Climate Science! With NASA's Gavin Schmidt

How do we fix climate change? In this episode, Neil deGrasse Tyson and comic co-host Chuck Nice sit down with Sr. Advisor on Climate Science at NASA, Gavin Schmidt, for the Youth Climate Summit to answer questions about climate change.

Speaker names marked ? are inferred from speaking time and the show’s known hosts — they are not voice-verified.

• 0:01Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Welcome to StarTalk, your place in the universe where science and pop culture collide. StarTalk begins right now.

• 0:15Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  This is StarTalk Cosmic Queries Edition, special live at the Broward County Youth Climate Summit, the third annual, so delighted to be a part of that. I've got with me my co-host Chuck, nice Chuck. Hey Neil. So obviously, while I know a little bit about climate, I don't know anything near who we've got here as guests. Yeah. A very important addition to this, because for Cosmic Queries, we want to make sure we have the right expertise at the right time, at the right place, which is now. I've got Gavin Schmidt, Gavin, welcome back to StarTalk.

• 0:48Gavin Schmidt?

  Hi Neil, Chuck, nice to be back.

• 0:50Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Hey Gavin. Excellent, and you recently became, in addition to being Director of the Goddard Institute for Space Studies, which is a NASA satellite office in Manhattan. Many people don't know about that one.

• 1:03Gavin Schmidt?

  Yep.

• 1:03Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  They know about Kennedy Space Center in Houston, but we've got a little pocket of NASA in New York City, and you're there as our neighbor, so good to know that. But you're also elevated, or is this a promotion, I guess, to Senior Advisor on Climate to NASA? So it's nice to know that such a position exists.

• 1:22Gavin Schmidt?

  Well, it does now, yes.

• 1:25Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  It does, it does now, and it's not good enough just to research on climate, this stuff has to get communicated.

• 1:31Gavin Schmidt?

  Yes.

• 1:32Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  And if you're an advisor to NASA, and NASA's a hugely public entity in our lives, not only domestically, but in the world, you've got a really key place there. And let me just lead off, before we get to the questions that I know Chuck has collected, because that's the DNA of this format, is questions from you, from the public, coming back to get answered in our StarTalkian way. But let me just ask you, Gavin, should we not be surprised that this Youth Climate Summit is being organized in Florida and not...

• 2:09Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Colorado or one of the mountain states? If you could tell us what what special relationship Florida has with climate change?

• 2:17Gavin Schmidt?

  Well, you know, Florida is grand zero for the impacts of things like sea level rise, coastal flooding, greater intensity of hurricanes. And so, you know, we're seeing we're seeing changes in the in the temperature of the sea around Florida. We're seeing changes in the storm climate and we're seeing sea level rise. And and that puts Florida very much at the grand zero for the really acute impacts of climate change that's happening now, not least the things that may be happening in the future.

• 2:52Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  You know, I remember seeing, was it not last year, but perhaps the year before, there was a satellite photo of hurricanes all lined up, ready to slam into Florida. It was like, OK, your turn. It was like they were lining up at the deli, right? And I just have no memory of seeing such such persistence of assault.

• 3:14Gavin Schmidt?

  Yeah, I mean, twenty twenty was a very bad year for hurricanes, a very, very active Atlantic season. Two thousand and five was was was a really big year, too. And that's not what you expect every year, thankfully. But we are seeing we are seeing trends in, you know, Caribbean hurricanes. We're seeing more those are being more frequent. They're more intense when they arise. We're seeing increases in, you know, cat three, four, five hurricanes. And we think that that's being fueled by the warmer temperatures in the tropical Atlantic and places. So, yeah, so it's that was very that was very sobering.

• 3:51Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Chuck, did you hear he's on a first name basis with the hurricane level? Yes, cat, cat, cat five. Yes, exactly.

• 4:01Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  One last thing before we run over to Chuck and get some questions that have been pre-collected. Last year, 2020, I heard there was like Hurricane Alpha, and I thought to myself, Alpha, did we run out of letters of the alphabet to name these words? We're starting to use the Greek alphabet? So what's up with that? I didn't know that was in the in the

• 4:21Gavin Schmidt?

  That's exactly right. Yeah, so the National Weather Service has a list of pre-approved names, and they have it for, I think, out for another five years. It's not every letter of the alphabet, but I think it's 23 names. I might not be quite right. But once you've run out of those, then you start doing these Greek alphabets. Alpha, Beta, Gamma, Delta, Epsilon. I mean, and so when you're seeing Hurricane Alpha, you know it's been a bad season.

• 4:51Chuck Nice?

  Wow. Yeah. And now, why only 23 of the letters? I mean, what names did they omit that are just so awful?

• 5:01Gavin Schmidt?

  So there's never been a Hurricane Xavier?

• 5:04Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So no X's?

• 5:05Gavin Schmidt?

  Yeah, so there's no X's.

• 5:07Chuck Nice?

  I'm looking forward to Hurricane Yvonne.

• 5:09Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  You need to modernize the names, right?

• 5:16Gavin Schmidt?

  They do modernize the names. I mean, so it used to be all very Anglo names, you know, Arthur and Charlie, and now they're also taking names from a broader cultural background. So

• 5:29Chuck Nice?

