Extended Classic: Cosmic Queries: Human Impact on Earth with Dr. FunkySpoon

Planetary scientist Dr. David Grinspoon answers questions about the human impact on Earth during the Anthropocene Era. Now updated with 13 minutes of Dr. FunkySpoon and Chuck Nice discussing why we must evolve from Homo Sapiens into Terra Sapiens.

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.

• 0:21David Grinspoon?

  Welcome to StarTalk Radio. My name is David Grin spoon. I'm an astrobiologist and a planetary scientist. And I'm here with my co-host Chuck Nice.

• 0:32Chuck Nice?

  Hey Dave, how are you?

• 0:33David Grinspoon?

  I'm fine. How are you doing Chuck?

• 0:34Chuck Nice?

  Great man. So I'm happy to see you.

• 0:37David Grinspoon?

  Yeah.

• 0:37Chuck Nice?

  And I am also curious as to where Mr. Tyson, Dr. Tyson is.

• 0:42David Grinspoon?

  Oh, I'm busted. Now, now people know I'm not Neil Tyson. Uh, I am sitting in for Neil Tyson who is off filming Cosmos somewhere, right?

• 0:51Chuck Nice?

  Yeah, literally he has left the galaxy.

• 0:53David Grinspoon?

  So Neil's off doing the cosmos as he is wont to do and we're left here to carry on without him as best we can. And so we will be today doing cosmic queries.

• 1:04Chuck Nice?

  Yes.

• 1:05David Grinspoon?

  Answering your questions and what's, what's the topic today?

• 1:08Chuck Nice?

  Okay, so today, of course, we call all of our resources and Facebook and Twitter and all of the various outlets where we appear on the internet. And today we have questions about human impact on our very own planet Earth.

• 1:25David Grinspoon?

  Oh yeah, Earth is a planet. And therefore it's part of space and so it belongs in StarTalk, right?

• 1:31Chuck Nice?

  It certainly does, you know, and you know, there's a lot of things in space that have a big effect on Earth, you know? And so what we have done is we've got all these questions here. You have not seen them.

• 1:43David Grinspoon?

  I've not seen the questions.

• 1:44Chuck Nice?

  And I understand that even though you are an astrobiologist, that this is also something that you are a a subject expert, would that be?

• 1:53David Grinspoon?

  Well, it's something I've been studying a lot recently. I mean, as a planetary scientist, I've always been interested in Earth. That's a lot of what we learn when we study planetary science is how to think about planets. So you learn about volcanism, earthquakes, all the things that make Earth tick, the climate and so forth, but we usually apply them to other planets. But what I've been doing recently is saying, well, let's take the techniques of planetary science and think about Earth as a planet, and even think about humanity and the human impact as an event on the planet.

• 2:20Chuck Nice?

  Uh huh.

• 2:20David Grinspoon?

  What are humans doing to the planet and how, if we're thinking as planetary scientists, how would that look, the way humans are changing the planet? So that is what I've been working on recently, and I think it's definitely a topic for space science. How does that space perspective influence the way we look back at our own planet, and what can we learn about our planet from that space perspective?

• 2:43Chuck Nice?

  I'm going to say that what we can learn is that we, as human beings, suck when it comes... I got a feeling Earth looks at us like we suck. I'm just sorry. That's pretty much how I feel.

• 2:55David Grinspoon?

  Well, we got a lot to answer for. I mean, we've really been, we've become a major geological force on this planet, and some of what we're doing is a little bit more, like you compare us to things in the past, and you look at the asteroid that came and wiped out 90% of the species. And right now, we're that asteroid, you know? We're, you know, we're causing a mass extinction. We're changing the climate in radical ways, and we're not, it's not like we planned to do this. Nobody said, hey, this is a good idea. We're just sort of stumbling into this role.

• 3:24Chuck Nice?

  Right.

• 3:25David Grinspoon?

  So now, a lot of people are saying, well, let's look at this role and figure out, you know, what do we want to be on this planet? So I think we're in this moment of realization of what our role is.

• 3:34Chuck Nice?

  Let's hope. I think you're a bit more optimistic than perhaps I am. I'm a bit more of a cynic, but let's see what our, let's see what our listeners have to say in the form of the questions that they have for you. Our first one is from Kalen Bugbee. What a great name, from Huntsville, Alabama. "We're talking about human impacts on Earth in one of my classes. We have been debating which human activity will lead to the collapse of society as we know it. We have discussed energy consumption, overpopulation, destruction, biodiversity." Technology vis a vis robots destruction by nuclear terrorism pandemics and finally water pollution if you could pick one destructive human force which one would it be what a happy question

• 4:18David Grinspoon?

  Wow we got quite quite the menu there

• 4:20Chuck Nice?

  Yes

• 4:20David Grinspoon?

