah. It
turns out that if you talk to scientists, how they
use these terms is that global warming refers more often
specifically to the increase in the mean surface temperature of
the Earth. It's caused specifically by human human emissions. Right,
(03:41):
that this recent trend we're talking about, right, right, whereas
climate change refers to both global warming and everything else
that causes the climate to change over a given period
of time a k a. Usually a very long period
of time, right, Yeah, So you can think of global
warming is sort of like a specific phenomenon and climate
change is like that phenomenon plus all of its effects. Right.
(04:03):
And then on top of that, you also have the
scientific literature that tends to use these these two different
terms in very specific contexts. So if you were to
actually read a paper, one paper might be about global warming,
another one might be about climate change, and those two
terms are not meant to be interchanged at all, Whereas,
like I said, with some of the in the media,
(04:24):
sometimes they just get tossed around without people really being
very aware of what right it's. It may be that
someone is unaware of the difference or that they're just misspeaking,
but at any rate, there does seem to be this
this idea that the two terms are used, or that
one was used before and now the other one is preferred.
Like there there's a there's a perception and misperception. As
(04:45):
it turns out that global warming was the term that
everyone was using in the eighties, and then once everyone
figured out, oh wait, no, no, no, it's not global warming,
it's climate change. It's switched. That's not actually true. Those
two terms are still used pretty much just as frequently
as they were before, but they're in that very specific context.
(05:06):
So it all depends upon the context of whatever research
you're reading as to which term will be used. But
the difference is actually pretty intuitive. They're what they sound like.
Global warming refers to the warming. Climate change refers to
the overall climate. But wait a minute, Wait a minute, Joe, Joe,
I'm I'm confused. I mean, yesterday was not as hot
(05:27):
as two days ago, which in turn was hotter than
the day before that, and a few days before that
was less hot. I don't see how this climate thing
is affecting me. Am I making a mistake. You might
be making a mistake. Um, For one thing, here, your
sample size is one. It's you. Yeah, I'm a very
(05:47):
reliable narrator. It's also a very small sample of days. Okay, sure, sure.
So to understand global trends in climate, we need to
step back and look at really massive systems and averages
across a lot of different time scales and geographical location, right,
(06:08):
because climate is global, whereas weather, which is what you're
talking about, is is local. Yes, yes, weather is local.
And weather is something that we usually refer to in
terms of, well we can it can be as short
as a few minutes and as long as a few months,
but that tends to be what we're referring to when
we talk about weather. Climate is a much longer term, uh,
(06:31):
subject matter. And like you said, Joe, we're talking about
global scale with climate, not just Jonathan in the metropolitan
Atlanta area over the course of the last two weeks.
So that that but that's one of those other things
that we see get confused often as the idea between
climate and weather, and in fact, that can cause confusion
when you're discussing things like climate change and global global warming,
(06:53):
because if someone says, yeah, but you know, this summer
just didn't seem as hot as last summer, it's it's
a total different scale than what we're talking about. Basically,
if you can make small talk about it in an
elevator with someone that you don't know politely, then its weather,
not climate. That's a good rubric. Did you did you
notice that the glacial ice is two less over the
(07:15):
last twenty years than it was over the last hundred
and twenty years. I see, I have different elevator experiences
that you clearly do. Okay, Jonathan's elevator experiences are just primo.
You gotta ask him about them sometimes, Okay. Uh, So
let's talk about temperature, okay, because clearly the central feature
(07:37):
of climate change is this idea that the temperature is increasing?
Number one? Is that true? And number two? How do
we know? Uh? It is true? And we know because
we take measurements and we examine them. The acceleration of
heating that we've seen over the last century is far
greater than what we can account for using the natural
(07:59):
cycles of the Earth. So, in other words, we're seeing
a more rapid acceleration in heating than we would normally
see if, in fact, human intervention had not been a factor.
So what kind of differences are we talking about in
recent years? Is it like a hundred degrees hotter? Well? So, okay,
So over the past five thousand years or so, global
temperatures rose a total of four to seven degrees celsius,
(08:23):
depending on you know, the absolute liability of our data,
And um, that's that's what like seven point two to
twelve point six degrees fahrenheit. I didn't just make that
up off the top of my head. I wrote it
down just to have a saying. Um, but uh, in
the past century alone, um temperatures rose point seven degrees celsius.
