Science Friday - Business Planning For Climate Change,The Digital Afterlife. May 3, 2019, Part 1

Episode Date: May 3, 2019

Scientists have built all sorts of models to predict the likelihood of extreme weather events. But it’s not just scientists who are interested in these models. Telecomm giant AT&T teamed up with scientists at Argonne National Laboratory in Illinois to build a climate map of the Southeastern part of the country, overlaid with a map of AT&T’s infrastructure. Climate scientist Rao Kothamarthi from Argonne Labs discusses the process of creating hyperlocal climate change models, and Shannon Carroll, director of environmental sustainability at At&T, talks about how the company can use that information for making decisions on how to protect their infrastructure. Social media is, in many ways, the record keeper of our lives. It may be time to start thinking about how we preserve that record for the future. How should we think about the online profiles of the deceased? As the person’s property or as their remains? Should they be inherited or passed on? Preserved or deleted? We discuss planning for the digital afterlife.  Subscribe to this podcast. Plus, to stay updated on all things science, sign up for Science Friday's newsletters.

Hey there, Ira here. We know lead is a harmful neurotoxin, especially for young children. And yet for much of the 20th century, it was used in a wide variety of everyday consumer products, including gasoline and household paint. WNYC Studios' new podcast, The Stakes, tells the story of how the lead industry fooled the public into thinking these products were safe. Here's a hint. It involved a marketing campaign aimed at children and their parents.

and how one pediatrician devised an elaborate study using kids' baby teeth to prove all of that lead was doing harm. That's the stakes from WNYC Studios. Check it out wherever you get your podcasts. This is Science Friday. I'm Ira Flato. A bit later in the hour, some digital estate planning and how one U.S. company is planning for the potential havoc wrought by climate change. But first, back in 2008, Paleo-Elew. anthropologists exploring in a Siberian cave found a single hominid finger bone. DNA analysis of that

bone led researchers to say the find marked the discovery of a new kind of ancient human lineage separate from the antutals and Homo sapiens. That lineage became known as Denisivans after the cave where the finger bone was found. This week, researchers announced another Denisovan find far away from the original site. Joining me now to talk about why that is important and other stories from the Week in Science is Maggie Kerth Baker, a senior science reporter at 538. Nice to have you back again, Maggie.

Thanks for having me. Tell us about this bone. What's important about this new bone find? Well, so the interesting thing about the Denisovan species is that it's really been something that we know primarily through DNA analysis. So scientists can tell you a lot about this gene. genome, but not about what Denisovans looked like. So the available data really increased significantly this week with this jawbone find. You know, it tells us a little bit more about their appearance

because it lacks a chin, for instance, and has these particularly big teeth that are different in shape and size from those of Neanderthals and modern humans and really any other known hominins. And the other thing that's really important about this is that finding this jawbone in Tibet helps back up this previous DNA research that had found that a mutation that's common in modern Tibetans probably originally came from Denisovans. So this mutation is interesting. It's associated with making it easier to breathe at high altitude. And this 160,000 euro jawbone shows that the Denisovans were there living in the Himalayas, at least 120,000 years before Homo sapiens. and they were adapting to their environment in a way that they'd eventually pass on to us.

And that was 1,500 miles away from the original find. Isn't that significant? Right. Yeah, that definitely is also. It means that they were spread out over a pretty big chunk of Vesha. Okay, let's move on to news this week about a scandal involving aluminum for rockets. Yeah. So at least two unmanned missions to space failed because a NASA contractor was falsifying

the results of materials testing. This Justice Department investigation just got published that found that this aluminum extrusion company had deliberately altered certification test results between 1996 and 2015, trying to make it look like the materials it produced met NASA specifications when they didn't. And the scam resulted in two satellites failing to reach orbit, ironically, because they failed to fail rather than failing themselves. So these were things that were part of the payload faring, which is kind of like this clamshell shaped housing that protects the satellite during launch. That opens up and lets it out, right?

Right, yeah. It's supposed to separate and fall away. And in both of these launches, it did not separate and fall away, which meant that the rocket weighed too much, and then the whole thing fell back to Earth and disintegrated. And it effectively wasted about $700 million. You know, this is something that the Justice Department and NASA have been investigating for a long time. The company involved got banned from government contracting back in 2015, but this is just the first time the results have been made public. Sounds pretty interesting. Let's move on to a story

that we covered a few weeks ago. We talked with astronomer Adam Reese about attempts to measure the Hubble constant. It seems to be really a lot of that going on in the news. Yeah. So the Hubble constant is kind of an interesting thing. It's this idea of trying to get a hold of the rate of expansion of the universe. And it is one of the key tasks that was proposed for the Hubble Space Telescope back when it first launched in 1990. So over time, the Hubble Space Telescope has been using these observations of the distance between certain kinds of pulsating stars to narrow down its estimate of what this Hubble constant is and get a little bit closer and closer to what, we assume is an accurate number.