  Well um thank you thank you for that question I mean it's it's a good question and I would have to say your question does presuppose a certain pessimism like which one is going to destroy us it doesn't leave us the option that maybe none of them will nonetheless uh the first thing I would say is those are all conflated because it's it's it's what we call a wicked problem where where you can't really separate things out population is ultimately related to all those things

• 4:46Chuck Nice?

  Correct

• 4:46David Grinspoon?

  If we weren't you know pushing uh nine billion people uh come mid-century then almost none of those other problems of the human footprint would be

• 4:55Chuck Nice?

  Would be really significant

• 4:57David Grinspoon?

  As big a deal

• 4:58Chuck Nice?

  Right

• 4:58David Grinspoon?

  But I think

• 4:59Chuck Nice?

  Not to mention travel because she says like pandemics which

• 5:01David Grinspoon?

  Absolutely

• 5:02Chuck Nice?

  Honestly that that wouldn't happen if we weren't traveling all around to and fro the way we do

• 5:07David Grinspoon?

  Yeah I mean those are all related problems I I would say you know out of all of those the most immediate one is you gotta go to climate change because that is one that we know is happening now it's accelerating and we don't have a clear path to solve it we have some good ideas and a lot of good intentions and I don't see that as hopeless but out of all those other ones like you know robots taking over maybe you know that could be scary in the future right now it's not the thing that keeps me up at night

• 5:34Chuck Nice?

  So we don't have to fear cyberdyne systems quite yet huh

• 5:37David Grinspoon?

  Not quite yet I mean I think it's it's it's smart to be aware that our world will change rapidly as computers get smarter and some of those changes might not be completely to our liking

• 5:49Chuck Nice?

  Right

• 5:49David Grinspoon?

  You know it's good to have that on our radar but but let's face it climate change is happening right now we don't all agree completely about the extent of it but uh most scientifically literate people now recognize that it is happening and that there is a large degree of implication of humans and that if we're not going to be the stupid species that soils its nest

• 6:10Chuck Nice?

  Right

• 6:10David Grinspoon?

  And dies um or at least destroys its civilization

• 6:14Chuck Nice?

  Right

• 6:15David Grinspoon?

  Then we ought to really be applying our intellect to dealing with that now

• 6:19Chuck Nice?

  Well, there you go, Kalen. There's your answer. One, don't poop where you eat. And two, um, we're looking forward to terroristic, nuclear terroristic robots that cause climate change. That is the biggest fear that we should have. No, that's great. Okay, climate change. That makes a lot of sense. All right, let's move on. Um, so the next one from Tommy Maines, uh, from St. Charles, Missouri. I'm reading Kevin Kelly's What Technology Wants. One hypothesis in the book is that technology was inevitable from the point of the Big Bang. Do you find this to be true? If so, can we now harness technology to heal our environment? So, uh, did the Big Bang create technology? And how do we heal our environment?

• 7:00David Grinspoon?

  Well, the laws of nature were set in motion with the Big Bang, and those laws seem to be conducive to the evolution of life on some planets. And I think on some of those planets, that complex life will lead to technology. So in a certain sense, technology was ordained by the Big Bang, not exactly on this planet.

• 7:18Chuck Nice?

  So kind of round about, in a roundabout way?

• 7:20David Grinspoon?

  Yeah, the capacity for technology. And yes, I think technology can be used to heal the problems we have. Not technology alone. A lot of it's going to come through self-knowledge and us being able to manage ourselves more wisely. But that knowledge of self has to go hand in hand with knowledge of nature and knowledge of how to manipulate nature, which is technology. So, technology, yes, it was ordained in the Big Bang, and yes, it will be part of the solution.

• 7:44Chuck Nice?

  Yes, our savior, technology.

• 7:46David Grinspoon?

  Thank you, Big Bang. All right, well, we gotta take a break now. More StarTalk when we come back.

• 8:12David Grinspoon?

  Welcome back to StarTalk Radio. I'm David Grin spoon. I'm an astrobiologist, sitting in here for Neil Tyson with my co-host Chuck Nice.

• 8:21Chuck Nice?

  Hey.

• 8:21David Grinspoon?

  And, uh, we're talking about the human impact on Earth and its space dimensions here. So, um, let's see. What do we got for another question?

• 8:30Chuck Nice?

  We got some more questions coming your way. Let me just reiterate that you have not seen these questions. You're just answering them as if the person were here, as if we were all the annoying guy at the bar, you know?

• 8:44David Grinspoon?

  I've met that guy before.

• 8:45Chuck Nice?

  Ah, yeah. Oh, my God, you're an astrobiologist. Okay, how do I power the planet with poop?

• 8:51David Grinspoon?

  All right, you gotta buy me a drink first and then maybe we'll get to that.

• 8:55Chuck Nice?

  All right, here we go. Uh, this is from Saba Nagi from Budapest. Do you agree with George Carlin that we exist because Earth wanted plastic but didn't know how to make it? It's a pretty funny joke, actually. Uh, just imagine looking at the Earth with a microscope and seeing all this mold, us humans, growing, living, spreading as a byproduct, making plastic. Clearly, she despises humanity.