That's one point to six degrees fahrenheit, which is about
(08:44):
ten times faster than the average rate of ice age
recovery warming. And on top of that, projection suggests that
by the end of the twenty first century, the temperature
will continue to arise between two degrees celsius and six
degrees celsius. That's kind of a range that's given. Uh.
You know, six obviously would be the worst case scenario.
(09:04):
But even if we were to quote unquote fix all
the problems, and we'll talk about fixing the problems in
the future podcast, but if we were to fix them,
we would still experience, uh, an increase in temperature because
there's a lag between addressing the problem and having the
problem actually resolve in any way, right, UM, And all
of us data is based on a whole lot of
(09:26):
figures that we are collecting about um. You know, the
the amount of radiation we're getting from the sun and
everything unhouse gases that are present in the atmosphere, uh,
everything from the cloud cover that can be a factor.
In fact, there's some people who suggest that uh, through
increased evaporation due to heat heating of the oceans, that
(09:50):
that will increase the cloud cover and that's that would
actually help help cool the earth. Uh. I'm not I'm
not a sold on that particular, on that particular interpretation.
Got I've got a bunch of information on that one.
The general answers, We're not sure yet, but we'll talk
about that in a future podcast. But but but now,
(10:10):
the kind of data that we collect is about the aerosols,
the particles in our atmosphere, atmosphere gases, the ocean surface
temperature changes, global sea level, extent of ocean, ice, plant growth, rainfall,
cloud structure, uh, ground temperature, snow depth records. I mean,
like all of this data is going into the way
(10:31):
that scientists define these estimates of global warming and UM.
When they take all of this data from natural events
and from human created events, they try to kind of
reverse engineer the temperature ranges that we've seen and UM,
the models that they create bork around nineteen fifty. If
(10:53):
you don't take into account human intervention. Right, So in
other words, when you if you were to say this
is only based this is just part of the Earth's
natural cycle, like this is exactly the same sort of
thing that's happened in the past. You can't account for
the amount of change we're seeing now in the in
the time span. That's the really important part is that
these are changes that we would see happen to the
(11:16):
Earth in a natural warming trend, but we would see
them stretched out over a much longer time span than
half a century. Okay, so the Earth is definitely warming recently,
and basically nobody denies this, right, And dude, that's well, well, basically,
I think most people who look at the science say no,
there's there's plenty of evidence here, pretty straightforward data. It's
(11:39):
just getting hotter. It's not like a question about that,
although there are people who will say that, no, it's
not getting warmer because look, the Arctic ice has recovered
from ice recovered compared to Therefore the worth the Earth
is not warming, or it's warming at a slower pace,
or it's declining. Again, a single year of data isn't
(12:02):
enough to base a trend upon, and the trends that
we are talking about have lasted since um at least
nine Yeah. So, so there are people who do deny
that the Earth is warming, but they are not as
numerous as those who deny the larger question of climate
change in general. Okay, Um, so the Earth is warming,
(12:25):
what's causing it? Well, that's where not some more the
argument comes in? Right? Yeah, so have y'all heard of
the greenhouse effect? Wait? What have you ever been inside
a greenhouse? I have? Or have you ever been inside
just a parked car out in the sunlight. My wife
leaves me there all the time. When into the story,
(12:48):
I beg her to crack a window, she just takes
the key out and it's power windows. So I'm just stuck. Seriously,
people don't leave your animals. No, no, no, it's bad,
very bad. Um. And it's bad because in a way
of the green house effect. Okay, so the greenhouse effect
happens when, um, there is sort of a differential in
the two way transportation of energy through a medium. So
(13:11):
it happens in a greenhouse when the sunlight comes through
the glass comes in and allows that that UV radiation,
all the sun's energy to come through one way, but
then it traps heat inside. Um. The Earth actually works
in a very similar way in the atmosphere, right. Yeah,
the atmosphere is kind of like the glass in a greenhouse.
(13:32):
And this is totally natural and in fact, if it
didn't happen, there wouldn't really be life as we know it. No,
if it didn't happen, the Earth would basically be the moon. Um. Right.
The the the heat trapped by the atmosphere keeps the
Earth at a habitable temperature. Right, that's exactly right. And
um So the greenhouse effect is not a bad thing,
and it's caused by multiple types of gases in the atmosphere.