  See, but is that a good or a bad thing? In a way, it's a good thing because it means that we're recognizing that there's cultural diversity. But in a way, it's a bad thing because you're being named after a hurricane. It's like, you know, I don't want to, I don't, you know, in a way, it's like

• 5:45Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Hurricane Chuck.

• 5:46Chuck Nice?

  Right.

• 5:47Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Batters the seaboard.

• 5:48Chuck Nice?

  Hurricane Rosaniqua. Like, you know. And then what if it's like the worst hurricane ever, and it's like a black name? You know what I mean? Just like, oh, of course Hurricane Ladamiyan gotta be the worst hurricane ever. Like

• 6:04Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  All right, so Chuck, let's do this.

• 6:06Chuck Nice?

  All right, let's just jump into it.

• 6:08Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  What do you have for us?

• 6:09Chuck Nice?

  Of course, all these questions come from the students of Broward County. And I think, let's start with Aiden M. And let me see here, Aiden, oh my goodness, Trade Winds.

• 6:22Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Do you have Aiden's grade in what school?

• 6:24Chuck Nice?

  He is in grade five at Trade Winds Elementary. So, and he says this, it's a great question. Who first noticed global warming? Which is a great question because people may think it's a relatively new phenomenon.

• 6:43Gavin Schmidt?

  So, so the answer to that is actually, it actually goes back a long time. There was a guy called Calendar, interestingly enough, in the 1930s, who was the first person to put together a time series of temperatures. And with his knowledge of what happens in the atmosphere and the important role of carbon dioxide, he had hypothesized that he should be able to see a trend. And he was working in the kind of mid 30s, so 1938, I think. And he put together this data set, which was pretty sparse. But it was enough to see that indeed the temperatures had changed

• 7:25Gavin Schmidt?

  from the beginning of the 20th century, so about 1900 through to 1930. And he said, yes, oh, look, it seems to be getting warmer. And this is something that we expect to happen. Because the physics of this had been worked out in the Victorian era, in the 19th century. So, and people knew that we were burning a lot of coal, we were burning a lot of oil, and we were expecting things to happen, and happen they did. But yeah, no, it was in the 1930s that people started to notice what was going on. And then we ignored it for another 30 years. But, but yeah, 1930s.

• 8:03Chuck Nice?

  And that's working out great, right?

• 8:07Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  How's that working out for you?

• 8:08Chuck Nice?

  Yeah, it's like 1930s, we find out that we are indeed warming the planet. And we go, eh, we'll get to it at some point.

• 8:17Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  But I want to drive my car.

• 8:19Chuck Nice?

  Right. Wow.

• 8:21Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Forget about the earth. I want to drive my car. But of course, if there is no earth, you can't drive your car. So people got to work out the causes and effects of your desires there. All right, Chuck, what else you got for me?

• 8:32Chuck Nice?

  All right, let's keep moving and um, let's go to Camilla B, who is at sixth grade in Indian Ridge Middle School. Hello, Camilla. And Camilla asked this. How fast are glaciers and icebergs melting? Oh. Camilla has a sense of urgency. She's like, look, I need to know what is going down.

• 9:03Chuck Nice?

  Because I'm here in Florida and I need to know if I should move.

• 9:08Gavin Schmidt?

  So, yeah, I mean, you've heard the phrase, right, glacially slow, right, to mean something really moving so slowly that you can't even see what's going on. Well, glacially slow does not mean what it used to mean, right? So glaciers are moving.

• 9:22Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  I haven't heard, I haven't heard that term used in that way in at least 10 years. Oh, it's moving at a glacial pace. No one says that anymore. That's amazing. Because we know deep down, we are moving those puppies and melted them down. Okay, go on. I'm sorry to interrupt you.

• 9:37Gavin Schmidt?

  No, no, that's fine. I mean, you're right. Nobody says glacially slow anymore because the glaciers are really moving quite fast. What we do at NASA is that we can keep track of how much water and ice there is on Greenland or in Antarctica. And we have, we have these records that they're measuring the gravity of the planet. And when the ice melts, then the gravity goes down a little bit. And we can, we can track that from space, which is pretty impressive, quite frankly.

• 10:05Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Wait, just to be clear, Gavin, Gavin, we know the gravity of earth as a, as a collective body. When you say NASA is measuring gravity, you mean they're measuring the difference in gravity from one part of earth's surface to the other.

• 10:18Chuck Nice?

  Isn't that what you're talking about?

• 10:20Gavin Schmidt?

  Yeah, and over time as well.

• 10:21Chuck Nice?

  If more mass is in one place than another, it's gonna have slightly extra gravity there rather than here.

• 10:27Gavin Schmidt?

  That's right. So there's more gravity above a mountain than there is over the ocean. And there's more gravity above a big ice sheet than over a little ice sheet. And so as the ice sheets shrink, then the gravity goes down a little bit and you can calculate how much mass has disappeared from the ice and has gone into the ocean. And so we keep track of that and we can measure, for instance, the loss of mass from Greenland. It's about 250 gigatons of water every year is leaving Greenland. And it's about 150 gigatons of water every year that's leaving Antarctica, mostly from the Antarctic Peninsula and West Antarctica,

• 11:10Gavin Schmidt?

  which is the bit which is, if you go all the way down through South America to the bit that sticks out, that's the peninsula, and then the bit just to the side of that is West Antarctica. So most of the mass in...