• 9:20David Grinspoon?

  Yeah, yeah, yeah.

• 9:21Chuck Nice?

  But so now the real question here.

• 9:23David Grinspoon?

  Good question, yeah.

• 9:23Chuck Nice?

  Yeah, the real question here is, because she's, she's making a joke, but here's the real question here. Um, would we be considered a kind of a virus, a bit of a scourge on the, on the face of the Earth? And the second, I'm gonna make an addendum to her question coming from me personally. Do we belong here? Because it kinda seems like we don't. It seems like the only people that aren't in sync with what's going on on Earth is us. So are we a virus? And do we belong here?

• 9:57David Grinspoon?

  Those are great questions. Thank you, Saba. And, um, you know.

• 10:01Chuck Nice?

  And Chuck.

• 10:01David Grinspoon?

  I'm got, yeah, and thank you, Chuck. I, I wanna stand up for the human race here a little bit, though. I mean, it's like, sure, it's obvious in some ways we're like a virus. So you look at the pattern of our growth and you look at a virus and, you know, in an organism and it, it just reproduces to the point where it makes its host ill or kills its host. But of course, a successful virus doesn't kill off its host, right? And a successful species may get to a certain point of over-reproduction and then have some self-preservation instinct and decide not to kill off its host. And, you know, if you look at the long history of life on Earth, we're not the first species to come along and sort of screw. Screw up the planet. There have been catastrophes that have come along before that

• 10:43David Grinspoon?

  have been caused by species of life. The cyanobacteria 2.2 billion years ago evolved photosynthesis and they thought, oh, here's a great energy source, sunlight, this is wonderful. And they started polluting the air with oxygen, which caused a catastrophe and wiped out most of the species that were alive then. So interestingly, we're not the first species to come along in the quest for an energy source and screw up the planet. That's not to get us completely off the hook because we do have supposedly intelligence and foresight and consciousness, but it's to say, okay, this, you know, life interacts with the planet in complex ways and it's our turn right now and we're interacting with the planet in this way that so far has been this sort of exponential growth and this

• 11:26David Grinspoon?

  exponential perturbation. And yeah, if we don't change some of our patterns, then we will be like that virus and just destroy our own civilization and that would be too bad. But we're having this conversation. We're becoming aware of our role on the earth. And so I actually think that that makes us different from the cyanobacteria and maybe we'll get to the point where we have enough of that conversation and we can start to actually sort of self-consciously alter our role. That's my wish and actually that's my expectation. I think we're, we got a lot of learning to do, but we are a species that alters our world and learns and changes our behavior. And I'm actually optimistic about the human experience on earth. And I can see why people think we are like a

• 12:08David Grinspoon?

  virus. We have been like a virus, but most viruses don't talk about the fact that they're like viruses.

• 12:14Chuck Nice?

  True.

• 12:15David Grinspoon?

  And we do, we're talking and so maybe-

• 12:16Chuck Nice?

  We're a self-aware virus.

• 12:17David Grinspoon?

  Yeah, exactly. So it makes us a little different.

• 12:19Chuck Nice?

  A little different. So there you go. There's your answer. Human beings, a little bit better than the cyanobacteria. So-

• 12:26David Grinspoon?

  Slightly better.

• 12:28Chuck Nice?

  Slightly, just slightly better.

• 12:29David Grinspoon?

  We're a little bit better than slime.

• 12:31Chuck Nice?

  That's it. Just a little bit better than slime.

• 12:32David Grinspoon?

  Smart slime.

• 12:33Chuck Nice?

  That's our new motto.

• 12:34David Grinspoon?

  We're slime, but we're smart.

• 12:36Chuck Nice?

  There you go. All right. Let's, let's move on to Rob Wilkinson. And Rob is from Jacksonville, Florida. With pollution problems such as the Pacific Garbage Patch, how viable is using the magma of subduction zones to break down garbage, especially plastic, to reduce the number of landfills? This guy's thought about this question just a little bit. What's, what's, what, his theory? Does it-

• 13:00David Grinspoon?

  Wow.

• 13:01Chuck Nice?

  Does it hold water?

• 13:04David Grinspoon?

