StarTalk Live! Climate Change

On a hot night in Brooklyn, Bill Nye and Eugene Mirman get steamed up about climate change with help from their guests, Nobel Prize-winning climatologist Dr. Cynthia Rosenzweig and comedians Jemaine Clement and Michael Che.

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.

• 0:21Bill Nye?

  Welcome, welcome, welcome to StarTalk Radio. Live from the Bell House Theater in Brooklyn, New York. The town's so nice, they named it twice. And we are gonna have big fun tonight talking about climate change. We have with us our regular co-host, is that your noun?

• 0:44Eugene Mirman?

  Sure.

• 0:45Bill Nye?

  Eugene Mirman.

• 0:51Bill Nye?

  And our science authority, a Nobel laureate with respect to climate change, Dr. Cynthia Rosenzweig.

• 0:59Speaker 03

  One of thousands.

• 1:00Bill Nye?

  And helping out with the hilarious science comedy, Whoa, Whoa, Whoa!, Jemaine Clement.

• 1:06Speaker 04

  Thank you. Nice to be here.

• 1:10Bill Nye?

  Cynthia, you were involved in the IPCC, the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, back in 2007, right? And what was going on back then?

• 1:23Speaker 03

  By the way, that was when the Nobel Prize was given to all of the IPCC scientists, so I'm just really one of many, many, many.

• 1:30Bill Nye?

  All right, well, I'll just hold that thought. How many people here have a Nobel Prize?

• 1:36Speaker 04

  I'm very humble about my Nobel Prize as well. I don't even like any publicity about it or anything written about it.

• 1:43Speaker 03

  Okay, but let me tell you a little bit about the IPCC. It stands for Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change. And it is scientists from all over the world who work on climate science. They work on actually the impacts and adaptation and vulnerability. That's, I'm in that part. And then there's the mitigation scientists who work on reducing greenhouse gas emissions.

• 2:07Bill Nye?

  What were you doing back in 2007?

• 2:10Speaker 03

  In 2007, I co-led the chapter on observed impacts of changes that are happening right now. Because there's a lot in climate change on projections into the future. This is what is going to happen in 2050. By the way, I'm going to be telling you a lot of those here tonight, too. But what a group of scientists came to realize is, we all know, climate change is happening now.

• 2:35Bill Nye?

  And when you say "now," you meant "then"?

• 2:37Speaker 03

  Then. Actually, I mean, over the past 100 years. And there had to be effects. There had to be, well, what, you know, what impacts were there? We call them "impacts." What did those change? So what we did with our chapter with scientists all around the world was to make a database of 28,000 time-series of changes in all different...

• 2:57Bill Nye?

  You say "time-series"?

• 2:58Speaker 03

  Time-series.

• 2:59Bill Nye?

  These are like graphs.

• 3:00Speaker 03

  It's the data that go into the graphs. And these are about species changing, moving their boundaries up to higher latitudes because it's getting warmer. Birds are arriving earlier in their...

• 3:18Eugene Mirman?

  Then they're invited.

• 3:19Speaker 03

  Then they're invited. And then there are changes in the water cycle. So we put together this massive database to show then that those were happening now. And 2013, the climate scientists came out with the rates of climate change, which we can go into, that now there are even more species changing.

• 3:42Bill Nye?

  The rate's higher than anybody was willing to admit, right?

• 3:45Eugene Mirman?

  I'm happy to admit it.

• 3:47Speaker 03

  It's happening faster. Yeah. So one of the things, yeah, one of the science things, actually, we do is we use models, which are big mathematical sets of equations for the whole climate system. And then we look to see, well, on those observations of what's been happening, do the models, are they doing a good job projecting? And in general, they're doing a pretty good job, but some of these changes have been incurring faster than have been projected.

• 4:17Bill Nye?

  What's an example of a faster change than you, than everybody anticipates?

• 4:21Eugene Mirman?

  Eagles having sex at 2 years old.

• 4:25Speaker 03

  Some of the warming in some of the...

• 4:29Bill Nye?

  Cynthia, hang on a sec. Really?

• 4:32Speaker 03

  So, for example, the... Oh wait, was I right?

• 4:36Bill Nye?

  Guess so.

• 4:37Speaker 03

  So, I would give that probably the... One of the most important examples is the melting of the polar ice cap, especially in northern hemisphere, but it's also happening in Antarctica as well.

• 4:51Speaker 04

  That's my hemisphere, by the way. I represent the hemisphere.

• 4:54Speaker 03

  And those have been... That loss of polar ice...

• 4:56Speaker 04

  We have a pole as well down the south. We have our own pole.

• 4:59Speaker 03

  Yes, and because you're down in New Zealand, right?

• 5:01Speaker 04

  That's right. There's no Father Christmas, but otherwise it's very similar.

• 5:06Bill Nye?

  Wow. Did not know that. So, the thing about polar changes is that it's a positive feedback, where you melt ice and less sunlight's reflected into space, so the sea water is dark, holds in more heat, more ice melts, blah.

• 5:24Speaker 03

  Yes. Yep, it happens on land as well.

• 5:27Bill Nye?

  Cynthia, I have a question.

• 5:29Speaker 03

  Yes.

• 5:30Bill Nye?

  Why should we be concerned about these changes?

• 5:32Speaker 03

  Yes, why? Well, because, you know, when we just say the ti...

• 5:35Speaker 04

  Good one, good question.

• 5:36Speaker 03

  When scientists come and say, for example, "Well, since 1880, there's been almost a degree Celsius warming", and I think people might go saying, well...

• 5:47Speaker 04

  Pretty old scientists.

• 5:48Speaker 03

  Yeah, like, "What's going on with that? Point 85 degrees C, right?" But when... First of all, that's the global average, and so up at the poles, it's much, much more than that.

• 5:58Bill Nye?

  How much more is it, seriously, at the poles?

• 6:00Speaker 03

  Like, up to, um... One and a half degrees Celsius? Oh, no, no, no, no. Like, three, four, five, six. But, you know, on the order of three, four, that's... Yeah. It's much, much more, and that's why you're seeing that melting. It's because it's that high latitude amplification that you just gave the science explanation of.

• 6:18Bill Nye?

  Yes, I just gave the science explanation.

• 6:20Speaker 03

  Very good.

• 6:22Bill Nye?

  So, but let me ask you this. Do we know, because here's what's gonna happen. There will be people questioning all this, which is troublesome. Do we know why it's happening more quickly at the, or it's much warmer, um, a higher change at the poles than we have elsewhere?

