Individual Actions and Conclusion

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Hey everybody, Chuck here with another one of our sciencey playlists curated podcast episodes This one's on Global wararming and it's appropriately titled How Global Warming Works Please to listen to it right now. Welcome to Stuff You should K knowow From howstuffworks. com Hey and welcome to the podcast. I'm Josh Clark and there's the Chipper Cheery Charles W Chuck Bryant. Howd deep? And there's Jerry over there Stay hi, Jerry. No. How are you doing man I'm Welter. how are you? I'm pretty well myself. I'm feeling alright, feeling a little fit Yeah yeah. A a little sweaty. As you can tell, But I'm all right gross It is. I don't smell do I Okay, good. So friendriends. Listeners Countrymen You're going to notice a little something different in this week's speed tomorrow bears a little explanation. We are dropping episodes one and two of my new Mvie interview show, moovie Cush We're dropping those into the stuff You should know feed. somethingomething we've never done here at the network, but we're going to I guess I'm the lab rat on this one The guinea pig The guinea pig I guess either one, right? The guinea pig doesn't die The labyrat dies Yeah, I guess so Let's go with the guuinea pig for sure. All right, well either way, we are dropping those into stuff you should know feed and we wanted to alert you. So when you saw all these new things You didn't rebel against us like everyone hated you two when they delivered the world a free album Right, right. yeah. I mean, this is like this is not just it's not a YouTube album. It's your new show. It's more important than any YouTube album. Oh, well, you know, appreciate that. Yeah So yeah, that's why they're there. And episode one is the great Janet Barney with we talk about the movie Tron And um That's the nature of the show as I talk to people about their favorite movie And episode two is Tig Naro. Wow Talking about the movie Mask, and that one is a very special episode And I'll tease it with this. We recorded that interview or conversation, rather seconds after she got the call that she was cancer free at the five year mark Oh, wow. So she started crying at the beginning and I didn't know what was going on I gave her some time. I was freaking out And it turned out to be good news, but And I explained that all at the onset of the episode, but it turned out to be a very special experience. Man, Chuck, you're like Barbara Walters. I didn't get it out of her. It was just weird timing. Yeah. But anyway, those are in there and it won't happen every week, but I would love for you to subscribe Well, yeah, that's the way to get it, right? Yeah. Just subscribe anywhere you listen to podcasts. These are a couple of gifts, a little gys. That's right. and I appreciate your support on it Well, way to go, man, congratulations. I speak for me and the rest of the world when I say we are looking forward to this. Thanks, dude. and you know, I'm gonna have you on as a guest. That's gonna be very strange and awesome. Yeah I think it'll be neat. I'll start crying too. Do you know what your favorite movie is that you would pick? I got a couple I think I could choose from sure. All right, well, hold on to that then Okay, and'll we'll just pick that up later. Okay. Well congrats again, man. Thanks, Pal. Shall we warm the globe Yeah. All right So Chuck I don't know if you've heard about this term recently, but it's been in the news lately Global warming Are you familiar? It does ring a bell Okay Well, just in case you for those of people who aren't aware of global warming, Global warming is what we're talking about today And a lot of people confuse it or use it interchangeably with climate change And it turns out that's not actually fully accurate Global warming is a symptom cllimate change. as a whole and climate change is a whole bunch of differences to the Earth's climate and we'll get into what climate is in a second. And one of those is global warming. Also things like extreme weather events, increased drought, increased temperatures, sea level rises. all these things put together, that's climate change, right? or the result of climate change. And global warming is one of them Global warming is climate change, but not all climate change is global warming I just wanted to make sure we got that out of the way to begin with. It's like the square rectangle thing, which I can still never keep straight. Well, and I think the what? L every square is not a rectangle, but every rectangle square or the reverse of that, whichever it is I've never heard that before. What I even aced geometry the second time I took it It was clearly ass didn't care about squares. Yeah, I guess not. I mean, they always talked about rectangles, but squares were never brought up. Yeah I think it's you know, I'm not gonna to dig myself a hole there. This's probably better So global warming, if you want just a kind of a straight up definition is The science community defines it as this and they should know Yeah. It's a significant increase in the climatic temperature over aort relatively short period of time as a result of activities of humans And by Increase in short, we're talking like One degree Celsius. couple of hundred years is global warming Right, because the effects of climate are so Pronounced I'm such a Like with just small incremental changes. Yeah that that that is climate change. somethinghing that if you just look at it on paper, you're like, that's nothing. Wh cares about one degree? Aually point of global warming is that when you have this increase in global temperatures, a whole basket of events starts to take place That's climate change. like global warming is related to climate change, right? It can trigger other climate changes That's right. And you hear a lot of people talk about You hear a lot of numum skulls talking about weather as if it is climate.. Like a very harsh winter might come and they'll say, Yeah, global warming, right That's a great nbsle It's not the same thing. Weather is local, it's short term Climate is long term. It's not even like the weather over a period of a year or even a couple of years. We' talking about predictable, generally predictable average weather conditions in a region over a long, long period of time. So you can safely say in Green Bay, Wisconsin. It is cold in the winterime. That is the climate of Green Bay in that Midwestern region as a whole. Right. But if it snows