June 19, 2026 • 60 mins
It's a confusing part of climate change when it seems winter is as cold as ever, but as global temperatures creep ever so slightly higher, a cascade of catastrophic events will almost surely follow. The ball is in humanity's court.
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Speaker 1 (00:01):
Hey, everybody. Chuck here with another one of our sciencey
Playlist curated podcast episodes. This one's on global warming and
it's appropriately titled How global Warming Works. Please to listen
to it right now.
Speaker 2 (00:15):
Welcome to Stuff you Should Know from HowStuffWorks dot com.
Speaker 3 (00:26):
Hey, and welcome to the podcast. I'm Josh Clark, and
there's the Chipper Cheery, Charles w Chuck Bryant, how do you?
And there's Jerry over there. Say hi, Jerry, how are
you doing? Man?
Speaker 1 (00:41):
I'm welcher. How are you?
Speaker 3 (00:42):
I'm pretty well myself. I'm feeling all right. Feel a
little fit? Yeah, yeah, yeah. You're a little sweaty as
you can tell. But I'm all right.
Speaker 1 (00:53):
It's gross, it is.
Speaker 3 (00:54):
I don't smell, do I No? Okay?
Speaker 1 (00:56):
Good so friends, listeners, country men, You're gonna notice a
little something different in this week's feed. Tomorrow. This bears
a little explanation. We are dropping episodes one and two
of my new movie interview show movie Crush Do Do
(01:17):
Do Do? We're dropping those into the Stuff you Should
Know Feed, something we've never done here at the network,
but we're gonna I guess I'm the labrat on this one.
The guinea pig, the guinea pig. Sure, yeah, I guess
either one, right, the guinea pig doesn't die, the lab rat.
Speaker 3 (01:34):
Dies, Yeah, I guess, so let's go with the guinea
pig for sure though.
Speaker 1 (01:38):
All right, well either way, we are dropping those into
the stuff you should know feed uh, And we wanted
to alert you so when you saw all these new things,
you didn't rebel against us, like everyone hated you two
when they delivered the World Free album.
Speaker 3 (01:52):
Right right, Yeah, I mean this is like, this is
not just it's not a U two album, it's your
new show. It's more important than any U two album.
Speaker 1 (01:59):
Oh well, you know I appreciate that. Yeah, So yeah,
that's why they're there. And episode one is the great
Janet Varney with we talked about the movie Tron, and
that's the nature of the show as I talk to
people about their favorite movie. And episode two is tig
Nataro Wow, talking about the movie Mask And that one
(02:20):
is a very special episode and I'll tease it with this.
We recorded that interview or conversation rather seconds after she
got the call that she was cancer free at the
five year mark.
Speaker 3 (02:34):
Oh wow.
Speaker 1 (02:35):
So she started crying at the beginning and I didn't
know what was going on. I gave her some time.
I was freaking out, and it turned out to be
good news. But and I explained that all the at
the onset of the episode. But it turned out to
be a very special experience.
Speaker 3 (02:51):
Man, Chuck, you're like Barbara Walters.
Speaker 1 (02:54):
I didn't get it out of her. It was just
weird timing. Yeah, but anyway, those are in there, and
it won't happen every week. But I would love for
you to subscribe.
Speaker 3 (03:03):
Well, yeah, that's the way to get it, right, Yeah.
Speaker 1 (03:05):
Just subscribe anywhere you listen to podcasts.
Speaker 3 (03:08):
These are a couple of gifts, a little gems.
Speaker 1 (03:10):
That's right, and I appreciate your support on it.
Speaker 3 (03:13):
Yeah, well, way to go, man. Congratulations. I speak for
me and the rest of the world when I say
we are looking forward to this.
Speaker 1 (03:19):
Thanks dude. And you know I'm gonna have you on
as a guess. It's gonna be very strange and awesome.
Speaker 2 (03:24):
Yeah.
Speaker 3 (03:24):
I think it'll be neat. I'll start crying too.
Speaker 1 (03:27):
Do you know what your favorite movie is that you
would pick?
Speaker 3 (03:30):
I got a couple I think I could choose from sure, all.
Speaker 1 (03:32):
Right, well, hold on to that then, okay, and we'll
just pick that up later.
Speaker 3 (03:36):
Okay, Well, congrats again man.
Speaker 1 (03:38):
Thanks pal. Shall we warm the globe? Yeah?
Speaker 3 (03:41):
All right, So, Chuck, I don't know if you've heard
about this term recently, but it's been in the news lately.
Global warming. Are you familiar?
Speaker 1 (03:54):
It does ring a bell?
Speaker 3 (03:55):
Okay, well, just in case you For those people who
aren't aware of global warming, global warming is what we're
talking about today, and a lot of people confuse it
or use it interchangeably with climate change, and it turns
out that's not actually fully accurate. Global warming is a
symptom of climate change as a whole, and climate change
(04:19):
is a whole bunch of differences to the Earth's climate.
We'll get into what climate is in a second, and
one of those is global warming. Also things like extreme
weather events, increased drought, increased temperatures, sea level rises, all
these things put together, that's climate change, right, or the
result of climate change, and global warming is one of them.
(04:40):
So global warming is climate change, but not all climate
change is global warming. I just wanted to make sure
we got that out of the way to begin with.
Speaker 1 (04:47):
So, like the square rectangle thing, which I can still.
Speaker 3 (04:49):
Never keeps straight, well, and I think the what.
Speaker 1 (04:53):
Like, every square is not a rectangle, but every rectangle
square or the reverse of that, whichever it is.
Speaker 3 (04:58):
I've never heard that before. What I even aced geometry
the second time I took it.
Speaker 1 (05:03):
Oh, it was clearly a class that didn't care about squares.
Speaker 3 (05:08):
Yeah, I guess not. I mean they always talked about rectangles,
it squares were never brought up.
Speaker 1 (05:13):
Yeah. I think it's you know, I'm not going to
dig myself a hole there. That's probably be so global
warming if you want just a kind of a straight
up definition. Is the science community defines it as this,
and they should know. It's a significant increase in the
climatic temperature over a short, relatively short period of time
(05:36):
as a result of activities of humans. And by increase,
in short, we're talking like one degree celsius in a
couple of hundred years.
Speaker 3 (05:48):
Is global warming, right, because the effects of climate are
so pronounced on such a like with just small incremental changes.
Oh yeah, that that that that is climate change, something
that if you just look at it on paper, you're like,
that's nothing. Who cares about one degree? Actually, the point
(06:08):
of global warming is that when you have these these
this increase in global temperatures, a whole basket of events
starts to take place. That's climate change. Like global warming
is related to climate change, right, it can trigger other
climate changes, that's right.
Speaker 1 (06:25):
And you hear a lot of people talk about you
hear a lot of numbskulls talking about weather as if
it is climate, right, like a very harsh winter might come,
and they'll say, yeah, global warming.
Speaker 3 (06:38):
Right, that's a great numbskull.
Speaker 1 (06:42):
It's not the same thing. Weather is local, it's short term.
Climate is long term. It's not even like the weather
over a period of a year or even a couple
of years. We're talking about predictable, generally predictable average weather
conditions in a region over a long, long period of time.
So you can safely say in Green Bay, Wisconsin, it
(07:06):
is cold in the winter time. That is the climate
of Green Bay in that Midwestern region as a whole. Right.
Speaker 3 (07:12):
But if it snows in February February of you know,
next year, on a Tuesday, then that's just the weather.
Speaker 1 (07:22):
Yeah. Or if it snows in Miami once, then that's
not a refutation of what climate change means. That is
a weird anomaly. And those happen.
Speaker 3 (07:34):
Yeah, and this is a this is a grabster and
strickling code joint, by the way, So that's why heavy
it popped off the page if you noticed. But one
of the things they wisely picked point out is what
you just said that, Yes, some weather anomaly happens like that,
even if it happened three years in a row. I
think a lot of scientists would pay attention to why
(07:56):
it snowed in Miami three years in a row. Right,
But if it went back to normal or something like
that like that, that would not necessarily be climate change.
It's just a weird occurrence. Right. Climate change is this
change in predictable changes.
Speaker 1 (08:11):
Yeah, and that can take like thousands and ten thousands
of years sometimes.
Speaker 3 (08:15):
Right normost times under natural circumstances. And here is where
we come to the current use for global warming. Right.
Global warming can happen by itself naturally. The Earth, basically
as in its current presence state, swings back and forth
between glacial periods and interglacial periods, so cool periods and
(08:36):
warm periods, and for an ice age to occur, the
global temperature only needs to drop by about five degrees
celsius on average, and all of a sudden, we're in
an ice age.
Speaker 1 (08:46):
Right, Yeah, that doesn't mean the entire Earth is a
big round cube, round cube.
Speaker 3 (08:51):
Wow, that's like a square rectangle, but not at all
the same.
Speaker 1 (08:55):
Well, you know when you go to a fancy cocktail
bar and they have those awesome round I want to
say ice cubes again, ice spheres. Yep, that's not what
the Earth looks like necessarily during an ice age.
Speaker 3 (09:07):
No, no, no, it's just much cooler, and like, because it's
cooler by say, five degrees celsius. Like, a lot of
stuff changes. It's the same thing as global warming, but
on the opposite end, right, Like you have changes in
migration patterns, you have changes in habitat for animals, some
things go extinct during the transition, sea levels change, A
(09:30):
lot of stuff happens, right, So this is part of
the normal process of the Earth. But the Earth's kind
of got it, like, hey, hey, I've got this under control.
I don't need any help from you humans. Sure, And
when I do do this, this is the Earth talking
and first person. When I do change from a glacial
period to a warm period, it takes many tens and
(09:52):
tens of thousands of years, right, yeah, you humans here again,
this is still me the Earth. Humans are really messing
with my program here and accelerating the process. And you
know what, I'll even give you a clue as to
what you're doing that's making it so bad carbon dioxide emissions. Bam,
(10:12):
said the Earth and dropped its microphone and walked away.
Speaker 1 (10:15):
Yeah, and then it went back and picked up as
mic and said, and maybe stop littering, yeah, and then
dropped the mic again. Yeah, we should talk a minute
about a wonderful group called the IPCC, the Intergovernmental Panel
on Climate Change. Yes, a lot of very smart people there.
Speaker 3 (10:32):
Oh man, can I just say it's to me, the
IPCC is one of the coolest things humanity's ever come
up with. Yeah, cause it's the world coming together saying
we got a real problem on our hands. Let's get
our smartest people together and create a database here of
good science.
Speaker 1 (10:49):
Yeah. And those people are specifically about twenty five hundred,
actually more twenty five hundred scientists from around the world
meeting together like Paris, because why not, right, Sure, they
did this about ten years ago and came up with
a lot of well, sort of a lot of distressing observations.
(11:11):
We'll just tick through a few of these as far
as temperature goes, and you know, like we said, like
one degree celsias can make a big swing, and what
kind of changes we see on the planet. Between nineteen
oh one and two thousand, the Earth warmed point six degrees,
(11:32):
so that's you. If you adjust that to nineteen oh
six to two thousand and six, it climbs up to
point seventy four degrees, So about three quarters of a
degree in temperature rise during that one hundred year period, right.
Speaker 3 (11:46):
And there's a lot, It is a lot, And so
a lot of people say, well, you guys just said
the Earth tends to do this on its own, maybe
that's it. Well, actually, no, there's a lot of science
that the IPCC has been able to come up with
that shows pretty clearly that this is human cause stuff
that's actually creating this increase in temperature. And again it
(12:08):
seems to come back to carbon dioxide.
Speaker 1 (12:11):
Yeah, should we took over a few of these other observations, Yeah,
for sure. Let me see. Here's a good one. The
ocean's temperature has increased to at least depths of almost
ten thousand feet down. The ocean's temperature has increased.
Speaker 3 (12:27):
Yep, not a good thing, because that's how like what
glaciers tend to melt is from underneath, That's right.
Speaker 1 (12:35):
What else, Chuck, Westerly winds have been growing stronger. Yeah,
Droughts have become more intense, lasted longer, covered bigger swaths
of land. What else Here, Precipitation has increased in the
Eastern Americas or the Europe parts of Asia.
Speaker 3 (12:52):
But it's decreased elsewhere.
Speaker 1 (12:55):
Yeah, And that's I mean, we'll get into this a
little bit. A little bit of global warming can mean
longer growing and better growing seasons in some parts of
the world, but devastating to other parts of the world.
Speaker 3 (13:06):
Exactly.
Speaker 1 (13:07):
I guess I let the cat out of the bag there,
But we'll go over that again later. And how about
this on the warming trend of the last fifty years
is about double of the last one hundred years. So
what that means is the rate is increasing. The rate
of warming is increasing.