• 6:38Speaker 03

  Yes, exactly, for the reason that you gave, the high lab.

• 6:39Bill Nye?

  Oh, it's that simple, or that complicated?

• 6:41Speaker 03

  Yeah, well, there's other dynamic changes as well, in the atmosphere.

• 6:45Speaker 04

  But what's the main one? It's that it's higher?

• 6:46Speaker 03

  The, uh, the, it's a positive feedback, because the reflectivity, which we call the albedo, um, is, um...

• 6:55Speaker 04

  Why don't you want me to know you call it the albedo, just him?

• 6:58Speaker 03

  Okay.

• 6:58Bill Nye?

  Albedo is from the word for white.

• 7:01Speaker 03

  The snow is, uh, the very, uh, and snow and ice are very reflective. The water and the, uh, land and vegetation are darker, and they absorb more heat, so you get a positive feedback of warming.

• 7:14Speaker 04

  Eugene has a very strong albedo.

• 7:20Speaker 04

  I don't, I don't like it brought up.

• 7:25Bill Nye?

  And so, this is a serious problem, because as we melt the poles, the world's gonna hold in more heat. The world gets on the order of sextillion joules every second.

• 7:39Speaker 03

  Yes.

• 7:40Bill Nye?

  And so if you increase the, the temperature of the world, one degree Celsius, you're talking about zillions of calories of heat that the world is holding in that it didn't use to.

• 7:54Speaker 04

  What I want to know is, in, in Soylent Green, in the movie Soylent Green, which was made in, what, the seventies? They're talking about the greenhouse effect all the time, why didn't people listen to Soylent Green?

• 8:06Speaker 03

  Well...

• 8:07Speaker 04

  Because next thing you know, we're gonna be eating people.

• 8:08Speaker 03

  Yeah, you know what?

• 8:10Speaker 04

  That's what happens at the end, spoiler alert.

• 8:14Bill Nye?

  It depends on the people.

• 8:15Speaker 03

  A Swedish scientist did a back-of-the-envelope calculation of the greenhouse effect in the eighteen, late eighteen hundreds, because with the Industrial Revolution, all the, when all the factories got going...

• 8:26Speaker 04

  A lot more people saw Soylent Green. It's a very popular movie. I would rate that.

• 8:31Bill Nye?

  Just everybody, if you're into this, we need the greenhouse effect, or we wouldn't be warm enough to live here at all, on Earth. And this is where visible light comes through the atmosphere, hits the Earth's surface, it changes to a lower frequency, to infrared, below red, and then the atmosphere holds that in. And here we all are, happy.

• 8:50Eugene Mirman?

  So we need a little greenhouse, but not as much as we're about to have.

• 8:53Speaker 03

  Right, so what we're doing with the greenhouse gas emissions, it's like we're putting on a thicker, fluffier blanket, sometimes. We describe it that.

• 9:03Speaker 04

  We want enough to make, to grow nice tomatoes, but we don't want to burn, we don't want, that's the level we want to keep it at, somewhere.

• 9:11Speaker 03

  Right.

• 9:12Speaker 04

  In there.

• 9:12Speaker 03

  Yeah, and that gets two impacts. That's why we care, because the climate system affects every single thing on the planet.

• 9:20Eugene Mirman?

  This sounds like a liberal money-making scheme that I can't understand.

• 9:26Speaker 03

  I don't know about that.

• 9:32Bill Nye?

  So, Doctor, you are a senior research scientist at NASA, so you're limited on what you can actually say about certain things. Is that true?

• 9:45Speaker 03

  We provide the science and technology, the science foundation, the knowledge foundation. And then, there's lots of, so what we, what we want, there are lots of decisions to be made. So, I can't comment on, on political things.

• 10:01Bill Nye?

  But there is going to be a decline in health, is that true?

• 10:04Speaker 03

  That's an impact.

• 10:05Eugene Mirman?

  Can you name which ten senators are evil?

• 10:10Eugene Mirman?

  And I don't mean bad, I mean evil.

• 10:14Speaker 03

  So, let's go to the impacts.

• 10:18Speaker 03

  So, let's just talk about sea level rise first. Because, so when weather's warmer, so the land ice, a lot of the water on the planet is caught up in glaciers. So when it gets warmer, that those glaciers are, and they are already melting, increasing sea level.

• 10:36Bill Nye?

  It goes downhill.

• 10:37Speaker 03

  It goes downhill and it all flows in. Also, warmer, these are the temperature, these are the knock-on effects of temperature. Also, warmer ocean temperatures are, expand, water expands. So we have what, thermal expansion, so a combination of thermal expansion and melting of land ice, we have sea level rise, again, already happening. So, just right here in New York City, we've had, over the past 100 years, over a foot of sea level rise.

• 11:11Eugene Mirman?

  Meaning, the water is a foot higher.

• 11:14Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 11:15Bill Nye?

  So there was, there was Sandy, right?

• 11:17Speaker 03

  Yes.

• 11:18Bill Nye?

  Now, sea level's already higher, but then that was wind-blown and we had a, we had a big rush.

• 11:23Speaker 03

  Right, so...

• 11:24Bill Nye?

  And we shut down the power, everything south of 26th Street or something, right?

• 11:28Speaker 03

  Yes, we did.

• 11:29Bill Nye?

  Which, that, we call that an impact.

• 11:30Speaker 03

  Definitely.

• 11:31Eugene Mirman?

  Yeah, Lit was close.

• 11:33Speaker 03

  But I have to be very, I have to be very clear with you, that we can, anyone storm, we cannot say it's climate change. But, we can say that there is

• 11:45Bill Nye?

  Likelihood?

• 11:46Speaker 03

  Science showing that the more intense, the most intense hurricanes are projected to change in the future. This is still very much an active area of research. But, guess what? Even if the storms don't change and become more, more intense, as they, they are in general projected to do, but when we have the higher sea level, again, it's like, oh, one foot, who cares? But really, what happens is, when any storm, even if the storms don't, don't change, a storm comes along, it's one foot high, the seas are one foot higher, they go, the flooding, the coastal flooding goes one foot. Further, of elevation. And that, that

• 12:27Bill Nye?

  Goes from 26th to 80th.

• 12:29Speaker 03

  Yeah. The one piece of Sandy that we could say was actually affected by climate change was the part of the sea level rise that is attributed to global warming, climate change, with the ocean temperatures and melting, which is on the order of about half of that. And so that extent of flooding that we had in Sandy, that is the actual, direct link to climate change.

• 12:56Bill Nye?

  So, just for everybody, think about if it's one foot, 30 centimeters.

