October 4, 2013 • 31 mins
What can we do to mitigate climate change? Will technology fix the problem? What are carbon caps?
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Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:00):
Brought to you by Toyota. Let's go places. Welcome to
Forward Thinking. Hey there, and welcome to Forward Thinking, the
podcast that looks at the future and says, Oh, the
weather outside is frightful. I'm Jonathan Strickland, I'm Lauren local Bon,
and I'm Joe McCormick. And uh, we're going to pick
(00:23):
up our conversation about climate change and what is what
can we possibly do about it to help mitigate it
or because in the previous episode we talked a lot
about how um global warming is real and that it
could have detrimental effects on everything stuff in the future. Yeah,
and that it's being somewhat powered by the stuff what
(00:45):
we do. In other words, people are causing a rapid
acceleration of a more rapid acceleration, a more rapid acceleration
of the warming trend of the Earth, and therefore we
could we could be in some deep water because of
sea level rises. So we wanted to talk about what
(01:05):
we could possibly do to help them address this. Well, Um,
so people are talking are having this public discussion about
whether humans are actually causing climate change. Uh, let's assume
this argument just does not get resolved enough to stop
us from adding more and more carbon dioxide to the atmosphere,
(01:29):
and or that the way that society works, it's really
hard for us to cut our dependency on things that
create carbon dioxide emissions, like cars, power. I like electricity
a lot myself personally. All those things, Yeah, they add
to the problem. So, uh, what happens if we get
way down in that hole? Is there any way for
(01:51):
us to get out? All right? So this is a
great question to ask because I have seen in the
past people who where I are climate change deniers, if
you want to use that term, or they were. They
didn't deny that climate change was happening, but they denied
that there was anything realistic that we would do because
(02:12):
they didn't want the impact for it to be, you know,
a negative economic impact or negative impact to lifestyle. In
other words, they didn't want their lives to be compromised
by the fact that there's this massive thing going on.
So they said, I'm not worried because science will fix it.
Technology will fix it. There's also a little bit of
research that's been done into the economics of climate change
(02:35):
and global warming, and people have said that in developed
countries at any rate, um the innovations needed to deal
with the warming weather will create um more jobs and
more money. Well and there in those specific areas. There's
also the economic argument about how developed countries can have
(02:57):
the luxury of investing in tech anologies that would remove
a dependence upon carbon emitting technologies, whereas developing countries would
not necessarily have that same luxury, and denying an entire
huge segment of the world's population access to the same
sort of comforts that we enjoy in other parts of
(03:17):
the world seems harsh when you remember that carbon contains
a lot. You know, you can get a lot of
energy out of carbon. In fact, that's why we depend
upon it so much. So to tell an entire huge
part of the world, hey guys, I know you're not
where we are right now, and you would really like
to be able to I don't know, eating stuff, but
stop using this thing that has all this power in
(03:40):
it and uh and and deal with that. That's that's
a denical reality, right. Yeah. So so a lot of
people they think, well, maybe we can turn to some
sort of like uh, crazy solutions to reverse engineer the problem, right, So,
for example, carbon capture, I've heard of that. Yeah, So
(04:00):
carbon capture and sequestration. What what is that? Is that
where where you you get like a net and you
uh andfferent net. Sorry, I thought we were doing a
beach blanket bingo thing here for a second. No, it's
not where you get a net and you capture carbon
and you drag it off kicking and screaming. Uh. It
(04:21):
really is talking about putting in systems in uh, in
places where a lot of carbon dox i gets released
in the atmosphere normally, so things like power plants, you know,
anything that's like a coal firing power plant would be
an example. Two capture the CEO two being given off
in that in that system, which could be a different
(04:44):
approach depending upon the actual system you're talking about. In
some cases you might get almost pure CEO two being admitted,
depending upon again what what it's coming from, in which
case capture would be a little easier. If the CEO
two is actually in a mixture, then you have to
figure out how are you going to deal with all
of this. But the idea is that you capture that,
you then put it someplace where it's not going to
(05:05):
get into the atmosphere. And the two big choices of
just capturing it and then putting it somewhere else. Are
either to pump it into the uh the ocean, deep
into the ocean, like deep undersea or underground. And by underground,
I mean you know hundreds of meters underground. You're you're
trying to pump c O two into a porous rock
(05:31):
formation that hopefully has a non porous formation above it,
which will block the c O two from filtering back up,
and the c O two will become trapped underground. Uh,
there's actually room for giga tons of c O two
underground in this way. And in fact, this is a
technology that oil companies already use when they're exploring for oil.
(05:51):
They'll pump c O two down in order to try
and find oil deposits. So the technology, the basic technology
to do this is already there. It's not being used
in this application, but the actual tech exists. Uh. But
but wouldn't putting a whole crap ton that's the scientific
term of c O two down into a place that
(06:12):
didn't already have it change? Well, if you're talking about
strata under the earth that's hundreds of meters below, it's
gonna change things in a way that doesn't really affect
us in any way, the same sort of thing as
if you were to find a natural gas deposit or something.
So if we're talking about the ocean, we're actually there
are some concerns here obviously. For one thing, in our
(06:32):
last podcast, we discussed the fact that c O two
and seawater can combine in a way that ends up
lowering the pH of sea water. So pumping a lot
of c O two into the ocean could end up
affecting the pH levels of at least the region around
wherever it is you're pumping the the c O two
into that has a potential for affecting an entire ecosystem
(06:55):
under the water. So obviously that is something that would
have to be studied in depth before we were to
roll that out on any kind of wide scale basis,
because you don't want to end up removing c O
two from the atmosphere, pump it into the ocean, and
just create a brand new set of problems. So that's
one possibility. I think that the one about essentially shoving
(07:18):
an underground is something that could at least in theory,
takes some of the burden of CO two emissions uh
out of the picture. Although obviously we don't have a
way of doing that for things like personal vehicles. You know,
we we're talking about these massive plants and manufacturing facilities.
That would be a big benefit, but it's only part
(07:40):
of the equation. Can I ask you a question? Sure,
go ahead? This process sounds energy intensive, especially if we're
already what we're trying to do is offset the carbon
we're putting into the atmosphere creating energy. Well, at least
the pumping creating the pumping carts certainly would require its
own energy. I mean, capturing is you could you could
(08:00):
potentially create a mostly passive system to capture c O two,
but it wouldn't you know, I would imagine a power
system would be more efficient. But when you're talking about
pumping CEO two under the ground, that's gonna require energy.