Speaker 3 (13:22):
Yeah, actually so, I think the IPCC has determined that
each of the past forty years has been warmer than
the average temperature of the twentieth century, and that twenty
sixteen was the hottest year on record, and the twelve
warmest years on record have occurred since nineteen ninety eight. Dude,
(13:43):
you should see the we'll get into it some of
the charts that you can find. And again, like if
you're even remotely interested in this, like just go look
up the IPCC's stuff in some of it, like you
have to be a climatologist to understand what in the
name of God they're talking about. But other stuff, especially
(14:04):
if you read like executive summaries of studies and reports
and stuff like that's meant to for like a non
scientist specifically often like policy makers to read and understand, right,
so the average person can understand that. And they have
some really great stuff that's showing like all of the
changes that the world is going through thanks to these
(14:27):
increases in the global temperature. And again, some of the
charts that they have are just stunning when you see them,
because it's like going along fine, going along fine, everything's fine,
and they oh, my god, what the hell just happened?
Speaker 1 (14:40):
Basically that was the Industrial Revolution?
Speaker 3 (14:44):
It was. But also one of the things that they
found recently, especially in the last like three four years,
I believe, is that it is that I think you,
like you were saying the increase in global temperatures, but
also again the increase in carbon dioxide has really shot
up over the last like fifty years, like from from
(15:06):
the beginning of the Industrial Revolution. I think they usually
start that about seventeen fifty to maybe eighteen hundred at
the latest, up to like nineteen fifty or so nineteen sixty,
Like there's a pretty surprising increase, but it is just
skyrocketed in the last like fifty or sixty years. So
they're seeing like this, the science is bearing out the
(15:29):
kind of the general theory of global warming, which we
should probably talk about this theory of global warming, right, because,
like we said, it's not just human caused a human
cause mechanism, Like basically, it's an already existing natural mechanism
that basically keeps the earth nice and toasty for life
(15:53):
and water.
Speaker 1 (15:54):
It keeps us from being Mars.
Speaker 3 (15:55):
But we have started messing with it big time because
of our our contributions to this normal cycle.
Speaker 1 (16:03):
Yeah, so should we talk about the greenhouse effect a
little bit?
Speaker 3 (16:05):
Yeah?
Speaker 1 (16:06):
The greenhouse effect is literally what keeps us from being Mars.
It is a good thing when it occurs naturally because
like you said, it keeps us on. You know, it
makes earth habitable and lovely and nice for the best part,
So they strickling in the grabster. I'm not sure who
came up with the car analogy, but it's a pretty
(16:27):
good one.
Speaker 3 (16:27):
I agree.
Speaker 1 (16:29):
If you go into your car on a hot summer
day and you get in your car, it's been sitting
out the sun for a little while, it's a lot
hotter than it is outside. It's kind of a no brainer,
but you might not have thought about why that happens.
It's not magic. What's happening is the sun that's coming
in through your car windows gets absorbed by the interior
of your car, whether it's your seats or the dashboard
(16:52):
or basically kind of everything in the car absorbs that heat,
and that heat is then eventually emitted back out and
radiated out from the seats and things like that. But
it's at a different wavelength than that initial sunlight that
came in, so some of it might get back out
of the window, but most of it stays kind of
(17:12):
trapped in that car. So the end result of the
net net, as they would say in a corporate meeting,
is that there's less energy going out than coming in.
Right so your car is going to get hotter.
Speaker 3 (17:25):
So pretend your car is the planet Earth basically, which
would be great, and the windshield is the atmosphere, right. Yeah,
So that's the greenhouse effect in a nutshell, as it
relates to the actual Earth. About seventy percent of the
solar energy that is directed toward Earth right, stays on
(17:46):
the planet, right, And instead of it being absorbed by
car seats and floor mats and stuff like that, it
gets absorbed by the ocean or land, or plants or
you right, right. And so about thirty percent of that
stuff that didn't make it through it was reflected back
(18:06):
by clouds, particles in the atmosphere, a bunch of other stuff. Right.
But as you're sitting there getting warm by the sun,
you actually have the potential to re emit that heat,
and so that stuff starts to go back through the
atmosphere out of space. Some of that stuff makes it
out into space, but there are other particles that take
(18:28):
that solar energy, usually in the form of heat, and
absorb it. And when they absorb it, they re emit
heat and then they direct it back down at Earth
and the process continues, and in some of that some
cases some of the stuff that they re emit, they
end up reabsorbing themselves, so that there is more heat
(18:48):
that's being trapped and sustained on Earth than is being
allowed to escape back into space at any given time. Yeah,
just like your car, right, And again, this is what
this is, like a positive feedback cycle that creates the atmosphere.
It also sustains the atmosphere. It also keeps water here
on Earth because water tends to heat up and rise,
(19:12):
but then it will it will cool off in the
atmosphere and fall back down as precipitation. And as long
as it can fall back down in the atmosphere and
nucleate around some of these particles that are trapped in
the atmosphere, we've got water here on Earth, that's right.
So it's all thanks to the wonderful, glorious greenhouse effect.
Speaker 1 (19:32):
Yeah, so that feels like a good place to pause.
Let people let that soak in a minute, like a
hot sun on a black car seat.
Speaker 3 (19:41):
Like a warm chutney on your forehead.
Speaker 1 (19:44):
My god. And we'll be back a little bit to
talk about the these gases in the atmosphere that we're
talking about here, all right, So we're back I think
(20:20):
everyone probably understands the greenhouse effect if you remember your
hot car. Yeah, it's kind of a nice easy way
to think about it. So, when you were explaining the
more like the Earth's version of that with getting absorbed
hitting things in the atmosphere, we're talking largely about three
things carbon dioxide, methane gas, actually four things, nitrous oxide,
(20:47):
and water vapor.
Speaker 3 (20:48):
And there are a lot of others, but as far
as stuff that really has the biggest impact on global warming,
it's these guys.
Speaker 1 (20:57):
Yeah, so we'll start with CO two excess. The when
you hear about most often carbon emissions gets all the
glory in the headlines these days. Carbon CO two is colorless,
it's gas. It is a byproduct of the combustion of
organic stuff, and it makes up a very small part
of the arth atmosphere point zero four percent, and most
(21:19):
of it that's up there has been there for a
long long time. It's from volcanic activity. However, we are
pumping lots and lots of CO two, additional CO two,
and remember there's a delicate balance going on there as
it is. So like you said, mother Earth doesn't need
us adding to this, and we have been adding CO
(21:41):
two like it's Gangbusters. Yeah.
Speaker 3 (21:44):
So like that, you remember when I was talking about
how water turns into vapor and rises and falls back down.
That's the rain cycle. There's also a carbon cycle where
carbon molecules just kind of go back and forth between
the atmosphere and the earth. And apparently every year two
hundred and thirty gigatons of carbon are released into the
(22:05):
atmosphere from the Earth, from plants, from rocks, from us,
and then about the same amount another two hundred and
thirty gigatons comes back down and is locked into Earth
from the atmosphere. Right, And this is, like you said, Chuck,
like a pretty nice balance. The Earth has got this,
Please don't mess with it. But when we take carbon
and unlock it from these carbon sinks, like you know,
(22:28):
we bust up rocks and mining operations, we burn fossil
fuels that have carbon locked into them, we cut down
trees and burn those things. Is fuel that releases more carbon,
and it messes up that delicate pretty much even exchange
between the atmosphere and the Earth.
Speaker 1 (22:46):
Yeah, and that's a big problem because carbon has a
knack for absorbing infrared radiation, so that energy that escapes
the atmosphere. That's the form that it comes in. So
all this extra CO two means basically, like your card,
just an overall increase in temperature.
Speaker 3 (23:03):
Right, And so not only does it absorb infrared heat,
hang on to it it, there's a lot of it
that we just finally, in the first time in the
history of the human race, all of humanity, not since
the Industrial Revolution, but ever since humans have been around,
the Earth reached four hundred parts per million, meaning that
(23:28):
out of every million molecules that you just snatched out
of the air and count, you're going to come up
with four hundred of those as carbon atoms, right, or
carbon dioxide molecules. So that's new. That's a big deal.
And the problem with that is is not just that
there's a lot of carbon dioxide in there, but it's
like you said, the more carbon dioxide there is, the
(23:50):
more radiative heat that comes back down to Earth that
doesn't escape into space, and the higher the global temperature gets.
Speaker 1 (23:56):
Yeah, and just to and a perspective, four hundred parts
per million now, and that's twenty seventeen numbers, I guess.
Speaker 3 (24:05):
I think in twenty fifteen we hit four hundred and
more up to like four hundred and four now.
Speaker 1 (24:11):
So that pre Industrial Revolution was about two hundred and
eighty parts per million, so it has swelled by about
one hundred and twenty four parts per million since the
Industrial Revolution, which is pretty staggering.
Speaker 3 (24:25):
Yeah, and there's apparently a way that you can tell
when you're actually measuring the carbon dioxide molecules themselves where
they came from, and ones that are introduced into the
atmosphere from burning fossil fuels have a specific signature that
we can detect, and we have seen that as the
global temperature has increased and more and more carbon dioxide
(24:49):
has been introduced into the atmosphere since the Industrial Revolution,
so too has the concentration of that specific type of
carbon dioxide. So there's a strong correlation between the fossil
fuel burned carbon dioxide that we humans have put in
the air with rising global temperatures.
Speaker 1 (25:08):
All right, moving on to nitrous oxide into which we
did a whole podcast on this right. Yeah, that was
a good one. That was a great one, mainly because
of that tank that we had here in the in
the studio, I.
Speaker 3 (25:21):
Know, like we're method podcasters. That was that definitely enhanced
the whole thing.
Speaker 1 (25:27):
So intwo oh is another greenhouse gas, super important, and
we are not releasing like human activity is not releasing
nearly as much as we are CO two, But no
two or I'm sorry, into absorbs a lot more energy,
like two hundred and seventy times as much as CO two,
So that makes it something we really need to pay
(25:49):
attention to, and we are paying attention to it. It
just doesn't get all the headlines.
Speaker 3 (25:53):
No, it definitely doesn't, just because there's so so much
less of it, right, And whereas it takes like tens
of thousands of years for you know, the twenty percent
of any given carbon dioxide emission to leave the atmosphere,
it takes about one hundred and fourteen years for a
full emission of nitrous oxide to leave the atmosphere.
Speaker 1 (26:13):
Yeah, as far as man made it's it is also
a byproduct of combustion and a lot of fertilizer. Nitrogen
fertilizer that they use on crops as releases the in
to oh into the atmosphere as well.
Speaker 3 (26:25):
See to me, all you have to do is like
seed the atmosphere with a bunch of hippies and let
them huff all the nitrous oxide right out of it.
Problem solved.
Speaker 1 (26:33):
That's right, because you've also gotten rid of a concert
in the sky. Exactly what else do we have methane?
Speaker 3 (26:41):
Methane's a big one, and this is super overlooked, but
I remember hearing about this when people first started realizing, like, oh,
that's a really big problem. It's it's there's very little
amount of it, whereas like there's four hundred and four
parts per million of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere. These
days we can measure about one point even parts per
million of methane. But it absorbs and amidst thermal energy
(27:07):
like Gangbusters as well, far more than CO two. I
think about twenty times more. And there's there's a lot
of different places where it comes from. Like when we
mine coal, it releases methane. When are ample herds of
livestock fart yep, they release methane. No joke. That's actually
(27:29):
a huge contributor of greenhouse gases.
Speaker 1 (27:31):
Oh yeah, we talked about that, like I feel like
years ago in another episode.
Speaker 3 (27:35):
Surely we have another one, Chuck was do you remember
our plasma waste incineration?
Speaker 1 (27:42):
Yeah?
Speaker 3 (27:42):
Episode, sure, well, remember one of the things we talked
about was that the average landfill gives off methane, and
that's a huge problem too. So like if you go
to a landfill and you see that there's flames around it,
they're actually burning that stuff off because the co two
it released is after it's burned, is actually preferable in
(28:03):
that case to the methane just being allowed to escape.
Speaker 1 (28:06):
Yeah, and that's bad news. It is bad news. And
there are scientists who have even posited that maybe, like
you know, tens and hundreds of thousands of years ago,
that large scale venting of methane into the atmosphere, like
if a big block of ice cracked open and unlocked
a big methane bubble from under the ocean, that could
(28:30):
have caused like maybe a mass extinction, right, like because
it was released so quickly into the atmosphere.
Speaker 3 (28:36):
Yeah, like like we're doing now basically.
Speaker 1 (28:38):
Yeah, on a slower basis. I don't think anyone's saying
that's going to.
Speaker 3 (28:41):
Happen now, I don't. I don't know. I think like
that is a concern that as arctis Arctic ice melts,
that methane bubbles could be released, which would just be
a nightmare on top of a catastrophe.
Speaker 1 (28:53):
That's right.
