Climate Confusion

Extreme weather events dominate the news -- tornadoes, hurricanes, winter snowmageddons, floods. What is fantasy and what is reality in the cultural conversation about climate?

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?

  Welcome back to StarTalk Radio. I'm Neil deGrasse Tyson, your personal astrophysicist. Joining me this week is my comedic co-host Chuck Nice.

• 0:24Speaker 01

  Hey!

• 0:24Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Chuck, welcome back to StarTalk.

• 0:25Speaker 01

  It's great to be here Neil.

• 0:27Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Yeah, it's like your eighth time or something.

• 0:29Speaker 01

  Yeah, I love it. I can't think of a better way to spend an early Sunday evening Neil.

• 0:35Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Okay, I don't know if you're joking, I don't know. And Chuck, you're tweeting at Nice Chuck Nice, still going strong there?

• 0:41Speaker 01

  No, I changed it. It's @ChuckNiceComic.

• 0:45Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Why, what are you doing to me here? How am I gonna find out what the... okay, fine. Chuck Nice Comic.

• 0:49Speaker 01

  There you go.

• 0:50Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Fine.

• 0:50Speaker 01

  I just thought it was simpler.

• 0:52Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  This week, you know, we couldn't leave it unattended to. We are going to devote this entire StarTalk Radio to climate confusion.

• 1:03Speaker 01

  Wow.

• 1:03Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Yeah, what's going on? Tornadoes wreaking havoc and floods and, of course, there's always been tornadoes and there's always been floods, but there's the worry that this is happening at a greater frequency and a greater intensity.

• 1:15Speaker 01

  Yes.

• 1:16Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  And is it global warming, global climate change, or is it just a fluctuation? So we assembled some experts that we'll get to during the show to just chat about this.

• 1:25Speaker 01

  I love the way you put it as "climate confusion." That is so much better than any term I've heard.

• 1:31Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  What?

• 1:32Speaker 01

  It makes the climate seem like a confused teenage girl. It's "climate confusion."

• 1:40Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Confusion.

• 1:40Speaker 01

  I love it.

• 1:41Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Actually, it's not the climate that's confused, it knows certainly what the hell it's doing. Let me bring in first Andrew Friedman. Andrew Friedman is exactly the kind of profile we wanted to explore for this show. He's managing editor and online content, managing editor of online content of climate policy. Let me get this, excuse me. Andrew, what are you?

• 2:02Speaker 02

  I'm a managing editor at Climate Central.

• 2:04Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  At Climate Central, right next door to Comedy Central.

• 2:07Speaker 02

  Yeah, yeah. We have a very weird relationship.

• 2:11Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  There you go. So this is based in Princeton, New Jersey, and what do you do there?

• 2:15Speaker 02

  We cover climate change. We basically put scientists and journalists together.

• 2:20Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Is that a good thing or a bad thing?

• 2:21Speaker 02

  Both. And we use that to cover climate and communicate it about it in ways that we think will be helpful to people to understand it.

• 2:30Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So you're at the you're at the nexus of the this important place where scientists are trying to communicate and you actually have people who know how to do this.

• 2:40Speaker 02

  Yeah, well, we we hope.

• 2:41Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Are you successful?

• 2:42Speaker 02

  We are and we aren't. There's a lot.

• 2:44Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  What kind of what?

• 2:48Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  That's not an answer.

• 2:49Speaker 02

  We are 100% successful.

• 2:51Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  There you go.

• 2:51Speaker 02

  I can't think of anything wrong.

• 2:53Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  That's right, Andrew. Go the Donald Trump route. How are how are you going to stop confusion of weather and climate in the public if you don't even know if you're successful? This worries me.

• 3:04Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Worries you too, I suppose.

• 3:06Speaker 02

  Yeah, well, I think that people are generally confused about what the difference is between weather and climate.

• 3:12Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Tell us, tell us.

• 3:13Speaker 02

  Well, I mean, all you you just have to think of it as.

• 3:16Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  People think they're the same thing typically.

• 3:17Speaker 02

  Right, I think so.

• 3:18Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So so fix it for us.

• 3:19Speaker 02

  Well, weather is short term and climate is the average of weather over the longer term.

• 3:25Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Longer, a month, a week, a month, a year, 10 years, a millennium?

• 3:29Speaker 02

  It depends exactly what you're talking about.

• 3:31Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Is climate the Ice Age? Or is climate it's it's summertime now because the next three months, you know, I'm going to the beach. Right.

• 3:38Speaker 02

  Yeah, I mean, that's also that's not exactly weather. It's it's still climate. It's it's knowing that it's going to be colder in January than it is in July.

• 3:46Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  That's climate. Okay, so now I get a tornado through my backyard and I've never had one in the history of my town. What's that?

• 3:53Speaker 02

  That's weather.

• 3:54Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  That's weather.

• 3:55Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 3:55Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Now, the fact that I never had one of these tornadoes before, that's kind of interesting to climate scientists, I presume.

• 4:01Speaker 02

  Yeah, I I think that the whole a lot of the discussion right now is coming out of, well, weather seems to be getting more and more unusual and extreme.

• 4:11Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  And is that really the case? Or are we just focusing on it more because there's this climate change backdrop on which to interpret it? Because if you go back in time, there've been extremes of weather, you know, there's the blizzard of 88 in New York that took out all of our power lines that you can go back, every town has got the legends of their town.

• 4:27Speaker 02

  Exactly.

• 4:28Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Floods and so are we just focusing a little better and so it gives the we're deluded into thinking that it's all the product of climate change?

• 4:37Speaker 02

  I think that there's some of that that goes on, but I think there's also actual trends that climate scientists can point to that show that certain extreme events are happening more frequently and they're happening in more extreme ways. It depends exactly what you're talking about.

• 4:52Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  All right, so I know exactly what I'm talking about. In the last six months, you know, you look across the country, these huge floods, record floods, basically, and tornadoes in the San, in, um, St. Louis Airport and in Alabama, tearing up Alabama. And again, not that they may have never heard of a tornado before, and, but we're talking about tornadoes in places other than where Dorothy, other than Kansas. Kansas is, of course, tornado alley. But if you have tornadoes in places other than tornado alley, oh, do we see a trend unfolding here?