in February, February of you know, next year on a Tuesday, then that's just the weather Yeah, or if it snows in Miami once then That's not a refutation of what climate change means, that is a weird anomaly And those happen Yeah, and this is a this is a grabster and strickling co joint by the way. So that's heavy. It popped off the page if you noticed. but u One of the things they wisely point out is what you just said that, yes, some weather anomaly happens like that. Even if it happened three years in a row I think a lot of scientists would pay attention to why it snowed in Miami three years in a row. Right. But if it went back to normal or something like that, like that would not necessarily be climate change. That's just a weird occurrence, right Climate change is this this change in predictable changes. Yeah. and that can take like thousands and ten thousands of years sometimes O most times. Under natural circumstances. And here is where we come to the current use for global warming, right Global warming can happen by itself naturally, the earth Basically in its current present state Sings back and forth between glacial periods and interglacial periods. So cool periods and warm periods. And for an ice age to occur, the global temperature only needs to drop by about five degrees Celsius on average. and all of a sudden we're in an ice age, right? Yeah, that doesn't mean the entire earth is a big round cube Cube. Wow. That's like a square rectangle, but not at all the same. Well, you know, when you go to a fancy cocktail bar and they have those awesome round I want to say ice cubes again. I Sheres. Yep U That's not what the Earth looks like necessarily during an ice age No, no, no, it's just much cooler and like because it's cooler by say, five degrees Celsius Um A lot of stuff changes. It's the same thing as global warming, but on the opposite end, right?re. Like you have changes in migration patterns. you have changes in habitat for animals. Some things go extinct during the transition. Sea levels change. A lot of stuff happens, right? So this is part of the normal process of the Eth, but the Earth's kind of got it like, hey, hey I've got this under control. I don't need any help from you humans. Sure And when I do do this, this is the earth talking and first person. when I do change from a glacial period to a warm period It takes many tens and tens of thousands of years, right You humans here, again, this is still me, the Eth. You humans are really messing with my program here and accelerating the process. And you know what? I'll even give you a clue as to what you're doing that's making it so bad Carbon dioxide emissions, Bam, said the Earth and dropped its microphone and walked away. Yeah, and then it went back and picked up his mic and said, and maybe stop littering Yeah that's then drop the mic again. Yeah U we should talk a minute about a wonderful group called the IPCC The intergovernmental panel on climate change. Yes. lot of very smart people there Oh man Can I just say it's to me, the IPCC is one of the coolest things humanity' ever come up with. Yeah Because it's the world coming together saying we' got a real problem on our hands. Let's get our smartest people together and create a database here of good science. Yeah, and those people are specifically about twenty five hundred, actually more twenty thousand five hundred scientists from around the world meeting together in places Paris because why not, right? Sure Uh, they did this about ten years ago and came up with a lot of Well, sort of a lot of distressing observations. We'll just tick through a few of these As far as temperature goes And you know, like we said, like one degree Celsius can make a big swing and what kind of changes we see on the planet U between nineteen oh one and two thousand Ethwarmed.o point six degrees Uh so that's if you if you adjust that to nineteen oho six to two thousand six at climbs up to zero point seven four degrees. So about three quarters of a degree. and temperature rise during that one hundred year period. Right And there's a lot. It is a lot. And so a lot of people say, well, you guys just said the Earth tends to do this on its own. Maybe that's it. Well actually no, there's a lot of science that the IPCC has been able to come up with that shows pretty clearly that this is human cause stuff that's actually creating increase in temperature. And again, it seems to come back to carbon dioxide Yeah, should we takeick over a few of these other observations? Yeah, for sure Um, let me see. hereere's a good one The ocean's temperature has increased to at least depths of Almost ten thousand feet down The ocean's temperature has increased Not a good thing because that's how But glaciers tend to melt is from underneath. That's right What else, Chuck Westerly winds have been growing stronger. Droughts have become more intense, lasted longer covered bigger swaths of land U what else here? Precipitation is increased in the Eastern Americas Northern Europe, parts of Asia but it's decreased elsewhere Yeah, and that's, I mean, we'll get into this a little bit a little bit of global warming can mean Longer growing and better growing seasons in some parts of the world, but devastating to other parts of the world. Exactly. I guess I'd let the cat out of the bag there, but we'll go over that again later. And how about this and the warming trend of the last fifty years is about double of the last one hundred years. So what that means is the rate is increasing. the rate of warming is increasing. Yeah, actually. I think the IPCC has determined that each of the past forty years has been warmer than the average temperature of the twentieth century And that twenty sixteen was the hottest year on record and the twelve warmest years on record have occurred since nineteen ninety eight Dude, you should see the We'll get into it someome of the charts that that you can find. And again, like if you're even remotely interested in this, like just go look up the IPCCs stuff Yeah. And some of it like you you have to be a climatologist to understand what in the name of God they're talking about But other stuff, especially if you read like executive summaries of studies and reports and stuff. Yeah. L that's meant for like a non scientist, specifically often like policymakers to read and understand, right? So the average person can understand that. and they have some really great stuff that's showing like All of the changes that the world is