Speaker 3 (28:54):
There's another problem with methane too, that in the atmosphere
it frequently converts to CO two, so it just not
only contributes itself, it also contributes to the CO two
emission problem. There's also chuck another thing called short lived
climate pollutants slcps. They don't get a lot of press either,
(29:16):
but a lot of people think that if we focused
on these we could really see some real results in
the short term. Supposedly slcps account for something like thirty
to forty percent of global warming. But they are particles
like black carbon methane counts as one of them, hydro
(29:37):
chloroflorocarbons nice, and they can live in the atmosphere from
say like days to tens of years, and then they
go away. And if we really cut down on some
of those emissions, it would we would see the effects
of that very quickly.
Speaker 1 (29:55):
Wow. Yeah, So speaking of effects, I guess we should
kind of talk about what this all could mean and
does mean. Yep, and is meaning sure. Number one, we
can talk a little bit about sea level or sea levels.
Glaciers and ice shelves are melting all around the world
and losing large chunks of ice like this can accelerate
(30:18):
this warming because there's less of the Sun's energy. You know,
we talked earlier about it being reflected by ice sheets
and things like that, these reflective surfaces. Less reflective surface
means less is getting reflected away. So just at like
the very base level, that's gonna be an increase in temperature.
Speaker 3 (30:37):
Yes, Also, depending on where the glacier is, it could
contribute to sea level increases too, as we'll talk about.
Speaker 1 (30:48):
Yeah, I mean we might as well hit that, huh.
Speaker 3 (30:50):
Okay. So if one of the things that I learned
from this that I just absolutely did not know, what
makes total sense, is that the Arctic sea ice, if
it melts, it will contribute zero to a sea level increase.
Speaker 1 (31:04):
Yeah. Interesting, I had no idea.
Speaker 3 (31:06):
But it makes total sense because it turns out that
Arctic sea ice in particular floats on the sea, so
it's already in the sea and it's already contributed to
the sea level rise. If anything, If that stuff, if
we went through an ice age and all that stuff
froze into basically a frozen land mass, then you'd see
a sea level decrease. But the way it is right now,
(31:27):
there wouldn't be a sea level rise if it melts completely.
There are other places around Earth where the glaciers and
ice caps are basically land masses, and if they did melt,
then you would see a sea level rise just from
that melted water, right.
Speaker 1 (31:42):
Yeah, I mean we're talking about Antarctica there, and the
likelihood of Antarctica thawing out is not great, which is good.
Speaker 3 (31:53):
Well, not all of it, but there's certainly parts of
it could, yeah for sure. And then same with Greenland too.
Speaker 1 (31:59):
We had Greenlands because it is much closer to the equator,
so temperatures are higher there anyway, It's not like negative
thirty seven degrees on average like it is in Antarctica. Right,
So I feel like I have to say that so specifically,
and the Arctica c Yeah.
Speaker 3 (32:16):
And the other problem too with with this this loss
of ice, like people might say, like, no, it's crazy,
Like there's I see plenty of glaciers, there's still but
if every season a little more melts off than is
replenished by snowfall in the winter, you have a net
loss of ice. And then over time, if you look
at it on a scale of a decade or two
(32:37):
decades or three decades. That's a substantial amount of lost ice,
and that is what increases the sea level that leads
to sea level rise.
Speaker 1 (32:47):
Yeah, so, as far as the IPCC is concerned, they
estimate that sea levels rose about a little over six
and a half inches in the twentieth century. Doesn't sound
like much, but it is a lot. Like sea level
rise in low lying coastal areas can mean pretty bad
(33:07):
flooding at just mere inches. They propose that if things
continue to go this way, they could rise by as
much as twenty two inches almost two feet by the
year of twenty one hundred and brother, if that happens,
we're gonna have to redraw the world map.
Speaker 3 (33:24):
That's true. I was looking, I was like, how high
is Miami Beach. Miami Beach is apparently just under four
feet above sea level. Yeah, New Orleans is like zero feet.
I think it's maybe at two feet basically. Yeah, there's
a lot of coastal city Singapore, I think Copenhagen, they're
(33:45):
all like very very close to sea level or just
slightly above sea level, and so yeah, two feet rise.
I know. The Maldives is frequently mentioned as like being
under real threat from sea level rise. But even if
you don't necessarily live in a coastal area that's two feet,
you know, just two feet above sea level, consider this,
(34:09):
If the sea level rose just six inches, like they
were saying, that means that when you have extreme weather
events which go hand in hand with global warming and
are part of climate change, where it rains really hard
and there's more like more major flooding than before, then
it's already working with an extra six inches than any
flood that you've been used to before. So the floods
(34:31):
are much more extensive. And that's a really good example
of how interconnected the global climate system is, where if
one thing gets messed up a little bit, it has
all these other widespread effects around the world on regions too.
Speaker 1 (34:45):
Yeah, because I think they found that there are not
necessarily more frequent like tropical storms and hurricanes and things,
but they are becoming much more intense, and that's the
issue at hand.
Speaker 3 (34:57):
Yeah, And that one in particular has to do with
the surface temperature of the oceans increasing as the temperature
of the world increases, because that's where those storms, hurricanes
and cyclones get their their energy from, is from the
warm surface of the sea.
Speaker 1 (35:12):
Yeah.
Speaker 3 (35:12):
So if it's warm. That's like you'll see them like
hit land and like lose steam, and then when they
go back over the ocean, they'll start to like regather
their strength. That's because they're over warm water again and
that's where that's where they get it all from.
Speaker 1 (35:26):
Yeah, plus there is uh. I don't think we mentioned
this yet about the density of water.
Speaker 3 (35:31):
No, no, I don't want to go anywhere near it.
You take this.
Speaker 1 (35:34):
One, well, very simply, water is most dense at four
degrees celsius. So that's its kind of a homeostasis of
where it needs to be. Anything above or below that
temperature and the density is going to decrease, So the
overall temperature of the water is going to increase naturally
(35:54):
and this is not like human cause. But that will
also cause the oceans to rise some and that's just
a natural thing, right. Well said, all right, let's leave
that one market right there.
Speaker 3 (36:05):
I'm glad you mentioned that though, because you don't see
that really ever, Like no one ever mentions like, oh yeah,
water is just gonna expand as it warms. I've never
thought about that one either.
Speaker 1 (36:14):
Or Cools, I think, right, yeah, or Cools.
Speaker 3 (36:17):
It's a weird weird thing, weird weird material. So let's
take another break and we'll get back to explaining why
global warming is a real pain, all right, Chuck. So
(36:56):
we talked about the ice caps melting, we talked about
glaciers melting, we talked about sea level rise. Correct, there's
also I mean people are out there saying like that's great,
but how does it impact may Yeah, a human that's
what I want to know about. Well, there's tons of ways.
Because as technologically clever as we humans are, we are
(37:17):
extraordinarily dependent on the earth. So as these this climate
change happens due to global warming, we're going to see
all sorts of problems. And we already are starting to
see problems.
Speaker 1 (37:31):
Yeah. So we did mention earlier that if you live
in a temperate area, if you've got like four kind
of lovely seasons, like let's say Atlanta, Georgia, for instance,
you may have a longer growing season, you might have
a bit more rain. It might be actually good for
the crops here in Georgia in some ways. But other
parts of the world, less temperate zones are going to
see big temperature increases, way less rain, and longer droughts,
(37:55):
worse drouts, bigger deserts. It's not going to be so
good of those places.
Speaker 3 (38:01):
No. They apparently have found that every trillion tons of
CO two it contributed to that atmosphere raises the global
temperature average by about three quarters of a degree celsius.
And then they went and correlated that each one degree
celsius increase in temperature equals an evaporative increase of about
(38:25):
seven to fifteen percent here on planet Earth in the soil. Right,
so as temperatures increase, there's going to be less water
in the soil, which affects crops and leads to things
like droughts and even desertification as well. But and man,
every time I throw out one of these terms, I'm like,
we did an episode on that, We did an episode
(38:45):
on that and droughts.
Speaker 1 (38:48):
Yeah, we've been dancing around this one for a while.
Speaker 3 (38:50):
We have. I'm glad we finally tackle that. Man, agreed,
you're doing great, by the way, Well, hold on, hold on.
So as the water evaporates from the soil and go
up and is locked into the atmosphere again, it's eventually
going to come down, and when it does, you're going
to have a far more severe flooding and precipitation than
(39:12):
you would have normally when it was just going up
and coming down and going up and coming down like
on its normal cycle. Yeah, so that's one way that
it can affect you, because while it's turning to droughts,
you got wildfires, and then when the soil gets degraded
and there's suddenly a lot of rain, you've got flooding.
And people get carried away in their cars because they
think it can drive across a flowing river.
Speaker 1 (39:36):
That's not funny at all, by the way, I guess,
not just the way you put it was. So one
of the other devastating effects. And this one is kind
of tougher to predict because we've don't haven't really seen
what can happen with our living human eyeballs, but ecosystems,
And I think we did we do on ecosystems as
(39:56):
a whole, or just have we talked about it forever
and everything.
Speaker 3 (39:59):
I think it's just popped up in so many of them,
it seems like that.
Speaker 1 (40:02):
Yeah, we've definitely covered coral reefs and things like that.
We're talking about living ecosystems, and we all know they're
very delicate and the delicate balance of the ecosystem is
what makes it worse. And we've talked ad nauseum over
the past nine years about how little, just little things
can happen in an ecosystem that will create this chain reaction.
(40:22):
It's all interconnected, and we don't know what might happen
in terms of global warming in our living ecosystem. Sure,
some animals might adapt, some might move, but there would
also be you know, massive amounts of extinction. Coral reefs
are already dying. We're seeing that with our eyeballs. Forests
(40:44):
are dying off and turning to grassland. And it's not
just like, oh, well, there they go. Now we have
grassland instead of a forest.
Speaker 3 (40:53):
Let's make some houlus kirts.
Speaker 1 (40:55):
Yeah. Again, it's just it's that that domino effect that
we're going to see. It's just no one knows what
it's going to mean in the end. It's really troubling.
Speaker 3 (41:07):
Yeah, And I was, I was, I was like, well,
how are ecosystems interconnected? I know they are, but how
so I looked up a good example and found salmon.
So salmon are born in like little streams and they
end up like traveling down into bigger streams and eventually
rivers and then estuaries, and then they actually go and
mature out in the ocean, which I hadn't really thought of,
(41:28):
And then when it's time for them to go breed,
they swim back upstream, back into the rivers, back back
into the streams themselves. Actually they go back to where
they were born to breed and then die. And as
they're doing it, they're basically acting as nutrient transport systems
between all these different ecosystems each step of the way.
Speaker 1 (41:49):
Yeah, it's like a seed being scattered in the wind.
Speaker 3 (41:51):
Yeah, very much so, but a seed that can actually
come back home and bring all the nutrients that it gathered,
like out in the ocean back into its home ecosystem
where it was born.
Speaker 1 (42:00):
Yeah.
Speaker 3 (42:00):
So it's pretty interesting. And I mean, like that's just
a great example. Let's just salmon, you know. So, Yeah,
the ecosystems are very much connected, so if something happens
with one, it's going to have an effect on all
the other ones. And like you said, some things will survive,
some things won't.
Speaker 1 (42:15):
But the.
Speaker 3 (42:17):
Thing that I think most of us here on Earth
are agreeing to agree about is we should probably do
something to stop those extinctions as best we can, even
if we'll probably survive, you.
Speaker 1 (42:31):
Know, yeah, And you know we're this is a very
USA centric show for the most part. That's where we're based.
We try to think outside that that box as much
as we can. And in the case of global warming,
it is the poorest nations of the world are the
ones that are going to be hit the hardest. They're
the ones in a lot of times, in the less
(42:51):
temperate zones that are going to be hit with more
devastating crop loss. But crop loss is going to be
a big deal all over the world. That already there's
something called the Carnegie Institution that estimates about five billion
dollars in crop losses per year due to global warming
is already going on right now, and farmers are seeing
(43:11):
a decrease of about forty million metric tons of wheat, barley, corn,
other cereal greens every year. So just one degree fahrenheit
an average temper of an increase could result in three
to five percent drop in crop yields. So it's a
global issue. Sure, some of the poorest nations might be
(43:34):
affected earliest in the worst, but it is going to
touch every nation.
Speaker 3 (43:38):
It definitely will. It doesn't necessarily have to be the
poorest nations. It can be the poorest people of rich nations.
Well yeah, true, and it can be people who are
very rich who end up living in areas that are
hit Like Houston saw a lot of increase in water
borne illnesses because of the flooding from Hurricane Harvey. That's
something that they otherwise wouldn't have had to have done with. Yeah,
(44:01):
there's there's like that whole crop loss thing and starvation
that it leads to. Like, there's a lot of ways
people can be affected. And just like salmon, like, we're
connected to other people as well, even if they're on
the other side of the world, and you know, we're
not really talking to them or don't really know them personally,
we're still connected to them. So if they suffer a
(44:22):
crop loss, it'll affect us all. And if they die
of starvation, it ends up affecting us all.
Speaker 1 (44:28):
Yeah. This I really like this computer model thing. Did
you see that? Yes, that was pretty pretty cut and dried,
you know.