• 13:00Speaker 04

  Thank you, thank you.

• 13:01Speaker 03

  Yeah. Yeah, sorry, I have

• 13:03Speaker 04

  For the modern world.

• 13:05Bill Nye?

  For everybody on earth except this place. Right. Anyway, if you have something that is several hundred kilometers wide, when you add a foot of that, you're adding just an enormous volume of water, enough to cover the streets of Manhattan and bury New, or sink New Orleans. And there's gonna be all kinds of trouble in Florida and so on. That's in the developed world, the United States, and

• 13:28Speaker 04

  Let me just say that it's fine that that will be a problem in Florida.

• 13:33Speaker 04

  New York, it's not fine. But there are, there are parts of the world that are already flooded, the Kiribati Islands in Polynesia.

• 13:41Speaker 03

  Yes.

• 13:42Speaker 04

  They don't have, they don't have much topography.

• 13:44Bill Nye?

  And your people are taking them in, right? The Kiwis are taking

• 13:48Speaker 04

  I think they're not taking them in. It's this, it's this scandal. They've got, they've got nowhere to go. So if you've got, I don't know, Airbnb.

• 13:57Bill Nye?

  The thing that impresses me is just the money involved. When you shut down a city like New Orleans, or Miami, or New York for a week or two, you're talking about billions and billions of dollars, right?

• 14:07Speaker 03

  Yeah, the estimate of the damage of Sandy for New York City was 19 billion.

• 14:13Speaker 04

  And was it all scones that lack them?

• 14:18Bill Nye?

  Goods gone.

• 14:19Eugene Mirman?

  Unbought.

• 14:20Speaker 03

  So...

• 14:21Bill Nye?

  Nineteen billion?

• 14:22Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 14:23Bill Nye?

  Dollars?

• 14:23Eugene Mirman?

  In how many weeks? Or in general?

• 14:25Speaker 03

  No, it just, no, in like, that was in like, one week. You know, that, it was, basically, that was it. I mean, you know, it happened fast. Um, as we know, and some of the rebuilding is still going on, so... Um, but can I tell you an important thing about Sandy?

• 14:42Eugene Mirman?

  Sure.

• 14:43Speaker 03

  Um, which is...

• 14:44Speaker 04

  Was it named after the character in the movie Grease?

• 14:49Bill Nye?

  No, no, it's the squirrel. It's the squirrel in SpongeBob.

• 14:52Speaker 04

  Oh, interesting.

• 14:54Speaker 03

  It, it actually...

• 14:55Speaker 04

  What's the other interesting fact about...

• 14:57Speaker 03

  So, in, in climate science, we have this concept of tipping point. Tipping point, so, for example, it's mostly used in the melting of the ice sheets. That, that, there's, there was the, the, there's this slow accumulation of a rate of change, and then, all of a sudden, wham! Tipping point. And, great acceleration.

• 15:20Bill Nye?

  And that's what we're concerned about.

• 15:22Eugene Mirman?

  What's, what's the year that it would be wham? What, what's wham year, in your opinion?

• 15:26Speaker 03

  Well...

• 15:27Speaker 04

  Because that's when we should put this podcast out.

• 15:31Speaker 03

  Yeah, it's, um, yeah, that's very challenging, um, to, given one.

• 15:36Bill Nye?

  But it doesn't sound good.

• 15:38Speaker 03

  Right, but, you know, but...

• 15:39Speaker 04

  I was gonna say, this is the most depressing comedy show I've ever been in.

• 15:42Speaker 03

  Oh dear!

• 15:42Bill Nye?

  No, no, wait, no, no, she's gonna, she'll, she'll lay on the optimism, watch this.

• 15:47Speaker 03

  So, the, the, the UN, um, uh, they, they have chosen a two-degree C warming, but, you know, really the science is...

• 15:55Bill Nye?

  As a bad, as a tipping point.

• 15:55Speaker 03

  Yes.

• 15:56Bill Nye?

  So, at point two Celsius a decade, we got ten decades.

• 15:59Speaker 03

  But, but, actually, the projection's because of the accelerated warming...

• 16:04Bill Nye?

  It's half of that.

• 16:05Speaker 03

  It's like, you know, by the end of the century, it's two to eight degrees C.

• 16:09Speaker 04

  I'll be a cyborg by then.

• 16:10Speaker 03

  I know, I know.

• 16:12Speaker 04

  I'll have...

• 16:12Speaker 03

  But anyway, but, I wanna be, I wanna go to, I, don't forget, I wanna talk about my tipping point of Sandy. Always before, when, in the United States, there, when there were storms and rebuilding and hurricane, for example, in Katrina, people would talk about, is this part of climate change or not? Or, and then they would raise climate change, but then, basically, nothing would happen. But in New York... Something happened. And in the plans for rebuilding, the city government, in their plans, took the projections of sea level rise and climate change into account in the rebuilding, so that we actually are preparing here for these changing risks.

• 16:54Bill Nye?

  You are, Cynthia, you are part of the UCCRN, are you not?

• 16:59Speaker 03

  Yes.

• 17:00Bill Nye?

  Anyone? That's right. Doesn't spell anything. Urban Climate Change Research Network.

• 17:04Speaker 03

  There are scientists and experts from cities all over the world. And it's in developing countries, cities...

• 17:10Eugene Mirman?

  Don't point to me.

• 17:14Speaker 03

  Good luck with your little forest and your wizard. The city, the vulnerability of the cities in developing countries is absolutely huge, especially the coastal.

• 17:24Bill Nye?

  So what topic?

• 17:24Speaker 03

  There are people, there are neighborhoods on stilts.

• 17:27Bill Nye?

  You're saying these health effects, these having to put houses on stilts, building seawalls, getting subway tunnels that can pump out flood. All that, if I understand you, you're saying it's going to happen in cities first, or cities especially, and that's where you want to put your thumb on the scale?

• 17:48Speaker 03

  Yep, but it's happening now. It turns out that cities are the first responders to climate change. And, you know...

• 17:56Eugene Mirman?

  You're the first ones to make changes.

• 17:57Speaker 03

  They're making changes now. And we're, I know we're going to be...

• 18:01Bill Nye?

  I have to say, that seems surprising. I would think it would be farmers, or fisherpeople.

• 18:07Eugene Mirman?

  Yeah, farmers at sea.

• 18:08Speaker 03

  Well, there are, yeah, okay.

• 18:10Eugene Mirman?

  Cement farmers.

• 18:11Speaker 03

  Climate farmers. There are a couple of reasons. Why are cities taking this role of first responders?

