StarTalk Radio - Cosmic Queries - Climate Change

Episode Date: October 20, 2017

Bill Nye is back to lead the fight against climate change and answer questions about the future of climate science. He’s joined by Columbia University climate scientist Dr. Radley Horton, and comic co-host Chuck Nice.NOTE: StarTalk All-Access subscribers can watch or listen to this entire episode commercial-free: https://www.startalkradio.net/all-access/cosmic-queries-climate-change/ Subscribe to SiriusXM Podcasts+ on Apple Podcasts to listen to new episodes ad-free and a whole week early.

Welcome to StarTalk, your place in the universe where science and pop culture collide. StarTalk begins right now. Welcome to StarTalk All-Stars. I'm your all-star host of the evening, Bill Nye. Or maybe Bill Nye the Science Guy, as some of you know me. I'm an American science educator, television presenter, and current CEO of the Planetary Society. And joining me as my co-host today is a professional comedian. Really. And StarTalk veteran, Chuck Nice.

Thanks for being here today, Chuck. It's so nice. Anyone. There we go. Today's show will be all about the future of climate science and the fight against climate change. And to help us out, we brought back a science expert who you may remember from a StarTalk radio episode on Nat Geo, Dr. Radley Horton. Dr. Horton, it's great to see you. Radley is, as I call him, I call him Radley.

He's a climate scientist at the Center for Climate Systems Research at Columbia University. His research focuses on extreme weather events, the limitations of climate models, and adaptation to climate change. Thanks for joining us on StarTalk All-Stars. Radley, Rad, the man. You're a climate science expert. We got some issues. We have some things coming up that could be troublesome. Okay, so here's a specific question

from me. I've wondered really for years. We are now, or you rather, are now able to tie extreme heat events to climate change. And you do this with computer models. That's absolutely right. Wrong. Sorry. That was your... No, but I don't know where that reflex came from.

I'm going to get you back for that later. Wow, you guys, that's quite a commentary, Dr. Dice. She was, sorry, rad. Go ahead, rad. Okay, yes, and we use a variety of tools. Looking at the historical trends, we've seen heat waves becoming much more frequent around the globe, more intense events when they're happening with the temperatures higher and longer lasting. But you're right, we also use climate models. That's a key piece. We can use those climate

models, running them out into the future. By model, we're talking about software, people writing code. That's absolutely right. Yeah, run on supercomputers generally. You can run experiments where you put more carbon dioxide in the atmosphere, essentially the experiment that we're running on Earth right now by burning all these fossil fuels. But we can move into the future with these models, putting in even higher levels of fossil fuels, for example, and see that the frequency of those extreme heat events will become even more frequent.

So that helps us attribute these heat waves to greenhouse gases. Like it's a coincidence you decided. Let's be for real. Those are just numbers. I mean, you're taking numbers, you're putting them into a machine that does more things with numbers, and then you're just coming up with more numbers. Hey, what you get paid for this show is just numbers. Do you get paid? this show is just numbers. Do you get paid?

No, I don't. But we're just so... So how can we rely on your models? Well, there's some important points I think embedded within there. There are some uncertainties, right? We can't tell you exactly when a tornado is going to happen two weeks from now. We can't necessarily tell you the exact weather two weeks from now. But what we can see is that the statistics of extreme events are changing.

If you're planning for the future, five years from now, ten years, twenty years. Five years. Wow. That's right around the corner. You sound like my high school guidance counselor. Look how well you – Exactly. Exactly. I think he's a little better than my high school guidance counselor. Look how well you – Exactly, exactly. I think he's a little better than your high school.

Yeah, I think he's very bitter right now. Go ahead. Five years from now. The statistics in some places are already shifting. Sea levels rising a little bit. That baseline as the oceans warm, as land-based ice melts into the ocean, the baseline rises. Even if coastal storms don't change at all, just having that higher baseline, that higher floor of the sea level is going to mean much more frequent coastal flooding.

We can't tell you the exact day, but if you're planning infrastructure- The wind blows, the water's already higher. Exactly. And aren't we seeing that now? I mean, with just regular storms, we just had a nor'easter here. It was nor' and easting. It was nor', it was easting. It was blowing. And we saw a great deal of coastal flooding without a lot of rainfall. Yeah. And so that's what you're talking about, right? And the reason the ocean's rising is getting bigger, right? You warm up that much water, it swells. It's a combination of two primary factors.