Speaker 3 (44:36):
Yes.
Speaker 1 (44:37):
So the IPCC they used a computer model and what
they did was they tried to simulate climate change and
what they found was the only models, the only models
that looked like today's climate that equalled, hey, well, this
looks like what's going on today, were models that included
the human contribution to global warming. When they did not
(44:59):
plug in the here human contribution. The answer that it
spit out was no, that climate doesn't look like what's
going on right now, right, So that is basically proof
that humans are contributing to this, right exactly. Yep.
Speaker 3 (45:15):
That combined with you know the signature of the carbon
dioxide from fossil fuel burning, all that jazz, Yes, you're
we and we should probably get to this part. Like,
there's there's a there's a tendency among naysayers to be like,
you know, there's not even like scientific consensus. They're not
one hundred percent certain that it's it's it's us creating
(45:38):
this global warming, right, and so science has really kind
of taken it upon itself in the last like decade
or so to address this and say, yes, that's true.
There's basically no such thing as settled science. But there
has so been so much like we've made it our
business to create and conduct so much research and study
(46:01):
all of this so closely over the last like ten
to fifteen twenty years that we have basically come up
with a scientific consensus that basically, if you take any
scientist on the street, there is pretty close to one
hundred percent chance that that person is going to say, yes,
climate change is real, Yes, global warming is happening, and
(46:22):
yes humans are causing it.
Speaker 1 (46:24):
Right, yeah, Because they use words differently than we use words.
And you sent this great article certainty versus uncertainty colon
understanding scientific terms about climate change.
Speaker 3 (46:35):
You know, it's smart when there's a colon.
Speaker 1 (46:38):
And for the average Joe or Jane walking around on
the street, if you say the word uncertain that means, well,
you just don't know. Scientists when they use the word
uncertain they mean how well you might know something or not.
So that's a big difference. It sounds like word games,
but there is no, very rarely is there absolute certainty
(46:59):
in sciencience. So their job is to research and research
and limit that uncertainty as much as possible.
Speaker 3 (47:05):
No, and that uncertainty in their public broadcasting of that
uncertainty has been used against them. It's been hijacked and
used against them to fight doing anything about climate change. Right,
So so they have started to use especially if you
go through like the ipccs like policymaker executive summaries. Everything
that they're stating, they will put like how confident they
(47:28):
are that what they're they're saying is true.
Speaker 1 (47:31):
They have a structure to that now, right.
Speaker 3 (47:33):
And so most of the stuff that they're releasing as
in their reports has something like a ninety percent chance
or greater of being correct. So they call it like
a very likely outcome or a very high confidence. And
I've even seen something called an extremely high confidence which
(47:54):
indicates ninety five percent or greater, and then the come
on which is ninety nine per cent greater.
Speaker 1 (48:01):
Yeah, so they're the there are five points which they
have quote very high confidence end quote about or even greater.
So at least ninety percent or greater certainty that the
following human induced warming influences physical and biological systems everywhere.
Sea levels are rising, glaciers and permafrost are shrinking, oceans
(48:23):
are becoming more acidic, and ranges of plants and animals
are shifting. So that's between ninety and one hundred percent
certainty on those things.
Speaker 3 (48:31):
Yeah, they also say they're comfortable saying with certainty that
the burning of fossil fuels and the clearing of forests
release carbon dioxide into the atmosphere. They say, there is
no uncertainty about that. They also say that they've learned
that carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gases in the atmosphere
trap heat through the greenhouse effect. They say, again there
(48:53):
is no uncertainty about this, and that the Earth is
warming because these gases are being released faster than the
k can be or by natural processes. And then they
say it's very likely greater than ninety percent probability that
human activities are the main reason for the world's temperature
increase in the past fifty years in particular. And so
they're saying, like, we are scientists, we're the ones who
(49:15):
are studying this. No, we're not a hot we can't
say with unequivocal certainty that this is the case. But
what really, people, what more do you need? Like we
have studied this so closely, we are so close to
one hundred percent certainty that like, what's the problem here,
Let's just get on board. And there was actually a
(49:36):
study done in two thousand and seven by this economist.
It made the news, made the news cycle. The same
is doctor Peter Cigaris, and he basically said if you
look at the cost of doing something and the cost
of doing nothing, statistically speaking, it makes way more sense
(49:59):
to you take steps to mitigate climate change and be
wrong about the fact that it was us humans.
Speaker 1 (50:06):
Yea, then it.
Speaker 3 (50:06):
Would to take no steps at all and be wrong
about it. Actually, no, it actually was us humans.
Speaker 1 (50:14):
Yeah. I mean that's where I get. I don't want
to get too much on a soapbox, but I get
angry that there are people out there that say, well,
you're not there's that ten percent or less chance. So
let's just gamble humanity, the future of humankind on that
ten percent or less chance, because we don't want to
(50:35):
get with the program and get behind green initiatives because
there's a chance you're not one hundred percent certain. I
I don't know that short sight, and it's just it's
staggering to me.
Speaker 3 (50:46):
Well, plus also that it's been proven I've mentioned that
book before, the Merchants of Doubt that think tanks have
been set up to basically influence public thought and point
out like scientists aren't a hundred percent so in sciences
are one hundred percent certain, and they're not looking out
for you or the earth or your family they're looking
out for their business interests because it's the fossil fuel industry.
(51:09):
They're they're the ones who are who benefit the most
from not taking steps against climate change. But even if
you look at some of the some of these fossil
fuel industry companies, they're like, no, we should probably do something.
We can figure this out. Even some of them are
(51:29):
saying this now as of twenty fourteen.
Speaker 1 (51:33):
Amazing.
Speaker 3 (51:34):
So, Chuck, speaking of twenty fourteen, there was something big
that happened, the Paris Accords. Yes, and in twenty fourteen,
I think one hundred and ninety five countries came together
and said, you know what, we're going to do something.
We're going to do everything we can to keep the
global average temperature from increasing two degrees above normal two
(51:58):
degrees celsius. I should say, because that was kind of
a largely agreed upon tipping point that there would be
a lot more extreme weather, sea level rise, we would
feel the effects of climate change from a two degree
celsius increase in global temperature. And so they took this
really interesting approach where they said, instead of us coming
(52:20):
up with a multi government group that decrease stuff, we're
going to just decentralize the whole thing, and how about
every country come up with what their country can do
on their own to fight to fight global warming, and
then we'll bring them all together and everybody will take
a pledge and we'll go do it. And it was
(52:40):
hugely successful, like out of one hundred and ninety five countries,
one hundred and sixty eight have ratified it. And the
US had had a pretty good plan as well. I
think we were going to we were going to pledge
that we would reduce our climate emissions something like twenty
six twenty eight percent by twenty twenty five, which would
(53:03):
be a huge significant contribution to fighting global warming. But
we got pulled out of that one, I think in
twenty seventeen.
Speaker 1 (53:13):
It's correct.
Speaker 3 (53:14):
So now the rest of the world seems to be
carrying on without us, fighting climate change through their own
decentralized plans. But that's where the United States stands right now.
We have said we're not going to be taking part
in that.
Speaker 1 (53:29):
That's right, But that's not to say that the citizens
of the United States can't do everything they can on
their own in their own lives by doing some of
the following things. First and foremost, decreasing your carbon footprint.
And I'm going to put out a call for us
right now to go ahead and do one soonish on
carbon offsets, because we're a few years into a few
(53:52):
years down the road from when carbon offsets first became
a thing and it's much more understood now.
Speaker 3 (53:59):
Didn't we do one on the I don't think so
we've done them on some week Oh I know what
it was. We talked about that kind of cap and
trade scheme in the Acid Rain, right, Yeah.
Speaker 1 (54:10):
Yeah, we should do on a carbon offsets, so because
they're much better understood now and then you it's pretty
clear now like the best ways to go about doing
something like that.
Speaker 3 (54:18):
Cool.
Speaker 1 (54:18):
So we're not going to cover it too much here,
but you can buy carbon offsets look for future podcasts.
But reducing your carbon footprint is the biggest thing. I mean,
it's really simple. The stuff that generates the greenhouse gases,
if we create less of it, that's a good thing.
So you doing that on a local level can make
a big impact of a lot of people are doing that.
(54:40):
Using less energy obviously is just a sort of a
no brainer. And this is just period in life, like
just being less wasteful Yeah, whether it's water or your
lights that you're turning on, or riding your bike instead
of driving your car, like, all of that makes a
big difference.
Speaker 3 (54:59):
But and with electricity in particular, one thing we always mentioned,
always mentioned is that even though it seems like your
light bulb is fine, it's getting its power most likely
from burning coal.
Speaker 1 (55:12):
So is that electric car that you bought that's plug
in for sure? Yeah, And your electric car is only
as good as the energy that it's where it gets
its energy from. Yeah, and we can that's a whole
rabbit hole into itself hybrids and electric cars and how
green they are. But the research I did today roundly
(55:35):
says that in the end, a hybrid and an electric
car is has a much smaller carbon footprint than a
combustion engine. Sure, and I know about the batteries, and
I know where they get the stuff. And this is
considering all the costs that go into making these cars
and what happens these cars over the years. There are
a lot of smart people that put this all together,
(55:56):
and it's still a better option than you know, a
combustion gas engine. Right, But that's you know, I'm not
here to say go out and get a hybrid or
an electric car that's up to you.
Speaker 3 (56:06):
Well, that kind of raises one of the issues too,
is like it can be expensive to be eco friendly,
you know, which really sucks.
Speaker 1 (56:14):
But you can also save money though.
Speaker 3 (56:16):
Yeah, in the end, it's just the upfront costs or
sometimes you know, greater which is the problem for you know,
for people who can't afford like a more expensive car.
Is the same thing with like food, you know, like
the better your food, the more expensive it is, which
sucks too.
Speaker 1 (56:31):
Yeah, but you can use less energy in your home
and pay less of an energy bill.
Speaker 3 (56:36):
Yeah, no, No, there's plenty of things of other things
you can do, Like it doesn't cost anything to recycle,
you know.
Speaker 1 (56:41):
Yeah, exactly. And all this stuff like recycling, you think, well,
I mean, I know that's good because there's no trash,
but no trash means it's not going to that landfill
and that means it's not releasing bad gases into the atmosphere.
So yep, this all affects your carbon footprint. Recycling to
how long you take a shower because you're using hot
water and that water has to be heated somehow, yep.
Speaker 3 (57:03):
And I mean if this has become like an issue
for you. Then then make it one of the things
you vote on too, Like vote for people who care
about this, and we'll make sure that that regulations are
put into place that fight climate change. Yeah, it's a
big one.
Speaker 1 (57:20):
There are politicians out there that care very much about this.
Speaker 3 (57:23):
Yeah. I remember after we pulled out of the Paris Accord,
like a few cities said we're still doing this. We're
going to stick to it regardless.
Speaker 1 (57:30):
Yeah.
Speaker 3 (57:31):
Yeah, you can do it. Your city can do it,
other people can do it. The rest of the world
doing it except for Nicaragua and Syria, I remember correctly,
you remember, Yeah, if you want to know more about
global warming, just step outside. And since I said that,
it's time for listener mate.
Speaker 1 (57:54):
I'm going to call this so smart. I don't get it.
But remember during the Buildering podcast we read a listener
mail about We asked why you get sleepy when you
read Yes, Well, we hit a chiropractor right in and
he says he has the answer. And I don't know
if this is right or not, but it certainly sounds
good to me. So he's a chiropractor, and he studied
(58:16):
functional neurology in school, and he said. The answer is
that when you're reading, your eyes move laterally as they
scan the page. This involves the lateral rectus muscle of
the eye, which is innervated by the six cranial nerve
the abductionins Hey, So the abduction's originates in the ponds
(58:37):
and the brainstem. And what happens is that as you
activate this nerve through reading, you also activate the ponto
medullary reticular formation or PMRF. One job of the PRF
is to dampen the sympathetic response of the intero medio
lateral cell column in the spinal chord, which activates the
(58:58):
sympathetic nervous system. In short reading, dampens the sympathetic response
and relaxes you. Nice, I think that's the takeaway. I
hope you find this interesting. I love your podcast. Use
a lot of your knowledge to you teach for Trivia
Tuesday that my coworkers and I play at my clinic.
And that is from doctor Michael Hilton in good old Washington, DC.
(59:21):
Nice or the district.
Speaker 3 (59:23):
Thanks doctor Michael, the chiropractor from DC.
Speaker 1 (59:29):
That's right.
Speaker 3 (59:30):
If you want to get in touch with us, like
doctor Michael did, you can tweet to us at Josh
M Clark or s YSK podcast. Both me and Chucker
on Facebook, and you can go to our official page
at Facebook dot com slash stuff you Should Know. You
can send us an email of the Stuff podcast at
house stuffworks dot com and as always, joined us at
(59:50):
our home on the web, Stuff you Should Know dot com.
