SPEAKER_1: Welcome to StarTalk, your place in the universe where science and pop culture collide.
SPEAKER_1: StarTalk begins right now.
SPEAKER_1: This is StarTalk Cosmic Queries edition.
SPEAKER_1: And of course, can't do that without Chuck Nice.
SPEAKER_1: Chuck.
SPEAKER_2: Hey, Neil.
SPEAKER_2: Hey, hey, hey.
SPEAKER_1: All right, all right.
SPEAKER_1: And this topic of climate change, you've been into that even before you were StarTalkian.
SPEAKER_2: Yes, I have to admit that it's one of my passions.
SPEAKER_2: I don't have a lot of passions, but it's one.
SPEAKER_1: No, that's good.
SPEAKER_1: It's really good.
SPEAKER_1: And you can take your skill set and bring it to conferences and have people, you know, because people, I've found that they're more committed and motivated if they can at least sort of smile and say, yeah, that's good.
SPEAKER_1: I like that.
SPEAKER_1: Let me do more of that.
SPEAKER_1: And let me feel this way some more.
SPEAKER_2: Let's do that.
SPEAKER_1: By doing something good for the world.
SPEAKER_2: You hit it on the head, man.
SPEAKER_2: That's the idea.
SPEAKER_2: The idea is if we can get people to think about what is an existential crisis without thinking of it doom and gloom, but in a way that they might take action.
SPEAKER_2: That's the whole idea.
SPEAKER_1: There you go.
SPEAKER_1: And so we think of you as a climate activist in your free time.
SPEAKER_1: I like that.
SPEAKER_1: Will you take that?
SPEAKER_2: Wait, translation.
SPEAKER_2: The worst activist ever.
SPEAKER_1: The lazy activist.
SPEAKER_2: Yeah, that guy's an awesome activist.
SPEAKER_2: Whenever he has time, you know, he's very committed when he has an afternoon free.
SPEAKER_1: Okay, I didn't mean it that way.
SPEAKER_2: I love it.
SPEAKER_1: Okay, now I follow climate science, but I'm no expert and you're an activist.
SPEAKER_1: So we need someone who knows what they're talking about.
SPEAKER_1: Yes, and we of course found right up the street here in New York City, climate scientist Kate Marvel.
SPEAKER_1: Kate, welcome back to StarTalk.
SPEAKER_3: Hello, I'm so excited to be here.
SPEAKER_2: Yeah, excellent.
SPEAKER_1: You're a research scientist at NASA's GISS.
SPEAKER_1: That's the Goddard Institute for Space Studies and your research scientist is Columbia University, which has a lot of overlapping scientists and research interests with NASA at your division there.
SPEAKER_1: My favorite part of your resume here is that you have a PhD in theoretical particle physics from Cambridge.
SPEAKER_1: You say, all right, now I'm done with that.
SPEAKER_1: Let me just fix the world.
SPEAKER_1: So, I'm loving it.
SPEAKER_1: I'm loving it.
SPEAKER_2: How cool is it to be bored with theoretical particle physics?
SPEAKER_2: Yeah, you know, I got kind of bored with that.
SPEAKER_1: So, Kate, can you take a minute to explain what you do?
SPEAKER_3: Sure.
SPEAKER_3: So, I work with climate models, which are basically toy planets that you put on a computer.
SPEAKER_3: And they help us do experiments, experiments that we can't do on the real planet.
SPEAKER_3: So, they let us project the future.
SPEAKER_1: You shouldn't do on the real planet.
SPEAKER_1: The way you said that is like, you know, if we could, we would.
SPEAKER_1: No, no, no.
SPEAKER_1: You don't want to do some of those on the real planet, I presume.
SPEAKER_3: Well, I mean, we are all doing a collective, very big, very serious experiment on this planet right now.
SPEAKER_1: Yeah, we're all turning knobs without knowing the consequence.
SPEAKER_3: Totally right.
SPEAKER_3: It doesn't seem very smart.
SPEAKER_3: But yeah, climate models are great because they let you do, they project the future.
SPEAKER_3: They let you say, okay, if emissions continue to rise, this is what the world will look like.
SPEAKER_3: If we cut emissions, this is what the world will look like.
SPEAKER_3: But they also help you do counterfactual experiments.
SPEAKER_3: What if there were no Rocky Mountains?
SPEAKER_3: What if a giant volcano went off tomorrow?
SPEAKER_3: What if we weren't putting any carbon dioxide in the atmosphere?
SPEAKER_3: So it's kind of like playing the Sims all day, but with math and physics because you have this toy planet and you can do experiments on it.
SPEAKER_3: And that teaches you something about how the real world works.
SPEAKER_1: So I didn't know there was another word for what if.
SPEAKER_1: Counterfactual.
SPEAKER_3: Sounds fancier, right?
SPEAKER_1: Right, right.
SPEAKER_1: Okay, I'm sticking with what ifs, if I may.
SPEAKER_1: Now, Chuck, you collected questions.
SPEAKER_1: This is not the first time we've done a climate cosmic queries.
SPEAKER_1: So this is a very popular topic with our audience.
SPEAKER_1: And Chuck has collected questions from our Patreon members.
SPEAKER_1: So they get exclusive access to our guests in this format.
SPEAKER_1: So Chuck, give me a few here.
SPEAKER_2: Okay, here we go.
SPEAKER_2: Let's do this.
SPEAKER_2: This is Hitty Wegmans who says, or hi Dr.
SPEAKER_2: Tyson and Dr.
SPEAKER_2: Marvel, Lord Nice, if we could do as Thanos suggested, killing half of the humans, would that stop or slow down climate change?
SPEAKER_2: And yes, I was inspired by Dr.
SPEAKER_2: Marvel's last name to ask this question.
SPEAKER_1: Marvel Universe.
SPEAKER_2: Yes.
SPEAKER_2: Also for you, Neil.
SPEAKER_2: Greetings, Neil, from the Netherlands.