As it warms, it expands. Also, we're having some of the ice that has been locked on land in Greenland and West Antarctica making its way into the oceans. I was in Greenland this summer. I use the term summer. It's 20 below at noon. And the evidence is incontrovertible. These guys are drilling a new core, the East Greenland Ice Core Research Project. They're drilling a new hole. And you pull out the ice, you can count the

snow letters, you can count neutrons, you can look at the bubbles of the ancient atmosphere. It's just, oh, man. So you guys, everybody, panel, how do we deal with this? We have right now the world's most influential country is being – the executive branch is headed by people who are nominally in denial of climate change. Nominally. I like that. Well, you always wonder – I always wonder how serious they are about it. I mean, are they really serious or is it just a matter of money? I tend to think that it is like the tobacco industry where, oh, come on, we know it causes cancer. We just can't say that. You know, it's that type of deal. I really believe that they are, especially because I believe it was up until the 80s that Exxon had climate change contingencies as a part of what they were, as a part of their corporate.

They had documents from 1977. Right. That's a little different, but it must be related. Yeah, that's what I'm saying. So it's like I think they know. I think it's just a matter of money. Rad, you're shaking your head. I'm nodding your head. Yeah, no, I mean, I think that I think that's absolutely right. I mean, really, most politicians aren't going to lead in some sense. You know, that's often the case. If the public speaks, if we see this issue rising

higher, in terms of what people are saying they care about. And I think part of it is us doing a better job messaging, talking about the health risks of climate change, for example. People don't realize that heat waves are a leading killer today. That's going to increase in the future. People don't realize that their houses near the coast are at risk in the lifetime of their mortgages in some cases. And part of it is this disinformation campaign, really, that you alluded to. There have been powerful interests that, for a variety of reasons, have tried to hide those risks. I think that's part of it. Part of it is, I think, maybe even simpler human nature that some people run away from bad news. So it's a variety of factors, but some of it is definitely what

you're talking about, this not disclosing the risks because of the policy implications, and maybe because you're worried about longer term getting sued for some of these damages. I have two specific questions. Yeah. So first of all, you're able to tie hot weather or heat events with computer models, the so-called recreating the past, right, where you make a computer model to predict temperatures that have already happened, like we do with sabermetrics in baseball. That's a great test or a validation of the models. But what about cold weather events? Are they tie-to-able, if I make a coin? Yeah, I would say that cold weather events can also be attributed to climate change. I mean, just there's a couple aspects to this.

If we look in recent decades across the U.S., we now have a situation where any given year, there's about twice as many record-breaking hot extremes. So for a given city, a record-breaking temperature for that day. We're seeing the heat events records being broken more than twice as often as the cold event records being broken. So that suggests it's going down below a cold record. Exactly, that's right. So in a typical year now for a typical city, at the end of the year, if you look back, you're going to have broken twice as many records where your high temperature was higher than it had ever been before on that day than you have situations

where it was colder than it had ever been before on that day, then you have situations where it was colder than it had ever been. So I think the science clearly supports cold extremes also going up a lot in the recent record. Now, there is a piece that, you know, I don't know if we have time to get into, but there's some evidence suggesting that these really extreme cold air outbreaks, right, these situations in winter where we have a really wavy jet stream, dips of cold air. Arctic vortex. Polar vortex, exactly. Polar vortex.

Polar vortex. There is an Antarctic vortex, I imagine. Yeah, and that one's actually less prone to these kind of meanders. When we see these meanders in the northern hemisphere, cold air can make its way south. Let me ask you this, and then go on. Yeah. But do we see more meandering in the northern polar vortex because there's more land north of the equator? That's right.

And especially the land-sea contrast at a given latitude. So if you're, say, at 50 north, 45 north, halfway between the north pole and the equator, if you're moving west to east, you go from ocean to land, ocean to land. I mean, whereas in the southern ocean or around the Antarctic is all water. Right, which helps basically just a ring form where you have the cold air to the south. Go ahead, you were going to say. So here we are. So there's some evidence that we're seeing a wavier jet stream developing in the northern hemisphere. The jet stream keeps the cold air to the north in the northern hemisphere separate from the warm air to the south.

When you get this wavy jet stream, it's easier for cold air, say, to make it south in some areas. And the idea is if that jet stream gets stuck in that location and doesn't sort of move west to east, you can get prolonged periods of really cold air. Maybe in the short term, we'll see a little more of those cold air outbreaks, but they're probably simultaneously going to be happening when it's warm somewhere nearby, right? So there's the idea that California maybe was really warm in some recent winters when the Northeast U.S. was cold. Longer term, though, as average temperatures go up just a couple degrees, that means the statistics shift so much that you're almost bound to have more extreme heat events, fewer extreme cold events. Wow. So we don't have to look forward to a day after tomorrow, that movie where all of the northern hemisphere freezes over and we all have to move to Mexico.

Hang on. Before we do that, when I was in Greenland, all these these are mostly Danish scientists, but there are a couple of people from University of Colorado, the Ice Corp lab there in Golden, Colorado. And they were talking about abrupt climate change. Have you looked into this, Rad? A little bit. I'd love to hear more. Well, they look at the ice and the temperature or the climate of the northern hemisphere changed radically in like a weekend. Or I would say over 10 years. 10 years, yeah.