• 5:25Speaker 02

  We don't see a trend in terms of where tornadoes are occurring. Um, there's actually another alley that's called Dixie Alley, which is the whole area that got hit by that massive tornado outbreak in Alabama and Mississippi.

• 5:38Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Yeah, just a few weeks ago, yeah.

• 5:39Speaker 02

  Yeah. Um, but what they are looking for is trends in tornado strength and trends in tornado frequency. A lot of that is still quite hazy because our records of tornadoes going back into the 1950s and earlier are really terrible.

• 5:55Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Why are they terrible? If a tornado comes, you'd think people would know about it and write it down.

• 5:59Speaker 02

  Right, well, there weren't-

• 6:00Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  There's not, there's no excuse there, I would think.

• 6:02Speaker 02

  There weren't that many people in, throughout the United States to record the tornado.

• 6:07Speaker 01

  Oh, so tornadoes may have happened and they just weren't actually experienced.

• 6:11Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  And they weren't, okay.

• 6:11Speaker 02

  If you look at the numbers, there are more and more tornadoes occurring every year. But they think that most of that trend is actually because we're just noticing them more. We have these radars, we have-

• 6:22Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  That's what I'm saying, we've got better equipment than ever before to find out what's, what's going on here.

• 6:26Speaker 02

  Right.

• 6:26Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  You know who's a big climate change guy, just who thinks a lot about it, in fact, lectures on it, is Bill Nye.

• 6:30Speaker 01

  Bill Nye, the Science Guy?

• 6:32Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  He's, he's like climate dude of late.

• 6:33Speaker 01

  Really?

• 6:33Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Yeah. And so he did a quick Bill Nye one-minute rant for us. Let's see what he tells us.

• 6:40Speaker 03

  Up until late in the last century, the one thing people could agree on was the weather. Statements like "it's cold," "it's hot," "it's rainy," or even "it's that dry heat" were not controversial. But now they are, because now people are wondering why the weather has turned so wacky. Flooding in the heartland again, but no Force Five hurricane to bring it on. Tornadoes? Sure, it's North America. But now they're in Brooklyn. If you're a climate change denier from, say, the wide-open spaces of Oklahoma, you just can't believe that things are not normal back in Norman, no matter how many homes are now underwater. A few humans can't change a climate. The Earth is just too big, isn't it? Look at the Earth from space.

• 7:24Speaker 03

  The atmosphere is thin. If you could somehow drive at highway speeds straight up, you'd be in outer space in just two hours. When it comes to the atmosphere and the sea ice and the no-show snows of Kilimanjaro, hours is a small world. And get this: By the end of October of this year, we will have seven billion people on this planet. A lot more humans, but no spare air. It's human-made carbon dioxide that's holding in the heat. On Venus, the same gas and the same heat-holding effect make it hot enough to melt metal. To understand climate change, compare planets. Have a look in from out in space. Nothing out there to cloud your thinking.

• 8:09Speaker 03

  For StarTalk Radio, I'm Bill Nye the Science Guy.

• 8:12Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  The one and only Bill Nye. Welcome back to StarTalk Radio. By the way, you can find us on the net, on the Internet. We are at StarTalkRadio.net. That's our website. And in fact, we've got a Facebook page.

• 8:26Speaker 03

  Nice.

• 8:27Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  StarTalk Radio. You can like us.

• 8:29Speaker 03

  Like us.

• 8:30Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  In the old days, you'd friend you, but now you just like it. Which is a little creepier, I think.

• 8:33Speaker 03

  Yeah, you know, it actually does change the social dynamic.

• 8:36Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  It does.

• 8:37Speaker 03

  I don't want to be your friend, but hey, I like you.

• 8:39Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  I'll still, nonetheless, like you. So, Bill left us with the notion that compare planets. There's a whole sub-cottage industry of astrophysics called comparative planetology. Well, you look around to other planets and see what knobs got turned there. See if you can get any insight to what's going on here on Earth. So, we know Venus, their atmosphere is mostly carbon dioxide, ninety-eight percent carbon dioxide, the kind of gas that traps heat. It, in fact, is doing a lot of heat trapping on Venus. So much that the temperature there has risen to nine hundred degrees Fahrenheit. It's hotter than a pizza oven. In fact, I did the calculation. I don't know if you do this, Chuck.

• 9:14Speaker 01

  Right.

• 9:15Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Next time you're in Venus, you can take a sixteen-inch pepperoni pizza, put it on the windowsill, it will cook in nine seconds.

• 9:21Speaker 01

  Actually, that sounds like a delicious meal. I might want a vacation in Venus now.

• 9:26Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  I, I, except that you would vaporize as well.

• 9:29Speaker 01

  Oh, I forgot about that little drawback, yeah.

• 9:31Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Also, Mars once had liquid running water on its surface. It's bone dry today, and it's a couple of hundred degrees below zero. Some knobs got, and by the, one, one of those planets is to our left, the others is to our right as we orbit the sun.

• 9:44Speaker 01

  So it sounds to me like we are the Goldilocks of planets.

• 9:47Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  That's, the question is, for how long?

• 9:50Speaker 01

  Ah.

• 9:51Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Let's see if we can bring in a research scientist in climate, in, in climate science. We've got David Rind here. David, you're a climatologist with NASA's Goddard Institute for Space Studies. That's right there on the Upper West Side of Manhattan. Hardly anyone knows it's there, why?

• 10:06Speaker 04

  Uh, well, it prefers to be incognito.

• 10:08Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Why?

• 10:09Speaker 04

  Well, historically, it was around during the late sixties when science was an anathema to a lot of people who related the science we were doing to Defense Department research.

• 10:19Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Oh, so that's why you're tucked away behind the restaurant.

• 10:22Speaker 04

  Well, we're at Tom's Restaurant, right above Tom's Restaurant.

• 10:26Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So, this is a famous restaurant. It not only shows up in every other scene change of, of, um, who, who, that's, uh, Seinfeld. Also, there's a famous song written in that restaurant by Susan Vega.