SPEAKER_1: Oh, the Netherlands.
SPEAKER_1: I love that.
SPEAKER_1: The Netherlands.
SPEAKER_1: So Kate, this person is asking the ultimate counterfactual question.
SPEAKER_1: If the Marvel Universe is real and there's such an evil as Thanos and he snapped his fingers and got rid of half the life, what...
SPEAKER_1: Is that a model you guys have done on your computers?
SPEAKER_3: So, yeah, I want to be totally clear.
SPEAKER_3: Let's not do that.
SPEAKER_3: Terrible idea.
SPEAKER_3: But the problem...
SPEAKER_3: I think that gets to a really important point.
SPEAKER_3: The problem with climate change, it's not people.
SPEAKER_3: It's the actions of people.
SPEAKER_3: So climate change is happening because carbon dioxide levels in the atmosphere are increasing.
SPEAKER_3: And they're increasing because humans are doing stuff.
SPEAKER_3: We're burning fossil fuels.
SPEAKER_3: We're cutting down forests.
SPEAKER_3: We're raising animals that put methane in the atmosphere.
SPEAKER_2: That still kind of sounds like people.
SPEAKER_1: You look like saying people don't cause climate change.
SPEAKER_1: Things people do cause climate change.
SPEAKER_3: Exactly.
SPEAKER_3: And the thing about people is we can do different things.
SPEAKER_3: So we don't have to generate electricity by burning fossil fuels because there is a giant nuclear fusion reactor in the sky that we can use that moves air around our planet.
SPEAKER_3: We can use wind.
SPEAKER_3: We can use solar.
SPEAKER_3: We can use geothermal.
SPEAKER_3: We can use nuclear.
SPEAKER_3: There are a whole bunch of different ways to generate energy, electricity for transportation that don't release carbon dioxide.
SPEAKER_3: We have choices.
SPEAKER_1: We have choices.
SPEAKER_1: So, my great rebuttal to that question is, if Thanos had that much power, why doesn't he just snap his finger and produce twice as much food?
SPEAKER_2: Just fix everything.
SPEAKER_1: Right?
SPEAKER_1: Dude, what's up with your solutions here?
SPEAKER_2: You big sociopath.
SPEAKER_2: That's your problem, Thanos.
SPEAKER_2: You big sociopath.
SPEAKER_2: You power tripping.
SPEAKER_2: Alright, never mind.
SPEAKER_1: Because then we're worried about food shortages and things.
SPEAKER_1: Just double the amount of food with the snap of your finger.
SPEAKER_2: Or by the way, even if that's not the...
SPEAKER_2: How about make everybody half the size they are?
SPEAKER_1: And Chuck, I think there was like a movie about that.
SPEAKER_1: Like downsizing.
SPEAKER_2: Okay.
SPEAKER_1: With Matt Damon.
SPEAKER_1: With like real, real marquee actors in it.
SPEAKER_1: So I didn't see it.
SPEAKER_1: So I don't know if like climate change is an issue in the storyline.
SPEAKER_1: But tiny people would solve a lot of problems.
SPEAKER_2: There are no small parts, just small actors.
SPEAKER_2: There you go.
SPEAKER_2: Sorry, I had to do it.
SPEAKER_2: Okay.
SPEAKER_2: All right.
SPEAKER_1: What else you got?
SPEAKER_2: This is Deb Beach.
SPEAKER_2: Deb Beach says, greetings.
SPEAKER_2: This is Deborah from Finland, Ohio.
SPEAKER_2: With a question.
SPEAKER_1: Are you serious?
SPEAKER_2: I'm dead serious.
SPEAKER_1: Okay.
SPEAKER_2: Finland, Ohio.
SPEAKER_2: I read it that way.
SPEAKER_1: We still love you.
SPEAKER_2: Yeah, exactly.
SPEAKER_2: We won't hold that against you, Deb Beach.
SPEAKER_2: With a question, of course, about climate change.
SPEAKER_2: I have a family who challenges me when I talk about climate change.
SPEAKER_2: They can't seem to understand the difference between weather and climate.
SPEAKER_2: Any confrontational and positive ways to illustrate the difference?
SPEAKER_2: Because I'm out of ideas.
SPEAKER_2: Thanks in advance, Dr.
SPEAKER_2: Marvel.
SPEAKER_1: So, this sounds like a retelling of a Thanksgiving dinner.
SPEAKER_1: So, Kate, what should we all do with Thanksgiving?
SPEAKER_2: Tell us.
SPEAKER_2: And also, what do we do about Uncle Joe's drinking problem?
SPEAKER_2: Because seriously.
SPEAKER_1: Chuck, that's not Kate's expertise, Chuck.
SPEAKER_3: I think Thanksgiving dinners go better when everybody just eats.
SPEAKER_3: But if this does come up, there are several ways to handle it.
SPEAKER_3: One of my favorite quotes is by Dr.
SPEAKER_3: Marshall Shepard, who's a climate scientist at the University of Georgia.
SPEAKER_3: And he says, weather is your mood, climate is your personality.
SPEAKER_3: So, weather is changeable.
SPEAKER_3: I have no idea what the weather is going to be like 10 years from now.
SPEAKER_3: But because I understand the climate of New York, I know that it's likely to be hot, it's likely to be warmer than it was in January, for example.
SPEAKER_3: So, when we talk about climate, we talk about long-term averages, whereas weather is something that fluctuates on a day-to-day basis.
SPEAKER_3: And it's really important to keep those things separate.
SPEAKER_3: But at the same time, climate affects the weather, because everything happens against the backdrop of climate.
SPEAKER_1: So, what you're saying is, when people, if it snows one day, right, like late in the spring, they'll say, see, climate change people are wrong, because we had a snowfall in late April, right, or early April.
SPEAKER_1: And so, that's like the perfect moment to say, no, you're just in a mood.
SPEAKER_1: All right, Chuck, give me another one.