So the guy said, it's imagine you're born and you're eating wheat from Iowa. And then by the time you're out of high school, you have to eat wheat from Saskatchewan or North because the climate's changed so radically. Wow. Yeah. Just in 20 years. They're all just like trying to understand it. Yeah.

I mean, I think that's an important point that there is this climate variability, this sort of unpredictable noise in some ways happening at the same time that we have these long-term upward trends. We're never going to be able to perfectly predict everything. But for some variables like sea level, they're now changing so fast that we know the risk is going to go up. But I think you're right. And maybe Greenland and the North Atlantic Ocean are a particular part of the world that's very prone to changes in ocean circulation. Well, they keep going on about the Greenland ice sheet is such a significant influence on climate. Yeah.

So speaking of rapidly changing. Yes. Significant influences. It's actually time for Cosmic Queries. Yes, it is. And, of course, that is where we take queries from all over the interwebs, wherever we are found. So, Rad, you're down with Cosmic Queries. Yes, it is. And, of course, that is where we take queries from all over the interwebs, wherever we are found. So, Rad, you're down with Cosmic Queries? Let's go.

Yeah, we'll feel free. We'll send in questions and you answer them. Our tremendously engaged StarTalk audience, as smart as they are, they send us questions. What are you doing here? Ha, ha, ha, ha, ha. So, the first one we always take is from a Patreon patron. And Tim Shaw wants to know this. What kind of climate change influence disaster will need to happen before the majority of the world takes it seriously and takes action

on climate change? I'm optimistic that the human race possesses everything we need right now to fight climate change effectively, but pessimistic when I see the current trend in politics. So let me note well, the majority of the world is concerned about climate change. The United States is the minority. We're the problem, right? Yeah. Rad, you were going to say.

Yeah, I agree with the sentiments of this question a lot. I think that we could move fairly quickly, right? We're already starting to see some renewables pricing around the same level as fossil fuels. The trends are all towards solar, wind becoming much cheaper. We may be at the cusp of a real revolution on the green energy side of things. Of course, there also is a lot of reason for pessimism. We know about the fossil fuels, the carbon dioxide already baked into the atmosphere. We're learning that we may have already committed to additional sea level rise

because of greenhouse gases we already put in the air. To the specific aspect of this question, though, of what's it going to take to spur people into action, I think back-to-back extreme events in a certain place can have a big effect. So, you know, that second hurricane. Katrina and Rita. Yeah, something like that could really have a big effect. Another one that I think is interesting to discuss, I'd love your thoughts on this, something remote. What about loss of sea ice in the Arctic, right? Most of us think, who cares about Arctic sea ice? But this is an iconic thing. We've had Arctic sea ice in the Northern Hemisphere for hundreds of thousands of years.

Our good buddy, Santa Claus lives there. It's going. I mean, the volume of late summer sea ice in the Arctic is down over 50% in the last three or four decades. I think that there are some feedbacks underway there. As you lose some of that initial ice, sunlight is able to penetrate into the ocean, the dark surface, where it can absorb that sunlight instead of reflecting off the white surface. More ice, more feedback. You can make the case, and I would say most scientists aren't there, but you can make the case that sometime in the next five, 10 years, we could have that ice-free summer in the Arctic. I'm not saying it's a 50-50 chance, but if it happens, how would people react?

In the next 20 years. Absolutely. Well, the upside is I can go swimming in the Arctic now. Well, the upside is you can drive your boat from Finland to Japan. Well, unfortunately, they're already fighting over shipping lanes and things of that nature, which I think is awful. Who's they?

Countries. So the United States and Russia right now, everybody's staking their claim to the... I thought we were friends. Yeah, everybody's staking their claim to who's going to be able to have the rights to these open shipping lines now because there's no ice there.

We can have air traffic. That should be outfigurable. Get us another cosmic query. Here's another cosmic query. Hello, Bill. Steve from the Netherlands here. A country that might one day partially disappear due to rising seawater levels, though we try very hard to keep the sea where it is. But just in case we fail, which country is least affected by climate change? Red? Dr. Horton? So the first thing I would say here is that every country is going to be affected in a major way. You can't just look immediately at how the climate's going to change in any one place, right? can't just look immediately at how the climate's going to change in any one place, right? If the developing world, with its large populations and high temperatures, starts to have more and

more droughts among these vulnerable communities, that's going to have impacts on the whole world. It's going to impact the price of food everywhere. More conflicts. More conflicts, yeah. We're all going to be impacted. If you had to answer the question directly, you know, locally, where might climate changes be the least impactful? You'd probably look at a place in the mid to high latitudes where it's not real hot right now, where winters are really intense. Yeah, maybe the west coast of the U.S., west coast of southern Canada. Are we going to have droughts on the west coast of the U.S.? It's a real risk, absolutely, especially further south maybe as temperatures rise. I think that no places are going to be net win if we have major climate change.