• 11:23Chuck Nice?

  So gig...

• 11:24Gavin Schmidt?

  Giga.

• 11:25Chuck Nice?

  Giga is billions.

• 11:26Gavin Schmidt?

  No, giga is 10 to the 9.

• 11:30Chuck Nice?

  Wow. Billion tons.

• 11:31Gavin Schmidt?

  Yes.

• 11:32Chuck Nice?

  250 billion tons.

• 11:35Gavin Schmidt?

  That's right. Every year, every year.

• 11:37Chuck Nice?

  Every year?

• 11:39Gavin Schmidt?

  Yeah.

• 11:39Chuck Nice?

  Wow. That's a lot of water. And that water is... So that's fresh water going into salt water?

• 11:49Gavin Schmidt?

  Yeah.

• 11:50Chuck Nice?

  That can't be good, right?

• 11:51Gavin Schmidt?

  So that's fresh water from the land that's going into the ocean and it raises sea level. It does get spread out mostly evenly around the ocean. And that's adding about a millimeter per year in global sea level. And the total amount of sea level is made up of that, plus changes in mountain glaciers, they're melting quite quickly. And then the warming of the ocean itself is also causing the sea level to rise. So the sea level rise right now is about just over 3 millimeters a year, which doesn't sound like a lot, but it's been about a foot around Florida in the last 60 to 100 years, I'd say.

• 12:33Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  And what I what I try to tell people is if you fill a glass completely with water and then add three millimeters, 100% of what you added spills.

• 12:45Gavin Schmidt?

  Yep.

• 12:46Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Just let's understand that. And also, there's another issue here, right? Where if you're adding fresh water at large rates to salt water, that changes the sort of the circulation patterns and the sea level mix that previously relied and evolved on what was a stable salt mixture. Is that correct?

• 13:08Gavin Schmidt?

  Right, so the changes in fresh water. So fresh water is lighter than salt water. So it tends to sit on the top, at least to start with, before it gets mixed down. That changes how easy it is for heat to get into the ocean, for carbon to get into the ocean. And so one of the things that we've seen in the oceans as things have warmed up and we've got this extra fresh water is that it's becoming harder to get things down into the ocean. And that's heat and carbon. And so that's actually adding to the temperatures in the atmosphere. It's adding to the carbon in the atmosphere. And so it's actually, that's not a good news. That's not good news either.

• 13:45Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Man, man, okay. Wow. All right, Chuck, keep them coming, Chuck.

• 13:50Gavin Schmidt?

  Yeah, this is just gonna get more and more depressing, I'm sorry.

• 13:53Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  I know. You better have something positive to say at the end of this.

• 13:56Gavin Schmidt?

  Oh, yeah, that's right.

• 13:58Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  The last time we're inviting you on something like this.

• 14:01Chuck Nice?

  So let's go to, let's go to Maya E. And Maya E. is in grade five at Trade Winds. Hi, Maya. And she says, what can we do as kids to slow down the global warming process? So here's something that's a little more encouraging and.

• 14:23Gavin Schmidt?

  You've got to remember that you're not just a kid, right? You are a son or a daughter. You are a classmate. You are an advocate. You are a consumer. But you're all of these things. And one of the most impressive things that's happened over the last couple of years related to climate is the outpouring of activity and concern from youth climate leaders like Greta Thunberg and Alex Villasenor in the US, who have kind of taken this and really pushed it. They pushed it to, you know, the top tables, to the UN, to government decision makers and made it very, very clear

• 15:08Gavin Schmidt?

  that it's not okay just to sit around and not do anything. It's not okay to know that this is a crisis and not act in a commensurate way. And there's been an enormous amount of, you know, truly authentic, you know, concerns about your future. I mean, speaking to the youth, I mean, not so much my future, but your future. You know, this is going to be the issue of your entire lives. It's not going to go away next year. It's not going to go away in 10 years' time. It's going to be a very, very real issue for all of that time. And your role as somebody, as people who can get the grownups and the decision makers to act in your interests is really very important.

• 15:53Gavin Schmidt?

  So, so, yes, I mean, you can encourage, you know, local recycling. You can encourage renewable energy. You can encourage your school to have, you know, a zero-waist cafeteria. All of these things are good and positive steps.

• 16:08Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  What you're saying, Gavin, is that even if someone in middle school does not have power of title...

• 16:16Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Or power of of of any other sort of high ranking official. You have the power, you have social and cultural power. Because if you're if you're 12 years old and you write a letter to the editor of the local paper that you're concerned, I bet they're gonna publish it. And so you can have influence beyond title.

• 16:36Gavin Schmidt?

  Yep.

• 16:37Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Because because when if if the 10 year olds start worrying about how the adults are messing up the environment, that's something to take notice of.

• 16:45Gavin Schmidt?