(13:55):
Um So, the biggest one actually is water vapor, right,
that one. That one ends up trapping heat at an
efficiency far greater than that of other greenhouse gasses. Yeah,
so water vapor, UM, cloud particles, carbon dioxide uh CFCs
so chlorofluoro carbons um in O two I believe, and
(14:15):
methane gases like this. Um. They hover up in the
atmosphere and what happens is the sunlight passes through them
on the way to the Earth, bringing energy with it.
That sunlight hits the Earth's crust and gets absorbed, and
when it radiates back upward it is heat. That heat
gets trapped under those gases and does not pass backward
(14:36):
out of the Earth, so we get sort of a
net gain of heat on the planet. Um. A certain
amount of this of this, like we've said, is good
because it allows us to not freeze to death. But um,
if you have too much greenhouse effect from an overconcentration
of greenhouse gasses, you can trap more heat than you're
(14:58):
used to, which is is what most scientists agree is
going on right now to cause this heating trend we've
observed recently, which in turn is driving climate change. So
what can we do about this? Well, we can't really
mess with water vapor much because there's a water cycle
on Earth that we need. It turns out water is
(15:19):
pretty important. Rain is kind of critical, so we don't
want to mess with the water. Um. But there are
these other gases that are non condensing gases as opposed
to water. Because water vapor condenses, it forms clouds. These
non condensing gases, and mainly most scientists degree carbon dioxide
are responsible for a huge part of the trend in
(15:40):
global warming. And the reason this is happening is because
we've increased the amount of carbon dioxide in our atmosphere
since the Industrial Revolution. So what you can do is
you can you can drill a cylinder of ancient ice
out of a glacier and pull that up and look
at it. And it turns out when ice freezes, it
traps little air bubbles in it, and those air bubbles
(16:02):
are like little time capsules of what the atmosphere was
like in throughout history. Yeah, and so we can look
at these, and this is one type of evidence we
have for the historical presence of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere.
What these ice cores tend to show is that pre
industrial air had about two hundred and eighty parts per
million of C O two um. This year we hit
(16:27):
four hundred parts per million, so we uh, not nearly doubled,
but we but half a yeah, yeah that's true, half
again as much. And that's a big deal earlier. And
so there are questions about exactly how much carbon needs
to be in the atmosphere to cause a significant increase
(16:50):
in the greenhouse effect. Um, what I've heard some people
say is like, well, we really need to get down
to three d and fifty parts per million for a
stable climate. UM four hundred was sort of like some
people have said, that's like a sort of turning point
or a point of stability that that really cannot be exceeded.
And now it's like, well, we already hit that, and
(17:12):
so there's sort of this smoothing scale of what can
feasibly be tolerated UM. The point is that is that
there's a correlation between the amount of carbon in the
atmosphere and the and the temperature the or the sorry
the climate. So you can look at look at this.
I think you mentioned earlier that these ice cores, for example,
(17:35):
you can look at dates um in the strata of
the ice and it turns out that times when there
was less carbon in the atmosphere or less carbon dioxide,
there were ice ages or colder periods, and time when
the carbon dioxide and the atmosphere spiked there were warmer periods,
just like we're seeing now. And you can argue that
(17:57):
part of this is due to U volcanic activity. Even today,
there have been a couple of large volcanoes that have
erupted UM over the past few decades that have caused
a significant amount of carbon dioxide to be released into
the air. They also tend to release a lot of
sulfur dioxide, which tends to lower it has a cooling
effect from cloud creation. Yeah. From what I've read, it
(18:19):
seems to be that they think that the volcanoes are
not a significant contributor, certainly not compared to cars. As
it turns out there are more cars and there are
volcanoes or factory power facilities. Yeah. Um, And so there
are a few questions. Okay, so we're we're seeing this
correlation between temperature and the concentration of CO two in
(18:41):
the atmosphere. Um, but are there other things that might
be causing it instead. Well, we don't know for sure,
but most scientists think not. Um. Well, you know, I mean,
you know, alterations in them in the Earth's orbit and
the Sun's orbit can change change the climate over a
given period of time, but not the drastic way that
we seen it in the past couple decades. Yeah. Like
(19:02):
some objections you might see sometimes people who say like, oh,
the Sun is just hotter, like it's warming the Earth
more than before. But we can actually test that hypothesis
and that doesn't really stand up apparently, right, the Sun's
energy varies on about an eleven year cycle. Um, it
might vary also on a on a greater cycle, but
(19:22):
we haven't had enough data yet to tell whether that's true.