They had, what happened this week is that they came out with a new revised estimate, and this one, they think, is narrowing that uncertainty to the point that it's probably accurate to within 1.9%. But, and I think this is something you guys talked about before, there's another way to measure the Hubble constant. And that other way is studying the cosmic microwave background radiation, so essentially like the leftovers of the Big Bang. Right.

And that's produced an entirely different estimate of the Hubble constant. And this new constant that the space telescope researchers think is the most accurate one they've ever produced is now 9% faster than the constant as measured by that cosmic microwave background radiation. So we've got this pretty big difference. Wow. And that would make the universe, what, younger if it's like? Or older?

Or older or something? both at the same time? I don't know. Let's look at our hands and just like be fascinated with the universe. But could they both be right? I mean, could there be new physics here? Adam re-said it to us. Well, maybe there's new physics we don't know about. Maybe we're both right, you know? Right. I mean, like, that's the really interesting thing is the existing cosmological models suggest that these two things, you know, should match. But nobody knows yet why they don't. So maybe somebody's got something wrong or maybe what we have wrong is our cosmological. models. Can't do good Twilight's own music.

Finally, there's a story about a delivery system for transplanted organs. Tell us about that. Yeah, so a life-saving kidney made a three-mile journey from donor to transplant recipient via drone this week, and that is a first for organ transplants. It's part of a test case demonstration at the University of Maryland, but the researchers are hoping the technology could someday make organ delivery faster and give doctors a better ability to sort of track the movement of the organ in transit so they would know exactly where it is at all times. And that matters for a couple of reasons. First, because those organs lose viability,

the longer it takes to get to a recipient. But another part here is that the organ donor system is currently undergoing some big changes that are likely going to make longer distance transplants more common. This is something I read about at 538 a couple of weeks ago. these new rules for liver donations took effect this week. And they are aiming to redistribute organs from parts of the country that have more donor organs to parts that have fewer donor organs. And they're pretty controversial rules. So the state of Kansas is currently considering a bill that would keep Kansas organs for Kansans, for instance. And kidneys are probably the next thing on the list that's going to get these rule revisions after.

the liver ones have taken effect. So we could someday be looking at a future where somebody in New York City is getting a new organ from rural Pennsylvania delivered via drone. Wow. And I guess you really have to have great confidence in a drone's ability to do this, because this is not just, you know, it's not a loaf of bread you're delivering here. Right. I mean, obviously, there's a lot of testing to go before people are going to feel comfortable

doing long-distance trips with these things. but they were done using multiple pilots following this thing very closely. And as the researchers pointed out, in some ways, it's a little bit better than sending it in a truck or, you know, a plane because you know exactly where the thing is. It's a lot more easy to track it as it's moving. Could we have an Oregon donor war break out between the states here? Oh, we could. That is, that whole bit is a whole issue in and of itself where what you have is some parts of the country have higher rates of donor registration and some parts of the country have higher rates of donor need and those do not necessarily match up real well. Maggie Kerth Baker, Senior Science Reporter 538.

Always a pleasure to have you. Thanks for joining us. Thank you for having me. Now it's time to check in on the state of science. This is KERNL. Iowa Public Radio News. Local science stories of national significance. California had a very green spring.

The hills are alive with color. Residents are certainly thankful for the vegetation that springtime rain is brought. But they may be sorry come next wildfire season when those verdant hills once again turn into kindling. That is, how much fuel does a super green spring eventually add to the fire? Jacob Margola, science reporter at KPCC set out to try and answer that very question. Hi, Jacob. Hey. So this is quite interesting.