  Yeah.

• 16:46Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  And so, oh, oh, yeah.

• 16:48Gavin Schmidt?

  It makes it makes the the adults feel bad. And you know what? Kids should make adults feel bad because they have something to feel bad about.

• 16:54Chuck Nice?

  Start guilting your parents, kids. Start guilting your parents. Mom, Dad, you don't love me. You don't love me. Look at what you're doing. Look at what you're doing to the planet, Mom. Dad, you don't love me. You guys suck. You suck. Grown up suck. Grown up suck.

• 17:15Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  No, that'd be less productive, I think. By the way, Chuck has Chuck has three kids. What are the ages of your kids, Chuck?

• 17:22Chuck Nice?

  I have a 20 year old, and then I have a 14 year old, and then I have a seven year old because I'm an idiot. Um, no.

• 17:33Chuck Nice?

  No, I have, so and I do have three children. And I try my.

• 17:38Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So you get all three different perspectives there at those different ages?

• 17:40Chuck Nice?

  It's great to see because, believe it or not, the 20 year old is concerned about climate, but not as much as the 14 year old. And the seven year old is a full blown activist. So it's, you know, when I see these questions from middle schoolers, I think it's fantastic that they are already keyed in on this as a true issue of concern. So it's fantastic.

• 18:19Speaker 03

  I'm Joel Cherico and I make pottery. You can see my pottery on my website, cosmicmugs.com. Cosmic Mugs, art that lets you taste the universe every day. And I support StarTalk on Patreon. This is StarTalk with Neil deGrasse Tyson.

• 18:43Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Welcome back to StarTalk. This episode is from a virtual livestream Cosmic Queries with the Broward County Youth Climate Summit in Florida. And we've been talking about the science of climate change with my co-host Chuck Nice and our special guest climatologist Gavin Schmidt. And we've been answering questions from the students themselves about the future of this climate crisis in which we find ourselves. So, let's get right back to it. All right, Chuck, keep it coming.

• 19:16Chuck Nice?

  All right, let's keep going now.

• 19:17Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  If you've just joined us, probably you should have been there from the beginning. But if you just joined us, we are at the Broward County Youth Climate Summit, 3rd Annual. And we're talking to Floridians about climate. And we've got with me Gavin Schmidt, Senior Advisor to NASA on climate and Director of the Goddard Institute for Space Studies. I didn't say at the beginning, but Goddard, it's abbreviated G.I.S. And G.I.S specializes in many things, but especially climate on planets. What the atmosphere is doing, what the environment around, you know, solar heating, cooling within the atmospheres, turbulence, all of this.

• 19:58Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So, Earth as just another planet can give you a cosmic perspective on the things that can go wrong. In a planetary atmosphere.

• 20:09Gavin Schmidt?

  Right.

• 20:09Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Right, and so Gavin, tell me two planets where stuff really went wrong in the past.

• 20:15Gavin Schmidt?

  So that was, that was, and that's an easy one. So you've got Venus and you've got Mars. So Venus.

• 20:22Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  One is to our left and the other is to our right. They're right, they're adjacent to us, okay?

• 20:26Gavin Schmidt?

  Yeah, and so Venus may well have been the first habitable planet in the solar system. And for a long time, for about a billion years, may have been able to maintain water at the surface. But as the sun got brighter over time, you know, and it's still getting a little bit brighter. The oceans evaporated, the hydrogen was lost, and it's turned into a hellhole where lead will melt on the surface.

• 20:52Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Gavin, I did the, yes, it can melt lead, fine, but you could cook a 16-inch pepperoni pizza on your windowsill in three seconds. So that's, that's, that's

• 21:03Gavin Schmidt?

  Wow.

• 21:03Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  That's an advantage, you see, there's a silver lining to this high-temperature place.

• 21:07Chuck Nice?

  Exactly, except that you, yeah, your charred remains will have a delicious meal.

• 21:15Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  You'd be vaporized too, but ignoring that complication, it would be an awesome pizza oven, that's all I'm saying.

• 21:20Gavin Schmidt?

  But like I said, it might have been the first habitable place in the solar system for about, for about a billion years.

• 21:26Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So something bad happened on Venus. Something bad happened on Venus. All right, now how about Mars?

• 21:32Gavin Schmidt?

  Now Mars, now we, you know, we see evidence for water on Mars, and so we think that at some point Mars, a little bit more recently than Venus, was habitable. There was sufficient water on the surface to have running water, and so we're trying to work out what combination of atmospheric composition could have led to that. But that is long in the past, you know, and now obviously Mars is extremely dry. It's lost whatever, I mean, it still has some atmosphere, but it's lost a lot of its atmosphere, it lost a lot of its water.

• 22:10Gavin Schmidt?

  And now is, does not have very much of a greenhouse effect, and is very cold, and has pretty sunsets. And you would be hard-pressed to cook a pepperoni pizza at any time right now on Mars.

• 22:25Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Okay, so Mars doesn't have any running water anymore, but it once did. But it has pretty sunsets. So Chuck, there's it. So those are the two reasons. One to go to Venus and one to go to Mars.

• 22:34Chuck Nice?