So you have to figure that out exactly. You know,
you can't. Are you just gonna have a massive petroleum
burning generator that's that's just releasing more c O two
(08:22):
into the atmosphere while you're pumping. Now, grant, you know
you're talking about different scales here too. The amount of
c O two omitted by a like a power company
coal burning plant is way higher than than yeah, a
pump exactly. So, um, you know you're looking at a scale.
You're talking about reducing c O two emissions. You're certainly
(08:42):
not talking about eliminating them. But that's that's one suggestion
of using technology to try and fight this off. But
there are a couple of other ideas, you know, like like,
what's this geo engineering thing I see on our outline,
Joe geo engineering. Um, there's there's a lot of exciting
stuff in this one. Oh boy, some route words. Okay.
(09:04):
So if y'all like the plots the bad guys come
up with in James Bond movies, oh do I you'll
like geo engineering. You don't look like blow Feld for
you know, just out of look you look like Donald Pleasant.
Thank you. But between between aggravating James Bond being chased
by Michael Myers, my book is full. Go ahead. Uh
(09:30):
so you've got one about about reforestry, I believe, Well,
see that's a tough one. Okay. So there are all
these ideas about how we could make major changes to
the planet Earth that would help offset the either the
heating effects of of global warming or the atmospheric carbon
(09:51):
situation that causes or in a few that I'm going
to talk about the radiation itself that's reaching near Yeah. Um,
so to one way or another change the planet to
help offset the bad effects of this or to keep
it from happening in the first place. Um And and
they say, well, okay, so we know there's gonna be
a lot of carbon out there, so just what are
(10:12):
we going to do about it? One idea has to
do with plants. Okay, so forests and plants they create
energy by photosynthesis. So they take in carbon dioxide from
the atmosphere and nutrients from the soil, and energy from
the sunlight and they use all that to turn that
carbon into plant matter. Um. And they create cellulose and
(10:35):
release oxygen and stuff. Yeah and so so wait this
sounds great. So it's taking all the carbon out and
it's releasing where's the problem. Some people have said, hey,
I know, we'll use this kind of principle, this plant
based principle in the ocean. And this is this idea
of ocean fertilization. If you heard of this, pray tell
what is this ocean fertilization that I would like to
(10:58):
talk about. Ocean fertilization by way of anecdote parable all right,
go ahead, okay. So there is a Guardian article from
two twelve that tells the story of an American businessman
from California named Russ George. Um, and he had an idea.
(11:21):
He said, okay, well, plankton like iron. Um a lot
of iron in the water that they use this as
a new trient. They gobble it up in the population
is bloom. Well, so they are photosynthetic, and that means
plankton absorbed carbon dioxide like trees do. The idea of
ocean fertilization is you put the iron in the water, um,
(11:44):
the plankton gobble it up, and they gobble up C
O two. They die, and then they take the c
O two to the bottom of the ocean with them
when they sink. So that's sort of like a natural
way of like sequestering the carbon dioxia, getting rid of it,
putting it somewhere else. They put it in their bodies,
they sink to the bottom, then they've got it down
there out of our hair. Right. Well, it turns out
(12:08):
it's not that simple. So Mr Russ George he went
off the west coast of Canada and dumped about a
hundred tons of iron sulfate in the water. According to
this article, that sounds like a lot. Yeah. Um, and
it spawned a plankton bloom as large as ten thousand
square kilometers. Um. Now you may have heard before of
(12:31):
blooms in the water being related to actually not so
wonderful effects. Well, anytime that you're changing an ecosystem like that,
if you've got too much of something at the bottom
of the food chain, what's that going to do to
the rest of it? Yeah, there are all kinds of
questions about whether this uh well, number one, whether it's safe,
(12:51):
and number two, whether it even works in the first place.
So scientists are still not sure whether this iron fertilization
process will actually keep the carbon locked and sequestered at
the bottom of the ocean, or if it's only a
temporary thing. And then also they raised all these uh,
you know, concerns about how it affects ecosystems in the water,
(13:12):
about how it can produce um chemicals in the water
that are toxic and you know, so in other words,
you're doing more harm than good. Yeah, And in fact,
I think some people think that this can actually worsen
global warming in fact, Nature, the journal of Science Nature
published a paper about how ocean fertilization should be completely abandoned.
(13:34):
They published that back in two thousand nine, and uh,
in fact, I can I can quote a little bit
from it is it is already commonly accepted that ocean
iron fertilization should not be rushed into as a mitigation strategy.
The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change regards it as supported
by neither appropriate assessment of environmental side effects nor a
(13:54):
clear institutional framework for implementation. Similarly, last year to United
Nations Conventions path resolutions restricting large scale ocean iron fertilization activities,
citing concerns about the environmental risks and lack of a
scientific basis on which to justify such activities, concerns that
have been recognized for some time. A Royal Society report
(14:15):
released this month emphasized that the technique has a relatively
small capacity to absorb carbon and comes with quote probably
deleterious ecological consequences end quote. Yeah. So, uh, here's our
first major geoengineering scheme thumbs down down. I think I think, uh,
(14:35):
I think I gotta go with nature on this one. Well,
I've got a I've got a question, Um, so if
the Earth is getting hotter, maybe we can't do anything
about the carbon. Maybe it's just gonna be there and
it's gonna trap this, you know. So radiation comes down,
it comes back up, but it doesn't escape the atmosphere.
What if we could reduce the amount of radiation coming
(14:55):
in in the first place? Right There are a bunch
of ways that scientists, mad or not are trying to
solve that problem. There's there's a the concept of cloud
reflectivity or cloud brightening, which says that and and no
one's really sure exactly what affect clouds have on climate
right now in terms of I mean, because they they're
(15:17):
going to reflect sunlight from the sun, but they also
do absorb some of the radiation coming back up from
the earth. So is it a net loss? Is it?
Is it just do you break even? And we're not
questioned about that, and we're not sure. But there's a
concept that if we can create more low reflective clouds,
that that could be awesome. Um. One idea for this
(15:38):
is that we could get these boats out onto the
ocean that are shooting seawater and therefore a salt high
into the air, creating large bright clouds with the help
of the salt, because adding particles to the air creates
more smaller water droplets, which creates clouds with a greater
surface area for reflecting sunlight. Um. I mean you know,
we could We could even put wind powered boats out
(16:00):
there that would drag propellers through the water to generate
the electricity to create the spray. So other than creating
the boats, this could be a pretty green adventure. I
just imagine all these fish flying up into the atmosphere
like that poor frog photo in a great some kind
more sushi for me. It's just called the killing floor.