We've talked before about a strong rainy season in California. Does it offer protection against a bad wildfire season? We found that maybe it does not. Yeah, so we want a lot of rain, right? We want our reservoirs to fill up. And with a lot of rain, those landscapes that really dried out, especially during that drought, they start to recover, especially the bigger fuels. The bad news is that along, as you said, along with all that rain, comes the growth of really fast-growing. fuels like grasses. And those actually dry out very quickly. They're ready to burn. They're good

fuels to burn. They burn hot and they burn fast. And there's even differences in Northern California versus Southern California, right? Oh, my God. It's hugely diverse here. And in Northern California, you know, they have to worry about the grasses too. But when grasses aren't enough on their own to fuel huge wildland fires. You need bigger fuels. So in Northern California, the big concern are the large swaths of dead trees that they have. And the fire is really hard to fight when those grasses catch, the trees eventually catch on fire, and that fire travels across the top of the trees. Firefighters have told me that it's pretty tough to fight. Here in Southern California, it's a bit different, though. Like our bigger fuel concern is largely with chaparral and brush, so lower-lying

plants. And those naturally swing back and forth between moist and dry. The thing is, you know, since we're coming off all these drought years with only a couple of wet years in between, it means that any of that recovery that we had that could possibly lower the fire risk, it could possibly go away. Like I called the National Interagency Fire Center and spoke to Jessica Gardetto, a spokesperson there, and this is what she told me. I do know that overall the vegetation in Southern California has recovered because of this moisture, but one good year of rain does not basically erase years of drought. So if we do get those high increased temperatures for a long period of time without rain to mitigate them, those fuels such as Chaparral could dry out and be ready to burn.

So Jacob, the firefighters know which areas will be vulnerable based on a vegetation that grew this spring? Yeah, you know, they don't necessarily. I mean, they're watching everywhere first off. But second, they don't necessarily there are certain areas that are more susceptible. And those are going to be the areas that have had a lot of old growth that's been around for a long time that hasn't burned because of fire management practices or maybe just a fire hasn't started up in that place. That's what happened with the Thomas Fire in 2017, which was at the time the largest firing of state history. All right. We'll just have to watch and wait and have you back, Jacob.

Jacob Margola, science reporter and host of the podcast, The Big One, your survival guide from KPCC. We're going to take a break and talk about why AT&T decided to build a climate change map for the fear of what the future holds. and how they need to be ready for it. Stay with us. We'll be right back after this break. This is Science Friday. I'm Ira Flato. When the talk turns to climate change, as it is increasingly doing, you can bet that people will discuss sea level rise or increased wildfires, more powerful hurricanes,

and how cities and governments are getting ready or not. What you don't hear a lot about is how companies are preparing to cope with the challenges ahead. But now the telecom giant AT&T, is teaming up with scientists at Argonne National Labs to build a climate map, a detailed climate map of the country. So why is AT&T interested in the climate? And will other companies follow suit? Let me introduce my next guest.

Shannon Carroll is the director of environmental sustainability at AT&T, and he is based in Dallas, Texas. Welcome to Science Friday. Hi, Ari. Great to be here. And Roald Cotomardi is chief scientist of the Environmental Science Division. at Argonne National Laboratory in Lamont, Illinois. Welcome to Science Friday. Ida, thanks.

You're welcome. Nice to have you. Shannon, AT&T isn't known to deal in climate science. Why is the company so interested in developing this detailed climate map? Well, why is definitely the most important question, but probably the easiest to answer in this case. No surprise, extreme weather, climate change, it impacts everyone, and that includes AT&T. So from our perspective, our customers, our employees, the communities in which we serve, they depend on us to not only maintain a great network today but into the future,

and that means being climate resilient. And so what do you mean you're worried about the winds, the waters, or all those things? Well, for this first go-around, we're piloting this essentially, right? So we have four states that we're doing and we're looking at flooding both coastal and inland, and we're also looking at severe winds. So that's where we started. and we have plans to expand the tool. But as we figured we're going to launch this journey, how do we do that?

We say, let's start with a particular region that's particularly susceptible to these severe weather events. And let's look at the categories that are, you know, the most impactful to our network. Yeah, because you do have a big network, and a lot of people depend on you. Rao, when we talk about climate models, they're usually on these really big global level. But you make, over the air at Argonne, you make very local level models down to the state, down to a couple of models. Miles? How do you... Yeah.

How do you do that? How do you turn it into a hyperlocal map, a big map into a hyperlocal one? Yeah. I mean, that's the biggest question, right? I mean, you have global climate models operating at 100, 200 kilometers. And most of the questions like AT&T and other people are actually asking at hundreds of meters to do a few kilometers. And this has been a big gap in the way we interact with this adaptation or mitigation communities

working on small scales with the global climate model. So what we do is a process called dynamic downscaling. It's a technical name in the sense. Essentially a model like you can imagine a weather forecast model that is used by NOAA, actually it's the same model. Operating on really long time scales, not just operating on one day or five-day forecast, but modified so that it can operate over. What we did is we modified it so it operates over all of North America for tens of years