going through thanks to these increases in the global temperature. And again, some of the charts that they have are just stunning when you see them. Yeah. because it's like goingo along fine, going along fine, everything's fine. and then Ohh my go, what the hell just happened? Yeah Basically. And it was the Industrial Revolution It was, but also one of the things that they found recently, especially in the last like three, four years, I believe is that is that I think you like you were saying, The increase in global temperatures, but also again, the increase in carbon dioxide really shot up Over the last like fifty years Like from the beginning of the Industrial Revolution, I think they usually start at about seventeen fifty to maybe eighteen hundred at the latest Up to like nineteen fifty or so, nineteen sixty Like ye, there's a pretty surprising increase, but it is just skyrocketed in the last like fifty or sixty years. So They' they're seeing like this this the science is bearing out the kind of the general theory of global warming, which we should probably talk about theory of global warming, right? Because like we said It's not just Um human cause a human cause mechanism. L basically it's an already existing n natural mechanism basically keeps the earth. Nice and toasty for life and water. It keeps us from being Mars. But we have we have started messing with it big time because of our contributions to this normal cycle Yeah, so should we talk about the greenhouse effect a little bit? Yeah The greenhouse effect is literally what keeps us from being Mars. it is a good thing when it occurs naturally Because like you said, it keeps us on And it makes Earth habitable and lovely and nice for the most part So they Strickland and the Grabster, I'm not sure who came up with the car analogy, but it's a pretty good one. I agree If you go into your car on a hot summer day and you get in your car, it's been sitting out in the sun for a little while, it's a lot hotter than it is outside U It's kind of a no brainer, but you might not have thought about why that happens. Um it's not magic. what's happening is that The sun that's coming in through your car windows gets absorbed by the interior of your car, whether it's your seats, or the dashboard or basically kind of everything in the car absorbs that heat and That heat is then eventually emitted back out and radiated out from the seats and things like that. But it's at a different wavelength than that initial sunlight that came in. So some of it might get back out of the window most of it stays kind of trapped in that car So the end result, the net net, as they would say, in a corporate meeting, is that there's less energy going out than than coming in So your car's going to get hotter So pretend your car is the planet Earth, basically, which would be great. And the windshield is the atmosphere, right? Yeah So that's the greenhouse effect in a nutshell. as it relates to the actual earth Um About seventy percent of the solar energy that is directed toward Earth stays on the planet, right And instead of it being absorbed by car seats and floor mats and stuff like that, it gets absorbed by the ocean or land or plants or you And so about thirty percent of that stuff that didn't make it through. It was reflected back by clouds, particles in the atmosphere, a bunch of other stuff, right? As you're sitting there getting warm by the sun, you actually have the potential to re emit that heat. And so that stuff starts to go back through the atmosphere out of space Some of that stuff makes it out into space But there are other particles take that solar energy, usually in the form of heat and absorb it And when they absorb it, they reemit heat and then they direct it back down at Earth. And the process continues. And in some of some cases, some of the stuff that they reemit, they end up reabsorbing themselves so that there is more heat that's being trapped and sustained on Earth and is being allowed to escape back into space at any given time. Yeah, justust like your car. Right. And again, this is what This is like a positive feedback cycle that creates the atmosphere. It also sustains the atmosphere. It also keeps water here on Earth because water tends to heat up and rise, but then it will cool off in the atmosphere and fall back down as precipitation. And as long as it can fall back down in the atmosphere and nucleate around some of these particles that are trapped in the atmosphere, we've got water here on Earth That's right. So it's all thanks to the wonderful, glorious greenhouse effect Yeah, so that that feels like a good place to pause Let people let that soak in a minute like a hot sun on a black car seat. Like a warm chutney on your forehead. My God And we'll be back a little bit to talk about the these gases in the atmosphere that we're talking about here Hey guys, it's Dasha here. The World Cup brings cities to life. Streets buzzing, crowds gathering, every goal sparking celebration. Moments like this are impossible to miss, but some moments are so quiet They slip right past us. Human trafficking affects real people across the US, and it often looks different from what we think. Some survivors cannot simply walk away or ask for help. so learn the signs. Break the silence. Visit bluecampaign d. gov slash World Cup I turned off news altogether I hate to say it, but I don't trust much of anything. It's the rangebit. feeles like it's trying to divide people If we got clear facts, maybe we can calm down a little NBC News brings you clear reporting. Let's meet at the facts. Let's move forward from there NBC News. orting for America You're locked into a lot of things you can't change. Weather, traffic. Hey, stay in your lane! Your wireless carrier's latest price hike, but you can unlock a better way. Unlock the savings at BoostMobile and save up to six hundred dollars hundred a year. Switch to the twenty five dollars a month unlimited wireless plan. No contracts, no price hikes, and you keep your phone. Stop being locked into their games. Unlock the savings at boostmobile dot com slash unlock Based on average annual single line of payment of AT and TV Verizon in TMbile customers compared to twve months on BooS mobile un limited wireless plan as of january twenty six for all off details visitoosmbile dot comot All right So we're back. I think everyone probably understands the greenhouse effect. If you remember your hot car Yeah kind of a nice, easy way to think about