Cosmic Queries – Predicting Earth’s Climate Future with Kate Marvel, PhD

What can the climate on Venus tell us about Earth? On this episode, Neil deGrasse Tyson and comic co-host Chuck Nice answer questions about climate modeling, the state of climate change, and future predictions with climate scientist, Kate Marvel.

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. This is StarTalk Cosmic Queries Edition. And of course, can't do that without Chuck Nice. Chuck?

• 0:21Chuck Nice?

  Hey Neil.

• 0:22Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Hey, hey, hey. All right, all right. And this topic, climate change, you've been into that even before you were StarTalkian.

• 0:31Chuck Nice?

  Yes, I have to admit that it's one of my passions. I don't have a lot of passions, but it's one.

• 0:37Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  No, that's good. It's really good. And you can take your skill set and bring it to conferences and have people... You know, because people, I've found that they're more committed and motivated if they can at least sort of smile and say, "Yeah, that's good. I like that. Let me do more of that. And let me feel this way some more."

• 0:56Chuck Nice?

  Let's do that.

• 0:56Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  By doing something good for the world.

• 0:58Chuck Nice?

  You hit it on the head, man. That's the idea. The idea is if we can get people to think about what is an existential crisis without thinking of it as doom and gloom, but in a way that they might take action. That's the whole idea.

• 1:11Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Yeah, there you go. There you go. And so we think of you as a climate activist in your free time. I like that. Will you take that?

• 1:19Chuck Nice?

  Wait, translation, "The worst activist ever."

• 1:25Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  The lazy activist.

• 1:27Chuck Nice?

  Yeah, that guy's an awesome activist, whatever he has time. You know, he's very committed when he has an afternoon free.

• 1:38Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Okay, I didn't mean it that way.

• 1:40Chuck Nice?

  I love it.

• 1:42Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Okay, now, I follow climate science, but I'm not, I'm no expert. And you're an activist, so we need someone who knows what they're talking about.

• 1:51Chuck Nice?

  Yes.

• 1:51Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  And we, of course, found right up the street here in New York City, climate scientist Kate Marvel. Kate, welcome back to StarTalk.

• 2:00Speaker 02

  Hello, I'm so excited to be here.

• 2:02Chuck Nice?

  Yeah.

• 2:03Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Yeah, excellent. You're a research scientist at NASA's G.I.S. That's the Goddard Institute for Space Studies. And your research scientist is Columbia University, which has a lot of overlapping scientists and and research interests with NASA at your division there. And my favorite part of your your resume here that you have a PhD in theoretical particle physics from Cambridge. And you say, all right, now I'm done with that. Let me just fix the world.

• 2:31Chuck Nice?

  Right.

• 2:31Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So. So I'm loving it. I'm loving it.

• 2:36Chuck Nice?

  How cool is it to be bored with theoretical particle physics?

• 2:42Chuck Nice?

  Yeah, you know, I got kind of bored with that. I figured, what the hell?

• 2:46Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So, so Kate, can you explain, take a minute to explain what you do?

• 2:51Speaker 02

  Sure. So I work with climate models, which are basically toy planets that you put on a computer. And they help us see, they help us do experiments, experiments that we can't do on the real planet. So they let us project the future.

• 3:07Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  What you shouldn't do on the real planet.

• 3:10Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  The way you said that is like, you know, if we could, we would. No, no, no. You don't want to do some of those on the real planet, I presume.

• 3:17Speaker 02

  I mean, we are all doing a collective, very big, very serious experiment on this planet right now, which.

• 3:25Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  We're all turning knobs without knowing the consequence.

• 3:27Speaker 02

  Totally right. It doesn't seem very smart. But yeah, climate models are great because they let you do, they project the future. They let you say, okay, if emissions continue to rise, this is what the world will look like. If we cut emissions, this is what the world will look like. But they also help you do counterfactual experiments, like what if there were no rocky mountains? What if a giant volcano went off tomorrow? What if we weren't putting any carbon dioxide in the atmosphere? So I, it's kind of like playing The Sims all day, but with math and physics, because you have this toy planet and you can do experiments on it. And that teaches you something about how the real world works.

• 4:09Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So I didn't know there was another word for what if. Counterfactual.

• 4:13Speaker 02

  Sounds fancier, right?

• 4:15Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Right, right. Okay, I'm sticking with what ifs.

• 4:18Speaker 02

  All right.

• 4:18Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  If I may. Now Chuck, you collected questions. This is not the first time we've done a climate cosmic queries.

• 4:24Chuck Nice?

  No.

• 4:25Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  This is a very popular topic with our audience. And Chuck has collected questions from our Patreon members. So they get exclusive access to our guests in this format.

• 4:36Chuck Nice?

  Very cool.

• 4:37Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So Chuck, give me a few here.

• 4:38Chuck Nice?

  Okay, here we go. Let's do this. This is Hitty Wegmans, who says, "Hi, Dr. Tyson and Dr. Marvel, Lord Nice. If we could do as Thanos suggested, killing half of the humans, would that stop or slow down climate change? And yes, I was inspired by Dr. Marvel's last name to ask this question."

• 5:08Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Marvel Universe.

• 5:09Chuck Nice?

  Yes. Also for you, Neil. Greetings, Neil, from the Netherlands.