  There you go.

• 22:34Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Get a pretty sunset.

• 22:35Chuck Nice?

  Yes.

• 22:38Chuck Nice?

  That's right. You know, no air, but God, the views.

• 22:43Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  The views are beautiful.

• 22:44Chuck Nice?

  The views are gorgeous. Can't breathe, but enjoy those views. All right. Okay, here we go. Let's uh.

• 22:52Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Keep them coming.

• 22:53Chuck Nice?

  I love this question from Sierra E. And Sierra E is in the ninth grade at Coral Springs High School. And Sierra is not playing around. She wants to know this. What kind of jobs are there for people interested in climate and climate studies? Sierra, I don't, let me just say, Sierra, I'm already proud of you, okay? You're not only looking to solve the existential crisis that faces all of mankind, but you're like, how do I make some money off of this?

• 23:37Chuck Nice?

  I love you, Sierra. That's the way to think.

• 23:43Gavin Schmidt?

  So there's some, there's some great, there's some great opportunities. Um, so the, the kinds of tech jobs that are gonna be important are things like smart grid technology, storage technology, renewables. Uh, all of those things that are gonna be growing enormously in the.

• 23:59Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Energy storage.

• 24:00Gavin Schmidt?

  Energy storage.

• 24:01Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  When you say storage, energy storage.

• 24:02Gavin Schmidt?

  Um, and then you've got, uh, you know, the adaptation part of it. You know, how do you, uh, help cities and agriculture uh, plan for the changes to come? You know, there's, there's a lot of social science issues there. There's a lot of politi- politics involved there. Um, but without those people, like all the technology in the world doesn't help us. Right? Things need to be deployed, uh, things need to be used. Then, you know, what, what is it? How is that change going to happen? And the people that are making that change or helping enable that change, they're going to be the most important people around. And those aren't necessarily STEM jobs. They could be public service.

• 24:46Gavin Schmidt?

  They could be urban planning. They could be, you know, people who are interested in sewage and septic tanks and like dealing with the legacy of what we've built now and the infrastructure that's in peril right now and how to make it resilient and how to deal with the problems that are going to come.

• 25:07Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Yeah, Gavin, that's a brilliant, brilliant answer there. And I had not fully grocked how interdisciplinary climate science in our society would be. Because, right, you said you need the scientists, you're among them. You need the policy people, you're among them. But a cool invention that pulls us off of fossil fuels into other forms of energy, that would be industry. But then you still have to deploy it, so you get the politics. I love it. Everybody can get a piece of that part.

• 25:36Chuck Nice?

  It's a problem that affects every single area of our lives, which means that if you think of it in terms of systems change, then whatever you do in life, if you relate it to climate, there is an application. So, and by the way, I have not fully grocked the word grocked. What the hell was that?

• 26:02Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  It's a geek word, and I forgot what its origin is.

• 26:06Gavin Schmidt?

  Robert Heinlein.

• 26:07Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Yeah, Robert Heinlein, thank you. It comes from science fiction, it's spelled G R O K.

• 26:12Gavin Schmidt?

  G R O K.

• 26:13Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  And it has to do with wrapping your head around an issue or a problem and coming to terms with it within yourself, possibly then being able to do something about it. Am I good there? Did I get that right, Gavin?

• 26:28Gavin Schmidt?

  I think so. I'm trying to remember the book in which it first appeared. It might have been The Moon is a Haast Mistress, but I forget the details. But it was very big in the 1960s and 70s, so.

• 26:39Chuck Nice?

  Well, there you go, kids.

• 26:41Gavin Schmidt?

  For the youth among us, that's where it comes from.

• 26:43Chuck Nice?

  This is when you know that you're in the secret astrophysics club, when you can actually use the word grocked and then know its frickin' origins. You're seeing the secret geek speak that these scientists have with one another.

• 27:02Chuck Nice?

  Okay.

• 27:06Gavin Schmidt?

  I'm sorry. Someone, someone look that up. Which book did it come from?

• 27:10Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Live Long and Prosper.

• 27:11Chuck Nice?

  Right. Thank you for bringing it back down to my level. Thank you. All right. Let's move on to Sean D, who has a very sobering question. He's at grade six at Margate Middle School. And Sean D wants to know this. What do you fear will happen in the future if we take no action?

• 27:39Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  All right. So there goes Gavin. Give us the apocalyptic scenarios. Well, let me, I'll start off. I'll start off. I'll start off and I'll hand off to you. The Broward County Youth Climate Summit in 20 years will be held underwater.

• 27:56Gavin Schmidt?

  Yeah, that's not, that's not funny.

• 27:59Chuck Nice?

  Okay, I'm sorry. What was funny was you say, hey, that's not funny.

• 28:06Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Okay, go on.

• 28:07Gavin Schmidt?

  I know. So I mean, like, if, if, if we, if we don't rise to this moment, then the sea will rise to this moment.

• 28:15Chuck Nice?

  Oh, wow.

• 28:17Gavin Schmidt?

  You know, if, if, if, if we don't.

• 28:20Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  There's a bumper sticker.

• 28:20Chuck Nice?