Speaker 2 (59:58):
For more on this and thats of other topics, visit
HowStuffWorks dot com.
Speaker 3 (01:00:08):
M h m hmm
Hey, everybody. Chuck here with another one of our sciencey
Playlist curated podcast episodes. This one's on global warming and
it's appropriately titled How global Warming Works. Please to listen
to it right now.
Speaker 2 (00:15):
Welcome to Stuff you Should Know from HowStuffWorks dot com.
Speaker 3 (00:26):
Hey, and welcome to the podcast. I'm Josh Clark, and
there's the Chipper Cheery, Charles w Chuck Bryant, how do you?
And there's Jerry over there. Say hi, Jerry, how are
you doing? Man?
Speaker 1 (00:41):
I'm welcher. How are you?
Speaker 3 (00:42):
I'm pretty well myself. I'm feeling all right. Feel a
little fit? Yeah, yeah, yeah. You're a little sweaty as
you can tell. But I'm all right.
Speaker 1 (00:53):
It's gross, it is.
Speaker 3 (00:54):
I don't smell, do I No? Okay?
Speaker 1 (00:56):
Good so friends, listeners, country men, You're gonna notice a
little something different in this week's feed. Tomorrow. This bears
a little explanation. We are dropping episodes one and two
of my new movie interview show movie Crush Do Do
(01:17):
Do Do? We're dropping those into the Stuff you Should
Know Feed, something we've never done here at the network,
but we're gonna I guess I'm the labrat on this one.
The guinea pig, the guinea pig. Sure, yeah, I guess
either one, right, the guinea pig doesn't die, the lab rat.
Speaker 3 (01:34):
Dies, Yeah, I guess, so let's go with the guinea
pig for sure though.
Speaker 1 (01:38):
All right, well either way, we are dropping those into
the stuff you should know feed uh, And we wanted
to alert you so when you saw all these new things,
you didn't rebel against us, like everyone hated you two
when they delivered the World Free album.
Speaker 3 (01:52):
Right right, Yeah, I mean this is like, this is
not just it's not a U two album, it's your
new show. It's more important than any U two album.
Speaker 1 (01:59):
Oh well, you know I appreciate that. Yeah, So yeah,
that's why they're there. And episode one is the great
Janet Varney with we talked about the movie Tron, and
that's the nature of the show as I talk to
people about their favorite movie. And episode two is tig
Nataro Wow, talking about the movie Mask And that one
(02:20):
is a very special episode and I'll tease it with this.
We recorded that interview or conversation rather seconds after she
got the call that she was cancer free at the
five year mark.
Speaker 3 (02:34):
Oh wow.
Speaker 1 (02:35):
So she started crying at the beginning and I didn't
know what was going on. I gave her some time.
I was freaking out, and it turned out to be
good news. But and I explained that all the at
the onset of the episode. But it turned out to
be a very special experience.
Speaker 3 (02:51):
Man, Chuck, you're like Barbara Walters.
Speaker 1 (02:54):
I didn't get it out of her. It was just
weird timing. Yeah, but anyway, those are in there, and
it won't happen every week. But I would love for
you to subscribe.
Speaker 3 (03:03):
Well, yeah, that's the way to get it, right, Yeah.
Speaker 1 (03:05):
Just subscribe anywhere you listen to podcasts.
Speaker 3 (03:08):
These are a couple of gifts, a little gems.
Speaker 1 (03:10):
That's right, and I appreciate your support on it.
Speaker 3 (03:13):
Yeah, well, way to go, man. Congratulations. I speak for
me and the rest of the world when I say
we are looking forward to this.
Speaker 1 (03:19):
Thanks dude. And you know I'm gonna have you on
as a guess. It's gonna be very strange and awesome.
Speaker 2 (03:24):
Yeah.
Speaker 3 (03:24):
I think it'll be neat. I'll start crying too.
Speaker 1 (03:27):
Do you know what your favorite movie is that you
would pick?
Speaker 3 (03:30):
I got a couple I think I could choose from sure, all.
Speaker 1 (03:32):
Right, well, hold on to that then, okay, and we'll
just pick that up later.
Speaker 3 (03:36):
Okay, Well, congrats again man.
Speaker 1 (03:38):
Thanks pal. Shall we warm the globe? Yeah?
Speaker 3 (03:41):
All right, So, Chuck, I don't know if you've heard
about this term recently, but it's been in the news lately.
Global warming. Are you familiar?
Speaker 1 (03:54):
It does ring a bell?
Speaker 3 (03:55):
Okay, well, just in case you For those people who
aren't aware of global warming, global warming is what we're
talking about today, and a lot of people confuse it
or use it interchangeably with climate change, and it turns
out that's not actually fully accurate. Global warming is a
symptom of climate change as a whole, and climate change
(04:19):
is a whole bunch of differences to the Earth's climate.
We'll get into what climate is in a second, and
one of those is global warming. Also things like extreme
weather events, increased drought, increased temperatures, sea level rises, all
these things put together, that's climate change, right, or the
result of climate change, and global warming is one of them.
(04:40):
So global warming is climate change, but not all climate
change is global warming. I just wanted to make sure
we got that out of the way to begin with.
Speaker 1 (04:47):
So, like the square rectangle thing, which I can still.
Speaker 3 (04:49):
Never keeps straight, well, and I think the what.
Speaker 1 (04:53):
Like, every square is not a rectangle, but every rectangle
square or the reverse of that, whichever it is.
Speaker 3 (04:58):
I've never heard that before. What I even aced geometry
the second time I took it.
Speaker 1 (05:03):
Oh, it was clearly a class that didn't care about squares.
Speaker 3 (05:08):
Yeah, I guess not. I mean they always talked about rectangles,
it squares were never brought up.
Speaker 1 (05:13):
Yeah. I think it's you know, I'm not going to
dig myself a hole there. That's probably be so global
warming if you want just a kind of a straight
up definition. Is the science community defines it as this,
and they should know. It's a significant increase in the
climatic temperature over a short, relatively short period of time
(05:36):
as a result of activities of humans. And by increase,
in short, we're talking like one degree celsius in a
couple of hundred years.
Speaker 3 (05:48):
Is global warming, right, because the effects of climate are
so pronounced on such a like with just small incremental changes.
Oh yeah, that that that that is climate change, something
that if you just look at it on paper, you're like,
that's nothing. Who cares about one degree? Actually, the point
(06:08):
of global warming is that when you have these these
this increase in global temperatures, a whole basket of events
starts to take place. That's climate change. Like global warming
is related to climate change, right, it can trigger other
climate changes, that's right.
Speaker 1 (06:25):
And you hear a lot of people talk about you
hear a lot of numbskulls talking about weather as if
it is climate, right, like a very harsh winter might come,
and they'll say, yeah, global warming.
Speaker 3 (06:38):
Right, that's a great numbskull.
Speaker 1 (06:42):
It's not the same thing. Weather is local, it's short term.
Climate is long term. It's not even like the weather
over a period of a year or even a couple
of years. We're talking about predictable, generally predictable average weather
conditions in a region over a long, long period of time.
So you can safely say in Green Bay, Wisconsin, it
(07:06):
is cold in the winter time. That is the climate
of Green Bay in that Midwestern region as a whole. Right.
Speaker 3 (07:12):
But if it snows in February February of you know,
next year, on a Tuesday, then that's just the weather.
Speaker 1 (07:22):
Yeah. Or if it snows in Miami once, then that's
not a refutation of what climate change means. That is
a weird anomaly. And those happen.
Speaker 3 (07:34):
Yeah, and this is a this is a grabster and
strickling code joint, by the way, So that's why heavy
it popped off the page if you noticed. But one
of the things they wisely picked point out is what
you just said that, Yes, some weather anomaly happens like that,
even if it happened three years in a row. I
think a lot of scientists would pay attention to why
(07:56):
it snowed in Miami three years in a row. Right,
But if it went back to normal or something like
that like that, that would not necessarily be climate change.
It's just a weird occurrence. Right. Climate change is this
change in predictable changes.
Speaker 1 (08:11):
Yeah, and that can take like thousands and ten thousands
of years sometimes.
Speaker 3 (08:15):
Right normost times under natural circumstances. And here is where
we come to the current use for global warming. Right.
Global warming can happen by itself naturally. The Earth, basically
as in its current presence state, swings back and forth
between glacial periods and interglacial periods, so cool periods and
(08:36):
warm periods, and for an ice age to occur, the
global temperature only needs to drop by about five degrees
celsius on average, and all of a sudden, we're in
an ice age.
Speaker 1 (08:46):
Right, Yeah, that doesn't mean the entire Earth is a
big round cube, round cube.
Speaker 3 (08:51):
Wow, that's like a square rectangle, but not at all
the same.
Speaker 1 (08:55):
Well, you know when you go to a fancy cocktail
bar and they have those awesome round I want to
say ice cubes again, ice spheres. Yep, that's not what
the Earth looks like necessarily during an ice age.
Speaker 3 (09:07):
No, no, no, it's just much cooler, and like, because it's
cooler by say, five degrees celsius. Like, a lot of
stuff changes. It's the same thing as global warming, but
on the opposite end, right, Like you have changes in
migration patterns, you have changes in habitat for animals, some
things go extinct during the transition, sea levels change, A
(09:30):
lot of stuff happens, right, So this is part of
the normal process of the Earth. But the Earth's kind
of got it, like, hey, hey, I've got this under control.
I don't need any help from you humans. Sure, And
when I do do this, this is the Earth talking
and first person. When I do change from a glacial
period to a warm period, it takes many tens and
(09:52):
tens of thousands of years, right, yeah, you humans here again,
this is still me the Earth. Humans are really messing
with my program here and accelerating the process. And you
know what, I'll even give you a clue as to
what you're doing that's making it so bad carbon dioxide emissions. Bam,
(10:12):
said the Earth and dropped its microphone and walked away.
Speaker 1 (10:15):
Yeah, and then it went back and picked up as
mic and said, and maybe stop littering, yeah, and then
dropped the mic again. Yeah, we should talk a minute
about a wonderful group called the IPCC, the Intergovernmental Panel
on Climate Change. Yes, a lot of very smart people there.
Speaker 3 (10:32):
Oh man, can I just say it's to me, the
IPCC is one of the coolest things humanity's ever come
up with. Yeah, cause it's the world coming together saying
we got a real problem on our hands. Let's get
our smartest people together and create a database here of
good science.
Speaker 1 (10:49):
Yeah. And those people are specifically about twenty five hundred,
actually more twenty five hundred scientists from around the world
meeting together like Paris, because why not, right, Sure, they
did this about ten years ago and came up with
a lot of well, sort of a lot of distressing observations.
(11:11):
We'll just tick through a few of these as far
as temperature goes, and you know, like we said, like
one degree celsias can make a big swing, and what
kind of changes we see on the planet. Between nineteen
oh one and two thousand, the Earth warmed point six degrees,
(11:32):
so that's you. If you adjust that to nineteen oh
six to two thousand and six, it climbs up to
point seventy four degrees, So about three quarters of a
degree in temperature rise during that one hundred year period, right.
Speaker 3 (11:46):
And there's a lot, It is a lot, And so
a lot of people say, well, you guys just said
the Earth tends to do this on its own, maybe
that's it. Well, actually, no, there's a lot of science
that the IPCC has been able to come up with
that shows pretty clearly that this is human cause stuff
that's actually creating this increase in temperature. And again it
(12:08):
seems to come back to carbon dioxide.
Speaker 1 (12:11):
Yeah, should we took over a few of these other observations, Yeah,
for sure. Let me see. Here's a good one. The
ocean's temperature has increased to at least depths of almost
ten thousand feet down. The ocean's temperature has increased.
Speaker 3 (12:27):
Yep, not a good thing, because that's how like what
glaciers tend to melt is from underneath, That's right.
Speaker 1 (12:35):
What else, Chuck, Westerly winds have been growing stronger. Yeah,
Droughts have become more intense, lasted longer, covered bigger swaths
of land. What else Here, Precipitation has increased in the
Eastern Americas or the Europe parts of Asia.
Speaker 3 (12:52):
But it's decreased elsewhere.
Speaker 1 (12:55):
Yeah, And that's I mean, we'll get into this a
little bit. A little bit of global warming can mean
longer growing and better growing seasons in some parts of
the world, but devastating to other parts of the world.
Speaker 3 (13:06):
Exactly.
Speaker 1 (13:07):
I guess I let the cat out of the bag there,
But we'll go over that again later. And how about
this on the warming trend of the last fifty years
is about double of the last one hundred years. So
what that means is the rate is increasing. The rate
of warming is increasing.