It's just going to be some places may suffer less than others. Great. Right. I'm going to make my vacation plans now. Let's get in one more. All right, here we go. Hey, Dr. Nye, it's Colton from Spring Hill, Florida. Given that we seem to be in an anti-intellectual movement with the entirety of our new administration denying climate change,

how can we progress and not fall back during these four years of Mad Max? So a couple things from Spring Hill, Florida. That's not Stephen. Who's that? That's Colton. Colton. Spring Hill, Florida. That's not Stephen. Who's that? That's Colton. Colton. Colton, greetings. A couple things.

What's happening, the deniers are doubling down on their denial. And this is not good or bad. It just is. It's human nature. For those of you out there who love your pop psychology, this is cognitive dissonance leading to the backfire effect. So you have this situation where you just can't believe you are a person and you can't believe that humankind could change the climate of an entire planet. The earth is enormous. How could you possibly be affecting the entire earth?

Well, we are. So what happens is as more evidence is presented to you as a denier, you deny it that much more strongly. You double down on your denial. That's the backfire. So apparently the way to influence people who are in this state of mind is to be partners with them. We are all in this together. Let us learn about climate change together. Let us all find out why there are more extreme heat events,

why the ocean seems to be showing up in Spring Hill, Florida, both from over the land and through the limestone from below. Why is that happening? We're all buddies. We're all going to learn about this. And we're all going to learn more about this, Chuck. Really? Dr. Radley Horton, when we come back to Cosmic Queries,

here on our own Cosmic Quirical channel now, right after this. Thanks for listening. Turn it up loud. We are back on Star Talk All Stars. I'm Bill Nye and your all-star host this week, along with Chuck Nice, my comedic co-host. Joining us in the studio is climate scientist Radley Horton, Dr. Radley Horton. So let's get right back to our conversation. Chuck, you have further cosmic queries for the doctor and maybe me.

That's right. Inquiring minds want to know, Bill. And this is SciFit42 from Instagram. We're everywhere. SciFit42 from Instagram. We're everywhere. Bill, what are your thoughts on making sustainability a mandatory class in high school? Some of the key highlights in this subject include better waste management and climate change.

So is it a good idea to make this a mandatory curriculum? B, that would be great. But A, it ain't going to happen. You know, everybody, you can't solve all problems in schools. What we want is people to get out of high school with the beginnings of what I would call liberal arts education, where you have a worldview that embraces science, the best idea humans have ever had, philosophy, how we know what we know, how we trust what we know, geography, a rudimentary understanding of where everything is everywhere,

and mathematics, people, let alone physics, chemistry, and biology. So these are all things we want from high school. Asking high schools to solve all these problems with a course called sustainability, I think it's going to be hard. So we can't even sell evolution. Evolution is the main idea in all of biology. We can't even sell that. However, Dr. Horton, are you familiar with the Solutions Project? No. All right. So this is a bunch of guys in California, guys and gals. No. All right. So this is a bunch of guys in California, guys and gals.

In California, the solutionsproject.org, I encourage everybody to check it out. It's a bunch of civil engineers, a group of civil engineers, who've done an analysis that they claim shows that we could power the whole United States, Canada, Mexico, 130 countries around the world, renewably right now. 100%. Renewable. We just decided to do it. If you just said, this is what we're going to do. So what we want, I guess, to answer your question about high school courses, we want to teach people about the cost of utilities, the cost of electricity. And would this be in a history class? Would this be in social studies? This would be in a high school. It would certainly be in a physics class or a chemistry class.

We want people to learn about solar cells, learn about wind turbines, learn about the Betz limit, if you're into the Betz limit. There's a limit to how much energy you can get out of the wind. Right. But, I mean, there's just a limit. And so when you know about it, you know how many turbines you need to provide for a city or so on. And don't forget clean coal. There's no such thing as clean coal. Now, look, don't get me wrong, people.

My beloved first cousins are the sons and daughters of my beloved mother's brother, my uncle. And they sell explosives. And most of what they sell is explosives to coal mining people. I mean, these are my blood people. But we can't mine coal anymore, everybody. We need mines. Who doesn't love platinum and europium and erbium and all these fabulous metals? You've got to mine. We can't be burning coal anymore.

Thank you. Okay. All righty. Let's move on to Hunter Arderly. Arderholly. Arderholly. There you go. Hunter Arderholly from Facebook says, what state could the climate be in 2030 if things do not change? So I guess, have you guys done any models? you know, I think that fortunately, if there's anything fortunate here, we're still in the phase where the changes are not radically fast. We're locked into more warming by 2030.