  I'll tell you right now, that's a T-shirt. That's a T-shirt.

• 28:23Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  That's, that's a T-shirt, a bumper sticker, a meme.

• 28:26Chuck Nice?

  Yeah.

• 28:27Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Okay. All right. But we say that again, so we can get, we can get a meme shot.

• 28:32Chuck Nice?

  Yeah.

• 28:33Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Like right there. I'm gonna get a screenshot. Okay. Go. Say it again.

• 28:36Gavin Schmidt?

  If we don't rise to this moment, the seas will rise to this moment.

• 28:42Chuck Nice?

  Wow.

• 28:42Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Boom.

• 28:43Chuck Nice?

  That's beautiful.

• 28:44Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Mic drop. We're done here.

• 28:47Gavin Schmidt?

  No, but, but, you know, this, this is, this is a serious question. I mean, like, the, the worst case scenarios that, that we've plotted out, you know, if we go, if we don't do anything, we just like, we just, we just burn all of the fossil fuels that we can. We burn all of the coal, all of the oil, the methane hydrates, the, the tar sands, the oil shales, all of the rest of it. We, we could have an impact on this planet that has not been seen in, in tens of millions of years, maybe, maybe even, maybe even longer. The anthropocene, the period that we're now creating, would be so far out of like the normal bounds of climate variability

• 29:31Gavin Schmidt?

  that quite frankly, we don't even know what kind of a planet that would be. Right, we're talking about, you know, if you, something more recent, like the art, the last ice age, right, which was only 20,000 years ago, and that was caused by, you know, wobbles in the earth's orbit. That was about, yeah, eight to nine degrees Fahrenheit cooler than today. Right, the worst case scenarios, if we just don't do anything and burn everything that we can find, that's about eight to nine degrees Fahrenheit warmer than where we are now. Right, and the last ice age, think about that, you know, massive ice sheets across the whole of North America, mammoths and a very, very different planet.

• 30:14Gavin Schmidt?

  And then kind of like flip that and say, well, well, what kind of planet would it be if it was that much warmer? And we don't know, we don't know what kind of planet that would be. It would be one that, that we and our current society would be, would be in trouble. Like, we have so much stuff next to the coast, we have so many expectations. You know, our agriculture, you know, where we grow things, how we grow things depends on the climate where we are. If things shift such a degree, then all of those anticipations, all of those expectations are worthless.

• 30:49Chuck Nice?

  Wait, Gavin, you said, "We have so much stuff near the coast."

• 30:53Gavin Schmidt?

  Yeah, like New York.

• 30:56Gavin Schmidt?

  Yeah, I mean, New York and harbors and, you know, how, you know, our world is a connected world, you know, we move things around. Miami, like, but Shanghai and Calcutta and Bombay, Mumbai. You know, Qianjin, London, Paris, all of these places are actually very close to the coasts. And, you know, and if you think that, you know, our heritage, such as it is, should be worth preserving, then, you know, not doing anything about climate change is not the way to maintain that.

• 31:32Chuck Nice?

  So now, as we talk about the loss of these coastal cities, is there a way to target climate change so that we could just take out a few places that perhaps, that we don't want around anymore?

• 31:44Chuck Nice?

  I'm joking Gavin, that's a joke. Did you see his face, Neil?

• 31:49Gavin Schmidt?

  If he had a sign, if it said joke on it, then I would know.

• 32:09Chuck Nice?

  All right, let's give a Patreon shout out to the following Patreon patrons. Jason Jost, Ava Spur, and Andrew Kadama. Guys, thank you so much for your gravity assist as we make our way around the cosmos. We appreciate your help and for anyone else who would like their very own Patreon shout out, please go to patreon.com/startalkradio and support us.

• 32:38Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Welcome back to StarTalk. This episode is from a virtual livestream cosmic queries with the Broward County Youth Climate Summit. It's Broward County, Florida. We've been talking about the science of climate change. I've got my co-host Chuck Nice and our special guest, climatologist Gavin Schmidt. And we've been answering questions from the students themselves about the future of the climate crisis. So, let's get back to it.

• 33:09Chuck Nice?

  All right, so let's, um, let's go to Natalia Pease. She's in 11th grade over at West Broward High School. And, um, she's looking at this from a policy standpoint. What are some laws that could be enacted in order to slow down climate change? So, is there anything that we can do that we should ask our governments to do?

• 33:38Chuck Nice?

  To take us out of this.

• 33:40Gavin Schmidt?

  Yeah, so I'm part of the government, so I have to be a little bit careful here. So, you know, I can give my personal opinion. Obviously, you know, NASA doesn't really have much of an impact on laws and policy directly. But, you know, but my personal view is that, you know, there are laws that exist that are pushing us in the right direction. Things like renewable standards for electricity. Things like, you know, encouraging electric vehicles over internal combustion vehicles.

• 34:15Gavin Schmidt?

  A price on carbon is something that nudges everything in the right direction so that you actually pay for the pollution that you put into the atmosphere. These things are difficult to enact and, you know, and there's a lot of politics behind what actually does get enacted. But even like, even things that you think might be trivial, like building codes. You know, you can do a lot with improving building codes so that they take account of not just the climate changes that you've had, but the climate changes that we're going to have. We can make rules that make buildings use less energy and made with more resilient structures.