  That's, that's pretty, that's pretty wild. I mean, first of all, yeah, Pacific Garbage Patch, there's a big zone of garbage of, of plastic that has been found in the Pacific. It's kind of scary because it's this huge zone, you know, hundreds of miles across, that's, that's all of our stuff that's sort of collecting there in the Pacific and slowly breaking down. So it's, it's, you know, it's big. The human impact on Earth is not subtle any longer. Now, specifically, this notion of using the magma in subduction zones. For those of you that don't know, a subduction zone is a place where, you know, Earth has plate tectonics, the plates, the crust, the solid part of our Earth is split into these 13 or so plates that are sliding around and crashing into each other, and some of

• 13:47David Grinspoon?

  them are crumping up, crumpling up into mountains, and other ones are getting pushed underneath. And the places where they get pushed underneath, deep into the Earth, are subduction zones. And that is a place where material gets taken down into the Earth and broken down into its constituent, you know, elements, or at least small molecules. And so if you could take all the plastic and put it in the right place, yeah, that would get rid of it, for sure, and break it down. I don't know how feasible it is. I'd like to, like the Beatles said, I'd like to see your plan, you know, but, but I, I wouldn't rule it out. I mean, that's the kind of creative thinking that we need, you know. How do you really get rid of plastic? Sure, put it on a, in a subduction zone and send it to the mantle of the Earth.

• 14:32David Grinspoon?

  I'm all for it. If I could see the details, I wouldn't, wouldn't rule it out. I would, I would, you know, before I invested in this, I'd need to see, see a little more, a little more of the, the details.

• 14:42Chuck Nice?

  But in theory, he's got a pretty decent plan there?

• 14:44David Grinspoon?

  Yeah, I mean, there's nothing, there's nothing that sounds wacky about it to me. It sounds, you know, like, and maybe, maybe, maybe there is a well-developed plan for this that I just don't know.

• 14:54Chuck Nice?

  Mm-hmm. Give our trash to the Morlocks. It's their problem now.

• 14:57David Grinspoon?

  Really?

• 14:58Chuck Nice?

  There you go.

• 14:58David Grinspoon?

  They might even like it.

• 15:01Chuck Nice?

  Okay, here, let's move on to Youssef Vet Mark Esparza. What a great name, huh? Regarding these recent earthquakes in Texas, are they really attributed to natural gas fracking? Should we stop the fracking and find another way to get natural gas? Let me just say, in addition to that, it is no longer just Texas. Pennsylvania, Michigan, and several other places in the country where we have seen seismic activity where we otherwise have not, and there is also fracking. Of course, the people who frack say there's no connection.

• 15:36David Grinspoon?

  No, no, there is a connection. It's pretty well-known and it's understood physically how it works. When you pump large amounts of water underground, you loosen up some of those faults and they move and you get earthquakes. Fortunately, the earthquakes you get from this tend to be shallow and rather small. And there's even the argument that that's good because they're relieving tension on the faults, which otherwise would build up and eventually result in a larger earthquake. So there have been fracking-related earthquakes. There haven't been like massive catastrophic ones. It does speak to the fact that there are unintended consequences when we start doing these major engineering projects

• 16:18David Grinspoon?

  and like altering the earth in intense ways in our greater and greater effort to extract those last bits of fossil fuels from the earth. And, you know, there are different opinions about fracking. It's giving us fuel at a time that we need to reduce our foreign dependence on oil.

• 16:38Chuck Nice?

  Making America great.

• 16:40David Grinspoon?

  Well, natural gas is better than coal, but in the long run, it's only at best an interim solution because we gotta move our energy supply away from fossil fuels. I mean, we have to, whether we're worried about climate change or not, because they're gonna run out. And if we go to extreme lengths to get those last little few percent remains of fossil fuels, we could do a lot of damage. You know, the tar sands and tabletop, mountaintop mining. There's a lot of like- Like really horrible things you could do to get that last bit of fossil fuels. Maybe fracking goes into that, maybe not. I think there's ways to do it safer and there's a lot of danger to the water supply and so forth. So I have mixed feelings about fracking,

• 17:22David Grinspoon?

  but the earthquakes are real and they do speak to the fact that we're not smart enough to anticipate all the unintended consequences. And ultimately, we know we gotta go beyond fossil fuels. So we really ought to be putting our creativity and our ingenuity into those new energy supplies that we're going to need, no matter how much fracking we do.

• 17:40Chuck Nice?

  Hmm. So, uh, the answer is, without a doubt, these earthquakes are real.

• 17:46David Grinspoon?

  Oh, yeah.

• 17:47Chuck Nice?

  And, uh, we, we pretty much need to stop fracking.

• 17:51David Grinspoon?

  Yeah, in the long run.

• 17:52Chuck Nice?

  In the long run.

• 17:52David Grinspoon?

  Absolutely.

• 17:53Chuck Nice?

  Okay. And, um, you do realize that's never going to happen. No, I'm joking.

• 17:59Chuck Nice?

  I'm joking. Lot of money we're talking about.

• 18:02David Grinspoon?

  Well, eventually, it's gotta happen because we're gonna run out of all that stuff.

• 18:05Chuck Nice?

  Uh, you know what? Now, that's the day I'm looking forward to. You know, the day we get off of fossil fuels is the day where there are no more fossil fuels. That's kinda sad.

• 18:15David Grinspoon?

  That's one way to look at it. But one way or another, you know, a thousand years from now, probably a hundred years from now, we're not gonna be using fossil fuels.

• 18:22Chuck Nice?

  There you go.