SPEAKER_2: All right.
SPEAKER_2: This is from Billy Bryant, who says, hello, Drs.
SPEAKER_2: Tyson and Marvel.
SPEAKER_2: Knowing that we can never turn back the dial on what we've already lost, how will we know when the effects of green initiatives have actually begun to have a positive impact on Earth?
SPEAKER_4: Ooh, I like that question.
SPEAKER_3: I love this question.
SPEAKER_1: That would help the movement, right?
SPEAKER_1: If you can see the effects.
SPEAKER_1: What do you got for us there?
SPEAKER_3: This is a real bad news, really good news situation, I think.
SPEAKER_3: So the bad news is under any kind of reasonable trajectory.
SPEAKER_3: We don't shut down all fossil fuel infrastructure immediately overnight, but we really get serious about this.
SPEAKER_3: We start cutting emissions, we start building out wind and solar.
SPEAKER_3: The climate benefits of that aren't going to start showing up for decades.
SPEAKER_3: So that's kind of the bad news.
SPEAKER_3: The good news is that there are a lot of immediate, what we call co-benefits, because a lot of the things that emit greenhouse gases, carbon dioxide, methane, those are the same things that are emitting what we think of as pollution.
SPEAKER_3: So particulate matter, smog, all that really bad stuff.
SPEAKER_3: And though getting rid of those things cuts pollution, it makes our air quality better, and there's a lot of research that shows that that makes our health better, that reduces inequalities, that can even increase things like labor productivity.
SPEAKER_3: So we start doing that, we see those benefits immediately.
SPEAKER_1: And we just learned about real estate inequalities, right?
SPEAKER_1: Where certain disadvantaged groups are, their only real estate available to them is near toxic waste dumps and this sort of thing.
SPEAKER_1: So right, there's an entire real estate dimension to this.
SPEAKER_2: Climate injustice.
SPEAKER_3: Yeah, there's a huge justice component to it.
SPEAKER_1: So you're saying you're making a better world beyond just saving the climate.
SPEAKER_3: Absolutely.
SPEAKER_3: That's kind of an added bonus, I think.
SPEAKER_1: That's a very positive way to think about that.
SPEAKER_1: I like that.
SPEAKER_1: But Chuck, we've got to take a quick break.
SPEAKER_1: We'll get there.
SPEAKER_1: This is Cosmic Queries StarTalk, where it's climate.
SPEAKER_1: And we've got one of the best around to tell us about it, Kate Marvel.
SPEAKER_1: And so stay with us.
SPEAKER_4: Hey, I'm Roy Hill Percival, and I support StarTalk on Patreon.
SPEAKER_4: Bringing the universe down to Earth, this is StarTalk with Neil deGrasse Tyson.
SPEAKER_1: We're back to Star Talk Cosmic Queries.
SPEAKER_2: One we should have weekly.
SPEAKER_1: Weekly, yeah, yes, yes.
SPEAKER_1: And we've got one of our favorite climate experts, Kate Marvel, is up at the Goddard Institute for Space Studies, a branch of NASA, where planetary climate is their thing.
SPEAKER_1: Isn't that right, Kate?
SPEAKER_1: This is what y'all do it, right?
SPEAKER_3: Yeah, with a particular focus on the best planet, I think.
SPEAKER_1: The bestest planet there is, okay.
SPEAKER_2: Yeah, and if anybody got a problem with that, you can leave.
SPEAKER_1: No, but also you can learn things from other planets, because it's going through different phases that could inform Earth, but Earth is the object of people's interest, of course.
SPEAKER_1: The ultimate object of interest.
SPEAKER_1: All right, Chuck, what else do you have for us?
SPEAKER_2: All right, let's jump right back into this with our guy Matthew Swada.
SPEAKER_2: Matthew says, hello, Dr.
SPEAKER_2: Tyson, Dr.
SPEAKER_2: Marvel, Lord Nice.
SPEAKER_2: There's so much talk of this point of no return for the effects that we have had on our planet's climate.
SPEAKER_2: What changes that we have caused, if any, are actually reversible?
SPEAKER_2: So forget just, all right, we're going to stop impending doom.
SPEAKER_2: Can we go back to like, I don't know, 1901 levels?
SPEAKER_1: Let me lead off with one point and pass the baton to Kate.
SPEAKER_1: I speak with biologists almost daily because they're my colleagues at the American Museum of Natural History.
SPEAKER_1: There's a wave of extinction that we are causing from all of our conduct and all of our behavior and with the climate change, the balance of insects and other creatures that depended on very specific ecological niches of where they were.
SPEAKER_1: As that climate changes, it becomes hostile to them and can render them extinct.
SPEAKER_1: So one of the things that's irreversible is extinction.
SPEAKER_1: Okay, so let me just lead off now, Kate, I'll just hand it to the baton.
SPEAKER_2: Thanks a lot, Debbie Downer, now I'll give it to Kate.
SPEAKER_1: Bum us out some more, Kate.
SPEAKER_1: What do you have for us?
SPEAKER_3: I guess I'll start out with the good news, which is that climate change is not pass fail.
SPEAKER_3: It's not a binary thing.
SPEAKER_3: You hear a lot of times people say, if we exceed a particular temperature threshold, if we exceed 1.5 degrees Celsius or 2 degrees Celsius, everything is fine up until then, and then boom, everything is destroyed or we're doomed.
SPEAKER_3: It's a catastrophe.
SPEAKER_3: And both of those things are wrong.
SPEAKER_3: So first, everything is not fine.
SPEAKER_3: Everything is not fine right now.
SPEAKER_3: The world has warmed about 1.2 degrees since pre-industrial times, and it is not fine.
SPEAKER_3: But at the same time, nature does not sink in terms of degrees Celsius, even degrees Fahrenheit.
SPEAKER_3: There's no firm threshold where we exceed that and all of a sudden everything is terrible.