• 34:59Gavin Schmidt?

  I mean, so we can both legislate to improve resilience and to reduce energy wastage. So, you know, laws on standards for refrigerators. You know, I mean, the fact that we've had more efficient refrigerators for the last 50 years has saved an enormous number of power stations from ever being built, right? So efficiency gains can be helped, like the CAFE standards, where they're looking at the miles per gallon of the vehicle fleet. All of those things are pushing us in the right direction.

• 35:37Chuck Nice?

  Okay.

• 35:38Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  All right. That's hopeful.

• 35:39Chuck Nice?

  That is hopeful.

• 35:40Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Very nice.

• 35:41Chuck Nice?

  Good stuff. We like that. All right, let's, um, Alessandra.

• 35:44Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Oh, by the way, so, so West Broward High School?

• 35:46Chuck Nice?

  Yeah.

• 35:46Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So, go Bobcats.

• 35:47Chuck Nice?

  Oh, right on.

• 35:48Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Right, okay.

• 35:50Chuck Nice?

  Okay.

• 35:51Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Why I know that, I don't know, but go Bobcats. All right, go ahead.

• 35:54Chuck Nice?

  Alessandra M. uh, is a fifth grader at Trade Winds Elementary School. And she's got a good question about what, what does global warming have to do with severe weather events like storms and heatwaves, droughts, and hurricanes? So...

• 36:19Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  That, that, I, I love that because, because Gavin, I mean, think about it. If you're just, if you're just thinking, all right, it's one degree warmer in the world. The fl- the temperature fluctuates so much more than that from between day and night. Why, how could one degree matter to anything else that's going on, on this planet? What's up with that?

• 36:39Gavin Schmidt?

  So, uh, so really, that's a, that's a question of, of, of how things change on average and how that gets translated into things that we think of more as weather. Uh, and that's a, that's a great question.

• 36:52Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  But first, tell us the difference between weather and climate. Just, just spend a minute, the difference between those two.

• 36:57Gavin Schmidt?

  So, so, yeah, so, so weather, I mean, you know, it's, it's what's happening today. It's my, what's happening next week. It's changeable, it's kind of chaotic. Um, and, and climate is really the average of, of all of that over, you know, averaged over many years and looking at the statistics over many years. Um, and, uh, there, there isn't, uh, it's, it's, it's not, it's not totally obvious how these things, um, uh, connect. Uh, but we now have a large enough climate change signal that we're starting to see how those things connect. So, so let me give you some, some of the pathways by which the, these connections happen. Right, so as the planet gets warmer, right, it's warmed more than a degree Celsius.

• 37:41Gavin Schmidt?

  So, it's almost two degrees Fahrenheit, uh, at this point in the last hundred years or so. Uh, the amount of water vapor in the atmosphere increases, right? So, so it turns out that, uh, uh, you increase the, uh, the water vapor by about 10% with that amount of temperature change, right? So, so there's now 10% more water in the air than there used to be. And if you think about storms and if you think about rain systems, what you're doing there is you're gathering up a lot of quite moist air, you're pushing it up and then it all rains out. And if there's more water in the air, more water vapor in the air, when you squeeze it all together and you push it up, it comes out and it comes out more and stronger. And so what we've seen over, over the last

• 38:26Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  By the way, that's just what Floridians want. They want more humid air.

• 38:30Gavin Schmidt?

  Well, I mean, so it is getting more humid. I mean, you can, you can track that in the, in the weather statistics in Miami as well. But yeah, so, so you have more humid air and you have more intense rainfall and you can see that happening, not just associated with big storm events like, like hurricanes, but you can see it more generally when you have a front coming through, you know, kind of from the Pacific side to, to the Atlantic side. You can see that the, that the statistics of rain are pushing us towards more intense rainfall. And we discussed it earlier, you know, the, the temperatures themselves in the ocean

• 39:11Gavin Schmidt?

  are leading to more intense storms in the, in the Atlantic because the heat of the water is, is really the, the fuel that drives the hurricanes. And so we're seeing more intense hurricanes happening because of those temperatures as well.

• 39:28Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Wait, Gavin, if it's, if it's one degree on average, that means in some places it'll be much more than that.

• 39:33Gavin Schmidt?

  Right. So, so the places that are warming the most actually are in the high latitudes, in, in the, in the Arctic, it's warmed, you know, three, four, some places five degrees Celsius.

• 39:44Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Just, just where we need it.

• 39:45Gavin Schmidt?

  Uh, yeah, no, not really. But we're seeing, but we're seeing quite clear warming in the, in the tropical, tropical Atlantic. That's one of the places where most of the hurricanes start off and so, so that's kind of juicing them up a little bit. And obviously, you know, if the temperatures are warming and, you know, weather is that kind of noise on top of that, you're going to see more heat waves, you know, more days over 90 degrees, more days over 100 Degrees and and you can see that happening uh you know all around all around the world you know from Australia through to uh to the US to Europe to Japan to Asia uh you know we had um you know

• 40:25Gavin Schmidt?

  massive heatwaves in in Siberia last summer uh you know Siberia not a warm place but they had like a hundred degrees above the Arctic Circle that's not usual right um in fact it may even be unique

• 40:38Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  A new vacation spot a new vacation spot Siberia

• 40:40Gavin Schmidt?