• 5:14Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Oh, Netherlands. I love that. Okay. So Kate, this person is asking the ultimate counterfactual question. If the Marvel Universe is real, and it is such an evil as Thanos, and he snapped his fingers and got rid of half the life, what... Is that a model you guys have done on your computers?

• 5:38Speaker 02

  So, yeah, I want to be totally clear. Let's not do that. Terrible idea. But the problem, like, I think that gets to a really important point. The problem with climate change, it's not people, it's the actions of people. So climate change is happening because carbon dioxide levels in the atmosphere are increasing. And they're increasing because humans are doing stuff. We're burning fossil fuels. We're cutting down forests. Um, we're raising animals that put methane in the atmosphere. Um, we have.

• 6:11Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  That still kinda sounds like people.

• 6:13Speaker 02

  Um, well.

• 6:14Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  It looks like saying people don't cause climate change, but things people do cause climate change.

• 6:19Speaker 02

  Exactly. And the thing about people is we can do different things. Um, so we don't have to generate electricity by burning fossil fuels. Because there is a giant nuclear fusion reactor in the sky that we can use. That moves air around our planet. Um, we can use wind. We can use solar. We can use geothermal. We can use nuclear. There are a whole bunch of different ways to generate energy. Electricity for transportation that don't release carbon dioxide. We have choices.

• 6:50Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  We have to have choices.

• 6:51Speaker 02

  Exactly.

• 6:52Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So my, my great rebuttal to that question is if Thanos had that much power. Why doesn't he just snap his fingers and produce twice as much food?

• 7:01Chuck Nice?

  Right, right. Just fix everything, right?

• 7:03Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Right, dude. What's, what's up with your solutions here?

• 7:07Chuck Nice?

  Your big sociopath?

• 7:10Chuck Nice?

  That's your problem, Thanos. You're a big sociopath. You're power tripping. All right, never mind.

• 7:18Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Cause they were worried about food shortages and things. Just double the amount of food with a snap of your finger.

• 7:22Chuck Nice?

  Or by the way, if you don't, if you, e- even if that's not the, how about make everybody half the size they are?

• 7:28Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  And Chuck, I think there was like a movie about that called like Downsizing.

• 7:33Chuck Nice?

  Okay.

• 7:34Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  With Matt Damon. Like real, real marquee actors in it. So I didn't see it. So I don't know if like climate change is an issue.

• 7:41Chuck Nice?

  Right.

• 7:41Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  In the storyline, but uh, tiny people would solve a lot of problems.

• 7:46Chuck Nice?

  There are no small parts, just small actors. Sorry, I had to do it.

• 7:52Chuck Nice?

  Okay.

• 7:52Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  All right. What else you got?

• 7:53Chuck Nice?

  This is Deb Beach. Deb Beach says, greetings. This is Deborah from Finland, Ohio, with a question.

• 8:02Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Are you serious? Are you serious?

• 8:04Chuck Nice?

  I'm dead serious.

• 8:05Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Okay, in Lynn, Ohio.

• 8:07Chuck Nice?

  I read it that way.

• 8:08Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  We still love you.

• 8:09Chuck Nice?

  Yeah, exactly.

• 8:09Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Okay, yeah.

• 8:10Chuck Nice?

  Yeah, we won't hold that against you, Deb Beach. Uh, with a question, of course, about climate change. I have a family who challenges me when I talk about climate change. They can't seem to understand the difference between weather and climate. Any confrontational and positive ways to illustrate the difference? Because I'm out of ideas. Thanks in advance, Dr. Marvel.

• 8:32Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So this sounds like a retelling of a Thanksgiving dinner. So, Kate, what do people, should we all do at Thanksgiving? Tell us.

• 8:40Chuck Nice?

  And also, what do we do about Uncle Joe's drinking problem? Because, serious.

• 8:46Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  That's not Kate's expertise.

• 8:47Chuck Nice?

  Oh, okay, okay.

• 8:48Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Okay, all right.

• 8:49Speaker 02

  Um, I think Thanksgiving dinners go better when everybody just eats. Um, but, you know, if this does come up, um, you know, there, there's several ways to handle it. Um, one of my favorite quotes is by, um, Dr. Marshall Shepherd, who's a climate scientist at the University of Georgia. And he says, "Weather is your mood, climate is your personality." Um, so, weather is changeable. I have no idea what the weather is going to be like 10 years from now. Um, but because I understand the climate, um, of New York, I know that it's likely to be hot. It's likely to be warmer than it was in January, for example. So, when we talk about climate, we talk about long-term averages.

• 9:32Speaker 02

  Whereas weather is something that fluctuates on a day-to-day basis. Um, and it's really important to keep those things separate. Um, but at the same time, climate affects the weather. Because everything happens against the backdrop of climate.

• 9:47Chuck Nice?

  Wow, there you go.

• 9:48Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  All right, so, so what you're saying is, uh, when people, if it snows one day, right? Like, late in the spring, people say, "See? You climate change people are wrong, because we had a snowfall in late April, right? Or early April." And so, that's, that's like the perfect moment to say, "No, you're just in a mood." That's not your personality.

• 10:12Chuck Nice?

  Right.

• 10:15Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  All right, Chuck, give me another one.