And um, as of early the solar brightness since two
thousand five has actually been slightly lower yeah than in
the past, So yet we have a warming trend during
that time. The bottom line is, uh, we're pretty sure
that there is a substantial link between the amount of
(19:43):
C O two especially, but other greenhouse gases like methane,
chlor flora carbons and stuff like that, and the greenhouse
effect that is causing the global warming trend we see, right,
So let's um, I guess then we need to talk
about some of the effects here, and we've touched on
these obviously, because if you're talking about global warming, a
lot of effects become fairly self evident, but some of
(20:06):
them you might not realize at first because they're kind
of a it's kind of like a domino effect. Right, So,
what's global warming going to do in the future? All right? Well,
first of all, I sounded so, yeah, here's a trend
that we're observing. What's it really going to do in
the future? Okay, Well, um, there's there are a lot
(20:28):
of a lot of disagreements, well, maybe not disagreements. There's
a lot of debate and conversation around this because frankly,
climate is an incredibly complex thing. There are a lot
of different factors that all influence one another in different ways,
and changing the temperature of the Earth is definitely changing climates.
It's just a question of how drastically are certain climates
(20:50):
going to change. And you know, once you get to
a point where you're trying to predict what's happening in
a particular region, it really gets tricky, right, right, So,
in other words, saying this is exactly how it's going
to affect the northeastern United States would be probably an
irresponsible thing to say as a scientist, unless you were
able to couch that in probabilities, making probabilistic models, where
(21:13):
you say there's a certain percentage of likelihood that this
is going to happen. But keep in mind that's a
percentage of likelihood, right, and there are just too many,
too many factors, too many points of data to really
be certain about that kind of thing. Yeah, and anytime
we're dealing in um future projections, instead of just say
I don't know, basic empirical observations. We're talking in terms
(21:34):
of likelihood certainty. Seeing even with these things that were
very sure about if it's future speculation, it's like, we're
not actually positive. And in fact, there there are percentages
that are like that, there's essentially certainty that we're going
to see uh increased heat waves in the future. So
(21:57):
that's scientists have put that uh a near certainty. Other
ones are you know, at different ranges. But for instance, ice,
we can we're gonna see less of it. Yeah, there's
gonna be a lot of melting. So we're gonna see
a loss of sea ice. We're gonna see reduction in
glacier sizes. We're gonna see ice breaking up and melting
(22:19):
earlier in the year on lakes and rivers and places
where it does freeze over right. That's because every year
um ice will will reform in the winter and then
melting down in the summer. And when they talk about
the glaciers melting, it's not that they're all doing it
all at once. Forever's um it's it's just that less
ice is being recaptured in the winter than it was
(22:39):
the previous So the overall trend is that the glaciers
are getting smaller in size and over time. And then
you also we see decrease decreases in snow packs, which
means you're going to see some actual ecosystems change as
a result. And by the way, all of this ice
melting and decreases in snow winds up creating warmer temper
(23:00):
cheers overall, because ice and snow are reflective, whereas um
warm ground or warm water or even I mean, you know,
room temperature ground or water are darker and therefore absorb
more of that heat coming down from the sun. Ye uh.
NASA says that the green Land and Antarctic ice sheets
have decreased in mass UH from two thousand two to
(23:21):
two thousand and six. They estimate that Greenland lost between
a hundred fifty cubic kilometers or thirty six to sixty
cubic miles of ice per year, and an Arcticle lost
about a hundred fifty two cubic kilometers or thirty six
cubic miles of ice between two thousand two and two
thousand five. So an Arctica is not losing it at
the same rate as Greenland, but it's still losing ice
(23:44):
on top of that we're seeing the possibility of of
drastically shifting weather patterns. We're talking massive changes in precipitation levels,
so the day after tomorrow, not that dramatic in that
quick Not not this this flip flopping effect where you
suddenly have temperatures dropped to thirty below zero in a
(24:04):
blink of an eye, but rather that you're going to
see areas get more rain than they normally would, while
other areas become get less rain and end up having
severe droughts. Um but not intelligent droughts, not not as
far as I can determine. They might still chase Jake
Jillen Hall, because wouldn't we all? I would like to
have an intelligent drought on this podcast to replace a
(24:27):
certain co host who's getting a little, little, little little
beans in the system. I'm just kidding too. He can
sit next to you. So yeah, we're changes in precipitation levels. Also,
projections suggest that there's a possibility that will see more
rainfall in high latitudes and less rainfall in subtropical climates.