it.ure. So when you were explaining the more like the Earths version of that with getting absorbed, hitting things in the atmosphere, we're talking largely about three things carbon dioxide methane gas Actually four things. Nitrous oxide and water vapor And there are a lot ofthers, but as far as like stuff that that really has the biggest impact. onn global warming, it's these guys. Yeah, so we'll start with CO two because that's the one you hear about most often carbon emissions gets all the glory in the headlines these days. Carbon, CO two is colorless. It's gas It is a byproduct of the combustion of organic stuff And it makes up a very small part of the Ear's atmosphere zero ero four percent And most of it that's up there was has been there for a long, long time. It's from volcanic activity. However We are pumping lots and lots of CO two, additional CO two And remember, there's a delicate balance going on here as it is.. So like you said, Mother Earth doesn't need us adding to this And we have been adding CO two like its's gang busters. Yeah. So like that remember when I was talking about how water water turns into vapor and rises and then falls back down, That's the rain cycle. There's also a carbon cycle where carbon molecules just kind of go back and forth between the atmosphere and the Eth Apparently every year two hundred and thirty gigatons of carbon are released into the atmosphere from the Earth, from plants from rocks from us And then about the same amount, another two hundred and thirty gigatons comes back down and is locked into Earth from the atmosphere, right? And this like you said, Chuck, like a pretty pretty nice balance. The Earth has got this, please don't mess with it. But when we take carbon and unlock it from these carbon sinks like, you know, we bust up rocks and mining operations. we burn fossil fuels that have carbon locked into them. We cut down trees and burn those things as fuel That releases more carbon and it messes up that delicate, pretty much even exchange between the atmosphere and the Earth. Yeah, and that's a big problem because carbon has a knack for absorbing infrared radiation. So that energy that escapes the atmosphere That's the form that it comes in. So all this extra CO two means Basically like your card, it justs an overall increase in temperature And so not only does it absorb infrared heat and hang on to it Um There's a lot of it We just finally, in the first time in the history of the human race All of humanity, not since the Industrial Revolution, but ever since humans have been around The earth reached Um, four hundred per million Meaning that out of every million molecules that you just snatch out of the air and count You're going to come up with four hundred of those as carbon atoms, right? Yeah or carbon dioxide molecules. So that's new. Thats that's a big deal The problem with that is is not just that there's a lot of carbon dioxide there, but it's like you said, the more carbon dioxide there is, the more radiative heat that comes back down to Earth that doesn't escape into space, and the higher the global temperature gets. Yeah, and just to put end perspective F hundred parts per million now And that's twenty seventeen numbers, I guess I think in twenty fifteen we hit four hundred and we're up to like four hundred and four now So that pre industrial revolution was about two hundred and eighty parts per million. So it has swelled. by about one hundred and twenty four parts per million since the industrial revolution, which is pretty staggering. Yeah, and there's apparently a way that you can tell when you're actually measuring the carbon dioxide molecules themselves where they came from Oes that are introduced into the atmosphere from burning fossil fuels have a specific signature that we can detect And we have seen that as the global temperature has increased And more and more carbon dioxide has been introduced into the atmosphere since the Industrial Revolution so too has the concentration of that specific type of carbon dioxide. So there's a strong correlation between the the fossil fuel burn carbon dioxide that we humans have put into the air with rising global temperatures All right, moving on to nitrous oxide. into which we did a whole podcast on this, right? Yeah It was a good one. It was a great one. Mainly because of that tank that we had here in the studio. I know, We're method podcasters. That was That definitely enhanced the whole thing So into twoz is another greenhouse gas, super important and we are not releasing Like human activity is not releasing nearly as much. as we are CO two, but NO two or I'm sorry into O absorbs a lot more energy two hundred and seventy times as much as CO two. So that makes it 's something we really need to pay attention to and we are paying attention to it It just doesn't get all the headlines. No, it definitely doesn't. just because there's so, so much less of it, right? Um, whereas it takes tens of thousands of years for, you know the twenty percent of any given carbon dioxide emission to leave the atmosphere It takes about one hundred and fourteen years for a full emission of nitrous oxide to leave the atmosphere. Yeah, as far as man madeade, it is also a byproduct of combustion. A lot of fertilizer, nitrogen fertilizer that they use on crops as releases into two O into the atmosphere as well. See, to me, all you have to do is like seed the atmosphere with a bunch of hippies and let them huff all the nitrous oxide right out of it. probleblem solved That's right Because you've also gotten a British concert in the sky. Exactly What else we have methane Methane's a big one and this is super overlooked. but I remember hearing about this when people first started realizing like, oh, that's a really problems It's um There's very little amount of it. whereereas like there's four hundred four parts per million of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere these days. We can measure about one point seven parts per million of methane absorbs and emits thermal energy like gang busters as well. far more than CO two Um I think about twenty times more. And theres there's a lot of different places where it comes from. like when we mine coal, it releases methane. when our ple herds of livestock. Fart Yep. They release methane. No joke. That's actually a huge contributor of greenhouse gases. Yeah, we talked about that I feel like years ago in another So surely we have. Yeah another one Chuck was, do you remember