• 18:16Eugene Mirman?

  A bunch of liberals with money to spend.

• 18:18Speaker 03

  Well...

• 18:19Eugene Mirman?

  And lots of fear.

• 18:20Speaker 03

  No, no.

• 18:21Eugene Mirman?

  You have a real problem.

• 18:23Speaker 03

  What are, what are, what are cities, what do cities need for people to live together? They need a water system. They need to have clean air. They need to be, have a transportation system. They need to work together to make things actually function. They have experience in dealing with other environmental issues, like air quality. And climate, they don't see climate change as that different. Okay, air quality.

• 18:44Bill Nye?

  Who's they in these examples?

• 18:45Speaker 03

  These are the city leaders. So, the mayors of cities around the world...

• 18:52Speaker 03

  Are forming, so we've been forming the, getting the scientists together, but the mayors have been getting together.

• 18:57Bill Nye?

  Who's "we"? Who's "we"?

• 18:59Speaker 03

  So, we, is, UCCRN.

• 19:01Speaker 04

  Okay.

• 19:02Speaker 03

  That's, that, so, the Urban Climate Change Research Network. We've been, that, that group has been working on getting the knowledge providers together. But the mayors and the city governments have been getting together and forming networks and for, and, and signing on PACs with each other to set targets and timetables for greenhouse gas emissions.

• 19:22Bill Nye?

  Fantastic. We were gonna talk about, more about, we're gonna talk more about this with Dr. Cynthia Rosenzweig, Eugene Mirman, and Jemaine Clement, after this. We'll be right back. Welcome back, welcome back to StarTalk Radio. I'm your guest host this week, Bill Nye, Science Guy, CEO of the Planetary Society, here with our beloved Eugene Mirman. During this week of climate change awareness, we have Dr.

• 20:01Bill Nye?

  Cynthia Rosenzweig, who unlike many of the listeners, has a Nobel Prize for Climate Change back in 2007, and still working hard on it.

• 20:14Speaker 03

  One of many.

• 20:15Bill Nye?

  I know, but still, compared to the rest of the room.

• 20:18Speaker 04

  She invented it. It's her fault.

• 20:20Bill Nye?

  And that voice is Jemaine Clement, everybody. And Michael Shays here.

• 20:27Speaker 05

  All right. Let's talk about this science.

• 20:37Speaker 04

  It's really bad news, Michael. We've been talking about it. It's really bad news.

• 20:41Bill Nye?

  We've got big problems around the world, don't we Cynthia? Like, we've got farming, which needs irrigation with clean water, and we've got, uh, species moving away from the equator, carrying all kinds of crazy diseases, and...

• 20:57Speaker 03

  Well, all biology is affected by temperatures. So, let's turn to food, I think, which is such an amazing hot topic now. And so, my actual, my actual PhD is in agronomy, which is in the science of...

• 21:12Bill Nye?

  Soil.

• 21:13Speaker 03

  Soils and crops. But, on the climate change side, agriculture is a very, very important sector. First, because-

• 21:21Bill Nye?

  Well, we all eat, right?

• 21:22Speaker 03

  Because we eat. It's, in some ways, the fundamental sector. Although, of course, my ecosystem, my ecologist colleagues would, of course, say that it's the larger ecosystem, and agriculture is actually an ecosystem service. But just-

• 21:37Eugene Mirman?

  You're a bunch of jerks. Why would they do that?

• 21:41Speaker 03

  But, anyway, agriculture is important because, first of all, it itself is an emitter of greenhouse gases.

• 21:49Bill Nye?

  I mean, you don't have to, this is not rocket surgery. I have-

• 21:54Bill Nye?

  I have been to the Midwest. There's a lot of corn growing-

• 21:57Speaker 03

  Mm-hmm.

• 21:58Bill Nye?

  On great, big fields.

• 22:00Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 22:00Bill Nye?

  There's a lot of soybeans growing everywhere. You can see them from space. So, they've gotta have an enormous effect on the climate, my goodness.

• 22:09Speaker 03

  Well, yes, and here's, and the livestock also, because of the enteric fermentation, believe it or not, of-

• 22:16Eugene Mirman?

  They fart.

• 22:16Speaker 03

  The stomachs, yes.

• 22:19Eugene Mirman?

  Thank you for calling it a different thing.

• 22:21Speaker 03

  And belch.

• 22:23Speaker 03

  And-

• 22:24Bill Nye?

  That's real?

• 22:24Speaker 03

  Put a lot of methane out, which is a very powerful greenhouse gas.

• 22:28Bill Nye?

  Michael, you were skeptical?

• 22:30Speaker 05

  No, is that, because I heard that, I heard that the cows fart and it's ruining everything, but it seems like a-

• 22:35Speaker 03

  I know, but-

• 22:36Speaker 05

  Seems like a hilarious way to go.

• 22:41Bill Nye?

  Well, they don't explode. It's not like that, no.

• 22:45Speaker 05

  Well, I mean, I'm just saying, like-

• 22:46Eugene Mirman?

  They don't say "pardon me" either.

• 22:47Speaker 05

  If that's the way the Earth ended, that would be pretty-

• 22:51Eugene Mirman?

  There would be no one to tell the joke to, but it would be pretty funny.

• 22:56Speaker 05

  Like, if it was written in a great book, like, an ancient book, and it's like, "And then, someday, the cows will fart, all at the same time, and that'll be the end of mankind."

• 23:07Speaker 05

  I'm like, "No, man, I'm not reading this book no more. It's just getting daffy."

• 23:12Bill Nye?

  But it's, you know.

• 23:13Speaker 03

  It's true.

• 23:13Bill Nye?

  It's stranger than a fiction.

• 23:15Speaker 03

  It is. It's actually true. Also, the fertilizer production, creating nitrogen fertilizer, is a highly energy-intensive.

• 23:22Bill Nye?

  So...

• 23:23Speaker 03

  Plus the fertilizer itself, when it's applied, emits another greenhouse gas, nitrous oxide, so the N2O.

• 23:31Bill Nye?

  So you're saying that's bad?

• 23:32Speaker 03

  Yep. These are the... This is the agriculture emission, you know, greenhouse gas emission side.

• 23:39Bill Nye?

  I have a fundamental question, though. In the old days, farmers would fertilize the field with the cow excrement, yes? But you're talking about fertilizer made on industrial scale. We're taking nitrogen out of the air. Is that right, industrially?

• 23:54Speaker 03

  Yes.

• 23:55Bill Nye?