So that's going to dramatically change those ecosystems, which brings
(24:50):
me to other ecosystem changes, plant and animal ranges are
going to shift as environments become less suitable for over time.
We've already started to see that where we're seeing animal
popular lations move from where they traditionally would range because
those areas are no longer suitable for them. That's going
to continue. In Latin America, UH rainforests are starting to
(25:10):
change over into savannah's now. That means that there's also
been a decrease in precipitation there, which means that there's
uh greater strain on fresh water resources, so people are
having to work harder to get fresh water in those areas.
Also means that because the rainforest is converting over to
a different kind of ecosystem, you're seeing a real risk
(25:32):
to bio diversity. Lots of species that are put at
risk because of that loss of their environment. In Europe,
there's been an increase in flash floods and coastal flooding.
Projections for Africa indicate that severe droughts and larger strain
of water resources will be in the near future. That
of course, will also affect food resources. We've discussed this
in the past, how water and food are so closely related.
(25:55):
Asia is also going to experience increased flooding and decreased
access to fresh water, so lots of rough things. They're
on top of that, the ocean is being affected in
a couple of different ways. A salinity is changing, that's
the amount of salt concentration in the oceans um that changes,
and drawing on observations from nineteen fifty five to two
(26:16):
thousand four, researchers found that the ocean sealinity changed throughout
the study period, and that the changes were independent of
known natural variability, and that the shifts were consistent with
the expected effects of anthropogenic climate change. So, in other words,
this is not due to some sort of undersea activity
or natural cycle. This is something means caused by by humankind.
(26:42):
The pH of oceans is changing. This is because when
carbon dioxide reacts with seawater, it lowers the pH of
the sea water. Uh so that means it makes it
more acidic um, which if you've ever had a a
fish tank at home, and that could be a bad thing.
That thing. Yeah, so it absorbs a lot of carbon
(27:03):
dioxide and it that kind of does that, you know,
it just does that naturally over over a long period
of time. It would absorb like if we were to
stop producing CO two today and and only natural sources
were producing it. Uh, the ocean would end up absorbing
that CEO two over the course of you know, a
couple of thousand years. Um. But uh, it's and that
(27:26):
would dramatically change that ocean over that time. But we're
also talking about using the ocean as a possible sink
for carbon dioxide, which we'll talk more about in another podcast.
But that would mean pumping up the acidity level of
the oceans, at least in a regional area wherever the
pumping was being done. Uh, in a in a time
scale that would be much shorter than what we would
(27:49):
see naturally. So in other words, we'd be seeing something
happening in the oceans that is akin to what we're
seeing in our atmosphere right now. It would be the
the effects would be different, but it's the same sort
of thing where you know, it's not necessarily a solution
to a problem, it's creating a different problem. It's it's
it's sort of a lateral shift. On top of that,
we're talking about the complexity of climate. You know, It's
(28:11):
like we said, it's it's complicated stuff. There's so many
different things to bring into consideration that it is very
difficult for us to say for sure what is going
to happen in the future. It's just, uh, we know
that these basic things are very likely to happen. When
you get more specific, like, well we see greater cyclone
activity and intensity in the future, that's a possibility, but
(28:33):
it's not a certainty. And I think that's r rated
about the sixty six percent level of certainty, which is
still over more certain than not, but still a pretty
huge But then when it comes to things like you know,
there'll be more heat waves and there will be less
rain in some areas and more rain in other areas,
the certainty level is way higher like or above. So
(28:57):
so there are some things that we just cannot know
right now because we don't have all the information we
would need to project an accurate model. And it's just
so hard to project in this realm because you're not
talking about, say, predicting a chemical reaction and a beaker
that's isolated. The climate is something that creates feedback loops
(29:18):
within itself, so lots of different climate variables influence the
other ones. Uh, it influences whether weather influences ecosystems which
affect the climate, and so there's just it's it's incredibly
complex system and only that, but we can't even be
certain how much greenhouse gas we're emitting on any given day,
(29:39):
let alone. Like we can make estimates, but those estimates
are based upon information that researchers can gather. And when
you think about it, that the world's a big place. Yeah,
the UM So, like the estimates I was using earlier,
they come from the Manoloa Observatory in Hawaii, and that
that consistently has been collecting uh data on the atmospheric
(30:00):
concentration of carbon dioxide for a while now, and so
that can pretty steadily track what's going on. But the
concentration might not be UM. Actually don't know the answer
to this, whether it's concentrated more in some places than others,
or if it's pretty well dispersed. Yeah. Well, I mean
the point being that even you know, even if if
(30:20):
one nation were to cut out all carbon emissions, unless
every other nation did so as well, Uh, you know,
the the effect might be small at least in the
short term. Maybe in the long term it would make
a pretty big difference, But in the short term it
would be negligible. We would have to have a much
larger effort to really make a huge impact. Okay, So
(30:44):
looking forward into the future, we are certain that the
Earth is warming, and the trend is that it's going
to continue warming. We're very confident that human activity has
caused this, and there are predictions we've made about lots
of possibly very negative consequences of this, with varying degrees
(31:06):
of certainty with each of those predictions. Um, what what
do we do next? Well? First, uh, I mean a
lot of that we're going to address in our next episode.