our pllasma waste incineration Yeah episode.ure. Well remember, one of the things we talked about was that the average landfill gives off methane U, and that's a huge problem too. So like if you go to a landfill and you see that there's flames around it They're actually burning that stuff off because the CO two it releases after it's burned is actually preferable in that case to the methane just being allowed to escape Yeah, and there are news. It is bad news. And there are scientists who have even posited that maybe like, you, tens and hundreds of thousands of years ago large scale venting of methane into the atmosphere, like if a a big u block of ice cracked open and unlocked a big methane I bubble from under the ocean, that could have caused like maybe a mass extinction because it was released so quickly into the atmosphere. Yeah, like like we're doing now basically. Yeah, on a slower basis. I don't think anyone's say saying that's going to happen. No I don't, I don't know. I think like that is a concern that as Arctic ice melts that methane bubbles could be released, which just be a nightmare on top of a catastrophe. That's right. There's another problem with methane too that in the atmosphere, it frequently converts to CO two. So it just Not only contributes itself, it also contributes to the CO two emission problem There's also cheuck another thing called short live climate pollutants SLCPs. They don't get a lot of press either. but a lot of people think that if we focused on these, we could really see some real results in the short term Supposedly SLCPs account for something like thirtycent to forty percent of global warming They are particles like black carbon. Methane counts as one of them Hydrochlorofluorocarbons? Nice U, and they can live in the atmosphere from say, like days to tens of years and then they go away And if we really cut down on some of those emissions It would we would see the effects of that very quickly So speaking of effects, I guess we should kind of talk about what this all could mean and does mean. is meaning Uh Number one, we can talk a little bit about sea level or sea levels. Gaciers and ice shelves are melting all around the world And losing large chunks of ice like this can accelerate this warming because There's less of the sun's energy. you know, we talked earlier about it being reflected by ice sheets and things like that these reflective surfaces less reflective surface means less is getting reflected away. So just at like the very base level, that's going to be an increase in temperature Yes. Also depending on where the glacier is Um, it could contribute to to se level increases too, as we'll talk about. Yeah, I mean, we might as well hit that, huh? Okay. So if one of the things that I learned from this that I just absolutely did not know, but makes total sense is that Aric sea ice If it melts, it will contribute zero to a sea level increase. Yeah, interestnteresting. I had no idea, but it makes total sense because it turns out that Arctic sea ice in particular floats on the sea. So it's already in the sea and it's already contributed to the sea level rise If anything, if that stuff if we went through an ice age and all that stuff frozeen into basically a frozen landmass thenen you'd see a C level decrease But the way it is right now, there wouldn't be a sea level rise if it melts completely There are other places around Earth where the glaciers and ice caps are basically landmasses. And if they did melt, then you would see a sea level rise just from that melted water, right Yeah, I mean, that we're talking about Antarctica there and the likelihood I've Antarctica thawing out is not great U whichich is good Well, not all of it, but there's certainly parts of it could. Yeah, for sure. And then same with Greenland too We had Greenlands a problem because it is much closer to the equator So Temperatures are higher there anyway. It's not like negative thirty seven degrees on average, like it is in Antarctica. Right. So I feel like I have to say that so specifically. Antctica Antica. Yeah And the other problem too with with this this loss of ice like people might say like, no, it's crazy. Like there's I see plenty of glaciers there still. But if every season a little more melts off than is replenished by snowfall in the winter. you have a net loss of ice. And then over time, if you look at it on a scale of a decade or two decades or three decades, that's a substantial amount of lost ice. and that is what increases the sea level. That leads to sea level rise Yeah. so as far as the IPCC is concerned, they estimate The sea levels rose about A little over six and a half inches. in the twentieth century U doesn't sound like much, but it is a lot. like sea level rise in low lying coastal areas can mean pretty bad flooding just mere inches They propose that things continue to go this way They could rise by as much as twenty two inches, almost two feet by the year of twenty one hundred. And brother, if that happens, We're going to have to redraw the world map. That's true. I was looking. I was like, how high is Miami Beach? Miami Beach is apparently just under four feet above sea level. Yeah. New Orleans is like zero feet I think it's it's maybe at two feet basically. Yeah. There's a lot of coastal cities Singapore, I think Copenhagen They're all They're all like very veryery close to Sa level or just slightly above sea level. And so yeah, two feet rise. I know the Maldives is frequently mentioned as like being under real threat from sea level rise. But if even if you don't necessarily live in a coastal area that's Two feet you know, just two feet above sea level, consider this If the sea level rose just six inches like they were saying That means that when you have extreme weather events, which go hand in hand with global warming and are part of climate change where it rains really hard and there's like more major flooding than before, then it's already working with an extra six inches than any flood that you've been used to before.. So the floods are much more extensive. and that's a really good example of how interconnected this the global climate system is where if one thing gets messed up a little bit, it has all these other widespread effects around the world on regions too Yeah, because I think they found that there are not necessarily more frequent like tropical storms and hurricanes and things, but they're are becoming much more intense and that's the issue at