• 10:16Chuck Nice?

  All right. Uh, this is from, uh, Billy Bryant, who says, hello, Doctors Tyson and Marvel. Uh, knowing that we can never turn back the dial on what we've already lost, how will we know when the effects of green initiatives have actually begun to have a positive impact on Earth?

• 10:37Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Ooh, I like that question.

• 10:38Speaker 02

  I love this question.

• 10:40Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Yeah.

• 10:40Speaker 02

  I love this question.

• 10:42Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  That, that would help the movement, right? If you can see the effects.

• 10:47Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 10:47Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So what do you got for us there?

• 10:48Speaker 02

  This is a real, um, bad news, really good news situation, I think. Um, so the bad news is under any kind of reasonable trajectory. Um, you know, we don't shut down all fossil fuel infrastructure immediately overnight, but you know, we really get serious about this. We start cutting emissions, we start building out wind and solar. Um, the climate benefits of that aren't gonna start showing up for decades. So, so that's kind of the bad news. Um, the good news is that there are a lot of immediate, what we call co-benefits. Because a lot of the things that emit greenhouse gases, carbon dioxide, methane, those are the same things that are emitting what we think of as pollution.

• 11:33Speaker 02

  So particulate matter, smog, all that really bad stuff. And though getting rid of those things cuts pollution, it makes our air quality better. And there's a lot of research that shows that that makes our health better, um, that reduces inequalities, that can even increase things like labor productivity. So we start doing that, we see those benefits immediately.

• 11:58Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  And we just learned about real estate inequalities, right? Where certain disadvantaged groups are, uh, their only real estate available to them is near toxic waste dumps and this sort of thing. So, right, there's an entire real estate dimension to this.

• 12:11Chuck Nice?

  Climate injustice.

• 12:12Speaker 02

  Yeah, yeah, there's a huge justice component to it.

• 12:15Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So you're saying you're making a better world beyond just saving the climate?

• 12:21Speaker 02

  Absolutely. That's kind of a, an added bonus, I think.

• 12:24Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  That, that's a very positive way to think about that. I like that. I like that. But Chuck, we gotta take a quick break.

• 12:29Chuck Nice?

  Oh.

• 12:30Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  When we come, I know, we'll, we'll get there, we'll get there. We're, this is a Cosmic Queries StarTalk where it's climate and we've got one of the best around to tell us about it. Uh, Kate Marvel. And so stay with us. We'll be right back.

• 12:53Speaker 03

  Hey, I'm Roy Hill Percival and I support StarTalk on Patreon, bringing the universe down to earth. This is StarTalk with Neil deGrasse Tyson.

• 13:08Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  We're back. StarTalk Cosmic Queries, a climate edition of Cosmic Queries.

• 13:14Chuck Nice?

  One we should have weekly.

• 13:16Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Weekly, yeah, yes, yes. And we've got one of our favorite climate experts, Kate Marvel, is up at the Goddard Institute for Space Studies, a branch of NASA.

• 13:26Chuck Nice?

  Yeah.

• 13:26Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Where planetary climate is their thing. Isn't that right, Kate? This is what you all, you all do it, right?

• 13:36Speaker 02

  Yeah, with a particular focus on the best planet, I think.

• 13:40Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  The bestest planet there is, okay.

• 13:43Chuck Nice?

  Yeah, and if anybody got a problem with that, you can leave.

• 13:47Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  No, but also you can learn things from other planets.

• 13:49Chuck Nice?

  Oh, yeah.

• 13:49Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Because it's going through different phases that could inform Earth, but Earth has got the, Earth is the, the object of people's interest, of course, the ultimate object of interest. All right, Chuck, what else do you have for us?

• 14:01Chuck Nice?

  All right, let's jump right back into this with, uh, our guy, Matthew Swada. Matthew says, hello, Dr. Tyson, Dr. Marvel, Lord Nice, there's so much talk of this point of no return for the effects that we have had on our planet's climate.

• 14:22Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Ooh.

• 14:22Chuck Nice?

  What changes that we have caused, if any, are actually reversible?

• 14:29Chuck Nice?

  So forget just, all right, we're gonna stop impending doom. Can we go back to like, I don't know, 1901 levels?

• 14:39Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Let me lead off with one point and then have, and pass the baton to Kate. I speak with biologists almost daily because they're my colleagues at the American Museum of Natural History. There's a wave of extinction that we are causing from all of our conduct and all of our behavior and with the climate change, the balance of insects and other creatures that depended on very specific ecological niches of where they were. As the, as that climate changes, it becomes hostile to them and can render them extinct. So one of the things that's irreversible is extinction. Okay, so let me just lead off. Now Kate, I just handed you the baton.

• 15:17Chuck Nice?

  Thanks a lot, Debbie Downer. Now I'll give it to Kate.

• 15:22Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Bum us out some more, Kate. What do you have for us?

• 15:25Speaker 02

  I mean, I guess I'll start out with the, the good news, which is that climate change is not pass fail. It's not a binary thing. You hear a lot of times people say if we exceed a particular temperature threshold, if we exceed 1.5 degrees Celsius or two degrees Celsius, everything is fine up until then and then boom, everything is destroyed or we're doomed. It's a catastrophe. And both of those things are wrong. So first, everything is not fine. Everything is not fine right now. The world has warmed about 1.2 degrees since pre-industrial times and it is not fine. But at the same time, nature does not sink in terms of degrees Celsius, even degrees Fahrenheit.