SPEAKER_3: What we have is a lot of little changes, some of which are reversible and some of which are irreversible.
SPEAKER_3: Things like species extinctions, those are irreversible.
SPEAKER_3: And the fear is that as we approach more and more and more warming, as we put more and more greenhouse gases in the atmosphere and it gets warmer and warmer, we start to trigger more and more changes that are irreversible.
SPEAKER_3: So for example, if you melt the West Antarctic ice sheet or you melt Greenland, that's a lot of ice that was sitting on land that now is going into the water and raising the sea levels.
SPEAKER_3: That is not reversible, at least on time scales that are relevant to humans.
SPEAKER_3: If you make it really, really warm, you could cause dieback of the Amazon.
SPEAKER_3: And once you get rid of the Amazon, it's not easy to regrow a rainforest from scratch.
SPEAKER_3: So there are a lot of these changes, what we call tipping points, that are irreversible in a human lifetime.
SPEAKER_3: And for me, the scariest thing about these tipping points is we can't tell you exactly when we're going to hit them.
SPEAKER_3: So I can't tell you this particular level of warming is safe, because no particular level of warming is safe.
SPEAKER_3: We do know that the risk of these things increases the warmer it gets.
SPEAKER_3: And so that's why I think, you know, really broken records, every scientist says, every tenth of a degree of warming matters.
SPEAKER_3: Every ton of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere matters.
SPEAKER_3: It all matters.
SPEAKER_1: What you're saying is, if we lose the Greenland ice sheet, and we flood the coastal cities, the way to reverse that is to just take a hose and drain the oceans and put it back into Greenland.
SPEAKER_1: But you have to be cold enough for it to still freeze.
SPEAKER_1: That's all you have to do.
SPEAKER_1: I just solved that problem.
SPEAKER_3: Great, all right, let's do it.
SPEAKER_1: I don't know why you didn't think of that.
SPEAKER_2: And is it a garden hose?
SPEAKER_1: Just sucking on hoses.
SPEAKER_2: It's a garden hose too.
SPEAKER_1: It's a garden hose.
SPEAKER_1: Totally a garden hose.
SPEAKER_2: We got this.
SPEAKER_2: Yeah, your ordinary garden hose.
SPEAKER_2: That's all you need.
SPEAKER_1: All right, Chuck, what else you got?
SPEAKER_2: Okay, here we go.
SPEAKER_2: I have to read this even though this gentleman from Patreon has been with us before, but it's our Alejandro Reynoso.
SPEAKER_1: Okay, this is our thing.
SPEAKER_1: We got to do it.
SPEAKER_1: I remember him.
SPEAKER_1: He's from Monterey.
SPEAKER_2: He is from Monterey, Mexico.
SPEAKER_2: And he says, hello.
SPEAKER_2: What should I say?
SPEAKER_2: Hola.
SPEAKER_1: What does he have?
SPEAKER_1: He's an old timer with us, I love him.
SPEAKER_2: He is, he is.
SPEAKER_1: So what does he have?
SPEAKER_2: He's got a pretty cool question here.
SPEAKER_2: He says, now where I live, we are going through a tremendous drought.
SPEAKER_2: How often is this going to happen in the world?
SPEAKER_2: And where are we going to see it the most?
SPEAKER_1: So Kate, clearly droughts are not something new, but do you have enough knowledge in your models to predict whether they'll become more frequent?
SPEAKER_1: And if they're more frequent, does that mean you have more rainfall somewhere else?
SPEAKER_1: Is there some net flow of water that just gets redistributed?
SPEAKER_3: Yeah, so we know a lot about how rainfall patterns will change in a warming world.
SPEAKER_3: We know that on average, the global average rainfall will increase, but that's not really any comfort to you if you live in a place like Australia or the Southwest or the Mediterranean that is projected to experience very severe drought, because rainfall will increase in some places.
SPEAKER_3: And in particular, really heavy rainfall is projected to increase in places like New York.
SPEAKER_3: In fact, we're already seeing that.
SPEAKER_3: Whereas in some other areas, rainfall is projected to decrease.
SPEAKER_3: But the thing about drought is that even if rainfall does not decrease, even if it remains the same, we are still going to see increased drought risk in many regions.
SPEAKER_3: And that's because warm air is thirsty air.
SPEAKER_3: It's driving evaporation away from the surface.
SPEAKER_3: So even if you're getting the exact same amount of rainfall, if that's all getting slurped out of your soil moisture very, very quickly by the warmer atmosphere, that's going to be a problem.
SPEAKER_3: You know.
SPEAKER_1: Oh, and so then it doesn't go to your water table, for example.
SPEAKER_3: Then it doesn't go to your water table.
SPEAKER_3: It doesn't go to plants.
SPEAKER_1: Oh my gosh, I hadn't thought about that.
SPEAKER_3: We have evidence that what's going on in Southwestern North America is actually the worst drought on record ever.
SPEAKER_3: So going back for thousands of years.
SPEAKER_2: And I just wanted to add that in addition to drought, areas that are warm where water should freeze, the water will not freeze.
SPEAKER_2: And that way the snow packs don't melt to sustain water levels.
SPEAKER_2: So that also leads to more drought.
SPEAKER_3: Absolutely.
SPEAKER_2: All right.
SPEAKER_2: Interesting.
SPEAKER_1: So Chuck, give me some more.
SPEAKER_2: Okay.
SPEAKER_2: Here we go.
SPEAKER_2: This is Peter Jacobs and Peter says, it is often said don't waste time on other planets while we haven't fixed our own.
SPEAKER_2: Isn't it better that we test our theories elsewhere?
SPEAKER_2: If possible, artificial habitats allow for much more experimentation.
SPEAKER_2: There's a lot of stuff packed in there.
SPEAKER_1: Yeah.
SPEAKER_1: So Kate, we've heard about these biodomes that was simulating Mars or the moon or whatever.
SPEAKER_1: So how realistic is that relative to your what-if models?