But first I think we need to talk a little
bit about the concept of a scientific consensus. Yeah, there's
sort of a public conversation going on about global warming.
(31:26):
In case you haven't noticed change you're not on Twitter
or something. Uh, So the scientific consensus is one of
those terms that I think, uh, gets thrown around a lot,
and there's not a full understanding and in the general
public about what that means. Yeah. Okay, Well let's just
do a little experiment here. Imagine I am a lay person,
(31:49):
uh that doesn't have a lot of expertise on climate science.
That's not hard to imagine. Um, But go on, but
I recognize that there's this public to eight about climate change,
and specifically, I think the most contentious part of the
debate is the anthropogenic part, whether humans are causing this um,
(32:11):
which I guess affects the idea of whether or not
we can we have the power to stop it, or
if we should, if we should take any efforts to
stop it because of the potential impact that would have
on economy, lifestyle side. Um. So, I am a lay person.
I have no expertise in this area, and I noticed
that there are people who both seem to know more
(32:32):
than me about it arguing about it. So how do
I make a decision? How do I form an opinion
about this that's over my head? Well, the scientific consensus
in this case, when we talk about consensus, you're talking
about a a large group of people who have all
uh kind of come to the same conclusions, uh perhaps independently,
(32:52):
and they are presenting a united front at least on
some level on the issue. Well, what is the consensus? What? Like?
How many people agree about this? In In a study
of papers that were expressing a position on um anthropogenic
global warming, point one percent endorsed the consensus that humans
(33:17):
are in fact causing it. Yeah, that's a that's a
huge scientific consensus there. This is from a literature review
that was published in called Quantifying the Consensus on Intropogenic
Global Warming in the Scientific Literature, that the one in
Environmental Research letters. That is indeed. Um. So, the way
(33:38):
this the study progressed, as I understand it is they
looked at all these different reports and they looked for
any mention of the causation for whatever the warming or
climate change effect was, right, reports in fact and so
(33:58):
eleven correct. Well, let's us read from the abstract to
have some clarity here. Sure, they say, we analyze the
evolution of the scientific consensus on anthropogenic global warming and
the peer reviewed scientific literature. Examining eleven forty four climate
abstracts from two eleven matching the topics global climate change
or global warming, we find that sixty six point four
(34:20):
percent of abstracts expressed no position on a GW, thirty
two point six percent endorsed it, points seven percent rejected it,
and point three percent were uncertain about it. So, in
other words, out of the ones that actually addressed what
the cause was, point one percent said it was anthropogenic.
(34:40):
And then the but I understand that some people are
framing this in a different way. Well, yeah, actually this
is a good example of how, um, sometimes it can
be difficult to interpret scientific literature. I was just looking
around about this paper. I found one blog post on
the internet that was like, look, you know, out of
all these scientists, so thirty two point six percent endorsed it,
(35:02):
So that's the minority. Um, ignoring the fact that, Yeah,
so sixty percent of the papers examined in this study
didn't express an opinion. They didn't address about what caused it,
whether it was anthropogenic or not. Um, they were you know,
they just didn't address that issue. But so they looked
(35:23):
at that and said like, oh, look it's it's the
minority now. Um, of course it's not the minority in fact.
On between, Yeah, as we've just been pointing out of
the papers that did express an opinion whether it was
caused by humans or not, said that it was right.
So that is a pretty that's a pretty uh big
(35:44):
consensus there. Yeah, and only that, But beyond that, there
have been plenty of of climatologist gatherings where more and
more people are just saying like, no, that the scientific
community at at large says that this is something that's happening.