• 16:08Speaker 02

  There's no firm threshold where we exceed that and all of a sudden, everything is terrible. What we have is a lot of little changes, some of which are reversible and some of which are irreversible. Things like species extinctions, those are irreversible. And the fear is that as we approach as more and more and more warming, as we put more and more greenhouse gases in the atmosphere and it gets warmer and warmer, we start to trigger more and more changes that are irreversible. So for example, if you melt The West Antarctic ice sheet, or you melt Greenland. That's a lot of ice that was sitting on land that now is going into the water and raising the sea levels. That is not reversible, at least on time scales that are relevant to humans.

• 16:53Speaker 02

  If you make it really, really warm, you could cause dieback of the Amazon. And once you get rid of the Amazon, it's not easy to regrow a rainforest from scratch. So there are a lot of these changes, what we call tipping points, that are irreversible in a human lifetime. And for me, the scariest thing about these tipping points is we can't tell you exactly when we're going to hit them. So I can't tell you this particular level of warming is safe, because no particular level of warming is safe. We do know that the risk of these things increases the warmer it gets. And so that's why I think, you know, really broken records. Every scientist says every tenth of a degree of warming matters.

• 17:38Speaker 02

  Every ton of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere matters. It all matters.

• 17:42Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  What you're saying is if we, if we lose the Greenland ice sheet and we flood the coastal cities, the way to reverse that is to just take a hose and drain the oceans and put it back into Greenland. But you have to be cold enough for it to still freeze. That's all you have to do. I just, I just solved that problem.

• 17:56Chuck Nice?

  There you go.

• 17:56Speaker 02

  Great, alright, let's do it.

• 17:57Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  I don't know why you didn't think of, think of that.

• 18:00Chuck Nice?

  And, and is it, uh? Is it, is it a garden?

• 18:04Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Everyone just sucking on hoses.

• 18:05Chuck Nice?

  Yeah, it's garden hose too, that's, that's.

• 18:07Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Garden hose, totally garden hose.

• 18:08Chuck Nice?

  Yes, yeah. Yeah, your ordinary garden hose, that's all you need. Oh, that's, wow.

• 18:13Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Alright Chuck, what else you got?

• 18:15Chuck Nice?

  Okay, here we go. I have to read this, even though this gentleman from Patreon has been with us before, but it's our Alejandro Reynoso.

• 18:25Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Okay, this is our, this is our thing, we gotta do it. I remember him, he's from Monterrey.

• 18:31Chuck Nice?

  He is from Monterrey, Mexico. And he says, hello, or should I say?

• 18:39Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  What?

• 18:39Chuck Nice?

  Hola.

• 18:45Chuck Nice?

  I gotta do it.

• 18:46Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  What does he have? He's an old timer with us. I love him.

• 18:49Chuck Nice?

  He is, he is.

• 18:50Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So what does he have?

• 18:51Chuck Nice?

  He's got a pretty cool question here. He says, now where I live, we are going through a tremendous drought. How often is this going to happen in the world? And where are we going to see it the most?

• 19:05Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So Kate, clearly droughts are not something new. But do you have enough knowledge in your models to predict whether they'll become more frequent? And if they're more frequent, does that mean you have more rainfall somewhere else? Is there some net flow of water that just gets redistributed?

• 19:21Speaker 02

  Yeah, so we know a lot about how rainfall patterns will change in a warming world. Um, we know that on average, the global average rainfall will increase. But that's not really any comfort to you if you live in a place like Australia or the Southwest or the Mediterranean that is projected to experience very severe drought. Because rainfall will increase in some places, and in particular, really heavy rainfall is projected to increase in places like New York. In fact, we're already seeing that. Um, whereas in some other areas, rainfall is projected to decrease. But the thing about drought is that even if rainfall does not decrease,

• 20:02Speaker 02

  even if it remains the same, we are still going to see increased drought risk in many regions. And that's because warm air is thirsty air. It's driving evaporation away from the surface. So even if you're getting the exact same amount of rainfall, if that's all getting slurped out of your soil moisture very, very quickly by the warmer atmosphere, that's gonna be a problem. Um, you know.

• 20:24Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Oh, and so then it doesn't go to your water table?

• 20:26Speaker 02

  Then it doesn't go to your water table. It doesn't go to plants.

• 20:28Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Oh my gosh. I hadn't thought about that.

• 20:31Speaker 02

  We have evidence that what's going on in southwestern North America is actually the worst drought on record ever. Um, so going back for thousands of years.

• 20:43Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Wow.

• 20:44Chuck Nice?

  And I, I just wanted to add that in addition to drought, areas that are warm where water should freeze, the water will not freeze. And that way, the snow packs don't melt to sustain water levels. So that also leads to more drought.

• 21:01Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Mm-hmm.

• 21:02Speaker 02

  Absolutely.

• 21:03Chuck Nice?

  Yeah.

• 21:04Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Yeah, all right, all right.

• 21:05Chuck Nice?

  Interesting.

• 21:05Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So Chuck, give me some more.

• 21:06Chuck Nice?