• 10:39Speaker 04

  Yeah, the restaurant's undoubtedly a lot more famous than us, no doubt about it.

• 10:43Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  I, I think that's a travesty, actually, if you're NASA and, and a restaurant's more famous than you. So, so tell me, what is climate? You, you're the man here, you do research on this.

• 10:52Speaker 04

  Yes, we build computer models of the climate system to try to answer questions just like the one you were asking. If something happens to the climate... Climate models predict, that's the sort of thing that would be the result of increasing carbon dioxide.

• 11:04Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So your climate models are only as good as how you set them up and what parameters you have interacting with each other.

• 11:09Speaker 04

  Definitely, and we also use satellites then, this is NASA after all, to try to observe the system and understand the relationship so that we can improve the model.

• 11:17Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  The system is like land, ocean, air kind of thing.

• 11:20Speaker 04

  Yes.

• 11:21Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  And sun, driving sun as your source of energy.

• 11:23Speaker 04

  Exactly.

• 11:24Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  And so, are you good at this?

• 11:26Speaker 04

  Well, that's an absolute term. Relatively, I can say this, we're better than we used to be.

• 11:33Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  You know, you guys are giving me wishy-washy answers here. All right, how about this, what does the history of your efforts tell us? Are you on the right track? Have you ever had to flip-flop based on one prediction from your computer models to another?

• 11:46Speaker 04

  Somebody did a study of this and looked at what the predictions were over the past 20 years for what would actually happen.

• 11:51Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  That would be a good test of your integrity.

• 11:53Speaker 04

  And actually, the models in general have been right on as to what's happened over the last 20 years. If you go back 20 years, see what they predicted, see what happened, it's pretty much aligned.

• 12:04Speaker 01

  That's a good track record.

• 12:05Speaker 04

  But, it doesn't mean-

• 12:06Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  There's always a but, everyone has a big but. So what's your but?

• 12:10Speaker 01

  Sir Mix a Lot of Comedy.

• 12:12Speaker 04

  The but is that we're just at the beginning of climate change, and if we go 50 years in the future, we may be in much more extreme climate change, and our ability to predict that, that we can't guarantee.

• 12:22Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  What you're saying is that your models are maybe good at predicting slow trends, but if there's a catastrophic tipping point, your models are less good at doing that.

• 12:32Speaker 04

  And even just the exponential increase of temperature and water and rain with time, whether we get those extremes right, that we can't guarantee. There's no way to check that.

• 12:40Speaker 01

  So all you have to do now, David, is change the model so everything will be okay, and then we're all right.

• 12:47Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Chuck, I don't think it works that way. He doesn't control the earth.

• 12:54Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  I should have told you before the show.

• 12:55Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 12:56Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  He may be powerful, but not that powerful. So, so let me just ask you, in your, in the parameters that you plug in, you're the knobs that you turn, are they, is there some knob you wish was better than better, you had better handle on?

• 13:13Speaker 04

  Yeah, the worst two knobs.

• 13:15Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  That's what I want to hear before we go to our commercial break.

• 13:17Speaker 04

  Clouds, because clouds can amplify or diminish climate warming and our ability to generate clouds, right? Pretty.

• 13:23Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Because they reflect sunlight or trap heat underneath.

• 13:26Speaker 04

  Exactly.

• 13:26Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Okay, when we come back, we'll bring in a filmmaker and find out what challenges he's faced when he's tried to communicate with climate change.

• 13:59Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Welcome back to StarTalk Radio. I'm Neil deGrasse Tyson with Chuck Nice. Comedian. Yes. Keeping it real. Good to be here. Let me reintroduce Andrew Friedman. Andrew works at the Climate Central, which is an office at Princeton University, charged with connecting scientists and the public.

• 14:15Speaker 02

  Yeah, yeah, we're scientists and journalists working out there.

• 14:18Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  That's what I'm trying to get that story straight. And David Rine from the Goddard Institute for Space Studies, up on the Upper West Side of Manhattan. So, thanks for being on, guys. David, before the break, you commented on a couple of the uncertainties that lurk in your models. Among them is how much cloud cover we have, because the water vapor in the cloud actually is itself a greenhouse gas, right?

• 14:38Speaker 04

  Exactly.

• 14:39Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Water traps heat, and clouds are made of water. And you also talk about aerosols. You're talking about my Underarm Spray. What do you mean aerosols?

• 14:45Speaker 04

  So aerosols are little particles, dust, for example, or sand that gets thrown in the air, or when you burn coal, you get soot thrown in the air. And the big issue here is that in addition to putting all this carbon dioxide in the atmosphere, which we've been doing now for a couple hundred years.

• 15:00Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Yeah, the Industrial Revolution and onwards, yeah.

• 15:02Speaker 04

  Exactly. That also has put... Put a lot of dust and dirt and aerosols in the air and that reflects sunlight back to space and it cools the climate.

• 15:11Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Oh.

• 15:12Speaker 04

  So the problem is, we don't know how much of warming we've been doing relative to the cooling that these aerosols do.

• 15:19Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So what you're saying is if Earth is warming from the CO2, what we need is more particles to block the sunlight.

• 15:24Speaker 04

  Well, you know, we're going in the opposite direction because we're cleaning the air up because particles irritate people, whereas carbon dioxide is invisible. So we're actually, by cleaning the air up, we're actually exacerbating the warming.

• 15:35Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So what you're saying is a solution is to just put dust in the atmosphere and block the sunlight.

• 15:40Speaker 04

  Exactly. A lot more asthma cases, a lot higher medical costs, but less global warming.

• 15:44Speaker 01

  Oh, who needs to breathe?

• 15:46Speaker 04

  Exactly.

• 15:47Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Let me bring in a guy who's actually a filmmaker, documentarian, and who has actually done segments on climate change for the news hour. And it's Charlie Lyons. Charlie, welcome to StarTalk Radio.

• 16:00Speaker 05

  Thank you for having me.

• 16:02Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Yeah, thanks for being here. So you made segments for, it wasn't just sort of global warming stories, wasn't just global, global warming stories, they were local, global warming stories. What were they?