That doesn't mean that there aren't people who disagree, but
(36:04):
they are in a very tiny sliver, right. And we
do want to say that we absolutely support skepticism. I
think all three of us are are pretty big skeptics
in general. We really appreciate the rigor of scientific research.
You know, we want questions to be asked. That questions
being asked is the entire point of science. But if
you aren't asking questions, if you're simply dissenting, then if
(36:29):
you're simply denying something, then you're not really being scientific.
And you know so. In other words, what I would
tell the lay person is that the majority of scientists
who have devoted their their professional lives to studying this
say that one, it's a thing, to it's it's being caused,
(36:49):
at least in part by human activity, and that therefore
we could do something that would reduce that um that
those far outnumber the dissenting of and that it's not
to say the scientists is smarter than you are, but
rather that here's all the research that they have done
that has been reviewed and replicated. Well, it's not just
(37:13):
that scientists are smart in fact, it's not even just
that scientists are the people who spend a lot of
time studying this, though both of those things tend to
be true. Um, it's you're trusted when you trust in
the scientific consensus. You trust not just in a person,
but in a process. You're you're trusting in the fact
that the way, um, the scientific community works is that
(37:36):
everybody's trying to prove each other wrong. Right, there's huge
rewards for proving someone wrong with math. The way you
would get accolades and attract a lot of uh, you
know money, essentially is to um, look to say, actually,
everybody's wrong about this, and here's why. And if you
(37:57):
produce a good argument, people look at and they say,
oh wait a minute, yeah, we do need to review
our our opinions. Um, that's how you become famous as
a scientist. Well, it's also think about most of the
most famous scientists are people who changed opinions in their field. Sure, sure,
and it's but I mean, the the thing we're looking
(38:19):
at here, and I mean I completely agree, but the
thing is for the scientific consensus here is that I
want to make sure that our listeners know we're not
advocating you fall into the rhetorical fallacy of argument from authority,
which is one of those ideas where you say, because
this person is an authority in this place, everything they
say is right. But we're really saying is that there's
(38:41):
been a massive amount of research. It all points to
the same way. The scientific community at large agrees upon it.
We're giving authority to their to their numbers and their methodology,
not them themselves exactly well, And the fact that even
this consensus doesn't mean that it's right. It just gives
you a more greater confidence that's right. Because in any case,
(39:05):
if you don't know exactly for yourself, and nobody really
does on these issues, you are making a value judgment.
You know, you're sure you're estimating probability. Right. As more
people who know a whole lot about this kind of
thing agree, the probability that they're wrong is probably is decreasing, right, exactly,
(39:25):
So could a lone voice of descent be correct and
say that all of these studies are wrong and in
fact they were all misinterpreted. But that but that possibility
is smaller, incredibly tiny, I mean very very tiny. Doesn't
mean that it's impossible. It just means it's not plausible. Um,
you know, it's it's something that could turn out to
(39:48):
be the case. I seriously doubt it, just based upon
the massive amounts of research and time that has been
dedicated to studying this already. It could be caused by
interdimensional reptiles. Okay, Tilly, sorry, so ignoring ignoring my co
hosts for the time being. Well, no, it's it's a
hoax they came up with to fund their war against
(40:09):
the Zeta reticulum. Attempting to continue to ignore my co hosts.
All right, So anyway, it'll be our next episode. We're
really going to be focusing on how best to address this,
you know, assuming that all of the science is right,
which I think is well within our rights to assume,
(40:29):
because of the mass of probability that it is right.
What can we do to reduce our impact on the
environment and try and mitigate climate change. We're gonna talk
about that in our next episode. Now, I'm sure some
of you listeners out there have a lot that you
want to say about this topic. I recommend you go
to fw thinking dot com. That's our website where all
(40:51):
of our stuff lives. We're talking the videos, the blogs, podcasts, articles,
join in the conversation. You can follow us on Twitter, Facebook,
Google Plus just look for f W thinking We are
there as well. And meanwhile, we're gonna take a little break.
Let this room cool down a bit. It's been warming up.
I don't know if that's climate or whether or it's
just you don't Oh well, you know it's so sweet
(41:14):
and we will talk to you again. Really sorry. For
more on this topic in the future of technology, visit
forward thinking dot Com, brought to you by Toyota. Let's
(41:38):
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