SPEAKER_3: So I want to say I'm a huge supporter of doing research on other planets.
SPEAKER_3: The more we know about other planets, the more we know about our own.
SPEAKER_3: So I think basic science is really, really important.
SPEAKER_3: Astronomy, really, really important because that teaches us about where we live.
SPEAKER_3: That said, I don't want to live on any of the other planets.
SPEAKER_3: I would hate to live on Mars.
SPEAKER_3: Mars wants to kill you.
SPEAKER_3: Venus wants to kill you even more, I think.
SPEAKER_3: And so the more we learn about other planets, the more we realize how special this particular planet is.
SPEAKER_3: I don't know because it's not my particular area of expertise what exactly technically we would need to pack to go live on another planet and how you fit that all in the trunk of, there's a trunk on spaceships, right?
SPEAKER_1: Of course, they all have trunks, yeah.
SPEAKER_3: Yeah, so I mean, I don't know how you pack that, but I think taking care of this planet.
SPEAKER_1: But just to be clear, there is a book called Packing for Mars, okay?
SPEAKER_1: And there's instructions, it's Packing for Mars, but in terms of living on Mars, that's a separate other book.
SPEAKER_1: You can pack to survive the trip there.
SPEAKER_1: After that, all bets are off.
SPEAKER_2: Just make sure you pack the book about living on Mars when you're packing on Mars.
SPEAKER_1: I'm excited.
SPEAKER_1: As Mary Roach, who has a whole series of very fun books exploring the limits of science and what they can do for us.
SPEAKER_1: Yeah, so okay, so I'm with you on this one, Kate, that Earth is, I think, will always be my priority.
SPEAKER_1: I love the universe, but I like being alive better.
SPEAKER_2: I think also resident in his question is, are your mathematical models reliable enough that they can be, I will say, perfect substitute for some type of empirical experimentation?
SPEAKER_1: A great, great way to rephrase that, Chuck.
SPEAKER_1: So what do you have, Kate?
SPEAKER_3: So models are always tested against data.
SPEAKER_3: So we test our models of Earth against observations of Earth's climate from satellites, from the ground.
SPEAKER_3: We also test them against reconstructions of past climates.
SPEAKER_3: So we say, what does the ice age look like in this particular model?
SPEAKER_3: And does that agree with our reconstructions from various proxies?
SPEAKER_3: You know, you also, it's the same physics that determines the climate on Earth and the climate on other planets.
SPEAKER_3: So you can take your climate model and you can say, all right, well, given what we know about Venus, what does it tell us about the, how do you pronounce it?
SPEAKER_3: Venusian, Venusian?
SPEAKER_1: Venusian, yeah, it's actually, it's technically venereal.
SPEAKER_1: But the medical doctors got to that word before the astronomers did.
SPEAKER_1: So you remember the Russian landers Venera?
SPEAKER_1: That was the name of their series of rush of landers on Venus.
SPEAKER_1: So, yeah, venereal is the genitive form of Venus.
SPEAKER_2: I'm not getting in any venereal ship, I'm sorry.
SPEAKER_1: So we just invented a whole new word, venutian.
SPEAKER_1: And it's fine, we will take it, there it is.
SPEAKER_1: So, time for like a couple more, like one more, one more question before we end this segment.
SPEAKER_2: Wow, just one more, okay.
SPEAKER_1: We have a third segment, but yeah, this will.
SPEAKER_2: Just in this segment, okay.
SPEAKER_1: Give me one more here from our Patreon list.
SPEAKER_2: All right, all right, all right.
SPEAKER_2: Jennifer Long says, Hello, Dr.
SPEAKER_2: Marvel, what would be the top five climate solutions?
SPEAKER_2: I don't care how ambitious they are.
SPEAKER_2: How do you feel they should be prioritized above all others?
SPEAKER_2: Thank you.
SPEAKER_2: Sincerely, Jen from Dallas, Texas.
SPEAKER_1: So Kate, it's possible to put pie in the sky goals, but maybe they're so out of reach, people get frustrated and then they give up.
SPEAKER_1: So maybe there's some middle ground between this is a big, audacious goal, but I think it's accessible to me, so therefore I will do it.
SPEAKER_3: So I think that's a great question.
SPEAKER_3: I also think that physicists are probably the wrong people to ask that question too.
SPEAKER_3: Because from our perspective, climate change is happening because greenhouse gas concentrations are increasing.
SPEAKER_3: So how do you stop climate change?
SPEAKER_3: You stop doing that.
SPEAKER_3: And in a climate model-
SPEAKER_1: By the way, I was thinking recently, a diet book written by a physicist, it would have two words in it.
SPEAKER_1: It would be, eat less, drink.
SPEAKER_2: That's all.
SPEAKER_3: So this is why nobody asks us anything.
SPEAKER_2: Nobody asks physicists.
SPEAKER_2: Hey, hey, doc, it hurts when I do this.
SPEAKER_2: Don't do that.
SPEAKER_1: Yeah, physicists are not all that compassionate with your situation.
SPEAKER_1: So what do you have?
SPEAKER_1: You have a top set of goals here?
SPEAKER_3: I would say, you know, stop burning fossil fuels.
SPEAKER_3: We know that so much.
SPEAKER_3: Number one.
SPEAKER_1: Number one.
SPEAKER_3: Number two, probably eat less meat or grow meat and fats or eat plant-based meat.
SPEAKER_3: I think that would be really, really helpful.
SPEAKER_1: So turn your diet into one with a smaller carbon footprint, however you might accomplish that.
SPEAKER_3: Yeah.
SPEAKER_1: Because the day might come where we grow meat proteins and then you're not raising farm animals to do it.
SPEAKER_3: Exactly.
SPEAKER_1: So you would have a lower carbon footprint than vegetarians do.
SPEAKER_3: Exactly.
SPEAKER_1: All that's done in the lab.