But the amount of warming that we get, in a sense, has sort of already been determined by the emissions so far. So in the next decade, probably we're going to see sea levels rising something like two or three inches. But we are going to see more frequent heat waves, as I said, fewer cold air outbreaks. Three inches doesn't sound like much. It doesn't. But because of the shifting statistics we talked about earlier, it has an impact. For example, New York has had about a foot of sea level rise in the past century, most of it due to climate change, but not all of it. What else is it due to?

The land sinking due to still responding to the last ice age. We're springing back. Sort of like if you think of a sponge. We've done springing. Now we're unspringing. It's sort of like if there's a plate, one side of the plate sits by the Great Lakes where the heaviest ice was. That was dead ice, so-called. Glacier went down and stopped.

Exactly. Well, actually, it stopped closer to New York, but sort of the heaviest of the weight would have been more further back towards Canada. So if you think of that as a plate, even though that ice has been gone for, what, 10,000 years or so, land where where the ice was thickest is still rebounding the sponge is still rising up because it's a plate that means that the other side of the plate in a sense has to swing down that's what's happening near new york exactly so that's three or four inches of effective sea level rise it's really land sinking nine inches exactly exactly so with that foot again which is in the past century, mostly due to climate change, you saw the floodwaters of Hurricane Sandy make their way and affect roughly 80,000 more people in their homes than would have been affected if the ocean was a foot lower. So you can see that three inches, an additional three inches would really matter. And it also means more frequent flooding of a certain level.

And percent, that's huge. That's another 25%. Absolutely. And of course, we can have extreme events today. You can have that drought year, California had a few very recent drought years. If you ramp temperatures up just a little bit, that means even less snow accumulating in winter, meaning less water available in summer. It means a little higher temperatures in summer. You need to irrigate more. You evaporate more water. The bigger drought stress in the world of 2030. And more floods when it's raining in the winter months instead of snowing. Yeah, that's right. It's all bad. It's all bad.

There you go. Let's take another question. But I think just sorry to jump in. It is important to highlight that the worst impacts are, we're already seeing impacts but if we act now to reduce emissions later than 2030 we can we can really get on to some better trajectories we hope yes we can all be driving electric cars after you drive an electric car you will never go back if you want to get rich and i know you're out there better battery even just incremental improvements in existing batteries would be huge and the other problem we've got to solve in the biggest picture is air transportation. We need something like

hydrogen turbines instead of fossil fuel turbines. So get that done, everybody. Cool. All right. Let's take another question. Here we go. There, we solved that problem. This is Live and Let Live 2010 says this. When you hear one say 98% of scientists agree that we need to combat climate change, how is that percentage quantifiable? What are the scientists' credentials? What type of scientists are they? And is it 98% of scientists around the world? Or is it just U.S. scientists? Who are these people? horton yeah good you're one of them yeah we're actually we're actually look we got a real live

one right here yeah as you might have guessed i'm not the two percent or really maybe one percent whatever you're not the fifth dentist in the four out of five dentists surveyed or a false fact pun intended that most of the denial papers are by the same half dozen people, handful of people. I think it is a very small group. Also, a lot of the denial papers may be people who don't actually have

a background in climate science. Go ahead. What are your credentials, man? What are you doing here, man? What does it mean? How does... Yeah, you. So, I mean...

How do you get to be a client scientist like uh and i think there is some validity to that what makes you a client a climate scientist yeah so it implies that you've studied um atmospheric motion you've studied land surface processes um you've looked at a lot of historical data. You've understood the limitations of climate models, the benefits of models. What's your background? What was your thesis about? I looked at climate variability at Columbia, used climate models to look at things like El Nino. Are you a computer guy or a fluid mechanics guy? I'm really more on the side of looking at the outputs from the climate models,

a little less under the hood, comparing the outputs from climate models to observations, and then working with cities' decision makers to sort of plan based on what it looks like the impacts are going to be of a changing climate. So I would say among this 98%, I don't know about the particular survey, but there are social science experts, for example, who have surveyed broad groups of climate scientists and other communities. And in general, the numbers near 98%, sometimes a little higher even, in terms of A, climate change is happening and B, a big part of it, not all of it, but a big part of it can be attributed to the human activities that we talked about earlier, the burning of fossil fuels, the land use changes, for example. So it's not you can't be like, well, you know, I was once in a hurricane and I saw the movie Twister.