(16:22):
There's really a sluice there. Um. However, this could potentially
lead to drought in areas down wind if if you,
because these clouds would be more rain resistant than normal clouds,
and so therefore it might be bad for already drought
potential areas. Gotcha. So again, another another potential solution that
(16:45):
could end up having unintended negative consequences. Absolutely, and since
we're not sure about clouds, roll and everything in the
first place, it's a pretty big question mark right now. Um.
No I had mentioned salt in the air helping create
these reflective clouds. That's technically an aerosol, which are which
is just solid particles of matter in the air. And
(17:06):
now different air sels can reflect or absorb some light.
We talked about this in the previous podcast I believe,
you know, for example, carbon tends to absorb radiation and
keep it in Earth's atmosphere, whereas things like sulfates and
nitrates will reflect. So there's an idea to inject sulfates
into the stratosphere to provide more of that reflection. Um,
(17:27):
there's there's a lot of potential here. According to NASA
models estimate that air sels have had a cooling effect
that has counteracted about half of the warming caused by
the build up of greenhouse gases since the eighteen eighties,
which is significant. However, you know, there's you know, a okay,
a model from the University Washington said that this will
(17:47):
never fully offset climate change. And furthermore, the idea of
just toss and stuff up into the air could have
serious I mean, obviously could have serious impacts on your ecology.
You have if you have chemicals combining in ways that
you had not anticipated, then you could end up with
things like acid rain or certainly different rain rain that
(18:08):
perhaps environment is not used to Um. There's another one,
and this is my favorite, and that is space mirrors.
Mirrors in space like a compact for the Earth or
or I'm really picturing this is the most James BONDI
of all of these, I think, um and okay, so
as Mr Burns, Yes, I think Mr Burns is really
(18:32):
a failed Bond villain if only he could cross cross
platforms there um. Now. Scientists have estimated that you'd only
have to deflect about one percent of incoming solar radiation
to completely offset climate change. That sounds cool, um right,
except for the part where that would require maybe six
(18:53):
hundred thousand square miles of mirror or many mirrors put together,
which which is a bunch and probably expensive. There there
are two different leading ideas for space mirrors right now.
One is to launch um launch one out in between
the Earth and the Sun at a gravitationally stable point
about four times away from Earth is the Earth is
(19:14):
to the Moon. If that just made SENSEI um. And
the other is to create a network of stable mirrors
in orbit around the equator, so it would be like
a swarm of mirrors. It would be like a like
a ring like we would have our own ring around
the planet. Yeah, a, this is this is a huge
expensive project, and be especially that that ring of mirrors
(19:37):
could create some really weird weather effects, uneven global temperature changes,
causing droughts in some places like for example, the America's
and northern Eurasia, which happens to be where a lot
of things get grown. So yeah, so well, hey, hey, hey,
I got I got a solution for you guys. Nanotechnology.
Put a period in it. We are done. I love
(20:00):
how nanotechnology is the illusion of everything. It's a magic
wand isn't it. You know, in the future, they'll they'll cue,
they'll cue, they'll cure chronic elbow pain with the nanotechnology.
Hey hey, nano robots in my blood are going to
do that, so they might. So nanotechnology is it's a
legitimate field. So even though we're joking right now, it
(20:20):
is very much legitimate field and there's some amazing science
coming out of it. But again, I think some people
point to nanotechnology like it's a cure all automatically, somehow
knowing how to make very very tiny things will solve
all of our scientific problems. It's like it's like people
use the idea of quantum in like science fiction or healing,
(20:43):
or or just using the word science. But you say,
so is this for real? Nanotech? Nanotech for real can
give us very helpful ways of of of dealing with
this situation. But so now, technology as a platform, it's not,
it's are It's not just a platform. It's not just
like nano technology is. You know, you wouldn't go into
(21:07):
a scientific laboratory and just see a big vat that
says nanotechnology and like I need some of that. Uh No,
we're actually talking about making improvements to existing technologies through
the discoveries we make in nanotechnology. For example, solar cells.
So one of the issues we have with solar cells.
You know, these are of course the cells that we
use in solar panels to collect solar energy and converted
(21:27):
into electricity. One of the problems you have is efficiency.
How much of that energy are you actually harnessing and
being able to convert into electricity usually tends to be
somewhere in the neighborhood. You know, you have laboratory conditions
that can get up higher than that, but in general
they're they're pretty lows. That means you're you're losing of
(21:48):
that energy. Uh, and that's one of the arguments against
using solar energy in various applications, saying that it would
be more expensive than alternatives, there's a higher startup cost,
it's not as efficient. Then you have all these other
issues you have to worry about. Well, nanotechnology is one
of those things that has taught us a lot about
nanostructures and the way that light behaves in nanostructures, and
(22:10):
but designing specific nanostructures, we can actually direct more light
down to hit the solar cell, so you lose less
of it in reflection and and that way you can
make the solar panels more efficient. So by making that
more efficient, you make get a more viable alternative to
fossil fuels. So that would take some of the demand
from fossil fuels off and put it into a renewable
energy source. Now I feel like you're talking in a
(22:33):
more feasible right. Well, when you say something like material science,
that's a little bit more. You know, on similar terms,
if you so, if you have better roads than all cars,
whether they're electric or not, are going to be more
energy efficient. But the you know, creating the infrastructure to
create better roads requires a lot of cement. Cement is
(22:54):
really energy inefficient to create. So if we could build
a better cement exactly, or you could use is nanotechnology
again to design lighter but strong materials and build vehicles
out of that. That means you need less fuel to
move those vehicles around. So again, this is one of
those things where nanotechnology can help in sort of an
indirect way, but they can make you know that that
(23:15):
discipline can help make other technologies more efficient and uh
and less let me put less of a burden on
us and when it comes to energy. So this brings
it full circle for me because I think, uh, it
sounds like, well, maybe we could do something with carbon sequestration,
(23:35):
carbon capture and sequestration that may help maybe, Um, most
of these other plans sound kind of mad scientist, not
very feasible, maybe making things worse. What's the real way
to deal with this? Bottom line, it's you've got to
go back to the stuff we've already heard about. I mean,
that's what seems like it's going to work. Reducing and
(23:56):
and and relying on reducing your your consumption and general
and relying on alternatives to fossil fuels in general as well.