  Okay, here we go, here we go, here we go. This is Peter Jacobs. And Peter says, it is often said, don't waste time on other planets while we haven't fixed our own. Isn't it better that we test our theories elsewhere if possible? Artificial habitats allow for much more experimentation. There's a lot of stuff packed in there.

• 21:35Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Uh, yeah, so Kate, we've heard about these biodomes, you know, that was simulating Mars or, or the moon or whatever. So how realistic is that relative to your what-if models?

• 21:47Speaker 02

  Um, so, you know, I want to say I'm a huge supporter of doing research on other planets. The more we know about other planets, the more we know about our own. Um, so I think basic science is really, really important. Astronomy, really, really important because that teaches us about where we live. That said, I don't want to live on any of the other planets. Um, you know, I, I would hate to live on Mars. Mars wants to kill you. Um, Venus wants to kill you even more, I think. Um, and so the more we learn about other planets, the more we realize how special this particular planet is. Um, I don't know, because it's not my particular area of expertise, what exactly technically we would need to pack to go live on another planet?

• 22:32Speaker 02

  And how you fit that all in, you know, the trunk of, there's, there's trunk on spaceships, right?

• 22:37Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Of course, they all have trunks, yeah.

• 22:39Speaker 02

  Yeah, so I mean, I, I don't know how you pack that. Um, but, you know, I think taking care of this planet.

• 22:46Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  But just to be clear, there is a book called Packing for Mars.

• 22:48Speaker 02

  Mm-hmm.

• 22:49Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Okay.

• 22:49Speaker 02

  Okay.

• 22:50Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Uh, and it is, there's instructions and it's packing for Mars, but in terms of living on Mars, that's a separate other book. You could pack to survive the trip there. After that, all bets are off.

• 23:03Chuck Nice?

  Yeah, just make sure, you know, make sure you pack the book about living on Mars when you package Mars.

• 23:08Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  As Mary Roach, who has a whole series of very fun books exploring the limits of science and what they can do for us. Yeah. So, okay, so, so I'm with you on this one, Kate, that Earth is, I think will always be my priority. I love the universe, but, you know, I'd like being alive better.

• 23:28Chuck Nice?

  Yeah. I think also Resident in his question is, are your mathematical models reliable enough that they can be a, I will say, perfect substitute for some type of empirical experimentation?

• 23:46Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  A great, great way to rephrase that, Chuck. So what do you have, Kate?

• 23:49Speaker 02

  So, models are always tested against data. So, we test our models of Earth against observations of Earth's climate from satellites, from the ground. We also test them against reconstructions of past climates. So, we say, what does the ice age look like in this particular model? And does that agree with our reconstructions from, from various proxies? You know, you also, it's the same physics that determines the climate on Earth and the climate on other planets. So, you can take your climate model and you can say, all right, well, given what we know about Venus, what does it tell us about the, how do you pronounce it? Venusian? Venusian?

• 24:31Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Venusian, yeah.

• 24:32Speaker 02

  Venusian climate.

• 24:33Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  It's technically venereal. And, but the medical doctors got to that word before the astronomers did. So, you remember the Russian landers, Venera? That was the name of their series of Russian, of landers on Venus. So, yeah, venereal is the, is the genitive form of Venus.

• 24:52Chuck Nice?

  I'm not getting in any venereal ship, I'm sorry.

• 24:55Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So, we just invented a whole new word, venusian. And it's fine, we will take it, there it is. So, time for like a couple more, like one more, one more question before we end this

• 25:05Chuck Nice?

  Wow, just one more, okay.

• 25:07Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  We have a third segment, but yeah, this will.

• 25:09Chuck Nice?

  Just in this segment.

• 25:10Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Give me one more here from, from our Patreon list.

• 25:12Chuck Nice?

  All right, all right, all right. Jennifer Long says, hello, Dr. Marvel. What would be the top five climate solutions? I don't care how ambitious they are. How do you feel they should be prioritized above all others? Thank you. Sincerely, Jen from Dallas, Texas.

• 25:33Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So Kate, it's possible to put pie in the sky goals, but maybe they're so out of reach, people get frustrated and then they give up. So maybe there's some middle ground between this is a big, audacious goal, but I think it's accessible to me, so therefore I will do it.

• 25:50Speaker 02

  So I think that's a great question. I also think that physicists are probably the wrong people to ask that question to. Because from our perspective, climate change is happening because greenhouse gas concentrations are increasing. So how do you stop climate change? You stop doing that. And in a climate model-

• 26:09Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  By the way, I was thinking recently, a diet book written by a physicist, it would have two words in it. It would be eat less.

• 26:19Speaker 02

  So this is why nobody asks us anything.

• 26:21Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Right.

• 26:23Chuck Nice?

  Hey, hey doc, it hurts when I do this. Don't do that.

• 26:31Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Yeah, physicists are not all that compassionate with your situation. So what do you have? You have a top set of goals here?

• 26:39Speaker 02

  I would say, you know, stop burning fossil fuels. We know that so much. Number one.

• 26:46Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Number one.

• 26:47Speaker 02

  Number two.

• 26:48Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Two.

• 26:49Speaker 02

  Probably eat less meat, or grow meat and fats, or eat plant-based meat. I think that would be really, really helpful.