  And then chemically, the Haber process or something, we're making fertilizer. And that takes a lot of energy.

• 24:02Speaker 03

  Yep.

• 24:02Bill Nye?

  But since we're... Sarah, I have a fundamental question. Since we're taking nitrogen out of the air, doesn't it just go back in the air eventually?

• 24:09Speaker 03

  Well, no, it then reacts, and then it... When... As it's applied, and then it reacts, and it goes back into the air as N2O.

• 24:17Bill Nye?

  As nitrous oxide.

• 24:18Speaker 03

  Which is a powerful greenhouse gas.

• 24:21Eugene Mirman?

  It's a nitrous oxide which you would... You... Like a dentist? Is that what a dentist uses to make you party?

• 24:28Speaker 04

  Isn't that what... Yeah, teen... That's what teenagers...

• 24:30Eugene Mirman?

  So far now, you flipped it, and I'm like, oh, this doesn't sound so bad.

• 24:33Speaker 03

  Well, sorry. It has a big... It does have a big warming effect.

• 24:38Speaker 04

  Well, stop doing it, everyone.

• 24:40Bill Nye?

  So is there a way... So go ahead. So these are horrible impacts.

• 24:43Speaker 03

  Yeah, so... But at the same time, as you... As we know from your description of the agricultural regions all over the world, also, climate is going to have a big effect on food production itself. So it's on both sides that agriculture is such a very critical piece.

• 25:03Bill Nye?

  What's the biggest piece?

• 25:05Speaker 03

  Well, in terms of the emissions, the fossil fuels are still the number one.

• 25:10Bill Nye?

  Uh-huh.

• 25:10Speaker 04

  What is exactly fossil fuel? Is that like those transformer robots?

• 25:20Speaker 03

  It's carbon that was fixed in the earth and, you know, It's buried. Millions of years ago, buried. And so it is coal, which is the, has the strongest effect for when it's burned for greenhouse gases. Oh, coal? And, yeah. I know, coal, yeah. Yeah, coal. And oil. And then, um, liquid fuels, and like our gasoline, and then, and diesel, et cetera, and then, natural gas.

• 25:49Speaker 04

  Won't they run out, though, anyway? Won't they run out?

• 25:52Bill Nye?

  Oh, no.

• 25:53Speaker 04

  No, there's a lot more.

• 25:54Bill Nye?

  I gotta tell you, that's the bad news. So we will never run out of fossil fuel. There's so much coal, coal, coal, coal, coal, coal, coal. There's so, now, in Canadia, they're going tar, sand, tar, oil shale.

• 26:08Eugene Mirman?

  Is that when you just shake Canada and then oil pops up?

• 26:11Bill Nye?

  Well, it would be great if you could do that. But the oil, the quality of the oil is much less usable. You have to burn a lot of oil to get it warm enough to process it.

• 26:23Speaker 05

  So coal's bad, right?

• 26:24Bill Nye?

  It's bad.

• 26:25Speaker 05

  Yeah.

• 26:26Bill Nye?

  Along with being in the UCCRN and the IPCC, you are also in AGMIP. Aren't you, the AGMIP?

• 26:37Speaker 03

  So, AGMIP, I'll explain AGMIP, which stands for Agricultural Model Inter-Comparison and Improvement Project.

• 26:45Bill Nye?

  So what's the difference between comparison and inter-comparison?

• 26:49Eugene Mirman?

  Compare the two.

• 26:51Speaker 04

  And inter-comparison.

• 26:53Speaker 03

  Well, we use inter-comparison.

• 26:55Speaker 05

  Inter-comparison is like a black comparison and a white comparison doing it. Right? We gotta be what that is.

• 27:03Eugene Mirman?

  And I'm fine with it.

• 27:07Speaker 03

  So, you know, there's been a lot of work on the climate system models that make the projections that we were talking about.

• 27:13Bill Nye?

  And the word "model," where these are computer programs.

• 27:15Speaker 03

  It's computer programs.

• 27:16Bill Nye?

  They're not, I don't have glue and plastic.

• 27:18Speaker 03

  No, no, no, they're not, they're, right.

• 27:19Speaker 04

  Like tiny farms.

• 27:22Speaker 03

  They're mathematical models that solve systems that have variables and equations of systems so that and then you can do experiments with models to say what will happen if the CO2 increases as on the trajectory that we're on, for example, that's on a global climate model, and then with agricultural models, we do what will happen if the climate changes the way those climate models project. So, there's been tons of scientific work on the climate projection side, but on the impact side, which we're realizing more and more, hey, you know, climate change is happening,

• 28:03Speaker 03

  that's what we talked about at the beginning, and the impacts are already happening, and the impacts are projected to basically intensify, and we need to know what those are, because we have to deal with it even as we're trying to, working to reduce greenhouse gas emissions, we also have to deal with the impacts of the changing climate. So, we got all the crop modelers, as many of them, we bring them together so that they, because in the beginning, people didn't, people were using their own models, and they didn't really want to say, oh, well, here's mine, and I'll show you mine if you show me yours.

• 28:37Eugene Mirman?

  I no longer know what you're describing. Are you describing how farmers flirt with each other?

• 28:44Speaker 03

  No. We got everybody together, finally, and people are now ready to say, look, because we have to compare, we have to learn from, otherwise, if we only use one model, we start to believe it.

• 28:57Speaker 04

  What about, what about just a tube that goes into your stomach, and you put the coal directly into it? Just an idea.

• 29:06Bill Nye?

  It's not that flavorful. I know what you mean, though, but...

• 29:10Speaker 04

  Sometimes it has a barbecue-y. Just tell Massa, that's all I'm saying.

• 29:17Bill Nye?

  But, uh...

• 29:18Speaker 05

  So you're saying this is all connected, right?

• 29:20Speaker 03

  Absolutely.

• 29:20Bill Nye?

  Could be. But when you have thirty models, you know, I've spent a lot of time with people who are focused on denying climate change, just to talk briefly about me and my problems. And, uh...

• 29:33Speaker 04

  But they don't get it together to organize a march, though, do they?

• 29:36Bill Nye?

  No. No, they don't. And we had a big march in New York City. Over three hundred thousand people. Very cool.

• 29:47Speaker 04

  I saw fifty in Brooklyn going, "No, it's not true."

• 29:54Eugene Mirman?

  Really?

• 29:55Bill Nye?

  Uh, anyway, when you have thirty models, my experience with scientists like you, Dr. Rosenzweig, is you guys don't get along that well. Like, part of it, you use the term "compare," and I think there was "intercompare" up there earlier, and you're all trying to shoot each other down, I mean, often, or call into question, uh, review carefully. But then what's happened, but what's happened is you've converged, right? Everybody has finding the same or very similar problems.