• 16:14Speaker 05

  Well, like Andrew, I was working with Climate Central and our idea was to take this, you know, huge issue and try to make it local. So to find stories in Montana, in Iowa, in Georgia, in...

• 16:29Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Just like CBS Sunday Morning where you go to the mom and pop in the local town.

• 16:33Speaker 05

  But what people are seeing change, you know, and getting and talking to them.

• 16:38Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Give me a couple of examples that you found.

• 16:40Speaker 05

  Well, trout fishing.

• 16:41Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Trout fishing, okay.

• 16:42Speaker 05

  Okay.

• 16:43Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  I had trout just recently, by the way.

• 16:44Speaker 05

  Really?

• 16:45Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Yeah, grilled it, it was beautiful.

• 16:46Speaker 05

  Rainbow?

• 16:47Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Uh, ooh. I don't, it was just trout.

• 16:49Speaker 05

  Anyway, so we talked to...

• 16:54Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  It was really thin, but it was delicious.

• 16:55Speaker 01

  Generic trout.

• 16:56Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Generic, thank you.

• 16:57Speaker 01

  When you buy it at the market, it just says trout in black and white letters.

• 17:00Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Thank you, Chuck.

• 17:01Speaker 05

  There we are. So we talked to a trout fishing guide out in Livingston.

• 17:07Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Livingston where?

• 17:08Speaker 05

  Montana.

• 17:09Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Montana.

• 17:09Speaker 05

  Yep.

• 17:10Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Big sky country.

• 17:11Speaker 05

  Yes. And, and we also talked to a scientist at the University of Montana, who made something very clear that when the snowpack melts two or three weeks earlier, that creates a scenario by the end of the summer with a lot of warm days, where the trout, which is a cold water species, end up just in these sitting pools that are getting hotter and hotter and hotter, and they can't survive.

• 17:35Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Bad for trout.

• 17:35Speaker 05

  Bad.

• 17:36Speaker 01

  Sounds to me, though, like the problem solving itself. We're cooking our trout early.

• 17:40Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Steamed trout.

• 17:41Speaker 01

  That's all.

• 17:45Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So there it is. We solved that one. Okay, what other town did you go to?

• 17:50Speaker 05

  Um, we, we, we interviewed a guy on the coast.

• 17:53Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Wait, just to back up. So the point there is, it's not just monitoring the weather that gives you indicators. You can monitor the ecosystem is the point.

• 18:00Speaker 05

  Yes.

• 18:01Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  And, okay, so what other examples did you have there?

• 18:03Speaker 05

  Well, we also talked to a riverkeeper, a guy down in, um, uh, Atlanta, not Atlanta.

• 18:11Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  In the old days, they called them trolls, you know, who you paid to cross the river. The river.

• 18:17Speaker 05

  In Georgia.

• 18:17Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Uh huh.

• 18:18Speaker 05

  And, um, and what he was seeing was, he was seeing a lot of the cedar trees dying. Um, and his claim, and we, we supported this, was that there was an increase in salinity because of the freshwater mixing with the saltwater.

• 18:32Speaker 01

  Right.

• 18:33Speaker 05

  And the saltwater coming farther in because of.

• 18:36Speaker 01

  Less freshwater to stave it off? Is that how it happens?

• 18:38Speaker 05

  Well, no, just because of, um, sea level rise.

• 18:41Speaker 01

  Oh, that's even worse.

• 18:44Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Oh, yeah. Okay, so the, the brackish water was reaching further up the, up the.

• 18:49Speaker 05

  That's right. That's right.

• 18:50Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Wow.

• 18:50Speaker 05

  And, and, um, so that, that was another concrete instance of, of, you know, a guy who spent his whole life working on this river, saw something. Saw something and said something.

• 19:02Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So, so if you see something, say something.

• 19:04Speaker 01

  Well, let me just say once again, being the eternal optimist, from that I just see more cedar closets.

• 19:12Speaker 01

  Just trying to keep it positive.

• 19:15Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  The positive outlook Chuck here. And so now, David, you're a documentarian filmmaker, and so do you study other people's attempts to do this?

• 19:25Speaker 05

  Yeah.

• 19:26Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Charlie, sorry.

• 19:27Speaker 05

  Yeah, I mean, the thing is that the imperatives of drama, whether you're doing a documentary for PBS, or whether you're trying to make a film about Ernestine Vincent Millay.

• 19:35Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Which is what you're doing now, I read, yes.

• 19:37Speaker 05

  Yes, I imagine, I imagine. The imperatives for drama are totally different than the imperatives for science.

• 19:44Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  For science communication.

• 19:46Speaker 05

  That's, well, for science itself. And so, the problem is when you try to merge those two agendas, to tell a story versus, you know, to tell a story with characters, with struggles, with overcoming struggles, well, that might not necessarily be...

• 20:03Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  How you tell the science story.

• 20:04Speaker 05

  Exactly.

• 20:05Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Right, but they try. It doesn't stop them.

• 20:07Speaker 05

  Okay, so the day after tomorrow. Do you want to talk about it?

• 20:10Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  You had to bring up the day after tomorrow. Somebody, who was going to do it first?

• 20:14Speaker 05

  I love that.

• 20:15Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Yeah, it was Charlie brings it up first. Okay, so you got a point to make?

• 20:18Speaker 05

  Well, let's, perhaps, listen to a couple of clips.

• 20:23Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Oh, you brought some clips?

• 20:24Speaker 05

  Yeah, yeah.

• 20:25Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Okay, Ivan, our engineer, you got some clips queued up here? Let's see what he's got going here. So, there's a clip from day after tomorrow. Scientist speaking, can you set up the clip?

• 20:33Speaker 05

  The first clip is one of the first announcements by our main character, Dennis Quaid, who's talking about evidence that, you know, things are getting worse.

• 20:45Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Okay.

• 20:46Speaker 05

  And, you know, you might look at its accuracy.

• 20:48Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Okay, let's check it out. Go for it.