• 26:57Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So turn your diet into one with a smaller carbon footprint, however you might accomplish that.

• 27:02Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 27:02Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Because the day might come where we grow meat proteins, and then you're not raising farm animals to do it.

• 27:06Speaker 02

  Exactly.

• 27:07Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  It would have a lower carbon footprint than vegetarians do.

• 27:10Speaker 02

  Exactly.

• 27:10Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  With all that's done in the lab. So that's interesting. Okay, three.

• 27:14Speaker 02

  Three. I mean, maybe this should be number one, is don't vote for people who don't get it.

• 27:20Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Oh my gosh.

• 27:21Chuck Nice?

  Yes.

• 27:22Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Duh, duh.

• 27:24Chuck Nice?

  There you go.

• 27:25Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Yeah, who thought of that? Why, okay. In a democracy, we create our own government, right? And so, so you need an informed electorate so that the leadership can has the science literacy necessary to solve this problem. Very good, okay.

• 27:41Speaker 02

  Electrify everything. So, you know, a lot of the things that we do right now.

• 27:46Chuck Nice?

  To a clean grid.

• 27:48Speaker 02

  Mm-hmm.

• 27:48Chuck Nice?

  To a clean grid.

• 27:50Speaker 02

  Exactly, but you know.

• 27:51Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Well, you do it even if you're not there yet.

• 27:53Speaker 02

  Even if you're not there yet.

• 27:54Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  It means you're, you built in the capacity.

• 27:56Chuck Nice?

  Right.

• 27:56Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  To take your energy from any of these other sources.

• 27:59Speaker 02

  Mm-hmm.

• 27:59Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Without changing your setup, right?

• 28:01Speaker 02

  Yeah, so an electric car is better than an internal combustion car, even if most of that electricity is not generated from clean sources. But we hope that they will become generated by clean sources. And, you know, again, walking, biking, taking the subway, those are all better than driving an electric car. But that's not an option for a lot of people that need to get various places.

• 28:22Chuck Nice?

  That's so, boy, you just made me, just imagine a time where we have a clean, smart grid, and then we're manufacturing clean technologies for transportation. All the way down the line, it's one big loop of, you know, net zero production.

• 28:44Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Yeah, sure.

• 28:44Chuck Nice?

  It's, it's.

• 28:45Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Net zero carbon.

• 28:46Chuck Nice?

  Net zero carbon, yeah. It'd be a beautiful thing because you're, the electricity used to make the thing is clean, and then the thing itself is clean. Like, that's pretty awesome.

• 28:56Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  All, all around, all around. Kate, we're gonna have one more segment with you, but before we take this quick break, what, what is your footprint, speaking of footprints? What is your, what is your social media footprint?

• 29:08Speaker 02

  Um, so I am on Twitter as Dr. Kate Marvel. Um, I occasionally post, taking a break right now. And that's about it.

• 29:18Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Okay, all right, so you're not yet on TikTok?

• 29:20Speaker 02

  I'm too old for TikTok, I think.

• 29:22Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Okay.

• 29:26Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  You said that with such authority, right? I'm too old for TikTok. All right, no, we're good there. All right, when we come back, a special segment of StarTalk Cosmic Queries, featuring climate, sustainability, and our expert guest, Kate Marvel. We'll see you in a moment.

• 29:55Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  We're back. Cosmic Queries, climate. And we've got our special guest, expert Kate Marvel. And Chuck, we've had her on the show before. We couldn't stop talking about her name.

• 30:06Chuck Nice?

  That's right.

• 30:07Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  It's so superhero. Oh, my gosh.

• 30:10Chuck Nice?

  It is. Your social media handle should be Stan Lee did not create me.

• 30:16Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Though I nonetheless be a superhero. Right.

• 30:20Chuck Nice?

  Right.

• 30:20Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  What you got here? And so, so Kate, just remind us what you do in a day.

• 30:26Speaker 02

  Sure. So I'm a climate modeler. I work with climate models, which are basically toy planets that you put on computers. And the cool thing about climate models is that they are literally world building machines. They help you understand the world that we live in. They help you understand what it would be like if things were otherwise. And they let you look at different what ifs.

• 30:46Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  And Kate, we know, because we learned this in movies. If you have the power to create a world, you have the power to destroy one.

• 30:56Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  With that power comes great responsibility. So how do you?

• 31:00Chuck Nice?

  Speaking of Marvel.

• 31:01Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Speaking of Marvel. So where do you get your data from? And then how do you invoke it in the models themselves?

• 31:08Speaker 02

  So a model is just physics. It just expresses what we know about how air and water and ice and land all react and and interact with each other. So it's very, very basic core. A climate model is just basically Newton's laws of motion. You know, F equals ma, energy conservation, mass conservation. So when you drill down, it's really just.

• 31:33Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  It's basic physics 101.

• 31:34Speaker 02

  Basic physics 101.

• 31:35Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  It's like the first month of physics.

• 31:36Speaker 02

  Exactly.

• 31:36Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Yeah.

• 31:37Speaker 02

  And you know, the reason that climate models are so complex, the reason that we have to run them on supercomputers is that. There are a lot of things acting under F equals ma. So they're all interacting with each other. You've got, you know, all of these different aspects of the climate system. And that gets really, really complicated. It's just a bunch of differential equations. It's just a bunch of physics. But when you write it all down, those equations get really, really difficult or impossible for a human being to solve. And so you need to solve them on a computer.