• 30:23Speaker 03

  It's a very feisty profession. You're absolutely right. And we're like, you know, having many, yes, those IPCC chapters are very, have very spirited debates before they come to consensus.

• 30:36Speaker 05

  Anybody ever get shot?

• 30:39Speaker 03

  I don't think so, but I would say they certainly try to...

• 30:45Speaker 04

  That would be a spirited debate.

• 30:46Speaker 03

  Career, like, damage.

• 30:47Speaker 05

  It's like a scientist shot on a Las Vegas Strip, on the passenger side of a BMW. Okay, well, maybe not.

• 30:53Speaker 04

  It's 2.5 degrees Celsius. Boom!

• 30:57Speaker 05

  I'm just saying, these disagreements get out of control if we're not careful.

• 31:01Speaker 03

  But it, it still gets pretty, I would say...

• 31:04Eugene Mirman?

  Heated, but not violent.

• 31:05Speaker 03

  Heated, but not violent.

• 31:07Eugene Mirman?

  Can people ever hook up, though?

• 31:09Speaker 04

  Never mind.

• 31:10Bill Nye?

  But, but hold on. Let me, I want to get back to the cities.

• 31:13Speaker 05

  That's a good-ass question.

• 31:14Bill Nye?

  But hang on a second. Uh, guys like Michael Mann, who's the first guy to come up with the hockey stick, or he led the hockey stick graph thing, where the world's steady temperature, then it gets warm really fast.

• 31:27Speaker 04

  I thought you were literally talking about the inventor of the hockey stick.

• 31:30Bill Nye?

  No.

• 31:30Eugene Mirman?

  And I thought you were talking about the director of Miami Bikes.

• 31:33Bill Nye?

  No.

• 31:33Speaker 03

  It's a very famous, it's a very famous graph.

• 31:36Speaker 04

  Dude.

• 31:37Bill Nye?

  The hockey stick is a graph where the hockey stick's on the floor and the blade is poking up toward the ceiling, getting fast, getting warm very fast. But what I was gonna say is, he had harassment. Somebody sends envelopes with white powder to his house where his kids are and they put this truck out in front with this sarcastic cartoon on the side. So there is a lot of controversy.

• 32:00Speaker 04

  What did he, and he predicted the?

• 32:03Bill Nye?

  He was, yeah, yeah, the world's getting warmer fast.

• 32:06Speaker 04

  Yes, but, so the suggestion is anthrax, right? But what about the sarcasm, is that? How is he about that?

• 32:14Bill Nye?

  Well, I mean, if you have kids

• 32:16Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 32:16Bill Nye?

  and your father's ridiculed, it's troubling. It's stuff that doesn't happen to everybody.

• 32:20Speaker 05

  Yeah, but your kid's gotta be pretty smart to pick up sarcasm.

• 32:25Bill Nye?

  The guy, the guy got a PhD from Yale or something, yeah, so.

• 32:30Eugene Mirman?

  Yeah, no, he would totally get the sarcasm.

• 32:32Speaker 04

  But, but, listen, listen, everyone in the world.

• 32:37Speaker 04

  Don't people notice that it's warmer? I've noticed that it's warmer in my city. And right now, it's a few degrees warmer than it was when I was, you know, when I first moved there, 20 years ago. And right now, it's kinda just a nice, it's delicious. And I could even, I could even take another one or two degrees Celsius higher. And, you know, it'd be good to be able to wear a t-shirt at night and just, you know, be relaxed about it, not have to pack a jacket in my bag.

• 33:07Speaker 05

  Yeah, how do we find our comfort zone?

• 33:10Speaker 03

  But, but you have to understand that that's just a step along the way.

• 33:14Speaker 04

  Well, you see, we're near Antarctica, so it's very cold. And it's just, we, we prefer it so far.

• 33:22Bill Nye?

  So there's been a lot of talk about that, that is, in the controversy, that it'll actually have some benefits for certain people. And carbon dioxide's good for crops and all this stuff. But it's the rate, right?

• 33:33Speaker 03

  One is the rate of change is very rapid compared to when we look at paleo-climatic rates of change. The other is that it's, it's human caused. We're doing this ourselves with the increases in the greenhouse gas emissions. There, I do think it's, I think it's good to be honest that, that some things, you know, not everything is a catastrophe, or certainly not everything is a catastrophe yet. I think it's really important.

• 34:02Bill Nye?

  Oh, that's good.

• 34:03Eugene Mirman?

  That is so hopeful. That's how... When I'm... Suck your kids in with that.

• 34:09Bill Nye?

  When I'm going off a cliff...

• 34:10Speaker 03

  I agree. Warmer temperatures will reduce people's heating bills, right here in New York City, in the winter.

• 34:17Bill Nye?

  But it might...

• 34:18Eugene Mirman?

  Keep talking.

• 34:19Bill Nye?

  Yeah, until you get the air conditioning bill.

• 34:21Speaker 03

  But anyway, so I do... One thing, we are very careful. But they're gonna have to buy a lot more surfboards. We... Yeah. We... So we try to... We do say... We try to be clear about what's happening, what are the projections, and we say, "This is what the models show." And then, decision makers, and who of... Who of course, citizens are the number-one decision makers, then they can decide what to do.

• 34:48Bill Nye?

  So, along that line, and we had a march in the big city in the United States. We had marches around the world, I guess. But you grew up, or you're an agronomist, working on the crops out there, the soil, but you live in the city, and you work for the city network, right? Because you want to get the cities to lead the way. Is that accurate?

• 35:10Speaker 03

  Well, in the late 1990s, I was asked to lead a study of how climate change would affect New York City. And it turned out that, I think that it not only was the first one here in New York, but it was actually the first one...

• 35:24Bill Nye?

  This is 20 years ago, or something.

• 35:27Speaker 03

  Getting on, of course, yeah. So, of any city anywhere. And then, as we worked with the city here, under Mayor Bloomberg, he formed the New York City Panel on Climate Change. So we were talking about the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change before. Well, actually, in the New York region, there is one just for...

• 35:51Bill Nye?

  What's the acronym? What's the acronym?

• 35:52Speaker 03

  NPCC. New York City Panel on Climate Change.

• 35:57Bill Nye?

  What fraction of the world's people live in cities? Seriously?

• 36:01Speaker 03

  Over 50%.

• 36:02Bill Nye?

  Over half. So, there you go. We're gonna talk about those people.