  Uh well lots of uh

• 40:42Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Sunny Siberia

• 40:43Gavin Schmidt?

  Probably there

• 40:44Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Hot Siberia

• 40:47Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Um well we only have a few minutes left let's see if we can get a few squeezed in there and Gavin this is gonna be a lightning round so real quick give me sound your best soundbite answer go Chuck

• 40:56Chuck Nice?

  Uh this is for uh well we're gonna switch gears here cuz um this is from Carlos B and Tyler B I don't know if they're related uh Pines Middle School and Pioneer Middle School respectively grade seven and six um what got you interested in being an astrophysicist planetary scientist author and science communicator that's for both of you thanks for asking about being a comedian there Tyler I mean uh Carlos appreciate that Carlos um and then Tyler B says what inspired you to do what you do so what got you interested in the specific work that you do and what made

• 41:41Chuck Nice?

  you go to science in the first place

• 41:44Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  I I don't know how soundbitable this is so we're probably gonna have to end on these questions so Gavin why don't you go

• 41:50Gavin Schmidt?

  Um for me I I started with mathematics and and it was the joy of just like kinda solving things and and solving puzzles and then uh and then I got into things that actually meant things to people and I realized that you could solve problems that people would appreciate and that they would care about and the more that I've done and the more that people care and the more I'm able to talk to people uh about these things uh the more excited and the more interested I got in the science that I was doing

• 42:20Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So you got good feedback on your ambitions. Yeah, that's very important thing. Because not everyone, if you like math and then you have a peer group that says you like math, ew, what do you, you know, that could turn a lot of people off if they still want to sort of hang out with the cool kids.

• 42:37Chuck Nice?

  And by the way, if that happens to you, anyone listening, they're just jealous that you're good at math. Don't, don't fall for it.

• 42:48Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Now Chuck, is it true that when you were a kid, if you're, if you're cracking up in class, the teacher says, if you keep this up, you'll only amount to being a comedian.

• 42:59Chuck Nice?

  Absolutely, yeah. I've had that said to me, like, what do you think, you are a comedian? I'm like, hmm.

• 43:10Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So for me, my profile is well-known, I think, because I've written about it and spoken about it. I was nine years old and a first trip to my local planetarium, the Hayden Planetarium. And in fact, when I sign off this show, my tagline is, keep looking up. That was a famous tagline, who was called the Star Hustler from the Miami Planetarium for many, many years. And he was the head of the planetarium and he had a show, a short bit on PBS, giving sort of that week's night sky. And what was his name, Jack, I remembered in a minute. And so he signed off, but he died several years back and I say, somebody's got to carry that forward.

• 43:55Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So I carry his legacy. Whenever I sign off, I say, keep looking up. So planetariums can be a tremendous force of influence on people's ability, interest in looking up. But also astrophysics, just the universe in general, is a gateway science. It's a gateway science because if you're interested in that, then you find out, oh my gosh, I need to, there's biology there. There's engineering that make the satellites. There's, there's physics, there's chemistry. And so you come for the universe and you stay for the whole rest of that smorgasbord of science. And I looked up at the night sky in the planetarium and I said, oh my gosh, the limitless discovery that awaits us is what attracted me.

• 44:41Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  And to communicate science, I agree with Gavin here. If you tell somebody something and they like it and they want more, that's reinforcing. And then you find something else to tell them that's really cool and interesting about your field. And as Carl Sagan once said, "When you're in love, you want to tell the world." So, I think we gotta call it quits there. Oh my gosh, this was fun. And this is our Cosmic Queries format. And I'm delighted that we got asked by the Broward County School System to bring our Cosmic Queries format into your universe. Because that's what we do and it's what we love to do. And Gavin, always great to have you on StarTalk.

• 45:20Gavin Schmidt?

  Always a pleasure. Thank you very much.

• 45:22Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Okay, and we gotta make sure that the President of the United States will have your ear with the head of NASA. And so, if stuff doesn't go right, we'll blame you, okay?

• 45:32Gavin Schmidt?

  That's fair, that's fair.

• 45:34Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  That's fair, that's totally fair. And Chuck, it's always good to have you. Thanks for bringing us a force of levity into this world. Because sometimes we need it, otherwise we'll just cry. It's always a pleasure. I'm just saying. And let me end by declaring that I don't know in the history of the world if there's ever been a community of adults who, upon looking at the next generation, said, "I can't wait till you all take over to fix this stuff." Take a look at what adults have said about the next generation for the past 4,000 years. And we've always worried about what the next generation would be and do. But maybe for the first time, the opposite is the case.

• 46:14Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So, you all hurry up, get older, and gain the power we need to fix this world.

• 46:20Chuck Nice?

  Save us, children!

• 46:23Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  I'm Neil deGrasse Tyson, your personal astrophysicist. As always, bidding you to keep looking up.