So those would be the two main things, right as
reduce your consumption and and shift as much of your
consumption to renewable forms of energy as you possibly can't,
Like just your average electronics are consuming power even when
(24:18):
you're not using them. Unplugging your television can have a
huge effect on your power bill and also on your
just energy consumption. Yeah, because stuff you've heard a million
times before. Turn your lights off when you leave the house,
just you know, walk places when you can, or ride it,
buy some and we've done we've done full podcasts on
a few of these topics. So well we'll try and
(24:38):
we'll try to link them up when this publishes. But
you know, I mean or or we talked a few
weeks ago about food, um, you know, vegetarian eating and
the effect that you know, meat has a huge carbon
footprint print. Well, you know what, there's one thing we
didn't talk about, which are the idea of carbon credits
and carbon credit economies. This is gonna work, well we
(25:01):
should explain so, so essentially, what what's happening here is
that here, here's the problem from an economic standpoint, at least,
this is what some people would argue. They would argue
that it costs less money to depend upon fossil fuels
than it would to shift to an alternative, at least initially.
You might be able to argue in the long term
that you would have a benefit, but that's a tough
(25:23):
sell for any company. Well, the alternatives are new technology now,
so they're more expensive. They're more expensive, and some would
argue unproven, some would say they're not efficient, so that
would cause other changes in production. It would mean possibly
passing the costs down to you, so that essentially, ultimately
(25:43):
the consumer ends up footing the bill for whatever the
changes are. There a lot of arguments against it. Yeah,
it's a hard sell. Well, carbon credits, the idea is
to make it less of uh, give give less incentive
to using carbon when you are a giant company, like
a manufacturing company. So basically the idea is you put
a cap on how much carbon you are allowed to
(26:07):
release into the environment in a given year. You have
a certain amount and beyond that you are not allowed
to go. So you have to figure out how to
work within that cap if you absolutely have to do
business beyond like if your business requires that, you're going
to have to emit more carbon than what you are allowed.
You can then purchase the right to emit carbon, or
(26:29):
you can trade, depending upon the way the the economy
is set up. But the idea is that at auction
you could purchase carbon emission allocations. You could you could
be allowed to admit a certain amount of carbon for
a certain amount of money. The government, in turn would
take the revenue generated from these these auctions and pour
that into research and development for clean energy alternatives, uh
(26:52):
and trying to do some sort of public good with
that money. In theory, anyway, that's what would happen. So
the idea is that economically you would have the incentive
to move away from carbon because if you stayed with it,
you'd have to start paying for it, and one way
or another, you would either have to ramp down production
so that you worked within the parameters that were given
to you, or you have to pay money so that
(27:14):
you work within the ones you were accustomed to. Either way,
it's an incentive for you to move off of that
and find some alternative. UM. The whether it works or not,
that's a good question, because in the United States it's
been struck down every time it's come up. It's one
of those things where, UH, it requires, It requires legislation
(27:34):
with teeth in it. You have to have the authority
to say, like, if you're doing business within this country,
these are the rules you have to follow. And if
you don't do that, if you just make it a suggestion,
then obviously very few companies it will adopt that if
it means that would affect the bottom line. So, uh,
you know, would it work. There's some question about whether
(27:57):
or not it would be a huge benefit, but it
would at least given incentive to companies to try and
explore alternatives, while theoretically also pouring more money from the
government into UH sustainable clean energy alternatives. UH. A lot
of the arguments I've read are that the private industry
just it's just not enough to to allow for these
(28:21):
clean energy alternatives to really get a strong foothold, in
part because the United States government, along with other governments,
subsidizes fossil fuels. So with fossil fuels getting a subsidy,
then they already have an advantage. And so you know,
you're playing against a stack deck. So that's that's the
general idea. Now. I think personally that a carbon credit
(28:44):
economy set up fairly, you know, the way it was
intended to be, and UH, with the added incentive to
move into more clean energy, would at least be a
good way to transition UM, particularly for a developed nation. UH.
And we discussed earlier. It's it's complicated issue because you
can't just demand the entire world shifts to this when
(29:07):
there are large parts of the world that are struggling
for basic UH supplies that all the rest of us
just tend to take for granted. UH. It's it's a
very complicated issue. But I think that this sort of
thing would really help. I just unfortunately, I don't think
that carbon credit is something we're going to see, at
least in the United States anytime really soon. I just
think that it's too hard to sell politically to have
(29:30):
it happen UM. So that that's kind of where we
get a lot of people saying, you know, we're hoping
that technology can help get us out of this, because
I don't see another way that's going to happen anytime soon.
So fun times, you guys want to add anything happy
and and silly before I go any any mole reptilians
(29:51):
that we need to talk about. I could help, okay, RoboCop,
so I think nano RoboCop could help Nano RoboCop, So
we have to go to Nano Detroit. Yeah, all right,
So we'll go to Nano Detroit and go to the
Nano Wonderbread factory that's been turned into a Nano casino
and uh, we'll we'll get help there. No, no, I
think I think that all of this is I mean,
we've talked about some things that that are not going
(30:13):
to work probably ever, but the fact that people are
thinking about it and putting research into it is absolutely
val valuable, even even if only to prove that, yes,
you should turn the lights off in your room when
you leave it. All right, So, guys, if you have
any comments you would like to share, or you just
want to join the conversation, go to f W Thinking
dot com. That's the website where we've got all the
(30:34):
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or you can let us know what you think on
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They'll find us there if we want to hear from you,
and we will talk to you again really soon for
(30:55):
more on this topic. In the future of technology visit
forward thinking dot Com brought to you by Toyota. Let's
Go Places,
Brought to you by Toyota. Let's go places. Welcome to
Forward Thinking. Hey there, and welcome to Forward Thinking, the
podcast that looks at the future and says, Oh, the
weather outside is frightful. I'm Jonathan Strickland, I'm Lauren local Bon,
and I'm Joe McCormick. And uh, we're going to pick
(00:23):
up our conversation about climate change and what is what
can we possibly do about it to help mitigate it
or because in the previous episode we talked a lot
about how um global warming is real and that it
could have detrimental effects on everything stuff in the future. Yeah,
and that it's being somewhat powered by the stuff what
(00:45):
we do. In other words, people are causing a rapid
acceleration of a more rapid acceleration, a more rapid acceleration
of the warming trend of the Earth, and therefore we
could we could be in some deep water because of
sea level rises. So we wanted to talk about what
(01:05):
we could possibly do to help them address this. Well, Um,
so people are talking are having this public discussion about
whether humans are actually causing climate change. Uh, let's assume
this argument just does not get resolved enough to stop
us from adding more and more carbon dioxide to the atmosphere,
(01:29):
and or that the way that society works, it's really
hard for us to cut our dependency on things that
create carbon dioxide emissions, like cars, power. I like electricity
a lot myself personally. All those things, Yeah, they add
to the problem. So, uh, what happens if we get
way down in that hole? Is there any way for
(01:51):
us to get out? All right? So this is a
great question to ask because I have seen in the
past people who where I are climate change deniers, if
you want to use that term, or they were. They
didn't deny that climate change was happening, but they denied
that there was anything realistic that we would do because
(02:12):
they didn't want the impact for it to be, you know,
a negative economic impact or negative impact to lifestyle. In
other words, they didn't want their lives to be compromised
by the fact that there's this massive thing going on.