at the time. So that produces a higher resolution output. We actually are at a resolution of about 12 kilometers per grid cell, which is approximately 10 times better than where the climate models are right now. And the idea is that from there you can then produce enough output

from these models on precipitation variability at local scales. Then you can run a hydrology model and coastal flooding miles and do other things. Let me bring my audience in our number 844-7-482-55. if you'd like to talk about, you know, cell towers, communications infrastructure, all stuff that AT&T and the other folks are thinking about and planning for 844-8255,

or you can tweet us at SciFRI. Shannon, this map you worked on, as you say, it's a pilot. You looked at states in the southeast. Why did you pick this region, the southeast, to focus on first? Well, again, we knew we wanted to start small, essentially. then build after that. And so as we had the conversations about, you know, which region do you start with, it's hard to argue that the Southeast region is particularly susceptible to these kind of weather events. So that was really our perspective. We're fortunate in the way that we have a significant

footprint in terms of we covered the entire United States. But again, it just made sense to start small. And so we started with the Southeast region. I mean, 2017 was a great example in terms of, you know, what happens with climate-related events. So there was multiple severe weather events, including multiple hurricanes, and the Southeast region got hit by those as well. Can you give us an idea of exactly where you're looking at first? Where in the Southeast? Well, so from our perspective, it's the entire four states.

So we're doing Florida, Georgia, North Carolina, South Carolina. And really, so let me describe the tool a little bit and what it can do. So now, if I'm a network planner, if I have a responsibility for, whether it's our buildings or particular pieces of equipment, in the network. I can sit down at my desk. I can pull up this tool and have a map in front of me. I can now see all the cell sites, all the fiber layout, all the different buildings that are associated with maintaining the network. I can see them on the map. Now also what I can do is click on those in particular, click on those individual things and see what the severe weather related

events could be. So for example, coastal flooding, inland flooding. So if I have responsibility for, I'm going to make this up five wire centers in the southeast or let's say savannah. for example, I can then click on each and every one of those and see if they're impacted at all or will they be impacted with up to six to eight feet of flooding. And now I have the data to make better decisions. And so you can theoretically then get your forces ready in certain areas if a storm should hit? Absolutely. And we've done that historically.

We have a long and proud tradition in terms of disaster recovery, business continuity planning. These are things we do today. This climate model or this climate tool really allows us to take it to the next level and beyond the near term and look at the long-term impacts of climate change. How did the state officials you're dealing with react to this? So the reception has been overwhelmingly positive. We have definitely received calls from folks wanting to know how they can access the data. And we very early on in our initial press release, we talked about the fact that we're

going to make this data publicly available. So obviously, as we engage Argonne, it's really important that we use the data to do good old-fashioned, you know, risk management, risk assessment, but we also want to empower others to do that as well. So we have announcements coming soon, but we're definitely going to make the underlying data that Argonne has produced for us available for everybody. It's important that everybody's climate resilient. Let me go to the phone. So Charles, in one of those areas in Fort Lauderdale, Florida. Hi, Charles. Good afternoon. Thank you so much for taking my call. We're obviously already aware and concerned about climate change here in Fort Lauderdale, and especially in Miami. But I'm wondering,

my question is, are there areas in the country, or particularly in the south, east of the country, that are likely to feel less of an impact that are safer to be? You know, is it better in the Carolinas, for instance, than it is. You might hear that I'm thinking about maybe relocating, depending on how this goes, but Fort Lauderdale may not be here forever, so I'd be curious to hear the answer about where it's safer. You know, we joke about it, but it is a serious question, is it not, if you want to know where to live? Let me ask Rao about that. So we have actually done this analysis at a grid resolution of 200 meters.

So once the AT&T makes a map available, there is uncertainty in this thing. So we also provide uncertainty on those things. You should be able to see which part of the region is actually more, less susceptible to this kind of issue. So the way I look at what we did for this is kind of a risk assessment for future. So they are looking at a lot of their infrastructure, how the risk for those infrastructure may change into the future. So that's what this does. And I think there could be a number of creative ways of using this

once it is available to everybody. Well, when can we look at this data? I mean, you're saying you've got this down that I hear right down to 200 meters? The flood data is around 200 meters. So the cool, the thing for me is somebody like me that is, very interesting about this is that we always talk about adaptation. Everybody says, okay, let me see if I can adapt to this change. But the cost for mitigation and policy are discussed a lot, climate change mitigation.