So that's not that's not going to give you the credentials necessary to call yourself. You publish papers, right? Yeah. Yeah. And the people who publish papers think the problem is very serious. right yeah yeah and the people who publish papers think the problem is very serious okay so now i'm going to follow up uh this question with how is it that you can have such a divergent finding from the two percent these people who say that the guys on your side are wrong, that this is not happening. How can that be? If it is indeed science and you have quantifiable results that you are looking at,

how does somebody else come along and say, nah, nah, dude, sorry, wrong? Yeah, I think there's one piece you already alluded to, Bill, which is we have sort of powerful preconceptions, all of us to some extent. And people don't like to change their worldviews. If people are surrounded by a community of people who may not believe in climate change, it's very hard to sort of speak out and go against your neighbors. If people have a perception that climate change is something that's going to be really scary, some people don't want to face that. If people have a perception that it's going to imply a

change in their behavior, right, that maybe we won't be able to live the exact same way we lived in the past, that scares some people, even if really, as you said earlier, Bill, there are opportunities associated with it, right? Cheaper energy, better air quality, to name a few. Change is scary to some people. Energy independence, not having to have a military on the other side of the world, protecting oil interests, goes on and on. Yes. Yeah. But I think so. So it's we, not everybody works, even scientists works completely in that fact space. We mostly do. But to varying degrees, people are impacted by other factors as well, that sort of social human component.

And I think that's part of what can explain. I don't think it's the science and the facts that explain that 2%. Basically, if you want to believe climate change isn't a problem, there's always going to be some thread, some piece of evidence that you can cling to. That one city that's seen a cooling trend or that one really cold you can cherry pick your data yeah or the idea that there's a piece of you know we can't say with who can say for sure that clouds might not change in a way that could slow down global warming or even stop it no science suggests that that could happen that we could see a sort of magical bailout of some kind but if you wanted to believe, you'd cling to the idea that,

well, we don't know exactly what's going to happen to clouds. But somehow, plus or minus 2% is the same as plus or minus 100%. Exactly. There you go. I'm going to go with they all work for Exxon. So here's- Guys who founded and wrote those papers in 1977 no longer work for Exxon. Well, yeah, that's- Ha, ha, ha, ha, ha. Yeah, exactly. Go ahead. Well, yeah, that's the exact.

Go ahead. I interrupted you, as always. No worries. This is Tim by trade. Tim wants to know this. Hey, Bill and Chuck, when scientists study climate change, I don't know why he's asking me like I know something. Well, you're a comedic co-host.

That's true. When scientists study climate change, have we reached the point where the research inherently seeks preventative measures, or is it still research of strictly observational and analytical in nature? Also, seriously, how much public funding would it take for you to run for president? That's to you. All right, so let me start with the present question. to you. All right, so let me start with the present question. Normally, all my experience, all my life, I'm over 60 years old now, the people you hire to run for president or to work as president are people with some government experience. That's how we used to do it, and I think we will again. I've never been a government official. I've never run for office.

So I may not be the most qualified for this. However, Chuck, I'll tell you right now, Dr. Horton, if they ask me to be a science advisor or the Office of Science and Technology Policy or something like that, I would certainly embrace that just to talk about me. Me, me, me. Now, where were we? Yeah, preventative measures, Dr. Horton, preventative measures. Yeah, so this, I think, is pointing towards some of the exciting research that's

happening around reducing greenhouse gas emissions, capturing carbon from the atmosphere. Is that really practical? I mean, those are molecules. These are hard old things. Yeah. You need a lot of something to react with that, right? Yes. Well, isn't that what they're talking about with like algae farms and that kind of, you know, trees and things of that nature? I mean, I think certainly nothing is to scale yet where, you know, cost-wise you can pull anything out of the atmosphere. The challenge is always with new technologies, what might be possible a few decades from now or more, maybe it's 50 years from now. I tend to agree though, it's very risky for us

to go down this route of saying, oh, we can emit now. We'll get it out of the atmosphere later. There's no evidence that we're able to extract that additional carbon from the atmosphere. But there is important research around renewables.

Billions of tons of something. Right. But there is research on adapting to climate change also, right? We're not going to be able to prepare for all of these climate changes. But that doesn't mean that we shouldn't do, you know, we're locked into some more sea level rise. Miami Beach on stilts. Yeah, I mean, Miami Beach is an interesting one, right?

That's, as you alluded to the limestone earlier, you know, it may not be possible long term to protect Miami Beach. But maybe there are some cities where, at least for a few decades, you can hold back the water while we come up with other strategies. Well, in the Netherlands, they have sea walls and rivers. Yeah. So they do that. Yeah, and you're seeing some interesting, you know, smaller-scale experiments in cities right now.

Green infrastructure, right, where you're putting in these parks and things with drainage underneath captures water during rain. It's going to be exciting. Stay tuned. Star Talk All-St going to be exciting. Stay tuned. Star Talk All-Stars. We'll be back right after this. Welcome back. Welcome back to Star Talk All-Stars.

I'm Bill Nye, your host this week, along with my comedic, insightful co-host, Chuck Nice. Yes. And this week's exciting guest really is really good. It's a climate scientist, Dr. Radley Horton from Columbia. Part of the 98%. Or so that are very concerned about climate change based on the facts. So we have to deal with people that are not fact-based.

But Dr. Horton, have you heard about the Science March? I'm starting to hear. I'm not on Twitter. I'm not on Facebook. So a little bit, but this is late March. What did you say?