• 18:22David Grinspoon?

  All right. Well, let's take a break and we'll come back in a little bit and we'll have some more StarTalk.

• 18:45David Grinspoon?

  Welcome back to StarTalk Radio. I'm David Grin spoon. I'm guest hosting, sitting in for Neil Tyson. And I'm here with, uh, with Chuck Nice.

• 18:54Chuck Nice?

  That's right.

• 18:55David Grinspoon?

  Co-host. And, um, let's, uh, let's do a little self-promotion here. Chuck, what's, what's your Twitter handle for the folks?

• 19:02Chuck Nice?

  My, thank you, David. That was so kind of you. Uh, you can find me @ChuckNiceComic on Twitter. So if you, uh, like to follow me, I'm more than happy to have you.

• 19:12David Grinspoon?

  That's so interesting. You know, I've got a Twitter handle, too.

• 19:14Chuck Nice?

  And what would that be?

• 19:15David Grinspoon?

  That would be Dr. Funky Spoon, @DrFunkySpoon.

• 19:18Chuck Nice?

  That is awesome. Dr. Funky Spoon. I love it.

• 19:22David Grinspoon?

  Yeah, yeah, thanks. And, um, and, and my website is funky science.net.

• 19:27Chuck Nice?

  Funky science.net.

• 19:28David Grinspoon?

  And the StarTalk website is starTalkradio.net.

• 19:31Chuck Nice?

  That's correct.

• 19:32David Grinspoon?

  So you can find all kinds more cool stuff at that address. Anyways, let's get back to, um, doom and destruction. It seems like we've been on this, on this riff of, you know, the whole, everything about the human impact on Earth isn't like negative and destruction and, and terror and, and doomsday, but it seems like that's what people associate with a topic.

• 19:51Chuck Nice?

  That's true.

• 19:52David Grinspoon?

  Um, yeah, it's understandable why.

• 19:54Chuck Nice?

  It is, only because, uh, you know, you really don't see lemurs screwing up the environment. So that's, you know, we gotta, we gotta, we gotta own that.

• 20:03David Grinspoon?

  Given enough time, the lemurs would evolve to the point where, you know, they would be causing horrible industrial damage too, I'm sure.

• 20:11Chuck Nice?

  Dag gone those lemurs. Eight million years from now, you just watch what they do to the planet.

• 20:17David Grinspoon?

  Exactly.

• 20:18Chuck Nice?

  You love your lemurs so much. All right, here we go. Let's go to, um, let's go to Libby Powell Crowe, who said, uh, "The solution to pollution is dilution." Is it? That's basically what she wants to know. Is the solution to pollution dilution? I just want to say that all over. "The solution to pollution is dilution." I think he's got it.

• 20:44David Grinspoon?

  That's good. That's good. Yeah. Well, it, it, it's a great question and it's catchy too. Uh, you know, and superficially, yes. I mean, you know, everybody's, um, let's face it, taken a leak in the ocean at some point in their life and you don't think like too badly about that because the ocean is huge, right? And it's like, what's the problem? But, but hopefully you don't do it in a hot tub, right? Cause that's like little. And but ultimately, of course, the world is more like that hot tub. And, um, you know, on any given scale, I mean, the hot question these days is Fukushima radiation. And that's like a whole, you know, hot button question. But the fact is you can put a lot of radiation

• 21:27David Grinspoon?

  in the ocean at one point. And by the time you're talking about the whole ocean, if you look at the numbers and you get to the other side of that ocean, then you're down in the noise. You're down in, in, you know, the natural variation level where you really don't have to worry about it. So in a certain-

• 21:40Chuck Nice?

  It's not harmful.

• 21:41David Grinspoon?

  Exactly. So yeah, the solution to pollution is dilution, but you can't use that as a cop out and figure because the ocean isn't infinite.

• 21:49Chuck Nice?

  Right.

• 21:49David Grinspoon?

  And one thing- We've learned, I think historically, people thought the world was infinite and, you know, the West, you know, we could just keep expanding forever. But hey, you get to the end at some point and you come back and you encounter yourself. And so ultimately, no, the solution to pollution is

• 22:05Chuck Nice?

  is not dilution.

• 22:06David Grinspoon?

  Dilution.

• 22:07Chuck Nice?

  It's it's a short term fix for an awful horrible problem.

• 22:12David Grinspoon?

  Yeah.

• 22:12Chuck Nice?

  That you should probably look to something else other than the dilution.

• 22:16David Grinspoon?

  Yes.

• 22:16Chuck Nice?

  Right.

• 22:17David Grinspoon?

  Yeah, but it is, but it is catchy.

• 22:18Chuck Nice?

  But it is catchy. I do like it.

• 22:20David Grinspoon?

  Yeah.

• 22:20Chuck Nice?

  And you know what I've learned from this question? Why no one wants to get in my hot tub?

• 22:25David Grinspoon?

  That's right.