hand. Yeah, and that one in particular has to do with the surface temperature of the oceans increasing as the temperature of the world increases because that's where those storms, hurricanes and cyclones get their their energy from is from the warm surface of the sea. Yeah. So if it's warm, that that's like you'll see them like hit land and like lose steam And then when they go back over the ocean, they'll start to like regather their strength. That's because they're over warm water again. and's where that's where they get it all from. Yeah, plus there is, I don't think we mentioned this yet about the density of water No, no, I don't want to go anywhere near it. You take this one Well, very simply, water is most dense at four degrees Celsius. So That's it's kind of a homeostasis of where it needs to be anything above or below that temperature and the density is going to decrease So the overall temperature of the water is going to increase Naturally and this is not like human cause. U but that will also cause the oceans to rise. I mean that's just a natural thing Well said leave that But you mark it right there. I'm glad you mentioned that though, because you don't see that really ever. L no one ever mentions like, oh yeah, water iss just gonna to expand as it warms. You I've never thought about that one either. Or cools, I think, right Yeah, or cool. It's a weird weird thing, weird weird material. So let's take another break and we'll get back to explaining why Global warmings are a real Hey guys, it's Dasha here. The World Cup brings cities to life. streets buzzing, crowds gathering, every goal sparking celebration. Moments like this are impossible to miss, but some moments are so quiet. They slip right past us. Human trafficking affects real people across the US, and it often looks different from what we think. Some survivors cannot simply walk away or ask for help. so learn the signs. Break the silence. 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Unlock the savings today at boostmobile dot com slash unlock on average annual sing l fame of eight and,ise and mobile comers compred toel months theoo mob unlimiteded plan of january twenty six for offer details visitoobile dot com All right, Chuck, so we talked about the ice caps melting. We talked about glaciers melting, we talked about sea level rise There's also, I mean, people are out there saying like Great, but how does it impact me? A human, that's what I want to know about. Well, there's tons of ways because as technologically clever as we humans are, we are extraordinarily dependent on The earth So as these climate change happens due to global warming U we're going to see all sorts of problems and we already are starting to see problems Yeah. so we did mention earlier that if you live in a temperate area, if you've got like four kind of lovely seasons, like let's say Atlanta, Georgia, for instance. you may have a longer growing season. you might have a bit more rain. It might be actually good for the crops here in Georgia in some ways But other parts of the world less temperate zones are going to see B temperature increases, way less rain and longer droughts, worse droughts, bigger deserts It's not going to be so good for those places. No, they apparently have found that every trillion tons of CO two contributed to the atmosphere raises the global temperature average by about three quarters of a degree Celsius. Wow. And then they went and correlated that that each one degree Celsius increase in temperature equals an evaporative increase of about seven percent to fifteen percent here on planet Earth in the soil, right? So as temperatures increase, there's going to be less water in the soil, which affects crops and leads to things like droughts and even desertification as well But and man, every time I throw out one of these terms, I'm like, we did an episode on that. We did an episode on that. And droughts. Yeah, we've been dancing around this one for a while. We have. I'm glad we finally tackled that, man. Agreed. You're doing great by the way. Well, hold on, hold on. So is as the water evaporates from the soil and goes up and is locked into the atmosphere again, it's eventually going to come down And when it does, you're going to have far more severe flooding and precipitation than you would have normally when it was just going up and coming down and going up and coming down like on its normal cycle. Yeah. So that's one way that it can affect you because while it's turning to droughts, you got wildfires. And then when the soil gets degraded and there's suddenly a lot of rain, you've got flooding peopleeople get carried away in their cars because they think they can drive across a flowing river U That's not funny at all, by the way. I guess not. Just the way you put it was. So one of the other devastating effects and this one is tougher to predict because we've haven't really seen what can happen with our living human eyeballs But ecosystems And I think we did that we do on ecosystems as a whole or just have we talked about it forever and everything? I think it's just popped up in so many of them it seems like that. Yeah, we' definitely covered coral reefs and things like that. We're talking about living ecosystems and we all know they're very delicate and the delicate balance of the ecosystem is what makes it worse. and we've talked Ed Nauseum over the past nine years about how little just little things can happen in an ecosystem that will create this chain reaction. It's all interconnected and We don't know what might happen in terms of global warming in our living ecosystem Sure. someome animals might adapt some might move But there would also be, you know, massive amounts of extinction.. Coral reefs are already dying. We're seeing that with our eyeballs. Forests are dying off and turning to grassland and It's not just like Oh, well, there they go. Now we have grassland instead of a forest Let's make some hula skirts. Yeah Uh again, it's just it's It's that Domino effect that we're going to see It's just no one knows what it's going to mean in the end. It's really troubling Yeah, and I was, um I was like, well, how are ecosystems interconnected? I know they are, but how? So I looked up a good example and found salmon So salmon are born in like little streams and they end up like traveling down into bigger streams and eventually rivers and then estuaries. and then they actually go and mature out in the ocean, which I hadn't really thought