So they said, I'm not worried because science will fix it.
Technology will fix it. There's also a little bit of
research that's been done into the economics of climate change
(02:35):
and global warming, and people have said that in developed
countries at any rate, um the innovations needed to deal
with the warming weather will create um more jobs and
more money. Well and there in those specific areas. There's
also the economic argument about how developed countries can have
(02:57):
the luxury of investing in tech anologies that would remove
a dependence upon carbon emitting technologies, whereas developing countries would
not necessarily have that same luxury, and denying an entire
huge segment of the world's population access to the same
sort of comforts that we enjoy in other parts of
(03:17):
the world seems harsh when you remember that carbon contains
a lot. You know, you can get a lot of
energy out of carbon. In fact, that's why we depend
upon it so much. So to tell an entire huge
part of the world, hey guys, I know you're not
where we are right now, and you would really like
to be able to I don't know, eating stuff, but
stop using this thing that has all this power in
(03:40):
it and uh and and deal with that. That's that's
a denical reality, right. Yeah. So so a lot of
people they think, well, maybe we can turn to some
sort of like uh, crazy solutions to reverse engineer the problem, right, So,
for example, carbon capture, I've heard of that. Yeah, So
(04:00):
carbon capture and sequestration. What what is that? Is that
where where you you get like a net and you
uh andfferent net. Sorry, I thought we were doing a
beach blanket bingo thing here for a second. No, it's
not where you get a net and you capture carbon
and you drag it off kicking and screaming. Uh. It
(04:21):
really is talking about putting in systems in uh, in
places where a lot of carbon dox i gets released
in the atmosphere normally, so things like power plants, you know,
anything that's like a coal firing power plant would be
an example. Two capture the CEO two being given off
in that in that system, which could be a different
(04:44):
approach depending upon the actual system you're talking about. In
some cases you might get almost pure CEO two being admitted,
depending upon again what what it's coming from, in which
case capture would be a little easier. If the CEO
two is actually in a mixture, then you have to
figure out how are you going to deal with all
of this. But the idea is that you capture that,
you then put it someplace where it's not going to
(05:05):
get into the atmosphere. And the two big choices of
just capturing it and then putting it somewhere else. Are
either to pump it into the uh the ocean, deep
into the ocean, like deep undersea or underground. And by underground,
I mean you know hundreds of meters underground. You're you're
trying to pump c O two into a porous rock
(05:31):
formation that hopefully has a non porous formation above it,
which will block the c O two from filtering back up,
and the c O two will become trapped underground. Uh,
there's actually room for giga tons of c O two
underground in this way. And in fact, this is a
technology that oil companies already use when they're exploring for oil.
(05:51):
They'll pump c O two down in order to try
and find oil deposits. So the technology, the basic technology
to do this is already there. It's not being used
in this application, but the actual tech exists. Uh. But
but wouldn't putting a whole crap ton that's the scientific
term of c O two down into a place that
(06:12):
didn't already have it change? Well, if you're talking about
strata under the earth that's hundreds of meters below, it's
gonna change things in a way that doesn't really affect
us in any way, the same sort of thing as
if you were to find a natural gas deposit or something.
So if we're talking about the ocean, we're actually there
are some concerns here obviously. For one thing, in our
(06:32):
last podcast, we discussed the fact that c O two
and seawater can combine in a way that ends up
lowering the pH of sea water. So pumping a lot
of c O two into the ocean could end up
affecting the pH levels of at least the region around
wherever it is you're pumping the the c O two
into that has a potential for affecting an entire ecosystem
(06:55):
under the water. So obviously that is something that would
have to be studied in depth before we were to
roll that out on any kind of wide scale basis,
because you don't want to end up removing c O
two from the atmosphere, pump it into the ocean, and
just create a brand new set of problems. So that's
one possibility. I think that the one about essentially shoving
(07:18):
an underground is something that could at least in theory,
takes some of the burden of CO two emissions uh
out of the picture. Although obviously we don't have a
way of doing that for things like personal vehicles. You know,
we we're talking about these massive plants and manufacturing facilities.
That would be a big benefit, but it's only part
(07:40):
of the equation. Can I ask you a question? Sure,
go ahead? This process sounds energy intensive, especially if we're
already what we're trying to do is offset the carbon
we're putting into the atmosphere creating energy. Well, at least
the pumping creating the pumping carts certainly would require its
own energy. I mean, capturing is you could you could
(08:00):
potentially create a mostly passive system to capture c O two,
but it wouldn't you know, I would imagine a power
system would be more efficient. But when you're talking about
pumping CEO two under the ground, that's gonna require energy.
So you have to figure that out exactly. You know,
you can't. Are you just gonna have a massive petroleum
burning generator that's that's just releasing more c O two
(08:22):
into the atmosphere while you're pumping. Now, grant, you know
you're talking about different scales here too. The amount of
c O two omitted by a like a power company
coal burning plant is way higher than than yeah, a
pump exactly. So, um, you know you're looking at a scale.
You're talking about reducing c O two emissions. You're certainly
(08:42):
not talking about eliminating them. But that's that's one suggestion
of using technology to try and fight this off. But
there are a couple of other ideas, you know, like like,
what's this geo engineering thing I see on our outline,
Joe geo engineering. Um, there's there's a lot of exciting
stuff in this one. Oh boy, some route words. Okay.