Speaker 3 (13:22):
Yeah, actually so, I think the IPCC has determined that
each of the past forty years has been warmer than
the average temperature of the twentieth century, and that twenty
sixteen was the hottest year on record, and the twelve
warmest years on record have occurred since nineteen ninety eight. Dude,
(13:43):
you should see the we'll get into it some of
the charts that you can find. And again, like if
you're even remotely interested in this, like just go look
up the IPCC's stuff in some of it, like you
have to be a climatologist to understand what in the
name of God they're talking about. But other stuff, especially
(14:04):
if you read like executive summaries of studies and reports
and stuff like that's meant to for like a non
scientist specifically often like policy makers to read and understand, right,
so the average person can understand that. And they have
some really great stuff that's showing like all of the
changes that the world is going through thanks to these
(14:27):
increases in the global temperature. And again, some of the
charts that they have are just stunning when you see them,
because it's like going along fine, going along fine, everything's fine,
and they oh, my god, what the hell just happened?
Speaker 1 (14:40):
Basically that was the Industrial Revolution?
Speaker 3 (14:44):
It was. But also one of the things that they
found recently, especially in the last like three four years,
I believe, is that it is that I think you,
like you were saying the increase in global temperatures, but
also again the increase in carbon dioxide has really shot
up over the last like fifty years, like from from
(15:06):
the beginning of the Industrial Revolution. I think they usually
start that about seventeen fifty to maybe eighteen hundred at
the latest, up to like nineteen fifty or so nineteen sixty,
Like there's a pretty surprising increase, but it is just
skyrocketed in the last like fifty or sixty years. So
they're seeing like this, the science is bearing out the
(15:29):
kind of the general theory of global warming, which we
should probably talk about this theory of global warming, right, because,
like we said, it's not just human caused a human
cause mechanism, Like basically, it's an already existing natural mechanism
that basically keeps the earth nice and toasty for life
(15:53):
and water.
Speaker 1 (15:54):
It keeps us from being Mars.
Speaker 3 (15:55):
But we have started messing with it big time because
of our our contributions to this normal cycle.
Speaker 1 (16:03):
Yeah, so should we talk about the greenhouse effect a
little bit?
Speaker 3 (16:05):
Yeah?
Speaker 1 (16:06):
The greenhouse effect is literally what keeps us from being Mars.
It is a good thing when it occurs naturally because
like you said, it keeps us on. You know, it
makes earth habitable and lovely and nice for the best part,
So they strickling in the grabster. I'm not sure who
came up with the car analogy, but it's a pretty
(16:27):
good one.
Speaker 3 (16:27):
I agree.
Speaker 1 (16:29):
If you go into your car on a hot summer
day and you get in your car, it's been sitting
out the sun for a little while, it's a lot
hotter than it is outside. It's kind of a no brainer,
but you might not have thought about why that happens.
It's not magic. What's happening is the sun that's coming
in through your car windows gets absorbed by the interior
of your car, whether it's your seats or the dashboard
(16:52):
or basically kind of everything in the car absorbs that heat,
and that heat is then eventually emitted back out and
radiated out from the seats and things like that. But
it's at a different wavelength than that initial sunlight that
came in, so some of it might get back out
of the window, but most of it stays kind of
(17:12):
trapped in that car. So the end result of the
net net, as they would say in a corporate meeting,
is that there's less energy going out than coming in.
Right so your car is going to get hotter.
Speaker 3 (17:25):
So pretend your car is the planet Earth basically, which
would be great, and the windshield is the atmosphere, right. Yeah,
So that's the greenhouse effect in a nutshell, as it
relates to the actual Earth. About seventy percent of the
solar energy that is directed toward Earth right, stays on
(17:46):
the planet, right, And instead of it being absorbed by
car seats and floor mats and stuff like that, it
gets absorbed by the ocean or land, or plants or
you right, right. And so about thirty percent of that
stuff that didn't make it through it was reflected back
(18:06):
by clouds, particles in the atmosphere, a bunch of other stuff. Right.
But as you're sitting there getting warm by the sun,
you actually have the potential to re emit that heat,
and so that stuff starts to go back through the
atmosphere out of space. Some of that stuff makes it
out into space, but there are other particles that take
(18:28):
that solar energy, usually in the form of heat, and
absorb it. And when they absorb it, they re emit
heat and then they direct it back down at Earth
and the process continues, and in some of that some
cases some of the stuff that they re emit, they
end up reabsorbing themselves, so that there is more heat
(18:48):
that's being trapped and sustained on Earth than is being
allowed to escape back into space at any given time. Yeah,
just like your car, right, And again, this is what
this is, like a positive feedback cycle that creates the atmosphere.
It also sustains the atmosphere. It also keeps water here
on Earth because water tends to heat up and rise,
(19:12):
but then it will it will cool off in the
atmosphere and fall back down as precipitation. And as long
as it can fall back down in the atmosphere and
nucleate around some of these particles that are trapped in
the atmosphere, we've got water here on Earth, that's right.
So it's all thanks to the wonderful, glorious greenhouse effect.
Speaker 1 (19:32):
Yeah, so that feels like a good place to pause.
Let people let that soak in a minute, like a
hot sun on a black car seat.
Speaker 3 (19:41):
Like a warm chutney on your forehead.
Speaker 1 (19:44):
My god. And we'll be back a little bit to
talk about the these gases in the atmosphere that we're
talking about here, all right, So we're back I think
(20:20):
everyone probably understands the greenhouse effect if you remember your
hot car. Yeah, it's kind of a nice easy way
to think about it. So, when you were explaining the
more like the Earth's version of that with getting absorbed
hitting things in the atmosphere, we're talking largely about three
things carbon dioxide, methane gas, actually four things, nitrous oxide,
(20:47):
and water vapor.
Speaker 3 (20:48):
And there are a lot of others, but as far
as stuff that really has the biggest impact on global warming,
it's these guys.
Speaker 1 (20:57):
Yeah, so we'll start with CO two excess. The when
you hear about most often carbon emissions gets all the
glory in the headlines these days. Carbon CO two is colorless,
it's gas. It is a byproduct of the combustion of
organic stuff, and it makes up a very small part
of the arth atmosphere point zero four percent, and most
(21:19):
of it that's up there has been there for a
long long time. It's from volcanic activity. However, we are
pumping lots and lots of CO two, additional CO two,
and remember there's a delicate balance going on there as
it is. So like you said, mother Earth doesn't need
us adding to this, and we have been adding CO
(21:41):
two like it's Gangbusters. Yeah.
Speaker 3 (21:44):
So like that, you remember when I was talking about
how water turns into vapor and rises and falls back down.
That's the rain cycle. There's also a carbon cycle where
carbon molecules just kind of go back and forth between
the atmosphere and the earth. And apparently every year two
hundred and thirty gigatons of carbon are released into the
(22:05):
atmosphere from the Earth, from plants, from rocks, from us,
and then about the same amount another two hundred and
thirty gigatons comes back down and is locked into Earth
from the atmosphere. Right, And this is, like you said, Chuck,
like a pretty nice balance. The Earth has got this,
Please don't mess with it. But when we take carbon
and unlock it from these carbon sinks, like you know,
(22:28):
we bust up rocks and mining operations, we burn fossil
fuels that have carbon locked into them, we cut down
trees and burn those things. Is fuel that releases more carbon,
and it messes up that delicate pretty much even exchange
between the atmosphere and the Earth.
Speaker 1 (22:46):
Yeah, and that's a big problem because carbon has a
knack for absorbing infrared radiation, so that energy that escapes
the atmosphere. That's the form that it comes in. So
all this extra CO two means basically, like your card,
just an overall increase in temperature.
Speaker 3 (23:03):
Right, And so not only does it absorb infrared heat,
hang on to it it, there's a lot of it
that we just finally, in the first time in the
history of the human race, all of humanity, not since
the Industrial Revolution, but ever since humans have been around,
the Earth reached four hundred parts per million, meaning that
(23:28):
out of every million molecules that you just snatched out
of the air and count, you're going to come up
with four hundred of those as carbon atoms, right, or
carbon dioxide molecules. So that's new. That's a big deal.
And the problem with that is is not just that
there's a lot of carbon dioxide in there, but it's
like you said, the more carbon dioxide there is, the
(23:50):
more radiative heat that comes back down to Earth that
doesn't escape into space, and the higher the global temperature gets.
Speaker 1 (23:56):
Yeah, and just to and a perspective, four hundred parts
per million now, and that's twenty seventeen numbers, I guess.
Speaker 3 (24:05):
I think in twenty fifteen we hit four hundred and
more up to like four hundred and four now.
Speaker 1 (24:11):
So that pre Industrial Revolution was about two hundred and
eighty parts per million, so it has swelled by about
one hundred and twenty four parts per million since the
Industrial Revolution, which is pretty staggering.
Speaker 3 (24:25):
Yeah, and there's apparently a way that you can tell
when you're actually measuring the carbon dioxide molecules themselves where
they came from, and ones that are introduced into the
atmosphere from burning fossil fuels have a specific signature that
we can detect, and we have seen that as the
global temperature has increased and more and more carbon dioxide
(24:49):
has been introduced into the atmosphere since the Industrial Revolution,
so too has the concentration of that specific type of
carbon dioxide. So there's a strong correlation between the fossil
fuel burned carbon dioxide that we humans have put in
the air with rising global temperatures.
Speaker 1 (25:08):
All right, moving on to nitrous oxide into which we
did a whole podcast on this right. Yeah, that was
a good one. That was a great one, mainly because
of that tank that we had here in the in
the studio, I.
Speaker 3 (25:21):
Know, like we're method podcasters. That was that definitely enhanced
the whole thing.
Speaker 1 (25:27):
So intwo oh is another greenhouse gas, super important, and
we are not releasing like human activity is not releasing
nearly as much as we are CO two, But no
two or I'm sorry, into absorbs a lot more energy,
like two hundred and seventy times as much as CO two,
So that makes it something we really need to pay
(25:49):
attention to, and we are paying attention to it. It
just doesn't get all the headlines.
Speaker 3 (25:53):
No, it definitely doesn't, just because there's so so much
less of it, right, And whereas it takes like tens
of thousands of years for you know, the twenty percent
of any given carbon dioxide emission to leave the atmosphere,
it takes about one hundred and fourteen years for a
full emission of nitrous oxide to leave the atmosphere.
Speaker 1 (26:13):
Yeah, as far as man made it's it is also
a byproduct of combustion and a lot of fertilizer. Nitrogen
fertilizer that they use on crops as releases the in
to oh into the atmosphere as well.
Speaker 3 (26:25):
See to me, all you have to do is like
seed the atmosphere with a bunch of hippies and let
them huff all the nitrous oxide right out of it.
Problem solved.
Speaker 1 (26:33):
That's right, because you've also gotten rid of a concert
in the sky. Exactly what else do we have methane?
Speaker 3 (26:41):
Methane's a big one, and this is super overlooked, but
I remember hearing about this when people first started realizing, like, oh,
that's a really big problem. It's it's there's very little
amount of it, whereas like there's four hundred and four
parts per million of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere. These
days we can measure about one point even parts per
million of methane. But it absorbs and amidst thermal energy
(27:07):
like Gangbusters as well, far more than CO two. I
think about twenty times more. And there's there's a lot
of different places where it comes from. Like when we
mine coal, it releases methane. When are ample herds of
livestock fart yep, they release methane. No joke. That's actually
(27:29):
a huge contributor of greenhouse gases.
Speaker 1 (27:31):
Oh yeah, we talked about that, like I feel like
years ago in another episode.
Speaker 3 (27:35):
Surely we have another one, Chuck was do you remember
our plasma waste incineration?
Speaker 1 (27:42):
Yeah?
Speaker 3 (27:42):
Episode, sure, well, remember one of the things we talked
about was that the average landfill gives off methane, and
that's a huge problem too. So like if you go
to a landfill and you see that there's flames around it,
they're actually burning that stuff off because the co two
it released is after it's burned, is actually preferable in
(28:03):
that case to the methane just being allowed to escape.
Speaker 1 (28:06):
Yeah, and that's bad news. It is bad news. And
there are scientists who have even posited that maybe, like
you know, tens and hundreds of thousands of years ago,
that large scale venting of methane into the atmosphere, like
if a big block of ice cracked open and unlocked
a big methane bubble from under the ocean, that could
(28:30):
have caused like maybe a mass extinction, right, like because
it was released so quickly into the atmosphere.
Speaker 3 (28:36):
Yeah, like like we're doing now basically.
Speaker 1 (28:38):
Yeah, on a slower basis. I don't think anyone's saying
that's going to.
Speaker 3 (28:41):
Happen now, I don't. I don't know. I think like
that is a concern that as arctis Arctic ice melts,
that methane bubbles could be released, which would just be
a nightmare on top of a catastrophe.
Speaker 1 (28:53):
That's right.
Speaker 3 (28:54):
There's another problem with methane too, that in the atmosphere
it frequently converts to CO two, so it just not
only contributes itself, it also contributes to the CO two
emission problem. There's also chuck another thing called short lived
climate pollutants slcps. They don't get a lot of press either,
(29:16):
but a lot of people think that if we focused
on these we could really see some real results in
the short term. Supposedly slcps account for something like thirty
to forty percent of global warming. But they are particles
like black carbon methane counts as one of them, hydro
(29:37):
chloroflorocarbons nice, and they can live in the atmosphere from
say like days to tens of years, and then they
go away. And if we really cut down on some
of those emissions, it would we would see the effects
of that very quickly.