of And then when it's time for them to go breed, they swim back upstream backack into the rivers, back back into the streams themselves, actually they go back to where they were born to breed and then die. And as they're doing it, they're basically acting as nutrient transport systems between all these different ecosystems each step of the way. Yeah, It's like a seed being scattered in the wind. Yeah, very much so, but a seed that can actually come back home and bring all the nutrients that it gathered like out in the ocean back into its home ecosystem where it was born. Yeah. So it was pretty interesting I mean, like that's just a great example. It's just salmon, you know? So yeah, the ecosystems are very much connected. So if something happens with one, it's going to have an effect on all the other ones. And like you said, some things will survive, some things won't, but the The thing that I think most of us here on Earth are agreeing to agree about is we should probably do something to stop. those extinctions as best we can even if we'll probably survive, you know? Yeah. And you know, we're this is a very USA centric show for the most part because that's where we'reed. We try to think outside that that box as much as we can. And in the case of global warming, it is The poorest nations of the world are the ones that are going to be hit the hardest They're the ones in A lot of times in the less temperate zones that are going to be hit with more devastating Crop loss But crop loss is going to be a big deal all over the world. It already is There's something called the Carnegie Institution that estimates five billion dollars in crop losses per year Due to global warming is already going on rightight now. and farmers are seeing a decrease of about forty million metric tons of wheat, barley, corn, other cereal grains every year So just one degree Fahrenheit an average temper of an increase could result in three to five percent. drop in crop yields. Right So it's a global issue sure Some of the poorest nations might be affected earliest and the worst, but it is going to touch every nation. It definitely will. it doesn't necessarily have to just be the poorest nations. It can be the poorest people of rich nations. Well yeah, true. And it can be people who are very rich who end up living in areas that are hit like Houston. saw a lot of increase in water borne illnesses because of the flooding from Hurricane Harvey ' that's something that they otherwise wouldn't have had to have dealt with. There's there's like that whole crop loss thing and starvation that it leads to. like there's a lot of ways people can be affected. And just like salmon Like we're connected to other people as well, even if they're on the other side of the world and you know we're not really talking to them or don't really know them personally, we're still connected to them. So if they suffer a crop loss, it'll affect us all. And if they die of starvation, it ends up affecting us all Yeah, this I really like this computer model thing. didid you see that Yes That was pretty pretty cutting and dry Yes So the IPCC, they used a computer model. What they did was they tried to simulate climate change And what they found was The only models the only models that looked like today's climate that equaled, hey, well, this looks like what's going on today were models that included the human contribution to global warming.. When they did not plug in the human contribution, And the answer that it spit out was that climate doesn't look like what's going on right now. Right. So that is basically proof that Humans are contributing to this xactly. Yeah That combined with, you know, the signature of the carbon dioxide from fossil fuel burning. all that jazz. Yes, you like and we should probably get to this part. Like there's there's a there's a tendency among naysayers to be like You know, there's not even like scientific consensus. They're not one hundred percent certain that it's it's it's us creating this global warming, right And so science has really kind of taken it upon itself in the last like decade or so to address this and say, yes, that's true. There's basically no such thing as settled science There is so been so much like we've made it our business to create and conduct so much research and study all of this so closely over the last like ten, fifteen, twenty years. we have basically come up with a scientific consensus that basically if you take any scientist on the street There is pretty close to a hundred percent chance. that that person is going to say, yes, climate change is real, yes, global warming is happening, and yes, humans are causing it Yeah, because they use words differently than we use words. And you sent this great article certainty versus uncertainty Colin Understanding scientific terms about climate change. You know it's smart when there's a colalon. Uh, and for The average Joe or Jane walking around the street, If you say the word uncertain, that means well you just don't know.. Scientists when they use the word uncertain, they mean how well you might know something or not So that's a big difference. It sounds like word games, but there is no Very rarely is there absolute certainty in science. So their job is to research and research and limit that uncertainty as much as possible No, and the uncertainty and their public broadcasting of that uncertainty has been used against them. It's been hijacked and used against them to fight doing anything about climate change, right? So so they they have started to use especially if you go through like the IPCCs like pololicymaker executive summaries Everything that they're stating, they will put like how confident they are that what they they're saying is true. They have a structure to that now. Right. And so most of the stuff that they're they're releasing as in their reports has something like a ninety percent chance or greater of being correct. So they call it like a very likely outcome or a very high confidence. And I've even seen something called an extremely high confidence, which indicates ninety five percent or greater. and then the come on, which is ninety nine percent or greater Yeah. so there' these there are five points, which they have very high confidence in quote about or even greater. So at least ninety percent or greater certainty that the following. human induced warming influences physical and biological systems everywhere sea levels are rising Glaciers and permafrost