How much does it cut? Climate change policy, how much does this cost? But there is very little discussion on what adaptation costs are. One of the cool things that AT&T is kind of trying to do is, what if I did this and how would make cost, how would it affect my bottom line? So I think once those kinds of business case for doing this climate change is developed in the industry, that will be a bigger impact with this than a lot of other things. In my mind, that would be a huge benefit of this. Interesting.

Shannon, but you're operating in some places of the country where you're not allowed to use the words climate change. Yeah, so for us, you know, our position is very clear, and we have public policies on this. that I'd point folks to, but climate change impacts everybody. We recognize that it's going to impact AT&T. So we have an obligation we feel to better serve our customers, our employees, and again, the communities in which we work to make sure that we have the most climate resilient network possible. So it's that simple for us. All right.

Let me go to a couple of interesting tweets coming in. Quix says does 5G, which we have talked about recently, does it offer any advantages for climate change preparedness or resilience? Shannon? So I'm not a 5G expert, so I'll definitely stay in my lane. What I can say to that is that this tool is going to allow us at AT&T to not only assess the risk to the infrastructure that we have in the ground today, but also the infrastructure we're going to put in for 5G, the infrastructure we're going to put in for FirstNet, and then whatever the next new network of the future is, which we know is coming, we'll be able to use this tool in all those cases. Another tweet from Barat says, will the tool be easy enough for users with limited

knowledge about climate science. Rao, what do you think? Yes. Yes, it should be. I think they developed a pretty nice tool. And now I'm going to say it one more time. When are we going to get to see it? So I'll go ahead and take that one. We're efforting that as we speak,

right? So we want to make sure that to the point that was just made that it's, when we put it out there, it's usable. And I think that's one of the biggest challenges. There's lots of climate data that you can find out there, but how usable is it? So we're trying to crack that nut right now. Obviously, With what we're doing with it, there's some proprietary issues in terms of our network layout,

so we want to make sure that we're able to provide the clean underlying climate data in a way that's useful, in particular for researchers, academics, universities, utilities, all those folks who are interested in being more climate resilient. Raoul, let's talk about the many flood models that are out there. You look specifically at how coastal flooding will change in 20 years in Florida, and that's a good spot because it is so low-lying. Did you find any interesting results? Yeah, I mean, one of the difficulties of doing coastal flood or coastal surges is that a climate model by itself doesn't actually simulate a hurricane or something like a hurricane. But with our downscale model, we were able to run a coastal flood model, which is called Earth Cirque, which is developed in Notre Dame. So what we did is we simulated a whole bunch of entire summers for the future, but mid-century, with various uncertainties and ran this model to simulate coastal.

flood-like situation. So every year we see a few of them. So we built the statistics on that and with the current we were able to, with the statistics for the current climate, we were able to do some uncertainty on that and also calculate what happens. One of the interesting things we saw from these calculations is that the low end of the coastal surge actually will increase, where you see low impact events, there seem to be increasing. The median decreased a lot somewhat and the extremes and the highest events also increased a lot. So the distribution seems to be changing how these things happen. So you're saying that it's more,

there's a greater possibility of high flooding and low-level flooding. Look, yeah. Wow. From coastal events. And as part of the stay with Florida, is the whole state, well not, the whole state can't be equally affected, but the coastal cities on the state, are they all equally affected? Yeah, yeah.

I mean, Florida is interesting because of, I mean, And they get about, I think historically they got about 40% of all hurricanes came over Florida. I think it's even probably more than that. So it's obviously it's a place that these things can happen quite often. And the coastal regions get affected. And another interesting thing is that when we did the wind analysis of, again, the risk of wind changing, Florida sees actually a decrease in wind speeds as you go in the future because the temperatures increase. And so there's more mixing in the atmosphere and seems like the peak winds actually decreases.

on average. Interesting. I'm Ira Flato. This is Science Friday from WNYC Studios, talking about coping with climate change. Shannon, do you think other companies, other companies in your business and other business now are having to take this more seriously and prepare as you are? Absolutely. I think, you know, if you go out there and do a little bit of research, there's definitely companies doing things in this realm.

I think what we're doing is very unique. It's definitely unique to our particular industry, and we want to promote that uniqueness. We want to promote that leadership position. So, again, that's why we're going to make this data available to everybody. We encourage everybody, whether it's our peers or those outside the industry to use this data. Let's go to the phones to Robert, a little more inland in Evanston, Illinois, though not far from O'League. Robert, go ahead. Yeah, well, my question is more about how AT&T is, like, does it affect their different services differently?