Speaker 1 (29:55):
Wow. Yeah, So speaking of effects, I guess we should
kind of talk about what this all could mean and
does mean. Yep, and is meaning sure. Number one, we
can talk a little bit about sea level or sea levels.
Glaciers and ice shelves are melting all around the world
and losing large chunks of ice like this can accelerate
(30:18):
this warming because there's less of the Sun's energy. You know,
we talked earlier about it being reflected by ice sheets
and things like that, these reflective surfaces. Less reflective surface
means less is getting reflected away. So just at like
the very base level, that's gonna be an increase in temperature.
Speaker 3 (30:37):
Yes, Also, depending on where the glacier is, it could
contribute to sea level increases too, as we'll talk about.
Speaker 1 (30:48):
Yeah, I mean we might as well hit that, huh.
Speaker 3 (30:50):
Okay. So if one of the things that I learned
from this that I just absolutely did not know, what
makes total sense, is that the Arctic sea ice, if
it melts, it will contribute zero to a sea level increase.
Speaker 1 (31:04):
Yeah. Interesting, I had no idea.
Speaker 3 (31:06):
But it makes total sense because it turns out that
Arctic sea ice in particular floats on the sea, so
it's already in the sea and it's already contributed to
the sea level rise. If anything, If that stuff, if
we went through an ice age and all that stuff
froze into basically a frozen land mass, then you'd see
a sea level decrease. But the way it is right now,
(31:27):
there wouldn't be a sea level rise if it melts completely.
There are other places around Earth where the glaciers and
ice caps are basically land masses, and if they did melt,
then you would see a sea level rise just from
that melted water, right.
Speaker 1 (31:42):
Yeah, I mean we're talking about Antarctica there, and the
likelihood of Antarctica thawing out is not great, which is good.
Speaker 3 (31:53):
Well, not all of it, but there's certainly parts of
it could, yeah for sure. And then same with Greenland too.
Speaker 1 (31:59):
We had Greenlands because it is much closer to the equator,
so temperatures are higher there anyway, It's not like negative
thirty seven degrees on average like it is in Antarctica. Right,
So I feel like I have to say that so specifically,
and the Arctica c Yeah.
Speaker 3 (32:16):
And the other problem too with with this this loss
of ice, like people might say, like, no, it's crazy,
Like there's I see plenty of glaciers, there's still but
if every season a little more melts off than is
replenished by snowfall in the winter, you have a net
loss of ice. And then over time, if you look
at it on a scale of a decade or two
(32:37):
decades or three decades. That's a substantial amount of lost ice,
and that is what increases the sea level that leads
to sea level rise.
Speaker 1 (32:47):
Yeah, so, as far as the IPCC is concerned, they
estimate that sea levels rose about a little over six
and a half inches in the twentieth century. Doesn't sound
like much, but it is a lot. Like sea level
rise in low lying coastal areas can mean pretty bad
(33:07):
flooding at just mere inches. They propose that if things
continue to go this way, they could rise by as
much as twenty two inches almost two feet by the
year of twenty one hundred and brother, if that happens,
we're gonna have to redraw the world map.
Speaker 3 (33:24):
That's true. I was looking, I was like, how high
is Miami Beach. Miami Beach is apparently just under four
feet above sea level. Yeah, New Orleans is like zero feet.
I think it's maybe at two feet basically. Yeah, there's
a lot of coastal city Singapore, I think Copenhagen, they're
(33:45):
all like very very close to sea level or just
slightly above sea level, and so yeah, two feet rise.
I know. The Maldives is frequently mentioned as like being
under real threat from sea level rise. But even if
you don't necessarily live in a coastal area that's two feet,
you know, just two feet above sea level, consider this,
(34:09):
If the sea level rose just six inches, like they
were saying, that means that when you have extreme weather
events which go hand in hand with global warming and
are part of climate change, where it rains really hard
and there's more like more major flooding than before, then
it's already working with an extra six inches than any
flood that you've been used to before. So the floods
(34:31):
are much more extensive. And that's a really good example
of how interconnected the global climate system is, where if
one thing gets messed up a little bit, it has
all these other widespread effects around the world on regions too.
Speaker 1 (34:45):
Yeah, because I think they found that there are not
necessarily more frequent like tropical storms and hurricanes and things,
but they are becoming much more intense, and that's the
issue at hand.
Speaker 3 (34:57):
Yeah, And that one in particular has to do with
the surface temperature of the oceans increasing as the temperature
of the world increases, because that's where those storms, hurricanes
and cyclones get their their energy from, is from the
warm surface of the sea.
Speaker 1 (35:12):
Yeah.
Speaker 3 (35:12):
So if it's warm. That's like you'll see them like
hit land and like lose steam, and then when they
go back over the ocean, they'll start to like regather
their strength. That's because they're over warm water again and
that's where that's where they get it all from.
Speaker 1 (35:26):
Yeah, plus there is uh. I don't think we mentioned
this yet about the density of water.
Speaker 3 (35:31):
No, no, I don't want to go anywhere near it.
You take this.
Speaker 1 (35:34):
One, well, very simply, water is most dense at four
degrees celsius. So that's its kind of a homeostasis of
where it needs to be. Anything above or below that
temperature and the density is going to decrease, So the
overall temperature of the water is going to increase naturally
(35:54):
and this is not like human cause. But that will
also cause the oceans to rise some and that's just
a natural thing, right. Well said, all right, let's leave
that one market right there.
Speaker 3 (36:05):
I'm glad you mentioned that though, because you don't see
that really ever, Like no one ever mentions like, oh yeah,
water is just gonna expand as it warms. I've never
thought about that one either.
Speaker 1 (36:14):
Or Cools, I think, right, yeah, or Cools.
Speaker 3 (36:17):
It's a weird weird thing, weird weird material. So let's
take another break and we'll get back to explaining why
global warming is a real pain, all right, Chuck. So
(36:56):
we talked about the ice caps melting, we talked about
glaciers melting, we talked about sea level rise. Correct, there's
also I mean people are out there saying like that's great,
but how does it impact may Yeah, a human that's
what I want to know about. Well, there's tons of ways.
Because as technologically clever as we humans are, we are
(37:17):
extraordinarily dependent on the earth. So as these this climate
change happens due to global warming, we're going to see
all sorts of problems. And we already are starting to
see problems.
Speaker 1 (37:31):
Yeah. So we did mention earlier that if you live
in a temperate area, if you've got like four kind
of lovely seasons, like let's say Atlanta, Georgia, for instance,
you may have a longer growing season, you might have
a bit more rain. It might be actually good for
the crops here in Georgia in some ways. But other
parts of the world, less temperate zones are going to
see big temperature increases, way less rain, and longer droughts,
(37:55):
worse drouts, bigger deserts. It's not going to be so
good of those places.
Speaker 3 (38:01):
No. They apparently have found that every trillion tons of
CO two it contributed to that atmosphere raises the global
temperature average by about three quarters of a degree celsius.
And then they went and correlated that each one degree
celsius increase in temperature equals an evaporative increase of about
(38:25):
seven to fifteen percent here on planet Earth in the soil. Right,
so as temperatures increase, there's going to be less water
in the soil, which affects crops and leads to things
like droughts and even desertification as well. But and man,
every time I throw out one of these terms, I'm like,
we did an episode on that, We did an episode
(38:45):
on that and droughts.
Speaker 1 (38:48):
Yeah, we've been dancing around this one for a while.
Speaker 3 (38:50):
We have. I'm glad we finally tackle that. Man, agreed,
you're doing great, by the way, Well, hold on, hold on.
So as the water evaporates from the soil and go
up and is locked into the atmosphere again, it's eventually
going to come down, and when it does, you're going
to have a far more severe flooding and precipitation than
(39:12):
you would have normally when it was just going up
and coming down and going up and coming down like
on its normal cycle. Yeah, so that's one way that
it can affect you, because while it's turning to droughts,
you got wildfires, and then when the soil gets degraded
and there's suddenly a lot of rain, you've got flooding.
And people get carried away in their cars because they
think it can drive across a flowing river.
Speaker 1 (39:36):
That's not funny at all, by the way, I guess,
not just the way you put it was. So one
of the other devastating effects. And this one is kind
of tougher to predict because we've don't haven't really seen
what can happen with our living human eyeballs, but ecosystems,
And I think we did we do on ecosystems as
(39:56):
a whole, or just have we talked about it forever
and everything.
Speaker 3 (39:59):
I think it's just popped up in so many of them,
it seems like that.
Speaker 1 (40:02):
Yeah, we've definitely covered coral reefs and things like that.
We're talking about living ecosystems, and we all know they're
very delicate and the delicate balance of the ecosystem is
what makes it worse. And we've talked ad nauseum over
the past nine years about how little, just little things
can happen in an ecosystem that will create this chain reaction.
(40:22):
It's all interconnected, and we don't know what might happen
in terms of global warming in our living ecosystem. Sure,
some animals might adapt, some might move, but there would
also be you know, massive amounts of extinction. Coral reefs
are already dying. We're seeing that with our eyeballs. Forests
(40:44):
are dying off and turning to grassland. And it's not
just like, oh, well, there they go. Now we have
grassland instead of a forest.
Speaker 3 (40:53):
Let's make some houlus kirts.
Speaker 1 (40:55):
Yeah. Again, it's just it's that that domino effect that
we're going to see. It's just no one knows what
it's going to mean in the end. It's really troubling.
Speaker 3 (41:07):
Yeah, And I was, I was, I was like, well,
how are ecosystems interconnected? I know they are, but how
so I looked up a good example and found salmon.
So salmon are born in like little streams and they
end up like traveling down into bigger streams and eventually
rivers and then estuaries, and then they actually go and
mature out in the ocean, which I hadn't really thought of,
(41:28):
And then when it's time for them to go breed,
they swim back upstream, back into the rivers, back back
into the streams themselves. Actually they go back to where
they were born to breed and then die. And as
they're doing it, they're basically acting as nutrient transport systems
between all these different ecosystems each step of the way.
Speaker 1 (41:49):
Yeah, it's like a seed being scattered in the wind.
Speaker 3 (41:51):
Yeah, very much so, but a seed that can actually
come back home and bring all the nutrients that it gathered,
like out in the ocean back into its home ecosystem
where it was born.
Speaker 1 (42:00):
Yeah.
Speaker 3 (42:00):
So it's pretty interesting. And I mean, like that's just
a great example. Let's just salmon, you know. So, Yeah,
the ecosystems are very much connected, so if something happens
with one, it's going to have an effect on all
the other ones. And like you said, some things will survive,
some things won't.
Speaker 1 (42:15):
But the.
Speaker 3 (42:17):
Thing that I think most of us here on Earth
are agreeing to agree about is we should probably do
something to stop those extinctions as best we can, even
if we'll probably survive, you.
Speaker 1 (42:31):
Know, yeah, And you know we're this is a very
USA centric show for the most part. That's where we're based.
We try to think outside that that box as much
as we can. And in the case of global warming,
it is the poorest nations of the world are the
ones that are going to be hit the hardest. They're
the ones in a lot of times, in the less
(42:51):
temperate zones that are going to be hit with more
devastating crop loss. But crop loss is going to be
a big deal all over the world. That already there's
something called the Carnegie Institution that estimates about five billion
dollars in crop losses per year due to global warming
is already going on right now, and farmers are seeing
(43:11):
a decrease of about forty million metric tons of wheat, barley, corn,
other cereal greens every year. So just one degree fahrenheit
an average temper of an increase could result in three
to five percent drop in crop yields. So it's a
global issue. Sure, some of the poorest nations might be
(43:34):
affected earliest in the worst, but it is going to
touch every nation.
Speaker 3 (43:38):
It definitely will. It doesn't necessarily have to be the
poorest nations. It can be the poorest people of rich nations.
Well yeah, true, and it can be people who are
very rich who end up living in areas that are
hit Like Houston saw a lot of increase in water
borne illnesses because of the flooding from Hurricane Harvey. That's
something that they otherwise wouldn't have had to have done with. Yeah,
(44:01):
there's there's like that whole crop loss thing and starvation
that it leads to. Like, there's a lot of ways
people can be affected. And just like salmon, like, we're
connected to other people as well, even if they're on
the other side of the world, and you know, we're
not really talking to them or don't really know them personally,
we're still connected to them. So if they suffer a
(44:22):
crop loss, it'll affect us all. And if they die
of starvation, it ends up affecting us all.
Speaker 1 (44:28):
Yeah. This I really like this computer model thing. Did
you see that? Yes, that was pretty pretty cut and dried,
you know.
Speaker 3 (44:36):
Yes.