• 20:50Speaker 06

  What we have found locked in these ice cores is evidence of a cataclysmic climate shift which occurred around 10,000 years ago. The concentration of these natural greenhouse gases in the ice cores indicates that runaway warming pushed the planet into an ice age which lasted two centuries. I'm confused. I thought you were talking about global warming, not an ice age. Yes, it is a paradox, but global warming can trigger a cooling trend. Let me explain.

• 21:24Speaker 06

  The northern hemisphere owes its temperate climate to the North Atlantic current. Heat from the sun arrives at the equator and is carried north by the ocean. But, global warming is melting the polar ice caps and disrupting this flow. Eventually, it will shut down, and when that occurs, there goes our warm climate. Excuse me, when do you think this could happen, professor? When? I don't know, maybe in a hundred years, maybe in a thousand, but what I do know is that if we do not act soon, it is our children's...

• 21:57Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  That's Dennis Quaid trying to tell it like it is in a movie. Right. So Charlie, so he's trying to convey this, and we see the confusion. In fact, one of the people listening said, "I'm confused." And the title of this StarTalk radio broadcast is "Climate Confusion." Let me just check, David, you're our research scientist here. Apart from what might be errors in detail, is there a general truth that you can have global warming that leads to a freeze?

• 22:26Speaker 04

  So, let's take it step by step. Models do show that as the climate warms, the North Atlantic circulation slows down, and the...

• 22:35Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  This is warm currents that come up the side of the United States.

• 22:37Speaker 04

  And they get reduced. So that aspect is consistent with what models are showing. The difference is, models show that that aspect is completely overwhelmed by the warming that the increased CO2 is causing. So even in these regions where the currents have slowed down, it still warms up. The situation talked about in the movie was historically during a time when ice spread all over good portions of North America and Europe. In that case, when that...

• 23:04Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  That's the Ice Age.

• 23:05Speaker 04

  Yes. When that ice melted, which is a hell of a lot more ice than we have today available, that really shut down the circulation and produced a lot colder conditions.

• 23:15Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Now Chuck, just so you know, humans were alive back then, and we survived it just fine.

• 23:19Speaker 01

  The Ice Age? Yeah, exactly, because, you know, they found footprints of man right next to footprints of a brachiosaurus, so, you know. Yeah.

• 23:27Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  You got the wrong Deon there, I think. So Andrew, I'm told you read the script for this.

• 23:34Speaker 02

  I did, I did.

• 23:35Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So do we credit you or blame you? Do we credit you for the little bit of the sciences there? Or do we blame you for how much they got wrong?

• 23:41Speaker 02

  I'd appreciate both, actually. I connected the writer with a bunch of scientists in the government and outside, and I gave some helpful comments about how inaccurate it was. But I don't think that I was ultimately the deciding factor on how to portray this. I mean, they basically just sped up rapid climate change to unfathomably fast, you know, levels.

• 24:05Speaker 01

  Yeah, well, the movie's only two hours.

• 24:06Speaker 02

  I know.

• 24:08Speaker 01

  Come on, man.

• 24:09Speaker 02

  Exactly.

• 24:09Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So Charlie, that's your clip, Charlie, that you brought in here.

• 24:12Speaker 05

  Again, it's the imperative of drama. You need to, you know, in screenwriting talk, up the stakes, up the ante really, really quickly. And so when he talks about in that clip 100 years, then very soon after that, he's, something else has changed and all of a sudden we're talking about six to seven weeks. And then we're talking about seven to 10 days. And then we're talking about 48 hours.

• 24:37Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  The day after tomorrow.

• 24:38Speaker 05

  You know, a temperature drop of 10 degrees every second.

• 24:43Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Hence the title. When we come back after this next break. I want to talk more about the portrayal of climate change in some famous films we all know about.

• 25:18Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Back on StarTalk. I'm with my co-host Chuck Nice, and I also have Andrew Friedman with Climate Central in Princeton, and David Rind, a climate research scientist for NASA's Goddard Institute for Space Studies, and also Charles Lyons, filmmaker and documentarian. Charlie, we left off before the break with you giving us a clip from The Day After Tomorrow, and there's Dennis Quaid, is that right? Yeah, yeah, just telling it like it is from his world, taking something that might take 100 years and for the movie it became The Day After Tomorrow. But the question is, if things are changing, let me go back to you, David, what kinds of changes would be the most obvious or perhaps the most devastating? Because I don't mind an extra couple of degree days in the summer, so what?

• 26:02Speaker 04

  Well, there are two really components that people focus on. One is that we already have seen that when it's raining, the rain comes heavier. There's more moisture in the air.

• 26:11Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Higher intensity. So if the climate warms up, it evaporates and sustains more moisture in the air.

• 26:16Speaker 04

  Exactly.

• 26:17Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Because the air becomes better.

• 26:18Speaker 04

  Because in summer, there's more moisture than in winter, because the air can just hold more moisture.

• 26:21Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Just in general.

• 26:22Speaker 04

  And when climate warms, even more moisture shows up, and then if there's a lot more moisture, it can rain heavier. And we've been seeing that already now for the last decade.

• 26:30Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So what you're saying is that climate change in the form of warming will give you more and more episodes of precipitation, be it snow or rain?

• 26:38Speaker 04

  Well, heavier episodes of precipitation.

• 26:40Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Heavier.

• 26:41Speaker 04

  More droughts, more floods, just an amplification of the-

• 26:44Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Of the extremes.

• 26:45Speaker 04

  Hydrology, exactly.

• 26:46Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Oh, hydrology, that's a nice word. So hydrology is the cycle of water coming in and out of the atmosphere, I guess.

• 26:50Speaker 04

  And the second component also relates-

• 26:52Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Why don't you just say that?

• 26:53Speaker 04

  The second component also relates to water, and that's melting of ice sheets and things of that nature, and rising sea level.

• 27:00Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  These would only be ice sheets that are on the land, because if you melt ice that's floating, it doesn't change the ocean level.

• 27:05Speaker 04

  Exactly.

• 27:06Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  You could do that experiment at home, did you know this, Chuck?

• 27:08Speaker 01

  Yes, yes, as a matter of fact.

• 27:09Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  You know this experiment?