For example, traditional phone, PSTN access, and maybe rural areas where they're still relying on some of that older technology or other, you know, similarly like ISDN services. And does AT&T deal with that differently? Are they able to safeguard one type of service more than the other? Or are they kind of leaving some things behind as they have to be changed their way of looking at the future? Good question. So the short answer is yes in terms of, you know, do we have to be? have to treat things differently. And that doesn't change from today to tomorrow.

So, you know, copper wires that we have in the ground versus fiber cables, they react very differently to water. But we rely on our network engineers, the experts that they are, to put in the right adaptation steps to address either scenario. Again, what this allows us to do is take kind of the great work that we've done traditionally in the near term and short term, you know, risk management planning, and then expand that out to mid-century and expand that out to the probability of inland and coastal flooding. So again, all different parts of the business can use this as well. So if you're in

corporate real estate, you need to put up a new wire center or if you're in, again, networking, you need to put in a new cell site. You can look at those two things differently and you have the expertise in your job to know how these different climate impacts affects that equipment. And again, we're just giving people knowledge and information so they can make smarter climate decisions. If there is an area that you see might have more flooding in the future, will you not build there? We will absolutely serve our customers where they are today and wherever they will be tomorrow. That's kind of full stop, right? So what this tool allows us to do, though, is, again, better serve those customers.

So if our customers in an area that is susceptible for flooding, well, now we have a tool that allow us to help maintain the network so they can keep receiving our services. Last question for you, Rao. Where do you go next with this idea? How do you refine it even better? I'm actually looking forward to running this whole. As I said, the model we ran is at a 12-kilometer simulation for the atmosphere. We are now just started doing the whole thing at four kilometers. That's a fairly large problem where we run for the entire North American continent.

So we have about 140 million grid cells and a lot of computing power needed, but we are going to get an excess scale machine pretty soon, I guess. So, yeah, we are looking at going a little bit lower. At 4 kilometers, what happens is in terms of physics, an important parameter for clouds called convective parametization is no longer required. It is considered resolved by the model. So it does seem to make a lot of difference

on how well the model does. So we are looking forward to running those simulations pretty soon. All right. Can you stay with this a little while longer? I'm going to take you through the break because there's a lot of people interested who want to talk about this. Shannon Carroll of AT&T and Rauau-Katomarty, who works at Argonne National Labor,

Our number 844-724-8255. Do you have a question about climate change and how it affects your phone service or your infrastructure? We'll talk about it after the break. Stay with us. This is Science Friday. I'm Ira Plato. We're talking about adapting to climate change and changing climate and what companies are doing and specifically talking today with Shannon Carroll, director of environmental sustainability at AT&T, and he is based in Dallas, Texas. and Rao Katamardi is chief scientist of the Environmental Science Division at the famous Argonne National Laboratory in Lamont, Illinois. On our number, 844-8255, also you can tweet us at the SciFRI. Shannon, I understand that you've also developed a water management application tool. Tell us about that.

Sure, and thank you for asking about that. The tool that we were talking about today is great and specific for climate change adaptation. but there's also lots of other components to climate change. One of them is water. This actually goes back several years and is done by Pyramine really good work with Tim Fleming and the Environmental Defense Fund. And what they did essentially is they developed a water tool

that would allow facility managers to go around and essentially give themselves a scorecard in terms of how they were using the water, how efficient the water uses was. And then the tool then made recommendations on what they could do differently. And much like how we're talking about we're going to share the climate data in the future,

And what we did with that tool was we then made it available to the public as well. It's actually maintained by a third party now, but it's accessible to anybody and everybody to use who has facilities. Yeah, a lot of people are very interested in. That's an interesting topic. Let me go to John in New Hampshire. Hi, John. Hi. Go ahead.

Hey, so this is a policy question. It's great that AT&T and other companies are planning on dealing with climate change. I'm a volunteer of citizens climate lobby, and we've got a bipartisan bill in Congress called the Energy Innovation Act to worldwide. And I was wondering if AT&T is doing anything to help Congress address the cause of climate change. So what I can say to that again, I'm not a policy person, so I do apologize, but I will kind of talk about largely what we're doing in that area. So it sounds like what you're talking about is mitigation, right? So how to reduce the amount of greenhouse gases that are going into the air. And we take that very seriously, that AT&T.

And to that point, last year in 2018, we were the second largest corporate buyers of renewable energy in the United States. We announced 820 megawatts worth of deals. So, you know, we are committed definitely to, you know, reducing our own carbon footprint. And we, you know, obviously encourage others to do the same. Ryle, let me ask you something I've asked for, I'm going to say, 45 years going back to the energy crisis of the 70s, 3-mile island, all kinds of, I guess, infrastructure are insured. And insurance companies have a lot to say about the future of an industry, about whether they're going to insure. They're going to insure your nuclear power plant or not, right? Are they very interested in your climate modeling?