• 22:26Chuck Nice?

  Pretty much what I figured out.

• 22:27David Grinspoon?

  That's right. Hey, I'm not saying I do that. I was just using an example.

• 22:30Chuck Nice?

  No, I'm saying I do. And that's the problem. Okay, let's move on. Uh, this is from Drew Willis from Davidson, North Carolina. What impact did the Industrial Revolution in America slash Europe have on the current climate now? There are pictures of smoke stacks and children in soot, et cetera. Are we now developing industrial aspects of Asia going through the same thing now?

• 22:53David Grinspoon?

  Yeah, it's a great question. You know, when did this problem really start?

• 22:56Chuck Nice?

  Right.

• 22:57David Grinspoon?

  It was in the eighties that people first started really talking about global warming as this might be, you know, something we really need to pay attention to. Some people warned about it a hundred years ago, but, you know, it wasn't considered a mainstream worry. But now people are looking at what we call the Anthropocene era, which is this study of the human impact on Earth, looking at as a geological period, you know, the the time at which humans are are changing the Earth. And and it's an interesting question. When did that start? Some people say it was the Industrial Revolution. That's when, you know, we discovered the steam engine. We started using a lot of fossil fuels. That's when we started pumping CO2 into the air.

• 23:32Chuck Nice?

  Right.

• 23:32David Grinspoon?

  Some people say it started even before then, by the way, with agriculture.

• 23:36Chuck Nice?

  Yeah, I was gonna say it kind of starts with agriculture, with a lot of cow farts. Let's be honest, you got a lot of cow farts.

• 23:41David Grinspoon?

  Cow farts and clearing the land.

• 23:42Chuck Nice?

  Clearing the land.

• 23:43David Grinspoon?

  Deforestation. Yep, changing the the the carbon cycle. Humans really started changing the carbon cycle and changing the climate thousands of years ago.

• 23:51Chuck Nice?

  Right.

• 23:51David Grinspoon?

  So it accelerated in the Industrial Revolution of the, you know, 1850, and it's really accelerated in the last 30 years with what we call the Great Acceleration. Where everything's going exponentially off the charts.

• 24:02Chuck Nice?

  So also is is it also too because now we're all doing it? You know, you know, before it was just Europe and America.

• 24:09David Grinspoon?

  That's right.

• 24:09Chuck Nice?

  It's Europe, America, China, Russia, uh, the all of brick. Uh, you know, it's it's like everybody's.

• 24:16David Grinspoon?

  Yeah, the developing nations now, one of the ways in which they're developing is they're mimicking our, you know, success in really messing up the atmosphere. And, you know, who are we to say they shouldn't do it because because we did it, but.

• 24:28Chuck Nice?

  And all.

• 24:28David Grinspoon?

  We're all in this together.

• 24:29Chuck Nice?

  So they're going to say back is I learned it from watching you.

• 24:32David Grinspoon?

  Exactly. But hopefully, you know, it's in our interest to help them do their technology better. It's in everyone's interest. So, yeah, you know, in a certain sense, they've got the right to pollute because we've polluted. But in another sense, we've all got to solve this problem because we all, there's only one atmosphere and we're all breathing it.

• 24:46Chuck Nice?

  Cool. Now, very quickly, what was that era you you said again?

• 24:49David Grinspoon?

  The Anthropocene era, anthropo, human.

• 24:51Chuck Nice?

  Right, human, the Anthropocene era. Just remember that, uh, Drew, because there's the answer to your question. It's all of us at all times.

• 24:58David Grinspoon?

  Yeah, all right. Well, on that note, we'll be back in a few minutes with more StarTalk.

• 25:20David Grinspoon?

  Welcome back to StarTalk Radio. I'm astrobiologist David Grin spoon, sitting in for Neil Tyson. And I'm here with Chuck Nice.

• 25:28Chuck Nice?

  Yes, yes.

• 25:28David Grinspoon?

  And we're talking about, we're doing cosmic queries, talking about human impact on Earth. And Chuck has all these great questions sent in by listeners and, uh, let's, let's, let's have another one.

• 25:38Chuck Nice?

  Let's jump right back into it. Okay. And this one from Marco Horvath. Now Marco says, do you think the climate change debate would be different if global warming was branded as climate change from the beginning?

• 25:52David Grinspoon?

  Well, that's a tough question. I, you know, it's like so much not a science question. It's a, it's a marketing and psychology question. I mean, it's very interesting. And I think those of us in the science community, we kind of get down on ourselves and say, "Oh, we've handled this wrong. There's all this anti-science and people are confused and against, "if only we had used this word and not that word." And I don't know. I think the resistance comes from the fact that-

• 26:17Chuck Nice?

  That there's a great deal of money being thrown at the problem by energy companies who want to confuse the issue maker.

• 26:25David Grinspoon?