• 27:10Speaker 01

  Because ice has a larger volume than water itself when it's frozen. This is the man is doing his, let's check him out! So water expands when it freezes, so if you put ice in a glass and you fill the glass, when the ice melts, there'll actually be less water in the glass than when it was when the ice was displacing the- Unmelted.

• 27:25Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  That's almost right.

• 27:26Speaker 01

  Almost?

• 27:26Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  You'll get a B plus for that.

• 27:27Speaker 01

  B plus?

• 27:28Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Yeah, yeah.

• 27:28Speaker 01

  Okay.

• 27:28Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So what you do is you fill up a glass with ice.

• 27:30Speaker 01

  Okay.

• 27:30Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  And then fill it as high as you possibly can with water. And the ice is ri- rises above the water line. And you say, and you ask yourself, well, when it melts, is it gonna spill? That's the big question.

• 27:40Speaker 01

  Right.

• 27:40Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Just do the experiment.

• 27:41Speaker 01

  Right.

• 27:41Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  You do the experiment, the ice melts, it does not overflow.

• 27:44Speaker 01

  Right.

• 27:45Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Because in fact, the ice shrinks in volume and occupies the sp- same, the space.

• 27:50Speaker 01

  Wait a minute, didn't I just say that?

• 27:52Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  No, you said something a little different, that's why I gave you a B plus.

• 27:54Speaker 01

  Okay, I'll take a B- from you, a B plus is like an A plus in my book.

• 27:58Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Back to David, so David, so we melt the ice sheets, yeah, so then what happened? So Greenland and Antarctica, basically.

• 28:03Speaker 04

  Yeah, so the estimates are now, the latest estimates, we've had sea level rise for the past a hundred years because water, the oceans have been warming and the sea level ex- water expands when it warms.

• 28:14Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  That's normal expansion.

• 28:15Speaker 04

  Normal expansion, but now the estimates are that whatever we've got in the past a hundred years, the estimates are five to 10 times as great as that for the next a hundred years. Now you're starting to really threaten a lot of the big coastal cities and places along the Gulf.

• 28:31Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Florida's underwater.

• 28:32Speaker 04

  Well.

• 28:32Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  The Everglades is ocean.

• 28:33Speaker 04

  Under the most extreme conditions, which nobody knows whether they'll happen or not.

• 28:37Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  If anyone knows, it would be you, cuz you turn the knobs on your models, so what do you mean, nobody knows?

• 28:41Speaker 04

  So it depends on how much people pay us to turn the knob.

• 28:47Speaker 04

  But the reality is that, uh.

• 28:49Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  He means grant money, people, not.

• 28:50Speaker 04

  Yes, exactly.

• 28:51Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Okay.

• 28:51Speaker 04

  The, the reality is, we don't know how dangerous this situation is. 10 years ago, we thought, ah, not so likely. Now we're thinking, hey, it looks more likely than we thought. And, and that would have such a big impact on economies, on people's lives.

• 29:06Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  And that would happen within a century, is.

• 29:09Speaker 04

  People didn't think so, but now they're not so certain.

• 29:11Speaker 01

  So really, the, the, the, the real danger here is not whether we get hot or cold, but whether we drown.

• 29:20Speaker 04

  Yeah, drought or droughts, droughts are another big issue. And we've been seeing them occurring.

• 29:25Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So it'll wreak havoc on our, our econ- the economic distribution of resources will be totally altered here. Is what you're saying.

• 29:34Speaker 04

  Water availability, coastal availability.

• 29:36Speaker 02

  Right now, you have this huge flood on the Mississippi River. Couple hundred miles away, you have one of the worst droughts in Texas's history going on right now.

• 29:44Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  That's right, right, right next to each other, right there.

• 29:47Speaker 01

  I smell aqua duck.

• 29:48Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  No, no, what of the world's water world, water world, Charlie, what that one, you know, the whole world is water. I guess is that's a, I forgot what the theme was because I'm one of the billion people who never saw the movie, apparently.

• 30:02Speaker 05

  Yeah, they, I think they, they kept referring to Kevin Costner as Kevin Cost a lot. After that, after that movie, right?

• 30:09Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  But the premise, of course, was some apoc- climactic apocalyptic.

• 30:13Speaker 05

  Exactly, and you know, and basically what you, what results and, and arguably that would be true with 2012. That came out a couple of years ago and made about a billion dollars is, is what happens is that these sorts of events lend themselves to what people call in academia and elsewhere, disaster porn.

• 30:30Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Disaster porn.

• 30:32Speaker 01

  Really?

• 30:32Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Whoa.

• 30:33Speaker 01

  All right, you just got my attention.

• 30:35Speaker 05

  No, but basically, basically, um, it's someone like Rowan Emmerich who directed both 2012 and, um, A Day After Tomorrow.

• 30:45Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  They did smell the same, actually, now that you mention it, yeah.

• 30:48Speaker 05

  He's a terrific, sort of a maestro at, at doing these special effects.

• 30:53Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Disaster porn.

• 30:54Speaker 05

  Yes, yes, I mean, forget about the characters, better got this, you know, than logical story development. It's about.

• 31:00Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Forget the story, forget whether any of the characters are believable, he did an awesome film.

• 31:04Speaker 05

  No, no, it's, it's better than I'm giving credit for, but I mean, the, the point is that, um, it's easier to go for the big stuff than to be subtle. And, you know, there was a movie called The Age of Stupid, which is much more subtle, which I think is extremely effective. And that, of course, only made a million dollars.

• 31:20Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So that, oh, so hardly anyone saw that, but that took place in the future, reflecting on the chatter that's going on today.

• 31:25Speaker 05

  Exactly.

• 31:26Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  And the arguments.

• 31:27Speaker 05

  And just playing stuff that we hear every day, you know, reports from. Australia from the Middle West. I mean, well, that wasn't in there, of course, but a lot of the reports that we've heard in the last five years were actually quoted.

• 31:40Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  And informing the dialogue of this future world where climate change has happened. Let me find out. So David, our climate research scientist here, anytime talk shows, of which there are many during the day and they run 24/7, they want to tackle this subject, they bring on a climate change skeptic and plus some other climate change researcher. And what's going on there? What is the viewer to make of this? Because they both carry scientific pedigree and you yourself have been on many of these shows. Why should I believe you and not the other pedigreed scientist who's arguing against you?