(09:04):
So if y'all like the plots the bad guys come
up with in James Bond movies, oh do I you'll
like geo engineering. You don't look like blow Feld for
you know, just out of look you look like Donald Pleasant.
Thank you. But between between aggravating James Bond being chased
by Michael Myers, my book is full. Go ahead. Uh
(09:30):
so you've got one about about reforestry, I believe, Well,
see that's a tough one. Okay. So there are all
these ideas about how we could make major changes to
the planet Earth that would help offset the either the
heating effects of of global warming or the atmospheric carbon
(09:51):
situation that causes or in a few that I'm going
to talk about the radiation itself that's reaching near Yeah. Um,
so to one way or another change the planet to
help offset the bad effects of this or to keep
it from happening in the first place. Um And and
they say, well, okay, so we know there's gonna be
a lot of carbon out there, so just what are
(10:12):
we going to do about it? One idea has to
do with plants. Okay, so forests and plants they create
energy by photosynthesis. So they take in carbon dioxide from
the atmosphere and nutrients from the soil, and energy from
the sunlight and they use all that to turn that
carbon into plant matter. Um. And they create cellulose and
(10:35):
release oxygen and stuff. Yeah and so so wait this
sounds great. So it's taking all the carbon out and
it's releasing where's the problem. Some people have said, hey,
I know, we'll use this kind of principle, this plant
based principle in the ocean. And this is this idea
of ocean fertilization. If you heard of this, pray tell
what is this ocean fertilization that I would like to
(10:58):
talk about. Ocean fertilization by way of anecdote parable all right,
go ahead, okay. So there is a Guardian article from
two twelve that tells the story of an American businessman
from California named Russ George. Um, and he had an idea.
(11:21):
He said, okay, well, plankton like iron. Um a lot
of iron in the water that they use this as
a new trient. They gobble it up in the population
is bloom. Well, so they are photosynthetic, and that means
plankton absorbed carbon dioxide like trees do. The idea of
ocean fertilization is you put the iron in the water, um,
(11:44):
the plankton gobble it up, and they gobble up C
O two. They die, and then they take the c
O two to the bottom of the ocean with them
when they sink. So that's sort of like a natural
way of like sequestering the carbon dioxia, getting rid of it,
putting it somewhere else. They put it in their bodies,
they sink to the bottom, then they've got it down
there out of our hair. Right. Well, it turns out
(12:08):
it's not that simple. So Mr Russ George he went
off the west coast of Canada and dumped about a
hundred tons of iron sulfate in the water. According to
this article, that sounds like a lot. Yeah. Um, and
it spawned a plankton bloom as large as ten thousand
square kilometers. Um. Now you may have heard before of
(12:31):
blooms in the water being related to actually not so
wonderful effects. Well, anytime that you're changing an ecosystem like that,
if you've got too much of something at the bottom
of the food chain, what's that going to do to
the rest of it? Yeah, there are all kinds of
questions about whether this uh well, number one, whether it's safe,
(12:51):
and number two, whether it even works in the first place.
So scientists are still not sure whether this iron fertilization
process will actually keep the carbon locked and sequestered at
the bottom of the ocean, or if it's only a
temporary thing. And then also they raised all these uh,
you know, concerns about how it affects ecosystems in the water,
(13:12):
about how it can produce um chemicals in the water
that are toxic and you know, so in other words,
you're doing more harm than good. Yeah, And in fact,
I think some people think that this can actually worsen
global warming in fact, Nature, the journal of Science Nature
published a paper about how ocean fertilization should be completely abandoned.
(13:34):
They published that back in two thousand nine, and uh,
in fact, I can I can quote a little bit
from it is it is already commonly accepted that ocean
iron fertilization should not be rushed into as a mitigation strategy.
The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change regards it as supported
by neither appropriate assessment of environmental side effects nor a
(13:54):
clear institutional framework for implementation. Similarly, last year to United
Nations Conventions path resolutions restricting large scale ocean iron fertilization activities,
citing concerns about the environmental risks and lack of a
scientific basis on which to justify such activities, concerns that
have been recognized for some time. A Royal Society report
(14:15):
released this month emphasized that the technique has a relatively
small capacity to absorb carbon and comes with quote probably
deleterious ecological consequences end quote. Yeah. So, uh, here's our
first major geoengineering scheme thumbs down down. I think I think, uh,
(14:35):
I think I gotta go with nature on this one. Well,
I've got a I've got a question, Um, so if
the Earth is getting hotter, maybe we can't do anything
about the carbon. Maybe it's just gonna be there and
it's gonna trap this, you know. So radiation comes down,
it comes back up, but it doesn't escape the atmosphere.
What if we could reduce the amount of radiation coming
(14:55):
in in the first place? Right There are a bunch
of ways that scientists, mad or not are trying to
solve that problem. There's there's a the concept of cloud
reflectivity or cloud brightening, which says that and and no
one's really sure exactly what affect clouds have on climate
right now in terms of I mean, because they they're
(15:17):
going to reflect sunlight from the sun, but they also
do absorb some of the radiation coming back up from
the earth. So is it a net loss? Is it?
Is it just do you break even? And we're not
questioned about that, and we're not sure. But there's a
concept that if we can create more low reflective clouds,
that that could be awesome. Um. One idea for this
(15:38):
is that we could get these boats out onto the
ocean that are shooting seawater and therefore a salt high
into the air, creating large bright clouds with the help
of the salt, because adding particles to the air creates
more smaller water droplets, which creates clouds with a greater
surface area for reflecting sunlight. Um. I mean you know,
we could We could even put wind powered boats out
(16:00):
there that would drag propellers through the water to generate
the electricity to create the spray. So other than creating
the boats, this could be a pretty green adventure. I
just imagine all these fish flying up into the atmosphere
like that poor frog photo in a great some kind
more sushi for me. It's just called the killing floor.
(16:22):
There's really a sluice there. Um. However, this could potentially
lead to drought in areas down wind if if you,
because these clouds would be more rain resistant than normal clouds,
and so therefore it might be bad for already drought
potential areas. Gotcha. So again, another another potential solution that
(16:45):
could end up having unintended negative consequences. Absolutely, and since
we're not sure about clouds, roll and everything in the
first place, it's a pretty big question mark right now. Um.