  Yeah, money exploiting human psychology. And the human psychology is to not be able to believe that we are actually affecting the earth in this way. I mean, after all, it's the earth and we're just us, right? And like, how could we possibly be messing up the entire world? And so there's a, there's a natural human disbelief in this. And then that's been exploited, I think, by those who do have an interest financially in saying, "Oh, you know, global warming, ha ha." And then, of course, we respond to these short time scale things. So there'll be like a cold spell or a snowstorm and people will say, "Oh, there, where's your global warming?" You know? And of course, it doesn't work that way. In fact, you can have years of cold temperatures

• 27:05David Grinspoon?

  and global warming is still happening because there's natural fluctuations superimposed on the long-term trend. But, you know, you, it is, it is a marketing problem getting people to accept this. And so, so you can wonder, "Okay, what if we hadn't used global warming? You know, did we make some horrible mistake?" I tend to think, no. It's like, it's more a question of getting people to kind of grow up and face reality and, and that it's not like-

• 27:27Chuck Nice?

  Good luck with that!

• 27:28David Grinspoon?

  Well, good luck with that. But I don't think we made some horrible language choice by calling it global warming. Yeah, maybe climate change is better in a certain sense in that it's more complex than just, "Oh, things are getting hotter." It's all these changes. Rainfall, storms, you know, moisture, temperature, all these connected changes.

• 27:46Chuck Nice?

  I heard somebody say once, "We should call it global weirding." Because really, it's more about extreme weather patterns, not just climate or, as, as you say, temperature or not weather, but extremeness of the weather.

• 28:00David Grinspoon?

  Absolutely, absolutely. Global weirding because because there are certain locations, of course, that will get warmer and certain locations that won't as much for a long time. And certain places will be winners and losers and there'll be changes in precipitation patterns. It's much more complex than just a change in temperature. So global weirding is not bad. Of course, it doesn't roll off the tongue.

• 28:20Chuck Nice?

  Yeah, that kind of makes Earth seem creepy, right?

• 28:23David Grinspoon?

  Yeah.

• 28:23Chuck Nice?

  Just like, you know, hey, what are you wearing? You know, that the global weirding, that's maybe not the best.

• 28:28David Grinspoon?

  They're getting weird.

• 28:29Chuck Nice?

  Well, you know what? Here's a follow up to Marco's question from Daniel Heed or Head. I'm gonna go with Heed. Are climate changes really climate changes? Okay, are we look like we call it climate change? Is it really climate change?

• 28:46David Grinspoon?

  Well, what else would it be? I mean, okay.

• 28:48Chuck Nice?

  Now, I think he means like on a permanent basis.

• 28:51David Grinspoon?

  Ah, like permanent, is it permanent change?

• 28:53Chuck Nice?

  It's like a permanent change.

• 28:55David Grinspoon?

  Well.

• 28:55Chuck Nice?

  Not just crazy weather patterns.

• 28:57David Grinspoon?

  It's not, it's not permanent what we're doing because the Earth has these long term cycles where, in fact, the carbon is regulated without our interference at all. Long before we got here, carbon dioxide in the atmosphere went up, it went down. And, you know, due to all kinds of complexities in the Earth's system and changes in the orbit and solar radiation and positions of the continents, there's all these things that over the long term change climate. And Earth has a natural mechanism that regulates CO2 and regulates climate. In the long run, because of volcanoes and because of chemical reactions that suck CO2 out of the atmosphere and make limestone and all that. The, the Earth returns to normal and the climate will return to normal.

• 29:41David Grinspoon?

  But that takes a few million years to happen. So that will not help us.

• 29:46Chuck Nice?

  Oh, there you go.

• 29:47David Grinspoon?

  The Earth will return to normal without us. So nothing's permanent. But on the timescale that we worry about, on our timescale of our civilization, it's what we're doing will last for thousands, tens of thousands of years. So for your purposes and my purposes, it's pretty permanent.

• 29:59Chuck Nice?

  Gotcha. So here you go. Catastrophic for us, nothing to the Earth.

• 30:04David Grinspoon?

  Yeah, exactly, exactly. We're not threatening the Earth. People say, save the Earth. No, no, no. It's not save the Earth. The Earth will be fine. It's save the humans.

• 30:11Chuck Nice?

  Right. So basically, when you talk about these debates, it's about our own carcasses.

• 30:16David Grinspoon?

  Well, and all the other species that were taken with us.

• 30:19Chuck Nice?

  You know, I really don't care about them, David.

• 30:21David Grinspoon?

  Well, you should, because we need them.

• 30:23Chuck Nice?

  I gotta tell you, I'm a little partial to human beings, because I happen to be one.

• 30:27David Grinspoon?

  But try to be a human being on Earth without those other species, and we're hosed. All right, we're gonna take a break now. We'll be back in a few minutes with more StarTalk Radio. In the meantime, you can visit us on the website at StarTalkRadio.net. Follow us on Twitter, at StarTalkRadio, and check it out on Facebook, on the StarTalk Radio Facebook page. We'll see you in a few.