• 32:16Speaker 04

  Well, I'd say, given that we live in a democratic society, there've been polls done of the major scientific organizations in the US and around the world. And like 99% of the scientists polled believe that global warming is real, is happening and will be a real danger to the world.

• 32:34Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  That would be a scientific consensus of great magnitude.

• 32:37Speaker 04

  Exactly. I mean, you could get people to disagree about anything. Is the world really round? You know, does the earth really go around the sun?

• 32:45Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Yeah, but those are crazy people arguing that. You go to the 1% of the scientists who are pedigreed in all the ways that our society pedigrees somebody, and they're up there 50/50 given arguments on the screen.

• 32:57Speaker 04

  The most rational arguments against it really relate to the issue of whether models can predict the future accurately or not. How much warming is going to happen? How fast is the warming?

• 33:07Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  You mean the distant future, not next week's weather?

• 33:09Speaker 04

  Exactly. So now it's a question of degree rather than the reality of the situation. Those are the most rational skeptics.

• 33:16Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  And the most irrational of the scientifically trained skeptics might say what?

• 33:19Speaker 04

  Well, they would say they don't believe global warming is happening, the observations are not clear.

• 33:24Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  What is the viewer to make of this?

• 33:26Speaker 01

  I tell you what I make of it, because I'm just the only guy here who's not a scientist. I'm going with the people who don't believe in global warming because I just purchased a bunch of Exxon stock.

• 33:36Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Oh, I see. So your worldview is altered by your financial circumstances. You darn skippy. Charlie, what do we make of this?

• 33:45Speaker 05

  Well, I just want to say one thing. I mean, having worked in television and film, I feel at this point with, you know, the statistic that was just given here.

• 33:54Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Ninety-nine percent, one percent.

• 33:55Speaker 05

  Ninety-nine percent, that we're really doing a great disservice to the public by having these talking heads constantly making it a debate.

• 34:04Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  And it's constantly all, it's.

• 34:05Speaker 05

  Let's just get beyond the debate and let's try to get, you know, the networks or the major cable companies to discuss specific things that people are seeing that are happening, you know, rather than this moronic. It really is a moronic debate.

• 34:20Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Andrew, you're head of the Climate Central. Are you taking this advice to heart? What do you do? What are you doing?

• 34:26Speaker 05

  How does that happen?

• 34:26Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  To solve this, yeah.

• 34:27Speaker 02

  Well, we're trying. I think.

• 34:28Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  In fact, we're blaming you, actually, for this.

• 34:30Speaker 02

  Thank you. Appreciate that. It results from the, your journalistic training is this concept of balance, right? You want to do a story on something in Congress and you go to a Republican and a Democrat and you get both voices in there.

• 34:43Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  And if they're two different religions, it's one religion.

• 34:45Speaker 02

  Exactly.

• 34:45Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So everybody's got, no one is more right than the other and they each have the right to their own view.

• 34:50Speaker 02

  But that doesn't work when it comes to science.

• 34:52Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Why don't you communicate this fact?

• 34:54Speaker 02

  We have and we do. And I think by and large, at least the print press has gotten a lot better. I think you won't really see a New York Times story or even a Wall Street Journal story. Wall Street Journal editorial is different.

• 35:06Speaker 05

  That's true.

• 35:07Speaker 02

  That talks about.

• 35:08Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Which is not news. It's just somebody's interpretation of the news.

• 35:11Speaker 02

  And that talks about climate change like it's a debate. The challenge now is to tell stories that relate to people, that use some of the dramatic elements from these movies that we talked about, but help anchor the stories in a way that people can make connections.

• 35:26Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Charlie, so you actually made me feel a little better about The Day After Tomorrow, when you said dramatically, they couldn't make it last 100 years. They had to do it quickly and then it became an exciting movie to watch. So do you, are you prepared to forgive filmmaking in this way if they have, if at least the message is accurate, the total message is accurate?

• 35:48Speaker 05

  Well, I, you know, I'm really uncertain about it and it actually kind of disturbs me.

• 35:53Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  We've got to take a quick break. More StarTalk when we return.

• 36:22Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Back on StarTalk. I've got Chuck Nice right with me, one of my co-hosts. Yes, sir. One of my stable of co-hosts. That's right. Andrew Freeman from Climate Central at Princeton. David Rine, Goddard Institute for Space Studies. Thanks for coming in. And Charlie, Charlie, you brought clips from "The Day After Tomorrow" with you. You're a filmmaker, so that's... And you've got one more. Let's hear what that one says about climate shift. And this is... Is this your favorite movie on climate change, by the way? Or is it...

• 36:47Speaker 06

  I wouldn't say that.

• 36:49Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Your favorite one to critique, let's say. All right, let's go. Check out that last clip.

• 36:52Speaker 06

  What about the North Atlantic Current? What about it? I got a call last night from Professor Rapsen at the Headland Center. He thinks the current has changed.

• 37:06Speaker 06

  Come on, Jack, how could that be? The current depends upon a delicate balance of salt and fresh water. We all know that. Yes. But no one has taken into account how much fresh water has been dumped into the ocean because of melting polar ice. I think we've hit a critical desalinization point.

• 37:27Speaker 07

  It would explain what's driving this extreme weather.

• 37:30Speaker 06

  Headland had some pretty convincing data. They've asked me to feed it into my paleoclimate model to track the next set of events. Hold on, Jack, are you suggesting these weather anomalies are going to continue? Not just continue, get worse.

• 37:44Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Let's analyze that. Wait, let me... Charlie, I'm sorry. David, David, in this clip with Dennis Quaid commenting that he had new data to put into his model, are these recent storms and turbulent activity that we've seen around the world, can they feed your model to make it more accurate as we go forward? Or are these fluctuations that you can't... That don't have the... They haven't been going on long enough to matter in your models. How do you... How do you deal with it?