Speaker 1 (44:37):
So the IPCC they used a computer model and what
they did was they tried to simulate climate change and
what they found was the only models, the only models
that looked like today's climate that equalled, hey, well, this
looks like what's going on today, were models that included
the human contribution to global warming. When they did not
(44:59):
plug in the here human contribution. The answer that it
spit out was no, that climate doesn't look like what's
going on right now, right, So that is basically proof
that humans are contributing to this, right exactly. Yep.
Speaker 3 (45:15):
That combined with you know the signature of the carbon
dioxide from fossil fuel burning, all that jazz, Yes, you're
we and we should probably get to this part. Like,
there's there's a there's a tendency among naysayers to be like,
you know, there's not even like scientific consensus. They're not
one hundred percent certain that it's it's it's us creating
(45:38):
this global warming, right, and so science has really kind
of taken it upon itself in the last like decade
or so to address this and say, yes, that's true.
There's basically no such thing as settled science. But there
has so been so much like we've made it our
business to create and conduct so much research and study
(46:01):
all of this so closely over the last like ten
to fifteen twenty years that we have basically come up
with a scientific consensus that basically, if you take any
scientist on the street, there is pretty close to one
hundred percent chance that that person is going to say, yes,
climate change is real, Yes, global warming is happening, and
(46:22):
yes humans are causing it.
Speaker 1 (46:24):
Right, yeah, Because they use words differently than we use words.
And you sent this great article certainty versus uncertainty colon
understanding scientific terms about climate change.
Speaker 3 (46:35):
You know, it's smart when there's a colon.
Speaker 1 (46:38):
And for the average Joe or Jane walking around on
the street, if you say the word uncertain that means, well,
you just don't know. Scientists when they use the word
uncertain they mean how well you might know something or not.
So that's a big difference. It sounds like word games,
but there is no, very rarely is there absolute certainty
(46:59):
in sciencience. So their job is to research and research
and limit that uncertainty as much as possible.
Speaker 3 (47:05):
No, and that uncertainty in their public broadcasting of that
uncertainty has been used against them. It's been hijacked and
used against them to fight doing anything about climate change. Right,
So so they have started to use especially if you
go through like the ipccs like policymaker executive summaries. Everything
that they're stating, they will put like how confident they
(47:28):
are that what they're they're saying is true.
Speaker 1 (47:31):
They have a structure to that now, right.
Speaker 3 (47:33):
And so most of the stuff that they're releasing as
in their reports has something like a ninety percent chance
or greater of being correct. So they call it like
a very likely outcome or a very high confidence. And
I've even seen something called an extremely high confidence which
(47:54):
indicates ninety five percent or greater, and then the come
on which is ninety nine per cent greater.
Speaker 1 (48:01):
Yeah, so they're the there are five points which they
have quote very high confidence end quote about or even greater.
So at least ninety percent or greater certainty that the
following human induced warming influences physical and biological systems everywhere.
Sea levels are rising, glaciers and permafrost are shrinking, oceans
(48:23):
are becoming more acidic, and ranges of plants and animals
are shifting. So that's between ninety and one hundred percent
certainty on those things.
Speaker 3 (48:31):
Yeah, they also say they're comfortable saying with certainty that
the burning of fossil fuels and the clearing of forests
release carbon dioxide into the atmosphere. They say, there is
no uncertainty about that. They also say that they've learned
that carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gases in the atmosphere
trap heat through the greenhouse effect. They say, again there
(48:53):
is no uncertainty about this, and that the Earth is
warming because these gases are being released faster than the
k can be or by natural processes. And then they
say it's very likely greater than ninety percent probability that
human activities are the main reason for the world's temperature
increase in the past fifty years in particular. And so
they're saying, like, we are scientists, we're the ones who
(49:15):
are studying this. No, we're not a hot we can't
say with unequivocal certainty that this is the case. But
what really, people, what more do you need? Like we
have studied this so closely, we are so close to
one hundred percent certainty that like, what's the problem here,
Let's just get on board. And there was actually a
(49:36):
study done in two thousand and seven by this economist.
It made the news, made the news cycle. The same
is doctor Peter Cigaris, and he basically said if you
look at the cost of doing something and the cost
of doing nothing, statistically speaking, it makes way more sense
(49:59):
to you take steps to mitigate climate change and be
wrong about the fact that it was us humans.
Speaker 1 (50:06):
Yea, then it.
Speaker 3 (50:06):
Would to take no steps at all and be wrong
about it. Actually, no, it actually was us humans.
Speaker 1 (50:14):
Yeah. I mean that's where I get. I don't want
to get too much on a soapbox, but I get
angry that there are people out there that say, well,
you're not there's that ten percent or less chance. So
let's just gamble humanity, the future of humankind on that
ten percent or less chance, because we don't want to
(50:35):
get with the program and get behind green initiatives because
there's a chance you're not one hundred percent certain. I
I don't know that short sight, and it's just it's
staggering to me.
Speaker 3 (50:46):
Well, plus also that it's been proven I've mentioned that
book before, the Merchants of Doubt that think tanks have
been set up to basically influence public thought and point
out like scientists aren't a hundred percent so in sciences
are one hundred percent certain, and they're not looking out
for you or the earth or your family they're looking
out for their business interests because it's the fossil fuel industry.
(51:09):
They're they're the ones who are who benefit the most
from not taking steps against climate change. But even if
you look at some of the some of these fossil
fuel industry companies, they're like, no, we should probably do something.
We can figure this out. Even some of them are
(51:29):
saying this now as of twenty fourteen.
Speaker 1 (51:33):
Amazing.
Speaker 3 (51:34):
So, Chuck, speaking of twenty fourteen, there was something big
that happened, the Paris Accords. Yes, and in twenty fourteen,
I think one hundred and ninety five countries came together
and said, you know what, we're going to do something.
We're going to do everything we can to keep the
global average temperature from increasing two degrees above normal two
(51:58):
degrees celsius. I should say, because that was kind of
a largely agreed upon tipping point that there would be
a lot more extreme weather, sea level rise, we would
feel the effects of climate change from a two degree
celsius increase in global temperature. And so they took this
really interesting approach where they said, instead of us coming
(52:20):
up with a multi government group that decrease stuff, we're
going to just decentralize the whole thing, and how about
every country come up with what their country can do
on their own to fight to fight global warming, and
then we'll bring them all together and everybody will take
a pledge and we'll go do it. And it was
(52:40):
hugely successful, like out of one hundred and ninety five countries,
one hundred and sixty eight have ratified it. And the
US had had a pretty good plan as well. I
think we were going to we were going to pledge
that we would reduce our climate emissions something like twenty
six twenty eight percent by twenty twenty five, which would
(53:03):
be a huge significant contribution to fighting global warming. But
we got pulled out of that one, I think in
twenty seventeen.
Speaker 1 (53:13):
It's correct.
Speaker 3 (53:14):
So now the rest of the world seems to be
carrying on without us, fighting climate change through their own
decentralized plans. But that's where the United States stands right now.
We have said we're not going to be taking part
in that.
Speaker 1 (53:29):
That's right, But that's not to say that the citizens
of the United States can't do everything they can on
their own in their own lives by doing some of
the following things. First and foremost, decreasing your carbon footprint.
And I'm going to put out a call for us
right now to go ahead and do one soonish on
carbon offsets, because we're a few years into a few
(53:52):
years down the road from when carbon offsets first became
a thing and it's much more understood now.
Speaker 3 (53:59):
Didn't we do one on the I don't think so
we've done them on some week Oh I know what
it was. We talked about that kind of cap and
trade scheme in the Acid Rain, right, Yeah.
Speaker 1 (54:10):
Yeah, we should do on a carbon offsets, so because
they're much better understood now and then you it's pretty
clear now like the best ways to go about doing
something like that.
Speaker 3 (54:18):
Cool.
Speaker 1 (54:18):
So we're not going to cover it too much here,
but you can buy carbon offsets look for future podcasts.
But reducing your carbon footprint is the biggest thing. I mean,
it's really simple. The stuff that generates the greenhouse gases,
if we create less of it, that's a good thing.
So you doing that on a local level can make
a big impact of a lot of people are doing that.
(54:40):
Using less energy obviously is just a sort of a
no brainer. And this is just period in life, like
just being less wasteful Yeah, whether it's water or your
lights that you're turning on, or riding your bike instead
of driving your car, like, all of that makes a
big difference.
Speaker 3 (54:59):
But and with electricity in particular, one thing we always mentioned,
always mentioned is that even though it seems like your
light bulb is fine, it's getting its power most likely
from burning coal.
Speaker 1 (55:12):
So is that electric car that you bought that's plug
in for sure? Yeah, And your electric car is only
as good as the energy that it's where it gets
its energy from. Yeah, and we can that's a whole
rabbit hole into itself hybrids and electric cars and how
green they are. But the research I did today roundly
(55:35):
says that in the end, a hybrid and an electric
car is has a much smaller carbon footprint than a
combustion engine. Sure, and I know about the batteries, and
I know where they get the stuff. And this is
considering all the costs that go into making these cars
and what happens these cars over the years. There are
a lot of smart people that put this all together,
(55:56):
and it's still a better option than you know, a
combustion gas engine. Right, But that's you know, I'm not
here to say go out and get a hybrid or
an electric car that's up to you.
Speaker 3 (56:06):
Well, that kind of raises one of the issues too,
is like it can be expensive to be eco friendly,
you know, which really sucks.
Speaker 1 (56:14):
But you can also save money though.
Speaker 3 (56:16):
Yeah, in the end, it's just the upfront costs or
sometimes you know, greater which is the problem for you know,
for people who can't afford like a more expensive car.
Is the same thing with like food, you know, like
the better your food, the more expensive it is, which
sucks too.
Speaker 1 (56:31):
Yeah, but you can use less energy in your home
and pay less of an energy bill.
Speaker 3 (56:36):
Yeah, no, No, there's plenty of things of other things
you can do, Like it doesn't cost anything to recycle,
you know.
Speaker 1 (56:41):
Yeah, exactly. And all this stuff like recycling, you think, well,
I mean, I know that's good because there's no trash,
but no trash means it's not going to that landfill
and that means it's not releasing bad gases into the atmosphere.
So yep, this all affects your carbon footprint. Recycling to
how long you take a shower because you're using hot
water and that water has to be heated somehow, yep.
Speaker 3 (57:03):
And I mean if this has become like an issue
for you. Then then make it one of the things
you vote on too, Like vote for people who care
about this, and we'll make sure that that regulations are
put into place that fight climate change. Yeah, it's a
big one.
Speaker 1 (57:20):
There are politicians out there that care very much about this.
Speaker 3 (57:23):
Yeah. I remember after we pulled out of the Paris Accord,
like a few cities said we're still doing this. We're
going to stick to it regardless.
Speaker 1 (57:30):
Yeah.
Speaker 3 (57:31):
Yeah, you can do it. Your city can do it,
other people can do it. The rest of the world
doing it except for Nicaragua and Syria, I remember correctly,
you remember, Yeah, if you want to know more about
global warming, just step outside. And since I said that,
it's time for listener mate.
Speaker 1 (57:54):
I'm going to call this so smart. I don't get it.
But remember during the Buildering podcast we read a listener
mail about We asked why you get sleepy when you
read Yes, Well, we hit a chiropractor right in and
he says he has the answer. And I don't know
if this is right or not, but it certainly sounds
good to me. So he's a chiropractor, and he studied
(58:16):
functional neurology in school, and he said. The answer is
that when you're reading, your eyes move laterally as they
scan the page. This involves the lateral rectus muscle of
the eye, which is innervated by the six cranial nerve
the abductionins Hey, So the abduction's originates in the ponds
(58:37):
and the brainstem. And what happens is that as you
activate this nerve through reading, you also activate the ponto
medullary reticular formation or PMRF. One job of the PRF
is to dampen the sympathetic response of the intero medio
lateral cell column in the spinal chord, which activates the
(58:58):
sympathetic nervous system. In short reading, dampens the sympathetic response
and relaxes you. Nice, I think that's the takeaway. I
hope you find this interesting. I love your podcast. Use
a lot of your knowledge to you teach for Trivia
Tuesday that my coworkers and I play at my clinic.
And that is from doctor Michael Hilton in good old Washington, DC.
(59:21):
Nice or the district.
Speaker 3 (59:23):
Thanks doctor Michael, the chiropractor from DC.
Speaker 1 (59:29):
That's right.
Speaker 3 (59:30):
If you want to get in touch with us, like
doctor Michael did, you can tweet to us at Josh
M Clark or s YSK podcast. Both me and Chucker
on Facebook, and you can go to our official page
at Facebook dot com slash stuff you Should Know. You
can send us an email of the Stuff podcast at
house stuffworks dot com and as always, joined us at
(59:50):
our home on the web, Stuff you Should Know dot com.
Speaker 2 (59:58):
For more on this and thats of other topics, visit
HowStuffWorks dot com.
Speaker 3 (01:00:08):
M h m hmm
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Josh Clark
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