SPEAKER_1: So that's interesting.
SPEAKER_1: Okay.
SPEAKER_1: Three.
SPEAKER_3: Three.
SPEAKER_3: I mean, I guess maybe this should be number one is don't vote for people who don't get it.
SPEAKER_1: Yes.
SPEAKER_1: Oh my gosh.
SPEAKER_1: Who thought of that?
SPEAKER_1: In a democracy, we create our own government, right?
SPEAKER_1: And so, you need an informed electorate so that the leadership has the science literacy necessary to solve this problem.
SPEAKER_1: Very good.
SPEAKER_1: Okay.
SPEAKER_3: Electrify everything.
SPEAKER_3: Yeah.
SPEAKER_3: So, a lot of the things that we do right now.
SPEAKER_2: To a clean grid.
SPEAKER_2: Mm-hmm.
SPEAKER_2: Yeah.
SPEAKER_2: To a clean grid.
SPEAKER_3: Exactly.
SPEAKER_3: But, you know, electrify.
SPEAKER_1: You do it even if you're not there yet.
SPEAKER_3: Even if you're not there yet.
SPEAKER_1: It means you built in the capacity to take your energy from any of these other sources without changing your setup, right?
SPEAKER_3: So, an electric car is better than an internal combustion car, even if most of that electricity is not generated from clean sources, but we hope that they will become generated by clean sources.
SPEAKER_3: And, you know, again, walking, biking, taking the subway, those are all better than driving an electric car, but that's not an option for a lot of people who need to get various places.
SPEAKER_2: Right, right.
SPEAKER_2: That's so, boy, you just made me, just imagine a time where we have a clean, smart grid and then we're manufacturing clean technologies for transportation all the way down the line.
SPEAKER_2: It's one big loop of, you know, net zero production.
SPEAKER_2: Net zero carbon.
SPEAKER_2: Yeah, it'd be a beautiful thing because you're the electricity used to make the thing is clean and then the thing itself is clean.
SPEAKER_2: Like that's pretty awesome.
SPEAKER_1: All around, all around.
SPEAKER_1: Kate, we're going to have one more segment with you.
SPEAKER_1: But before we take this quick break, what is your footprint, speaking of footprints, what is your social media footprint?
SPEAKER_3: So I am on Twitter as Dr.
SPEAKER_3: Kate Marvel.
SPEAKER_3: I'm occasionally post taking a break right now.
SPEAKER_3: That's about it.
SPEAKER_1: All right.
SPEAKER_1: So you're not yet on TikTok.
SPEAKER_3: I'm too old for TikTok, I think.
SPEAKER_1: You said that with such authority, right?
SPEAKER_1: I'm too old for TikTok.
SPEAKER_1: All right.
SPEAKER_1: No, we're good there.
SPEAKER_1: All right.
SPEAKER_1: When we come back, a special segment of StarTalk Cosmic Queries featuring climate sustainability and our expert guest, Kate Marvel.
SPEAKER_1: We'll see you in a moment.
SPEAKER_1: We're back, Cosmic Queries, climate.
SPEAKER_1: And we've got our special guest, expert Kate Marvel.
SPEAKER_1: And Chuck, we've had her on the show before, we couldn't stop talking about her name.
SPEAKER_1: It's so superhero, oh my gosh.
SPEAKER_2: Your social media handle should be, Stan Lee did not create me.
SPEAKER_1: Though I nonetheless be a superhero.
SPEAKER_1: Right, what you got here.
SPEAKER_1: And so, Kate, just remind us what you do in a day.
SPEAKER_3: Sure, so I'm a climate modeler.
SPEAKER_3: I work with climate models, which are basically toy planets that you put on computers.
SPEAKER_3: And the cool thing about climate models is that they are literally world building machines.
SPEAKER_3: They help you understand the world that we live in, they help you understand what it would be like if things were otherwise, and they let you look at different what ifs.
SPEAKER_1: And Kate, we know, because we learned this in movies, if you have the power to create a world, you have the power to destroy one.
SPEAKER_1: With that power comes great responsibility.
SPEAKER_1: How are you thinking of Marvel?
SPEAKER_1: So, where do you get your data from?
SPEAKER_1: And then how do you invoke it in the models themselves?
SPEAKER_3: So, a model is just physics.
SPEAKER_3: It just expresses what we know about how air and water and ice and land all react and interact with each other.
SPEAKER_3: So, at its very, very basic core, a climate model is just basically Newton's laws of motion.
SPEAKER_3: You know, F equals MA, energy conservation, mass conservation.
SPEAKER_3: So, when you drill down, it's really just...
SPEAKER_1: Basic physics 101.
SPEAKER_1: This is like the first month of physics.
SPEAKER_3: Exactly.
SPEAKER_3: And, you know, the reason that climate models are so complex, the reason that we have to run them on supercomputers is that there are a lot of things acting under F equals MA.
SPEAKER_3: So, they're all interacting with each other.
SPEAKER_3: You've got, you know, all of these different aspects of the climate system.
SPEAKER_3: And that gets really, really complicated.
SPEAKER_3: It's just a bunch of differential equations.
SPEAKER_3: It's just a bunch of physics.
SPEAKER_3: But when you write it all down, those equations get really, really difficult or impossible for a human being to solve.
SPEAKER_3: And so, you need to solve them on a computer.
SPEAKER_1: I guess, and what do satellites do for you?
SPEAKER_3: So, satellites help give us the data that let us check whether or not our models are credible or not.
SPEAKER_3: So, we've got an amazing earth-observing system at NASA that's looking at various aspects of the climate system.
SPEAKER_3: So, everything from the temperature, to the cloud cover, to the color of the oceans to see what phytoplankton is doing in the oceans.
SPEAKER_3: So, we're tracking an incredible amount of data from space and that gives us ways to test, hey, are things changing in the way that our models say they should be changing?
SPEAKER_1: Well, Kate, when I hear you say that, part of me also thinks the opposite, not the opposite, but the inverse of that.