• 38:14Speaker 04

  Well, what we can do is, we can see if we add more carbon dioxide to the radiative coat of the model, do we get those same sort of phenomena? Does a warming climate produce that type of thing that we're seeing going on? If it does, it's a little bit more confidence that it is related to it.

• 38:30Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So, my question is, does it?

• 38:33Speaker 04

  Some of the events, as we said, heavier rainfall events, without a doubt.

• 38:36Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Without a doubt.

• 38:37Speaker 04

  Melting of sea ice, melting of glaciers, without a doubt, melting of snow cover. Tornadoes, difficult story. Hurricanes, difficult story.

• 38:44Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Okay, so you're getting some, some, not all. Chuck, that was, that was a clip from Day After Tomorrow, and you told me that's like, you had a favorite spot of that movie.

• 38:53Speaker 01

  I love that movie because I love the end, because at the end, the Mexicans say to the Americans, "You can't come in our country." "Sorry dudes."

• 39:02Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Because everyone is told to run south.

• 39:04Speaker 01

  Yeah, everybody says you have to go south because it's warmer down there. And then we all start going south, and they're just like, "Sorry gringos."

• 39:10Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  But, yeah, but then we cut a deal to, to relieve them of their debt.

• 39:17Speaker 01

  Right. Isn't that funny? Even in the movie, America buys its way out of a global disaster.

• 39:24Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Andrew, you, you work at Climate Central Princeton. It turns, I wouldn't mind if people chose sides on whether they were climate deniers or climate supporter, climate change deniers or supporters, if it's just sort of random with the person, but it seems to split along political party lines, or liberal and conservative. Is that, that's what you see in your data, and why is that so?

• 39:42Speaker 02

  Well, the polling data suggests that the number one predictor of what you're going to think about climate change is your political affiliation. Um, why that is?

• 39:51Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  That's crazy.

• 39:52Speaker 02

  It is a little bit crazy.

• 39:53Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  That what science you'll accept is a function of what your political affiliations, that's crazy.

• 39:58Speaker 02

  We're at a very unusual point right now where you cannot believe in climate change and run in the Republican presidential primaries. You saw Tim Pawlenty disown his cap and trade support. Um, but, you know, I think this will change. I think that people are, you know, rational, and will take a look at the science, and it'll change, but...

• 40:19Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Well, will it change because things will happen fast enough, and then they see the evidence of these predictions? Because that's the disconnect. There's the prediction, and they're not believing the predictions.

• 40:28Speaker 02

  Or, in this case, a lot of them believe that the solution, the proposed solution, is like a big government... Tax and spend proposal and they're opposed to that ideologically speaking so they don't want it and that's not true.

• 40:40Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Charlie, um, there have been other climate change movies, the most famous, I think among them is

• 40:45Speaker 05

  The documentary Inconvenient Truth.

• 40:47Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Inconvenient Truth, uh, produced by, um, former vice president.

• 40:51Speaker 05

  Yeah.

• 40:51Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Al Gore. But, uh, so he, he used various tactics, you know, personal narrative and he had a big graph with a cherry picker and, uh, are there any other ways to communicate this?

• 41:02Speaker 05

  Well, I, I would argue that one of the reasons that movie was so effective is, you know, people, people criticized it by saying it's just a slideshow and all that, but it really did include a lot of his personal narrative just after, you know, arguably getting the raw end of the deal, uh, after the election. So, um, it was a, a classic case of a movie using character, in this case, Al Gore, um, as a way of, um, really

• 41:31Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Of delivering a message.

• 41:32Speaker 05

  Delivering a message and, and getting people involved in the story.

• 41:35Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  All right. So, and you mentioned earlier during the break about, uh, about animation. What role would that play?

• 41:41Speaker 05

  Well, in that movie, there's some terrific animation, but I think, I think, um, animation is probably one of the most, the least tapped methods of communicating.

• 41:49Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  On purpose or, or, or just overlooked?

• 41:51Speaker 05

  I just don't think it's been done so well enough yet.

• 41:54Speaker 01

  People will accept this, uh, information from Bugs Bunny is what you're saying.

• 41:58Speaker 05

  They might and, and, and actually it's interesting.

• 42:00Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  This is sad, actually.

• 42:01Speaker 05

  No, but you're being funny about it.

• 42:03Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Ignore the scientist, listen to the cartoon character.

• 42:05Speaker 05

  But, but that's what we're doing here on this show is being

• 42:07Speaker 01

  Bart Simpson on climate change.

• 42:09Speaker 05

  You know, you can, you can communicate this stuff much better if you're being funny and I think that animation can do that and you can, you can just send a little link to people and

• 42:17Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  It's an excuse to be funny. Yeah. There's another, uh, uh, movie, Happy Feet. That was one of my favorite movies out there. That one, uh, some people thought it was a little too preachy, but I enjoyed the dancing and the singing, actually.

• 42:29Speaker 01

  Yeah, it was kinda like River Dancing for Penguins.

• 42:31Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  That's what it was. It was, but actually that was like the third Penguin movie in two years or something. We had Penguin Overload. A quick question here for my whole panel, can I call you that, is can you imagine the future where we don't stop producing CO2, we invent some machine that removes it from the atmosphere, or we have some CO2 forest where the whole job of the wood is to grow faster to suck it out, so that we, we, we, we fight the emissions rather than getting rid of them. Do you have some insights into that?

• 43:01Speaker 04

  Yeah, there are proposed solutions. The bottom line for all those solutions is you first have to take the problem seriously before you're gonna put money into building those solutions, basically.

• 43:11Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Yeah, and if you don't believe the problem is there at all, there's no solution waiting to happen.

• 43:15Speaker 05

  And, and we've been talking about the need to, to reduce by 80% by 2050, and the fact, certain people have been saying that that's very, very unlikely it's gonna happen, and so geoengineering is coming into the, into the discussion.

• 43:29Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Geoengineering, where you have the power to alter, alter entire weather systems to your, to your, to your whims. Unfortunately, we've gotta end it there. You've been listening to StarTalk Radio. I'm Neil deGrasse Tyson, and as always, I bid you to keep looking up.