• 36:05Speaker 03

  We're now... Exactly.

• 36:06Bill Nye?

  We're gonna talk about those people when we come back, right after this.

• 36:23Bill Nye?

  All right, welcome back, welcome back to StarTalk Radio. I'm your guest host, Bill Nye. Science guy, CEO of the planetary study here with our beloved Eugene Mirman. Hilarity continues, out of control, Jermaine Clements here. You're not gonna believe it, Michael Shea. And this week's science authority, Dr. Cynthia Rosen's life. So NASA has looked at climate change for how long? Twenty-five years, thirty years?

• 37:00Speaker 03

  Oh, yeah. The first, some of the first projections with our, with the GIs global climate model were made in early 80s.

• 37:11Bill Nye?

  Are working to get the cities motivated to help lead the world because mayors of cities, leaders of cities, are not necessarily conservative or liberal or progressive. They have cities to run. They got bills to pay, they got taxes to collect, and they can't have the lower part of downtown flooding. And they can't lose their port if they're a seaport. If they live on a big river, they can't have the whole thing flood. So here's the thing, these are policy issues, right? You got, how many, where are you gonna move people if they have to move? Who's gonna spend money on seawalls if they have to be built? What's gonna happen to crop production and farmers who've made their living in some

• 37:52Bill Nye?

  place for better part of a century, old family farm, they gotta move or something? But, let me ask you this. You're from the States, you're the US?

• 38:02Speaker 03

  Yes, I am.

• 38:03Bill Nye?

  It is my opinion that if the United States were leading, if the United States were out in front on all this, everybody else or many other countries would have less trouble fighting it. Do you agree with that?

• 38:15Speaker 03

  Well, again, it's...

• 38:16Bill Nye?

  Oh, you're not allowed to say because you're a NASA employee.

• 38:19Speaker 03

  Yeah. But I just would say that from the scientists, many scientists who have been working on this for, lo these, now, decades.

• 38:28Bill Nye?

  Decades.

• 38:29Speaker 03

  Yes. And bringing to the attention of the global community this mega-planetary challenge. So that we continue to do everything we can to provide the science and technology, everything that's needed, contribute to the knowledge foundation, so that we can actually solve it.

• 38:54Bill Nye?

  So let me ask you this. It is my opinion, once again, it's just correct, that denial of climate change, which is what's held at least the United States back from getting going on this, lo these couple decades, is generational. That in general, younger people are less troubled, they embrace the problem and want to get on with it. Would you agree with that?

• 39:18Speaker 03

  Now, I have to say that because I work in the area of climate science on impacts, I interact with groups from basically every generation. I've, we've interacted with the Gray Panthers. They are completely for it, too. So, we've, one day, in the course of 24 hours, I gave four talks.

• 39:42Eugene Mirman?

  And one was to Panthers?

• 39:44Speaker 03

  The Gray Panthers were in the, in the activists.

• 39:48Bill Nye?

  This is the advanced AARP.

• 39:50Eugene Mirman?

  Anyway, you get it.

• 39:51Speaker 03

  You know, it's just...

• 39:52Bill Nye?

  Is that like really old Black Panthers?

• 39:53Speaker 03

  What I'm saying is that I interact with so many groups, all of the groups. I mean, the young people are great. That's what's actually really needed, is it's everybody and all the different groups. And so, it's great to have challenging, you know, I don't mind having challenging questions. Let's look at those challenging questions.

• 40:12Eugene Mirman?

  Okay, here's one.

• 40:13Speaker 03

  Okay. All right, here we go.

• 40:15Speaker 04

  Well, with the hotter temperatures, will mosquitoes evolve to be human size? I think that's what everyone's wondering. What's gonna happen? What are the worst things that are gonna happen?

• 40:28Speaker 03

  There's been a lot of research on how climate change will affect mosquitoes not getting so large, but also how they affect the carrying of the actual... related to health.

• 40:41Speaker 04

  Isn't there something NASA does? They look at the temperature changes and they can predict a malaria outbreak based on, you know, the temperature.

• 40:50Speaker 03

  Well, that's actually very hard to do.

• 40:52Speaker 04

  I know it's hard to do. I find it hard to do.

• 40:54Speaker 03

  Right.

• 40:55Eugene Mirman?

  It's rockets, right?

• 40:56Speaker 03

  Because it's so multi-factor. But also, but in terms of health, just plain old heat stress is also like the very big one.

• 41:04Eugene Mirman?

  So you're saying, so NASA's not... NASA is saying there's climate change. They're just not saying which politicians are helpful or not helpful, or what to do about it. What do we do about it?

• 41:15Speaker 05

  I smell a conspiracy.

• 41:18Eugene Mirman?

  Wait, so you can't, you don't have suggestions of what, or you're not allowed to present suggestions?

• 41:22Speaker 05

  Well, listen, I know that I'm not allowed...

• 41:23Eugene Mirman?

  You're allowed to present suggestions.

• 41:24Speaker 05

  Yeah. Well, I'll speak for you.

• 41:32Speaker 05

  But I just think it's mighty curious. Can I say that word, curious?

• 41:38Speaker 05

  I just think it's mighty curious that they're kinda disrupting things and they're the ones that own all the spaceships.

• 41:48Bill Nye?

  Hardly a coincidence.

• 41:49Speaker 05

  You're like, yeah, don't worry, we'll be fine on Earth. And then the last minute, they're like, guess what? Tickets to the moon, six billion dollars. Then what?

• 42:03Speaker 05

  Think about it.

• 42:05Bill Nye?

  If you go to the moon, by the way...

• 42:07Speaker 05

  Just saying.

• 42:08Bill Nye?

  If you go to the moon and you open the door, you'll notice right, you can't breathe. You'll notice that right away.

• 42:15Speaker 05

  So they want you to believe.

• 42:18Bill Nye?

  Good point. It's a good point. Along this line, Doctor.

• 42:24Bill Nye?

  You're working with cities. We're working in New York City, for example. But I imagine the President, he's using the means at his disposal, the President of the United States we're talking about, to make changes like executive orders as opposed to getting Congress, the US Congress, to agree on things.

• 42:43Speaker 03

  Yes, this is something I can talk about. President Obama and his administration has put out executive orders to the agencies of the US government to prepare both mitigation on the reduction of greenhouse gases and on adaptation.

• 43:06Bill Nye?

  So you're talking about, I mean, I can easily imagine the Environmental Protection Agency would get some directive. I can imagine the Department of Agriculture get some directive. But you're talking about NASA.