• 32:09Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  I get you. And so, and what do satellites do for you?

• 32:12Speaker 02

  So satellites help give us the data that let us check whether or not our models are credible or not. So we've got an amazing earth observing system at NASA that's looking at various aspects of, of the climate system. So everything from the temperature to the cloud cover, to the color of the oceans, to see what phytoplankton is doing in the oceans. So we're tracking an incredible amount of data from space. And that gives us ways to test, hey, are things changing in the way that our models say they should be changing?

• 32:47Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Well, Kate, when I hear you say that, I, part of me also thinks the opposite, not the opposite, but the inverse of that. If you, are you creating a model? Wouldn't you use data to start the model? Or is all the data you're gathering from space to check your model?

• 33:01Speaker 02

  Most of it's to check the model.

• 33:02Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Isn't some of the data show up in both places?

• 33:04Speaker 02

  Yeah, some, I mean, so some of it starts in both places. You know, we have rough estimates for, you know, what the average temperature of the planet is. So we, we've, we've got a lot of measurements that we use as kind of initial conditions for the model. You know, what the ocean looks like, where the ocean is. Um, you know, something as basic as that. But then at the time component, how things are changing. A lot of times people think that we are using the observations in order to kind of drive the models. And that's not necessarily the case. We're using the observations in order to check the models.

• 33:39Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  I was, I was trying to clarify that, that's all, yeah, yeah.

• 33:42Chuck Nice?

  So, and is, is, are there any other organizations that are modeling uh, along with you or in opposition to you? And do you guys share information?

• 33:52Speaker 02

  Yeah, so there's, there's a bit of a friendly competition with different climate modeling groups. We have, I think, four climate models in the United States. Um, ours at NASA Gis, um, there's one, um, at Princeton, one in Boulder, and one developed out of, um, the Department of Energy. Then there's climate models all over the world. So there's a Japanese climate model. There is a Chinese climate model. There is a British climate model. There is a French climate model.

• 34:20Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  And so what's your competition? Just to see who matches the data the best as it comes rolling in, I guess.

• 34:24Speaker 02

  Well, there's a whole bunch of different ways to be wrong. So all models are wrong. I think that's really.

• 34:33Speaker 02

  You know, so we're not just measuring the average temperature of the planet. We're measuring, you know, climate models output an incredible amount of data. You know, right now, I think the current generation of climate models is giving us about 50 petabytes of data. So this is a huge big data problem.

• 34:54Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  A petabyte is a thousand times bigger than a terabyte. A terabyte. A thousand times bigger than a gigabyte. A thousand times bigger than a megabyte. So there we go.

• 35:02Speaker 02

  It's, yeah, it's a lot. It's a lot. So, you know, they're giving us not just temperature, but rainfall and cloud cover and soil moisture and ice and all of these different variables that interlock and interact and make up the climate system.

• 35:17Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So. Wow. So at some point, if all of you start agreeing with each other, that's a good sign. Cause it means that however differently everyone was thinking from each other at the beginning, there's some convergence of an understanding of how the systems work. Is that a fair, a fair prediction for the future?

• 35:35Speaker 02

  Absolutely. So if all climate models agree on something, that means that the physics is incredibly well understood. So all climate models get warmer in response to elevated carbon dioxide. And that's because the physics of the greenhouse effect is not something that is at all controversial.

• 35:52Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So there are other research centers that, like you said, you're pseudo competing with. But how can an organization, which presumably has a little more power and influence than an individual? So how can an organization maybe allocate its time, its money, its effort?

• 36:11Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  To mitigate some of what you're you're you're trying to understand there.

• 36:17Speaker 02

  So I love that question. And the reason I love it is I think there's so much emphasis put on the individual. What can individuals do? Do you recycle? Do you buy different light bulbs? And no individual is going to be able to make even a drop in the bucket of climate change. So this is really a systemic problem, and we really need systemic solutions. But no individual is completely isolated. Everybody is part of a community. Everybody is part of a church group. Everybody has, you know, most people have employers. And so it's really at that level that we can start.

• 36:50Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Interesting. So the concept of an organization here is way beyond just what is the name of your company. It's anything you are a participant in is bigger than you are, but you all might have a like mind in order to take action.

• 37:04Speaker 02

  I think so.

• 37:05Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Is that kind of where you're you're headed there?

• 37:06Speaker 02

  I think so. Yeah, I think then that can be really powerful because A, you can get stuff done when you band together in larger groups. But also, it makes you feel less alone. I talked to a lot of people who are feeling really overwhelmed and really terrified and really anxious. And when you think of just yourself as an individual, of course, you feel anxious, because what can one individual do with such a big problem? But once you start acting and once you start bringing in other people in your networks, your friend group, your school, whatever, then you start feeling less alone, and you start being able to be more effective.

• 37:44Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  You're a New York resident. You may remember there's there's going to be a mandate on is it new construction or all construction where you can't use a gas stove anymore, where everyone is going to convert to the electromagnetic induction or or just the electric coil. So that's a city making a decision for its own future. And that's what you mean when you say this, right?