SPEAKER_1: If you are creating a model, wouldn't you use data to start the model?
SPEAKER_1: Or is all the data you're gathering from space to check your model?
SPEAKER_3: Most of it's to check the model.
SPEAKER_1: Isn't some of the data show up in both places?
SPEAKER_3: Yeah, I mean, so some of it starts in both places.
SPEAKER_3: We have rough estimates for what the average temperature of the planet is.
SPEAKER_3: So we've got a lot of measurements that we use as kind of initial conditions for the model.
SPEAKER_3: What the ocean looks like, where the ocean is, something as basic as that.
SPEAKER_3: But then at the time component, how things are changing, a lot of times people think that we are using the observations in order to kind of drive the models.
SPEAKER_3: And that's not necessarily the case.
SPEAKER_3: We're using the observations in order to check the models.
SPEAKER_1: I was trying to clarify that.
SPEAKER_1: That's all.
SPEAKER_1: Yeah.
SPEAKER_2: So are there any other organizations that are modeling along with you or in opposition to you?
SPEAKER_2: And do you guys share information?
SPEAKER_3: Yeah.
SPEAKER_3: So there's a bit of a friendly competition with different climate modeling groups.
SPEAKER_3: We have, I think, four climate models in the United States.
SPEAKER_3: Ours at NASA GISS.
SPEAKER_3: There's one at Princeton, one in Boulder, and one developed out of the Department of Energy.
SPEAKER_3: Then there's climate models all over the world.
SPEAKER_3: So there's a Japanese climate model.
SPEAKER_3: There is a Chinese climate model.
SPEAKER_3: There is a British climate model.
SPEAKER_3: There is a French climate model.
SPEAKER_1: And so what's your competition, just to see who matches the data the best as it comes rolling in, I guess?
SPEAKER_3: Well, there's a whole bunch of different ways to be wrong.
SPEAKER_3: So all models are wrong.
SPEAKER_3: I think that's really a good thing.
SPEAKER_3: So we're not just measuring the average temperature of the planet.
SPEAKER_3: We're measuring climate models' output, an incredible amount of data.
SPEAKER_3: Right now, I think the current generation of climate models is giving us about 50 petabytes of data.
SPEAKER_3: So this is a huge big data problem.
SPEAKER_1: A petabyte is a thousand times bigger than a terabyte.
SPEAKER_1: A terabyte, a thousand times bigger than a gigabyte, a thousand times bigger than a megabyte.
SPEAKER_1: So there we go.
SPEAKER_2: Yeah, it's a lot.
SPEAKER_3: It's a lot.
SPEAKER_3: So they're giving us not just temperature, but rainfall and cloud cover and soil moisture and ice and all of these different variables that interlock and interact and make up the climate system.
SPEAKER_1: So at some point, if all of you start agreeing with each other, that's a good sign because it means that however differently everyone was thinking from each other at the beginning, there's some convergence of an understanding of how the systems work.
SPEAKER_1: Is that a fair prediction for the future?
SPEAKER_3: Absolutely.
SPEAKER_3: So if all climate models agree on something, that means that the physics is incredibly well understood.
SPEAKER_3: So all climate models get warmer in response to elevated carbon dioxide.
SPEAKER_3: And that's because the physics of the greenhouse effect is not something that is at all controversial.
SPEAKER_1: So there are other research centers that, like you said, you're pseudo-competing with.
SPEAKER_1: But how can an organization, which presumably has a little more power and influence than an individual, so how can an organization maybe allocate its time, its money, its effort to mitigate some of what you're trying to understand there?
SPEAKER_3: So I love that question.
SPEAKER_3: And the reason I love it is, I think there's so much emphasis put on the individual.
SPEAKER_3: What can individuals do?
SPEAKER_3: Do you recycle?
SPEAKER_3: Do you buy different light bulbs?
SPEAKER_3: And no individual is going to be able to make even a drop in the bucket of climate change.
SPEAKER_3: So this is really a systemic problem and we really need systemic solutions.
SPEAKER_3: But no individual is completely isolated.
SPEAKER_3: Everybody is part of a community.
SPEAKER_3: Everybody is part of a church group.
SPEAKER_3: Everybody has, most people have employers.
SPEAKER_3: And so it's really at that level that we can start.
SPEAKER_1: Interesting.
SPEAKER_1: So the concept of an organization here is way beyond just what is the name of your company.
SPEAKER_1: It's anything you are a participant in is bigger than you are, but you all might have a like mind in order to take action.
SPEAKER_3: I think so.
SPEAKER_1: Is that kind of where you're headed there?
SPEAKER_3: I think so, yeah.
SPEAKER_3: I think then that can be really powerful because A, you can get stuff done when you band together in larger groups.
SPEAKER_3: But also it makes you feel less alone.
SPEAKER_3: I talk to a lot of people who are feeling really overwhelmed and really terrified and really anxious.
SPEAKER_3: And when you think of just yourself as an individual, of course you feel anxious because what can one individual do with such a big problem?
SPEAKER_3: But once you start acting and once you start bringing in other people in your networks, your friend group, your school, whatever, then you start feeling less alone and you start being able to be more effective.
SPEAKER_1: You're a New York resident.
SPEAKER_1: You may remember there's going to be a mandate on, is it new construction or all construction where you can't use a gas stove anymore, where everyone is going to convert to the electromagnetic induction or just the electric coil.
SPEAKER_1: So that's a city making a decision for its own future.
SPEAKER_1: And that's what you mean when you say this, right?
SPEAKER_1: Because larger organizations can make systemic changes in ways the individual can't.
SPEAKER_3: Absolutely.
SPEAKER_2: And there are several cities making that same move.
SPEAKER_2: There are several cities across the nation right now making that same move where the gas pipes will be capped.
SPEAKER_2: And when you have a building, you will just have an induction.
SPEAKER_2: You'll be cooking with magnetism.