No I had mentioned salt in the air helping create
these reflective clouds. That's technically an aerosol, which are which
is just solid particles of matter in the air. And
(17:06):
now different air sels can reflect or absorb some light.
We talked about this in the previous podcast I believe,
you know, for example, carbon tends to absorb radiation and
keep it in Earth's atmosphere, whereas things like sulfates and
nitrates will reflect. So there's an idea to inject sulfates
into the stratosphere to provide more of that reflection. Um,
(17:27):
there's there's a lot of potential here. According to NASA
models estimate that air sels have had a cooling effect
that has counteracted about half of the warming caused by
the build up of greenhouse gases since the eighteen eighties,
which is significant. However, you know, there's you know, a okay,
a model from the University Washington said that this will
(17:47):
never fully offset climate change. And furthermore, the idea of
just toss and stuff up into the air could have
serious I mean, obviously could have serious impacts on your ecology.
You have if you have chemicals combining in ways that
you had not anticipated, then you could end up with
things like acid rain or certainly different rain rain that
(18:08):
perhaps environment is not used to Um. There's another one,
and this is my favorite, and that is space mirrors.
Mirrors in space like a compact for the Earth or
or I'm really picturing this is the most James BONDI
of all of these, I think, um and okay, so
as Mr Burns, Yes, I think Mr Burns is really
(18:32):
a failed Bond villain if only he could cross cross
platforms there um. Now. Scientists have estimated that you'd only
have to deflect about one percent of incoming solar radiation
to completely offset climate change. That sounds cool, um right,
except for the part where that would require maybe six
(18:53):
hundred thousand square miles of mirror or many mirrors put together,
which which is a bunch and probably expensive. There there
are two different leading ideas for space mirrors right now.
One is to launch um launch one out in between
the Earth and the Sun at a gravitationally stable point
about four times away from Earth is the Earth is
(19:14):
to the Moon. If that just made SENSEI um. And
the other is to create a network of stable mirrors
in orbit around the equator, so it would be like
a swarm of mirrors. It would be like a like
a ring like we would have our own ring around
the planet. Yeah, a, this is this is a huge
expensive project, and be especially that that ring of mirrors
(19:37):
could create some really weird weather effects, uneven global temperature changes,
causing droughts in some places like for example, the America's
and northern Eurasia, which happens to be where a lot
of things get grown. So yeah, so well, hey, hey, hey,
I got I got a solution for you guys. Nanotechnology.
Put a period in it. We are done. I love
(20:00):
how nanotechnology is the illusion of everything. It's a magic
wand isn't it. You know, in the future, they'll they'll cue,
they'll cue, they'll cure chronic elbow pain with the nanotechnology.
Hey hey, nano robots in my blood are going to
do that, so they might. So nanotechnology is it's a
legitimate field. So even though we're joking right now, it
(20:20):
is very much legitimate field and there's some amazing science
coming out of it. But again, I think some people
point to nanotechnology like it's a cure all automatically, somehow
knowing how to make very very tiny things will solve
all of our scientific problems. It's like it's like people
use the idea of quantum in like science fiction or healing,
(20:43):
or or just using the word science. But you say,
so is this for real? Nanotech? Nanotech for real can
give us very helpful ways of of of dealing with
this situation. But so now, technology as a platform, it's not,
it's are It's not just a platform. It's not just
like nano technology is. You know, you wouldn't go into
(21:07):
a scientific laboratory and just see a big vat that
says nanotechnology and like I need some of that. Uh No,
we're actually talking about making improvements to existing technologies through
the discoveries we make in nanotechnology. For example, solar cells.
So one of the issues we have with solar cells.
You know, these are of course the cells that we
use in solar panels to collect solar energy and converted
(21:27):
into electricity. One of the problems you have is efficiency.
How much of that energy are you actually harnessing and
being able to convert into electricity usually tends to be
somewhere in the neighborhood. You know, you have laboratory conditions
that can get up higher than that, but in general
they're they're pretty lows. That means you're you're losing of
(21:48):
that energy. Uh, and that's one of the arguments against
using solar energy in various applications, saying that it would
be more expensive than alternatives, there's a higher startup cost,
it's not as efficient. Then you have all these other
issues you have to worry about. Well, nanotechnology is one
of those things that has taught us a lot about
nanostructures and the way that light behaves in nanostructures, and
(22:10):
but designing specific nanostructures, we can actually direct more light
down to hit the solar cell, so you lose less
of it in reflection and and that way you can
make the solar panels more efficient. So by making that
more efficient, you make get a more viable alternative to
fossil fuels. So that would take some of the demand
from fossil fuels off and put it into a renewable
energy source. Now I feel like you're talking in a
(22:33):
more feasible right. Well, when you say something like material science,
that's a little bit more. You know, on similar terms,
if you so, if you have better roads than all cars,
whether they're electric or not, are going to be more
energy efficient. But the you know, creating the infrastructure to
create better roads requires a lot of cement. Cement is
(22:54):
really energy inefficient to create. So if we could build
a better cement exactly, or you could use is nanotechnology
again to design lighter but strong materials and build vehicles
out of that. That means you need less fuel to
move those vehicles around. So again, this is one of
those things where nanotechnology can help in sort of an
indirect way, but they can make you know that that
(23:15):
discipline can help make other technologies more efficient and uh
and less let me put less of a burden on
us and when it comes to energy. So this brings
it full circle for me because I think, uh, it
sounds like, well, maybe we could do something with carbon sequestration,
(23:35):
carbon capture and sequestration that may help maybe, Um, most
of these other plans sound kind of mad scientist, not
very feasible, maybe making things worse. What's the real way
to deal with this? Bottom line, it's you've got to
go back to the stuff we've already heard about. I mean,
that's what seems like it's going to work. Reducing and
(23:56):
and and relying on reducing your your consumption and general
and relying on alternatives to fossil fuels in general as well.