Yes, they are interested in our product and similar product, similar kind of research that is going on. The challenge for a company, like insurance company, it depends on the scale they are operating. Somebody who's just selling a car insurance, his outlook, their outlook is about five years, so they really are not worried about climate change. But the ones that actually ensure infrastructure and bigger houses and things like it, they actually started thinking about it. And the great thing with AT&T that happened, the conversation we need to have with insurance companies,

is that with AT&T, the first three, four weeks, we just kind of figured out what they think climate change is and what we think they need. And it actually took a lot of discussion to come to a common ground that, okay, what you guys are talking about is how will the water depth change in some grid cell. So I think that kind of conversation has not happened,

at least with me, with insurance companies. I talked to a lot of them, and they are still at the space they're trying to find out how they manage this risk. Because the risk tables they use are based on historical climate change, climate data. So how do I act to that? And what is the competitive advantage in that for me if I increase my rates because climate is changing and nobody else is doing? So you're giving them a new tool that they can use it if they didn't have before. All right. So they think of this as a product innovation somewhat, so yeah.

Well, we've run out of time, a great topic of discussion. Thank you both. Rao Katamardi is chief scientist at the Environmental Science Division at Argonne National Laboratory in Lamont, Illinois. Shannon Carroll, Director of Environmental Sustainability. I will get that word right at AT&T based in Dallas. Thank you both for this great discussion. Thank you. Great.

Thank you. Facebook may not be attracting new members. like it once did, but it's still the largest social networking site with over 2 billion users. Think about how much time you have spent carefully curating your digital self on the site. Social media is many ways the record keeper of our lives. And together with all the fake news and hate speech and garbage on the Internet, it is a record of our current 21st century society. And right now, that record is stored and owned by Facebook.

They will hold and store this data as long as it makes sense for the record. them to do so. But what happens when these billions of Facebook profiles are no longer consumers, but rather dead people from the past? According to a new study published this week, a minimum of one and a half billion Facebook users will pass away before the year 2100. I'd say that most people listening to this program now are among you. How should we think about the online profiles of the deceased as the person's property or their remains? Should they be inherited or passed on, preserved they're deleted. There's a lot to think about, and here to sort through with me are my guests.

Dr. Karl Oman, the doctoral candidate at the Oxford Internet Institute, lead author on the study out this week in the journal Big Data and Society. Welcome to Science Friday. Thanks for having me. I hope you can hear me all right. I'm calling from the U.K. Well, we'll tighten up the strings on the tin cans there. Dr. Candy Can is Associate Professor in Baylor Disciplinary Corps

and the Department of Religion at Baylor University. Dr. Kane, welcome back to Science Friday. Thanks, Sarah. It's great to be here. Carl, a question of what we should do with all the data we produce on social media seems to point back to how do we view the stuff we produce. Is it our property or is it part of us or who owns it? Well, as long as you're alive, you and Facebook co-own your data. Now, of course, this changes when you die when they become the sole owner of data that behind. So it does not fall to your family members or to your kin. And can do you agree with that?

Well, yes, it's currently dictated by the platform. And so whichever platform you're posting on, it has control, ultimate control over that data. But why is it not like, why is it not like, let's say, a copyright on a book or a song or an estate or a shoebox of old photos, Why do you not retain those ownerships after you pass away? Well, so it's quite complicated with the data that we produce on social media. We must not forget that Facebook data includes also messenger data, which is often some of the most private messages that we send. So Facebook users trust that they will not disclose their data to anyone else, and this includes family members. and normally a family member would be someone to trust,

but there are plenty of families where you would not like to, like your children or your pets, see what you've been writing and doing on Facebook. Caney, what does Facebook allow you to do with the profile of someone who has died? So on Facebook, and the same thing with Instagram, since they are a child company of Facebook, they're owned by Facebook. You can designate a legacy contact, too,

will then take your data and either memorialize the site where you have posted pictures and posted messages and stuff like that. And then what happens is you can't add anything to that site. So it becomes memorialized. Basically, it's archived, but it becomes a place where you can visit and revisit, say, the anniversary of the death or the birthday of the deceased person. And so a lot of people use these sites as a way to also help mourn the deceased. How do you feel about that, Carl?