are shrinking Oceans are becoming more acidic and ranges of plants and animals are shifting So that's betweenet ninety and one hundred percent certainty on those things. Yeah, they also say they're comfortable saying with certainty that the burning of fossil fuels and the clearing of forests release carbon dioxide into the atmosphere. They say there is no uncertainty about that They also say that they've learned that carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gases in the atmosphere trap heat through the greenhouse effect They say again, there is no uncertainty about this that the Eth is warming because these gases are being released faster than can be absorbed by natural processes. And then they say it's very likely greater than the ninety percent probability that human activities are the main reason for the world's temperature increase in the past fifty years in particular And so they're saying like we are scientists. We're the ones who are studying this. No, we're not a we can't say what unequivocal. c certainty that this is the case. but what really people, what more do you need? Like we have studied this so closely. We are so close to one hundred percent certainty that like what's the problem here? Let's just get on board And there was actually a study done in two thousand seven by this economist Um it made the news uh, made the news cycle. N name is Dr. Peter Sigaris and he said if you look at the cost of doing something and the cost of doing nothing Statistically speaking, it makes way more sense two. take steps to mitigate climate change and be wrong about the fact that it was us humans. Yeah than it would to take no steps at all Um and be wrong about actually no, it actually was us humans. Yeah I mean, that's where I get I don't want tona get too much on a subbox, but I get angry that there are people out there that say, well you're not there's that ten percent or less chance. So let's just gamble humanity the future of humankind on that ten percent or less chance. because we don't want to get with the program and get behind green initiatives Be there's a chance. you're not one hundred percent certain I just I don't that short sight in this just is staggering to me. Well, plus also that it's been proven, I've mentioned that book before, The Merchants of Doubt Think tanks have been set up to basically influence public thought point out like scientists aren't one hundred percent certain, scientists aren't one hundred percent certain. and they're not looking out for you or the Eth or your family. They're looking out for their business interests because it's the fossil fuel industry.re they're the ones who are who benefit the most from not taking steps against climate change But even if you look at some of the some of these fossil fuel industry companies Um they They're like, No, we should probably do something. We can figure this out. Even some of them are saying this now as of twenty fourteen Amazing So Chuck, speaking of twenty fourteen, there was somethingomet big that happened, The Paris Accords Yes. And in twenty fourteen, I think one hundred and ninety five countries came together and said, you know what? We're going to do something. We're going to do everything we can. keep the global average temperature from increasing two degrees above normal two degrees Celsius, I should say. becausecause that was kind of a largely agreed upon tipping point that there would be a lot more extreme weather, sea level rise. We would feel the effects of climate change from a two degrees Celsius increase in global temperature And so they took this really interesting approach where they said inststead of us coming up with a multi government group that decrees stuff We're going to just decentralize the whole thing. And how about every country come up with what their country can do on their own to fight to fight Global warming And then we'll bring them all together and everybody willll take a pledge and we'll go do it And it was hugely successful. Like out of one hundred and ninety five countries one hundred and sixty eight have ratified it And the U.S had had a pretty good plan as well. Um I think we were going to We were going to pledge that we would reduce our climate emissions Something like twenty sixcent, twenty eight percent by twenty twenty five which would be a huge significant contribution to fighting global warming But we got pulled out of that one I think in twenty seventeen So now the rest of the world seems to be carrying on without us fighting climate change through their own decentralized plans, but that's where the United States stands right now. We have said we're not going to be taking part in that That's right, but that's not to say that the citizens of the United States can't do everything they can on their own in their own lives by doing some of the following things U first and foremost, decreasing your carbon footprint, Um and I'm going to put out a call for us right now to go ahead and do one soonish on carbon offsets because u We're a few years into a few years down the road from when carbon offsets first became a thing. And it's much more understood now Did we do one on this I think so We did we've done them on on. Oh I know what it was. We talked about that kind of cap and trade scheme in the acid rain Right Yeah. Yeah, we should do one on carbon offosite though because they're much better understood now and. you it's pretty clear now like the best ways to go about doing something like that So we're not going to cover it too much here, but Uh you can buy carbon offsets Look for future podcasts But reducing your carbon footprint is The biggest thing, I mean, is really simple, the stuff that generates the greenhouse gases, if we create less of it That's a good thing. So you doing that on a local level can make a big impact if a lot of people are doing that U using less energy, obviously is just a sort of a no brainer. U and this period in life, like just being less wasteful Yeah, whether it's water or your lights that you're turning on or riding your bike instead of driving your car All of that makes a big difference And But and with electricity in particular, one thing we always mention, always mention is that Even though it seems like your light bulb is fine, it's getting its power most likely from burning coal. So so is that electric car that you bought That' plu in for sure Yeah, and your electric car is only as good as the energy that it's where it gets its energy from.