So those would be the two main things, right as
reduce your consumption and and shift as much of your
consumption to renewable forms of energy as you possibly can't,
Like just your average electronics are consuming power even when
(24:18):
you're not using them. Unplugging your television can have a
huge effect on your power bill and also on your
just energy consumption. Yeah, because stuff you've heard a million
times before. Turn your lights off when you leave the house,
just you know, walk places when you can, or ride it,
buy some and we've done we've done full podcasts on
a few of these topics. So well we'll try and
(24:38):
we'll try to link them up when this publishes. But
you know, I mean or or we talked a few
weeks ago about food, um, you know, vegetarian eating and
the effect that you know, meat has a huge carbon
footprint print. Well, you know what, there's one thing we
didn't talk about, which are the idea of carbon credits
and carbon credit economies. This is gonna work, well we
(25:01):
should explain so, so essentially, what what's happening here is
that here, here's the problem from an economic standpoint, at least,
this is what some people would argue. They would argue
that it costs less money to depend upon fossil fuels
than it would to shift to an alternative, at least initially.
You might be able to argue in the long term
that you would have a benefit, but that's a tough
(25:23):
sell for any company. Well, the alternatives are new technology now,
so they're more expensive. They're more expensive, and some would
argue unproven, some would say they're not efficient, so that
would cause other changes in production. It would mean possibly
passing the costs down to you, so that essentially, ultimately
(25:43):
the consumer ends up footing the bill for whatever the
changes are. There a lot of arguments against it. Yeah,
it's a hard sell. Well, carbon credits, the idea is
to make it less of uh, give give less incentive
to using carbon when you are a giant company, like
a manufacturing company. So basically the idea is you put
a cap on how much carbon you are allowed to
(26:07):
release into the environment in a given year. You have
a certain amount and beyond that you are not allowed
to go. So you have to figure out how to
work within that cap if you absolutely have to do
business beyond like if your business requires that, you're going
to have to emit more carbon than what you are allowed.
You can then purchase the right to emit carbon, or
(26:29):
you can trade, depending upon the way the the economy
is set up. But the idea is that at auction
you could purchase carbon emission allocations. You could you could
be allowed to admit a certain amount of carbon for
a certain amount of money. The government, in turn would
take the revenue generated from these these auctions and pour
that into research and development for clean energy alternatives, uh
(26:52):
and trying to do some sort of public good with
that money. In theory, anyway, that's what would happen. So
the idea is that economically you would have the incentive
to move away from carbon because if you stayed with it,
you'd have to start paying for it, and one way
or another, you would either have to ramp down production
so that you worked within the parameters that were given
to you, or you have to pay money so that
(27:14):
you work within the ones you were accustomed to. Either way,
it's an incentive for you to move off of that
and find some alternative. UM. The whether it works or not,
that's a good question, because in the United States it's
been struck down every time it's come up. It's one
of those things where, UH, it requires, It requires legislation
(27:34):
with teeth in it. You have to have the authority
to say, like, if you're doing business within this country,
these are the rules you have to follow. And if
you don't do that, if you just make it a suggestion,
then obviously very few companies it will adopt that if
it means that would affect the bottom line. So, uh,
you know, would it work. There's some question about whether
(27:57):
or not it would be a huge benefit, but it
would at least given incentive to companies to try and
explore alternatives, while theoretically also pouring more money from the
government into UH sustainable clean energy alternatives. UH. A lot
of the arguments I've read are that the private industry
just it's just not enough to to allow for these
(28:21):
clean energy alternatives to really get a strong foothold, in
part because the United States government, along with other governments,
subsidizes fossil fuels. So with fossil fuels getting a subsidy,
then they already have an advantage. And so you know,
you're playing against a stack deck. So that's that's the
general idea. Now. I think personally that a carbon credit
(28:44):
economy set up fairly, you know, the way it was
intended to be, and UH, with the added incentive to
move into more clean energy, would at least be a
good way to transition UM, particularly for a developed nation. UH.
And we discussed earlier. It's it's complicated issue because you
can't just demand the entire world shifts to this when
(29:07):
there are large parts of the world that are struggling
for basic UH supplies that all the rest of us
just tend to take for granted. UH. It's it's a
very complicated issue. But I think that this sort of
thing would really help. I just unfortunately, I don't think
that carbon credit is something we're going to see, at
least in the United States anytime really soon. I just
think that it's too hard to sell politically to have
(29:30):
it happen UM. So that that's kind of where we
get a lot of people saying, you know, we're hoping
that technology can help get us out of this, because
I don't see another way that's going to happen anytime soon.
So fun times, you guys want to add anything happy
and and silly before I go any any mole reptilians
(29:51):
that we need to talk about. I could help, okay, RoboCop,
so I think nano RoboCop could help Nano RoboCop, So
we have to go to Nano Detroit. Yeah, all right,
So we'll go to Nano Detroit and go to the
Nano Wonderbread factory that's been turned into a Nano casino
and uh, we'll we'll get help there. No, no, I
think I think that all of this is I mean,
we've talked about some things that that are not going
(30:13):
to work probably ever, but the fact that people are
thinking about it and putting research into it is absolutely
val valuable, even even if only to prove that, yes,
you should turn the lights off in your room when
you leave it. All right, So, guys, if you have
any comments you would like to share, or you just
want to join the conversation, go to f W Thinking
dot com. That's the website where we've got all the
(30:34):
blog posts, podcasts, videos, articles. You can join the conversation there,
or you can let us know what you think on
social media and you can find us at Twitter and
Facebook and Google Plus. Just search for f W Thinking.
They'll find us there if we want to hear from you,
and we will talk to you again really soon for
(30:55):
more on this topic. In the future of technology visit
forward thinking dot Com brought to you by Toyota. Let's
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Hosts And Creators
Jonathan Strickland
Joe McCormick
Lauren Vogelbaum
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Dateline NBC
Current and classic episodes, featuring compelling true-crime mysteries, powerful documentaries and in-depth investigations. Follow now to get the latest episodes of Dateline NBC completely free, or subscribe to Dateline Premium for ad-free listening and exclusive bonus content: DatelinePremium.com
On Purpose with Jay Shetty
I’m Jay Shetty host of On Purpose the worlds #1 Mental Health podcast and I’m so grateful you found us. I started this podcast 5 years ago to invite you into conversations and workshops that are designed to help make you happier, healthier and more healed. I believe that when you (yes you) feel seen, heard and understood you’re able to deal with relationship struggles, work challenges and life’s ups and downs with more ease and grace. I interview experts, celebrities, thought leaders and athletes so that we can grow our mindset, build better habits and uncover a side of them we’ve never seen before. New episodes every Monday and Friday. Your support means the world to me and I don’t take it for granted — click the follow button and leave a review to help us spread the love with On Purpose. I can’t wait for you to listen to your first or 500th episode!