Did you hear that, Chuck? He said, I'm not on Twitter. I'm not on Facebook. I even stumbled with the names of them. I am on Twitter, though. I misspoke. Actually, I'm on Twitter. I'm not on Facebook. I even stumbled with the names of them. I am on Twitter, though. I misspoke. Actually, I'm on Twitter. I'm not on Facebook.

But anyway, point being, I think this is on Facebook. This is a late March. Late March March. Is that right? A late March March. Yeah. So there was a Reddit conversation, which is another one of the electric social media things on the computer machines the kids use. And a guy suggested having a science march that would be akin to, or march of scientists or scientifically inclined people, akin to the women's march of a

couple of weeks ago to raise awareness of science. And, you know, there's a lot of concern at the Environmental Protection Agency that they've been instructed, it's better than a rumor, they've been instructed not to, I guess you do release a press release. Yeah. Or report anything more about climate change. And I guess the model for that is Governor Scott from Florida, who thinks by keeping people from using the phrase climate change, somehow Florida will not be affected by climate change. Yeah, like it's Voldemort or something.

Yeah. You can't mention it. You can't say his name. So, Bradley, Brad, do you think that's a good idea, having a climate march? I do. I think it's very important to, you know, we talked earlier about ultimately the public has to lead in some sense. This needs to be an issue, climate science, that the public cares about. They need to understand the vulnerabilities.

They need to understand the science is clear and that there are huge risks, whether we're talking about our military, the very young, people who live along the coast. Climate change is going to affect everybody. And I think if a broad group of scientists, not just climate scientists, but scientists more generally advocate in some sense for the need for continued funding, for continued ability to speak publicly and publish and promote their research. Get on StarTalk All-Stars, a way of example. Yeah, that's the way to help get those messages out and you don't want scientists feeling stifled you do want diversity of opinions you want everybody to be able to speak um you don't want to you don't want to muzzle i think that's the key to

to also having isn't that part of the problem right now is that everybody is given an opportunity to speak i mean there was a time when you were a dumbass. You had to shut up, okay? Nobody wanted to hear what you had to say. We're on a freaking podcast. I'm sorry. Chuck Nice, we are as free to speak as it gets. We are part of the problem.

I'm not talking about that. Use that quote over and over there. Hi, you guys on the conservative cable news networks. Take that sentence that Bill and I just said and just crank it. Knock yourselves out. But I'm just saying that isn't that part of the problem? Like, you know, you have people who get to muddy the waters because everybody now gets to have an opinion about this. And the truth is there was a time when you were a dumbass. You had to shut up. Now you can get on social media.

You can get on the Internet and you can spout all this nonsense and you will find some traction with some people. Whereas in times past, you didn't have that. People didn't have that ability to do that. Well, we'll see what happens because the current administration is being so, as we record, so aggressive towards the media, towards the press. It's got to backfire. You can't just call all the press people idiots or evil or unfair or dishonest and expect the press, the mainstream people, and especially the cable people, not to rebound with equally rabid nuttiness.

And so I remember, you guys, when Richard Nixon resigned. It was extraordinary, but not, the world kept spinning. I didn't say goodbye, I said so long. And so I don't know if the modern word everybody loves, I don't know if the current approach of the administration is sustainable. Everybody loves that word. So you would participate in a march?

Yeah. Yeah, I would too. I guess I should be there. Now, I am beholden to my board of directors at the Planetary Society, but we have a thing we can ask ourselves. What would Carl Sagan do? Carl Sagan started the Planetary Society, and he would, at least in my experience with him, spent a little time with him, he would just be coming unglued at this.

Yeah. So, and everybody respects that guy because he was such a good communicator. at this. So, and everybody respects that guy because he was such a good communicator. Everybody expects Dr. respects Dr. Sagan's opinions, even though he's no longer living, maybe most especially. So, we'll see what happens in the coming weeks, but I hope we can show the deniers that they're reacting in a very normal, predictable human way. But together, we must move forward by examining the facts and embracing the common good. Okay. Do you have another query?

Let's go back to our queries. You're a cosmic man. You're a cosmic man. Here we are. This is Adam McSweeney from Twitter says, how can people that openly ignore climate change evidence be convinced that investing in renewables is worthwhile anyway? So is there an argument to be made aside from climate change that might bring more people to the side of renewable energy? I think it's a very good question. So forget, let's take climate change off the table. Screw you.

Okay, you don't believe in climate change? That's great. Okay. Now, here's why you should go to renewables. Already you have price parity in many parts of the U.S., solar and wind at the same cost as traditional fossil fuels. When you get down to 1.8 cents a kilowatt, then you're in the game. Two cents a kilowatt, you're almost in the game.