• 38:04Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 38:05Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Larger organizations can make systemic changes in ways the individual can't.

• 38:09Speaker 02

  Absolutely.

• 38:09Chuck Nice?

  And there are several cities making that that same move.

• 38:12Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Oh, okay.

• 38:12Chuck Nice?

  There are several cities across the nation right now making that same move where gas pipes will be capped. And when you have a building, you will just have an induction. You'll be cooking with magnetism.

• 38:23Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Yes. Electromagnetism.

• 38:26Chuck Nice?

  Electromagnetism. It's delicious.

• 38:30Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  But it doesn't roll off the tongue like Chuck when they say.

• 38:32Chuck Nice?

  Really?

• 38:32Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  You're cooking with gas now. You're cooking with electromagnetic induction now.

• 38:40Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So another very important question, I think, Kate, is often we see industries that are invested in their own carbon footprint or in denial of it. And we have scientists giving these other messages. Do you have any, any advice on how scientists and the corporate world can make nice in the sandbox? Because I don't see that happening.

• 39:08Speaker 02

  Yeah, I think, you know, one of-

• 39:12Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Wait, wait, wait, one more thing. What do you do with your brethren who, they'll find the one out of a hundred of you who says, "Oh, this, this climate thing is all a hoax." And they'll show up with credentials, you know, not entirely different from your own.

• 39:26Chuck Nice?

  Yeah, what they also should show up with is that guy's bank account because he's being paid by fossil fuel companies to say that crap.

• 39:35Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So where's the bridge, Kate? How do you do this?

• 39:38Speaker 02

  I mean, one of the most painful realizations for me as, as a scientist is that data doesn't change people's minds. Um, you know, I have this temptation to show up and when I talk to people, say, "But I have an equation." "Oh, you want to see another equation? You want to see a graph? I have a graph." And that doesn't work. That doesn't change people's minds. Um, I think what changes people's minds are, are stories and stories told by messengers that they trust. Um, and so I realized that there are audiences that I'm not going to be able to talk to. They don't trust me. They don't see me as a welcome messenger. And, and that's okay because what we need is to get more people involved in talking about climate change.

• 40:23Speaker 02

  I think that's why it is so important for all of us to talk about this as much as possible. Because if people don't listen to me, maybe they'll listen to you.

• 40:31Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Uh, Kate, that's profound. Uh, I like the idea of the storytellers who, the trusted storytellers. Uh, we just have to make sure that they are educated in ways that, uh, their story has some relationship to an objective reality.

• 40:45Chuck Nice?

  Once upon a time, there was a planet called Earth. And then they had these things called Homo sapiens come along and they mucked it all up.

• 40:58Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  The end.

• 41:01Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Okay, one last question. We gotta keep this tight. How can we communicate the urgency of this without having people throw up their hands without hope?

• 41:11Chuck Nice?

  Oh, that's, that's good stuff there.

• 41:14Speaker 02

  Yeah, that's something that I struggle with a little bit. Because if you say how bad it is, if you say, you know, this is, this is really, really serious, this is an existential threat, then yes, people tend to shut down. People tend to get very anxious. And I think the way, the framing that really works for me is saying, can you imagine how scary climate change would be if we didn't know what was causing it? Can you imagine if there was nothing that we can do about this? That's not true. There is something that we can do about this.

• 41:49Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Oh, this is good. You know, I've never thought of it that way, Kate. That's brilliant. It's simple and brilliant at the same time, which most brilliant things are.

• 41:59Chuck Nice?

  One of the things I like to say to people is, aren't you tired of hearing about the greatest generation? Like, every time you hear anything about any generation, it's like, oh yeah, well, we're the greatest generation. We, we saved the world. We did this. We did... Don't, don't you want to be the greatest generation? Like, you have an opportunity to be the greatest generation. Because when we look back on this time, it will either be that we stepped up to the plate, or, you know, we're in a world of crap, one or the other. And if we step up to the plate, they'll, they'll call you the greatest generation because you, you did it.

• 42:39Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So Chuck, you won a roll there with your poetic brilliance, and then you said, crap.

• 42:44Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  That didn't fit in the narrative.

• 42:46Chuck Nice?

  You know why?

• 42:49Chuck Nice?

  Because the term is world of something else.

• 42:53Chuck Nice?

  So you're absolutely right.

• 42:55Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  All right. Okay, we gotta close this out. Give me one, give us a sentence to take us home. Just, just one, you've been wise this entire show. Now cap that with another bit of wisdom that'll, that'll take us home.

• 43:08Speaker 02

  Oh man, no pressure. I would say, we are, we are lucky. We are lucky to have been born at this time because we are alive at exactly the right time to change everything for the better.

• 43:23Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Again, something not to take for granted. Very good.

• 43:28Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  All right, we're gonna call it quits there. Kate, this has been wonderful. We have to, like Chuck says, we gotta do this weekly. There's too much, it matters too much to make this an only every now and then thing. So, anyway, Dr. Kate Marvel, always good to have you. And I want to see the superhero comic book with you featured in it soon, okay? Chuck, always good to have you, man. Always a pleasure. All right, this has been StarTalk Cosmic Queries, climate edition. Neil deGrasse Tyson here, your personal astrophysicist. Keep looking up.