I think that's essentially a good thing on an individual level that Facebook allows other Facebook users to sort of take care of their business remains. I actually think Facebook has done a really good job navigating the space. is really quite difficult for them because they have so many stakeholders to think about. It's the privacy and the dignity of the deceased. It's the feelings of loss from the loved ones, but it's also the original contract which they signed with their users. And last but not least, we must remember that Facebook is ultimately a corporate commercial enterprise. So whatever solutions they come up with, it needs to be commercially sustainable for them.

So Candy, what happens, though, for the tons of cases where people haven't left anyone in charge? I mean, what happens to those profiles? So that's when it gets complicated because then you have, basically, you become an Internet ghost, right? I think I've mentioned this to you before. So when my grandfather died, he would, no one memorialize his page, and some people didn't know he had died. And so people would go and post to him and tell him happy birthdays. It was really disturbing because he wasn't around anymore. Or he would invite me to play video games with him.

And, of course, he wasn't around. But I was still getting these invites from him. Well, should anybody be able to gather data from a profile of someone who has died, let's say, for research or historical analysis, Candy? I think it would be really valuable data someday. And I know that Carl's study discusses this a bit. It definitely democratizes the access to history, right? So right now, all the history we have from the past is basically written by the victors of history and the privilege, the educated, those who had access to power. So Facebook data in 100 years, I mean, we're going to have an amazing resource of data about people that live today.

But Carl, how do we know, and I'll ask this of Candioso, if there's so much junk and bad, you know, factual news on there, how valuable will that be besides telling us what a bunch of liars we were? Real value for this data really comes from comparing different sources. So seeing, for instance, how a person portray themselves on their Facebook timeline or Instagram, is sort of comparing that with what they actually click on, what they do, the kind of activities that go on and other parts of the site. I would also just like to add a qualifier to this democratization of history. I totally agree with Candy that previously the data that we have about historical figures is basically affluent men who could afford to leave something behind, whereas now we will have access to a much broader demographic population. The problem, though, is that this data is only valuable in aggregate, and it's only Facebook that controls all this data.

I'm Ira Flato. This is Science Friday from WNYC Studios. Talking about what happens to your Facebook data after you pass away with Carl Oman and Candy Can. Here's a tweet from Kent. He said, I definitely want my Facebook profile to go on forever or as long as it can. And everything I put on it is designed knowing that it could go on forever. I worked in a law firm that did estate planning, and we started advising our clients to, to make specific documents stating what they wanted to do with their online world. I guess you could put it in your will, could you not? Yes, and you should. You should definitely, as a part of estate planning, but, you know, less than half of all Americans at least have a will. So this is something that I really want to urge everyone out there to please make a will, because it will definitely ease the burden on your loved ones and your family, your friends.

But part of that will can be digital estate planning and explaining who should control the way that the digital estate should be archived or memorialized. And who should have access to that information? I'm sorry. I mean, Carl, is there no case to be made for saying, you know, when you die, your info dies with you? It gets buried along with you. Do you mean as sort of standard regulation? Or you could make that as an option? I think that you can certainly make that as an option.

I mean, Facebook allows the legacy contact to completely delete the profile. And I'm sure that anyone could put that in their will too. There are these so-called cleaning companies that you can subscribe to and you can commit what they call digital suicide. So they basically cleanse the web from any data that belongs to you. This is more common in Europe, where we have the stronger data protection loss and the right to be forgotten than you have in the U.S. But could you not make it as an option on Facebook to when you pass away,

your stuff passes away with you, click, you know? and have Facebook get rid of it for you? They do have such an option. You can actually choose, if someone submits a death certificate on you, the profile will be immediately deleted. The problem is that, of course, if you're dead, you can't do it yourself,

so someone else has to do it for you. Candy, last question. Does it make it hard for people to remember the dead? We don't have any sort of physical or digital record. I think so, but I'm part of the continuing. Bonds Theory Camp, which believes that continuing some kind of relationship with the dead in some way allows you to move forward in the grieving process. There are those that believe that's unhealthy, but I'm definitely a big proponent of the continuing some kind of relationship with the dead and being able to talk to them and being able to revisit their photos and being able to think about them. Well, we used to have our photos in a shoebox and you could always pull them out, but now you can't.

can't do that, and that's why make this so much different than more complicated. I want to thank both of you for taking time to view with this today. Carl Oman is a lead study author and doctoral candidate at the Oxford Internet Institute in Oxford, UK, and Candy Can is Associate Professor at Baylor University and author of virtual afterlives, grieving the dead in the 21st century. Thank you both for taking time to view. Thank you, Ira. You're welcome.

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I'm Ira Flato in New York.