Okay. Air quality, you don't have any of these other particulates that are associated with burning of fossil fuels, combustion engines, separate from the greenhouse gas issue. And then we heard about energy independence earlier. Yeah, and so if you want to have tariffs on things, how about imported oil? There you go. And then if you did that, then wind and solar and geothermal become competitive in an instant. Yeah, but if we put tariffs on oil, we might hurt our besties' feelings, Mr. Putin. Oh, I see.

You are being especially political today. I know. What's wrong with me? I am just shocked. I'm just shocked. So I was in Stanton, Texas, which is the zip code adjacent to Midland, Texas, where I used to work as a young man, as an engineer in the oil patch. And there are wind turbines above the oil pumps, like in the same picture. Wind turbines casting shadows on oil pumps.

And they're doing that because the wind is free. And when the price of oil got extremely low because of the success of fracking, well then it's not competitive anymore. But the wind's always blowing for free. Oh, that's cool. I actually thought that you meant they're running the oil pumps with wind turbines, which would be awesome. Actually, that might be happening at some grid level thing because the oil pumps are electric. There are a lot of internal combustion sort of lawnmower engines in the oil field, but there's a lot of electricity all over the place too. That is an interesting point of interest. That'd be great. We should be investigating that. Exactly.

We're sitting here thinking thoughts. Texas is now leading in wind energy, isn't it? And Iowa gets 25% of its electricity from the wind, a quarter of it, without any subsidies as such, without the enormous subsidies that oil companies get or oil production gets. So we have five minutes left, gentlemen. Yes, we do. I think you know what that means. Yes, it does. It means that it's time for the lightning round. Oh, I can feel the excitement.

Take it, Chuck. Here we go. Let's get to it. This is RP, or I'm sorry, Rip Rats from Instagram says, Hey, we used to have snow days where we would miss school or work because it was too dangerous to travel in the snow. How long will it take before we start having heat days? I think we'll start seeing, I think you're already starting to see heat days, really hot days in June, hot days in early September.

Are people going to stay home from school, or are they going to hustle to school where it's air-conditioned? Well, a lot of schools probably aren't air-conditioned in some places. Yeah, they certainly aren't where I was growing up. So maybe there won't be heat days, but I bet this is already impacting learning as we see higher temperatures harder for kids to focus at school. There we go. This is Nick Orlowski.

He's coming to us from Twitter as well. He says, is it feasible to start a family solar farm? What would it take to become profitable? Would it quickly become obsolete? Is it something that you can scale down so that you can have a mom-and-pop farm for solar energy? We use the word farm because it takes up a lot of land, but you don't grow solar panels. Not yet.

People have talked about carbon-based or organic solar panels. Oh, we've got a great crop of solar panels going in. As far as homegrown electricity, I have solar panels on my house in Studio City, which is totally in the valley, and it's sunny a lot. And so I get electric bills for $10 every 60 days. Am I a solar farmer? I guess.

And I harvest rainwater. I get big rain tanks so you don't have to rely on rainfall every time you need to water the garden. Cool. There you go uh this is shereen from twitter says how would you approach creating a sustainable fashion industry in terms of eco fabrics and energy consumption do you guys ever think about fashion and when you're doing your climate models i'm ready so there are going to be a lot of fibers made from sustainable crops. The big one everybody loves is bamboo. You may have heard of rayon. Anyway, so we can

recycle existing textiles and upcycle them. But the other opportunity is what I would call them. But the other opportunity is what I would call 3D weaving. It's a term I just coined. So in other words, traditionally, you have bolts of cloth and you cut out the fabric and discard a lot of the cloth. Ideally, you'd grind it up and make it into insulation, treated with something that keeps rats from enjoying it. And then you have all this waste. But there are shoes now made by the big shoe company Nike that are made in a sort of additive manufacture way where you only weave as much shoe material as you need to make an individual shoe. They have smaller sizes, use less material, and so on. So this could be the future of additive shoe manufacture, additive textile manufacture, and then we'll have more amazing fashions with more amazing people wearing them.

Cool. And maybe down the line, we could also have solar nanoparticles embedded in clothing. How far out is that? Nanoparticle clothing, yes. Love it. Okay. This could be the last question. This could be. This is Rob Hutton says, should we reuse bioengineering other than active steps to lower CO2 rather than passively scaling back activity? All the options have to be on the table. We need to highlight that it's not clear how we could do this today. This would be an investment. We know we're going to have to reduce emissions, go to green energy. We know we're going to have to adapt. That's a long-term

possibility we should also explore. Resins to take carbon dioxide out of the air, a tricky business, but perhaps. Unfortunately, we are out of time here on StarTalk All-Stars. Thank you to Chuck Nice for co-hosting today. It's a pleasure. Thanks to our special guest, Radley Horton, for all his insight on today's topic. I'm Bill Nye. Until next time, let's change the world. Turn it up loud!