• 43:16Speaker 03

  No, all, every agency.

• 43:18Eugene Mirman?

  Tobacco and firearms and wood or whatever it is.

• 43:21Speaker 03

  So, the executive order goes out about, here's what, here, you have to be beginning to track your greenhouse gas emissions in your agencies. You have to begin to develop energy efficiency programs. You have to begin to develop your adaptation strategies. And so, every agency is doing that.

• 43:42Bill Nye?

  There's a couple of old and happy numbers. One of them is 80 by 50, right? 80% reduction in greenhouse gases by 2050. 80% reduction, can you imagine 80% fewer taxi cabs?

• 43:56Eugene Mirman?

  Just 80% reduction in?

• 43:58Bill Nye?

  Greenhouse gases.

• 43:59Speaker 03

  Greenhouse gas emissions.

• 43:59Eugene Mirman?

  Okay. But Uber will be fine, Uber will be fine.

• 44:02Bill Nye?

  Yeah, it's gonna be fine.

• 44:04Speaker 04

  I'll never get a cab.

• 44:08Bill Nye?

  But that's just in New York. Right, Doctor, we're gonna, we're doing this in cities all over the world.

• 44:14Speaker 04

  Why didn't, why didn't NASA, when they first heard about this, make solar-powered cars flying, if possible, and meat that just grows out of the ground with no animals that, with no farts? Why didn't you do this?

• 44:29Eugene Mirman?

  Why won't you plant meat in the ground, NASA?

• 44:35Eugene Mirman?

  Is that correct?

• 44:36Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 44:38Speaker 03

  But let me just say one thing about New York.

• 44:42Speaker 04

  Avoiding the question.

• 44:44Speaker 03

  Let me just say one thing about New York, which is...

• 44:46Speaker 04

  Slippery.

• 44:47Speaker 03

  But also, it goes back to Michael's comment about the different cities, and different cities have different issues. Every city also has to find out what is their biggest source of emissions.

• 44:58Bill Nye?

  Now, when you say "every city", you're not just talking about the United States.

• 45:02Speaker 03

  No, all around the world.

• 45:03Eugene Mirman?

  You mean Paris?

• 45:05Speaker 03

  Yes, and Paris is being very active because they're hosting the Conference of the Parties.

• 45:11Bill Nye?

  2015.

• 45:12Speaker 03

  2015, when the new agreement is supposed to... But anyway, what do we have in New York? We have a lot of old buildings, and they are incredibly open to the environment, very energy inefficient.

• 45:24Bill Nye?

  Single-pane windows, leaky pipes.

• 45:27Speaker 03

  Exactly, all of that.

• 45:28Speaker 04

  The Chrysler Building already looks like solar panels. Why not make it all solar panels?

• 45:33Eugene Mirman?

  Will they do things like that? Will it be like...

• 45:34Speaker 04

  Is the Chrysler Building actually a rocket?

• 45:36Eugene Mirman?

  We're just gonna be fixing stuff, not building.

• 45:38Bill Nye?

  Well, fixing stuff's not bad. And by the way, somebody asked you...

• 45:41Speaker 05

  I actually heard that too. I heard that.

• 45:43Speaker 04

  Yeah, we've heard that. We've heard the rumors.

• 45:45Bill Nye?

  So, if you guys, somebody out here wants to get rich, if you can invent a pale pavement, instead of black asphalt, if you could make somehow a...

• 45:54Speaker 05

  Easy.

• 45:56Speaker 04

  That does sound easy. A lot of these things sound really easy.

• 46:00Eugene Mirman?

  You mean like a beige pavement?

• 46:01Bill Nye?

  Yes.

• 46:02Speaker 04

  What about paint?

• 46:04Bill Nye?

  Paint is good, but when you put it on a street, you get... it's limited.

• 46:08Speaker 03

  So, New York is already painting roofs white with a roof covering.

• 46:13Eugene Mirman?

  And what's the advantage of that?

• 46:16Speaker 03

  Remember back to the albedo of the snow? The reflection of the snow.

• 46:21Eugene Mirman?

  Because it's so it's pretty.

• 46:22Speaker 03

  It's...

• 46:24Eugene Mirman?

  Yeah, no, it reflects.

• 46:26Speaker 03

  Instead of black tar roofs, right? Just absorbing the solar radiation, right? The solar...

• 46:32Eugene Mirman?

  Yeah. It reflects and goes back.

• 46:34Speaker 03

  So, that's a big program. That's...

• 46:37Eugene Mirman?

  What about mirrored streets?

• 46:38Speaker 03

  It's called Cool Roofs.

• 46:40Eugene Mirman?

  Mirrored streets? No?

• 46:43Speaker 04

  No, because the ladies in their dresses.

• 46:48Bill Nye?

  It's reflecting your Catholic school upbringing. But we've got problems to solve. If we, as we reduce...

• 46:58Speaker 04

  Well, we're trying. We're trying.

• 47:01Bill Nye?

  But the dress thing came up.

• 47:02Speaker 05

  I honestly don't think we're gonna solve everything tonight.

• 47:06Bill Nye?

  No, we're gonna, we're gonna take a step.

• 47:08Speaker 05

  Yeah. I think we've made a lot of progress.

• 47:12Bill Nye?

  Yes.

• 47:14Speaker 05

  I like that one thing you said.

• 47:19Bill Nye?

  Uh, thanks. So, we're burning fossil fuels, right? We are now, uh, making more natural gas than we use with fracking, right? Um, we've got the information. Now, we want to move to actions. Is that right?

• 47:36Speaker 03

  Here's the issue with climate change. We can't give up on learning about it because it's evolving. We don't know, the climate system is evolving. We don't know exactly how it's gonna change. So simultaneously, as we are seeing it with the climate summit, there is a move to action. But at the same time, we have to keep the science going so that we can continue in, in this back and forth way.

• 48:00Bill Nye?

  Work the problem from both ends.

• 48:02Speaker 03

  Exactly. It's gotta be interactive as we go forward.

• 48:05Speaker 05

  It has to grow and evolve.

• 48:06Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 48:06Speaker 05

  Like science.

• 48:08Bill Nye?

  Exactly.

• 48:08Speaker 05

  Because it's science.

• 48:11Bill Nye?

  So with that, everybody, I would like to thank our panel.

• 48:16Bill Nye?

  Dr. Cynthia Rosenzweig. Hey. Our Eugene Mirman. Michael Shays. Jermaine Fleming. I've been your host, Bill Nye. We will see you and listen to you next time on StarTalk Radio. Thanks very much. Turn it up loud.