SPEAKER_1: Yes.
SPEAKER_1: Electromagnetism.
SPEAKER_2: Electromagnetism.
SPEAKER_2: It's delicious.
SPEAKER_1: But it doesn't roll off the tongue like Chuck, when they say, cooking with gas now.
SPEAKER_1: You're cooking with electromagnetic induction now.
SPEAKER_1: So another very important question, I think, Kate, is often we see industries that are invested in their own carbon footprint or in denial of it.
SPEAKER_1: And we have scientists giving these other messages.
SPEAKER_1: Do you have any advice on how scientists and the corporate world can make nice in the sandbox?
SPEAKER_1: Because I don't see that happening.
SPEAKER_3: Yeah, I think, you know, one-
SPEAKER_1: Wait, wait, wait, one more thing.
SPEAKER_1: What do you do with your brethren who they'll find the one out of a hundred of you who says, oh, this climate thing is all a hoax.
SPEAKER_1: And they'll show up with credentials, you know, not entirely different from your own.
SPEAKER_2: Yeah, what they also should show up with is that guy's bank account because he's being paid by fossil fuel companies to say that crap.
SPEAKER_1: So where's the bridge, Kate, how do you do this?
SPEAKER_3: I mean, one of the most painful realizations for me as a scientist is that data doesn't change people's minds.
SPEAKER_3: You know, I have this temptation to show up and when I talk to people say, but I have an equation.
SPEAKER_3: Oh, you want to see another equation?
SPEAKER_3: You want to see a graph?
SPEAKER_3: I have a graph.
SPEAKER_3: And that doesn't work.
SPEAKER_3: That doesn't change people's minds.
SPEAKER_3: I think what changes people's minds are stories and stories told by messengers that they trust.
SPEAKER_3: And so I realized that there are audiences that I'm not going to be able to talk to.
SPEAKER_3: They don't trust me.
SPEAKER_3: They don't see me as a welcome messenger.
SPEAKER_3: And that's okay because what we need is to get more people involved in talking about climate change.
SPEAKER_3: I think that's why it is so important for all of us to talk about this as much as possible because if people don't listen to me, then maybe they'll listen to you.
SPEAKER_1: Kate, that's profound.
SPEAKER_1: I like the idea of the storytellers who, the trusted storytellers, we just have to make sure that they are educated in ways that their story has some relationship to an objective reality.
SPEAKER_2: Once upon a time, there was a planet called Earth.
SPEAKER_2: And then, they had these things called homo sapiens come along.
SPEAKER_2: And they mucked it all up.
SPEAKER_2: The end.
SPEAKER_2: The end!
SPEAKER_1: Kate, one last question.
SPEAKER_1: We gotta keep this tight.
SPEAKER_1: How can we communicate the urgency of this without having people throw up their hands without hope?
SPEAKER_2: That's good stuff there.
SPEAKER_3: Yeah, that's something that I struggle with a little bit.
SPEAKER_3: Because if you say how bad it is, if you say, you know, this is really, really serious, this is an existential threat, then yes, people tend to shut down.
SPEAKER_3: People tend to get very anxious.
SPEAKER_3: And I think the way, the framing that really works for me is saying, can you imagine how scary climate change would be if we didn't know what was causing it?
SPEAKER_3: Can you imagine if there was nothing that we can do about this?
SPEAKER_3: That's not true.
SPEAKER_3: There is something that we can do about this.
SPEAKER_1: Oh, this is good.
SPEAKER_1: You know, I've never thought of it that way, Kate.
SPEAKER_1: That's brilliant.
SPEAKER_1: It's simple and brilliant at the same time, which most brilliant things are.
SPEAKER_2: One of the things I like to say to people is, aren't you tired of hearing about the greatest generation?
SPEAKER_2: Like every time you hear anything about any generation, it's like, oh yeah, well, we're the greatest generation.
SPEAKER_2: We saved the world.
SPEAKER_2: We did this.
SPEAKER_2: We did, don't you wanna be the greatest generation?
SPEAKER_2: Like you have an opportunity to be the greatest generation because when we look back on this time, it will either be that we stepped up to the plate or we're in a world of crap, one or the other.
SPEAKER_2: And if we step up to the plate, they'll call you the greatest generation because you did it.
SPEAKER_1: So Chuck, you wanna roll there with your poetic brilliance and then you said crap.
SPEAKER_1: It was like, that didn't fit in the narrative there.
SPEAKER_2: You know why?
SPEAKER_2: Because the term is world of something else.
SPEAKER_2: So you're absolutely right.
SPEAKER_3: All right.
SPEAKER_1: Kate, we gotta close this out.
SPEAKER_1: Give me one, give us a sentence to take us home.
SPEAKER_1: Just one, you've been wise this entire show.
SPEAKER_1: Now cap that with another bit of wisdom that'll take us home.
SPEAKER_3: Oh man, no pressure.
SPEAKER_3: I would say we are lucky.
SPEAKER_3: We are lucky to have been born at this time because we are alive at exactly the right time to change everything for the better.
SPEAKER_1: Again, something not to take for granted.
SPEAKER_1: Very good.
SPEAKER_1: All right, we're gonna call it quits there.
SPEAKER_1: Kate, this has been wonderful.
SPEAKER_1: Like Chuck says, we gotta do this weekly.
SPEAKER_1: Because there's too much, it matters too much to make this an only every now and then thing.
SPEAKER_1: So, anyway, Dr.
SPEAKER_1: Kate Marvel, always good to have you.
SPEAKER_1: And I wanna see the superhero comic book with you featured in it soon, okay?
SPEAKER_1: Chuck, always good to have you, man.
SPEAKER_2: Always a pleasure.
SPEAKER_1: All right, this has been StarTalk Cosmic Queries climate edition.
SPEAKER_1: Neil deGrasse Tyson here, your personal astrophysicist.
SPEAKER_1: Keep looking out.