• 31:06David Grinspoon?

  Hi, welcome back to StarTalk Radio. I'm David Grin spoon. I'm an astrobiologist, filling in for Neil Tyson. I'm here with my co-host Chuck Nice.

• 31:15Chuck Nice?

  Yes.

• 31:16David Grinspoon?

  And we are now ready, hopefully, for the lightning round. This is where we quickly get to a lot of the questions we didn't get to before, and give succinct, but highly incisive and accurate answers.

• 31:29Chuck Nice?

  That is correct, sir. And whenever you are done with your answer to me, that it's time to move on.

• 31:34David Grinspoon?

  I'm gonna do this.

• 31:35Chuck Nice?

  And there we have it.

• 31:36David Grinspoon?

  Oh, that felt good.

• 31:37Chuck Nice?

  Doesn't that feel good?

• 31:37David Grinspoon?

  Yeah.

• 31:38Chuck Nice?

  All right, let's jump right into it. All right, this is from Susan Manobi. "To combat global warming, besides reducing our production of greenhouse gases, is there any way to reduce the amount of solar radiation that reaches the Earth? I'm thinking ring world shadow squares around the Earth, rather than around the Sun."

• 32:00David Grinspoon?

  Oh, yeah, there are schemes that people have come up with, where we could block some solar radiation by putting things in orbit. Big, shadowy squares, massive engineering schemes. In the long run, humanity might want to do something like that. I'm wary of that in the short run, because that's sort of an abdication of our responsibility to just, like, get control out of our energy and our emissions. But I think we should put that in the parking lot, as they say, and consider it for some future time, when we know what we're doing a little bit more with space technology, and we may ultimately need to, because the Sun's getting warmer. And in the future, we're gonna have to take more drastic measures. So, yeah, maybe ultimately we'll do that. Let's go for another one. Ooh, yeah.

• 32:42Chuck Nice?

  There you go. All right, this is from Mark Wright on Twitter. Is nuclear power maybe our best real choice morally? Chernobyl placed territory beyond human use, but plants and animals thrive. Hmm.

• 32:56David Grinspoon?

  The morality of nuclear power is a lightning question. Sure, that's easy. Uh, you know, it's a tricky question. The more concerned you are about global warming as an emergency, the more you have to consider other power sources and nuclear power does not create the kind of carbon footprint that fossil fuels does. Nuclear power is scary because it makes all this waste that lasts for a long time and we don't completely know how to deal with. But I think the responsible thing for us to do is to be seriously considering nuclear as part of the constellation of solutions that we need to come up with. But it's not going to be the whole answer and it's probably not something that should be completely off limits.

• 33:35Chuck Nice?

  There you go. Also from Twitter, Rachel Fender says, what would the consequences of a sudden decrease in greenhouse gases be versus a gradual decrease?

• 33:48David Grinspoon?

  Ah, good question. Because everybody's worried about climate change, more and more CO2 getting hotter. What would happen if the CO2 went away?

• 33:54Chuck Nice?

  Right away, today.

• 33:55David Grinspoon?

  By the way, when you talk about some of these solutions, like let's geoengineer something, let's design some organism that sucks CO2 out of the atmosphere. What if we're too successful and we can't turn it off and all the CO2 goes away? We would die. We depend on the fact that we have a couple hundred parts per million CO2 in the atmosphere to keep Earth warm enough. So a sudden decrease in CO2 would be just as bad or worse maybe even than a sudden increase in CO2. You need a certain range of CO2 and you don't want to go too far out of that range in either direction.

• 34:28Chuck Nice?

  Awesome answer. I love it. Uh, yeah, but would it help if we just all hyperventilate it? Ha, ha, ha, you know?

• 34:35David Grinspoon?

  It may help you.

• 34:38Chuck Nice?

  All right, here we go. This is from Ben Ratner, also from Twitter. What have we learned about life in space that we have been able to use to improve life on Earth?

• 34:51David Grinspoon?

  Well, I mean, in an overall sense, the perspective of thinking about life in space and how life works on planets in general has given us a lot of new perspective on life on our planet. But more specifically, we've learned about things about how radiation affects organisms. We've learned how to think about closed environments. If you're going to design a space station, you need to recycle everything. Well, ultimately, we're realizing now that our own Earth is a closed environment. We talk about Biosphere 2. Well, we're here in Biosphere 1. Biosphere 1 is a closed environment. And so just the thinking about how you would design space systems, I think, really has

• 35:33David Grinspoon?

  made us smarter about realizing that in a certain sense, we are in a space system. We are life in space. Our planet is Spaceship Earth. And so some of those design problems turn back around and help us conceive of how we're going to survive for the long term on this spaceship that we happen to have evolved on.

• 35:49Chuck Nice?

  Awesome. Great answer. All right. This one is from Beth Grace. The risk we are taking with our planet reflects certain mindsets we have about natural resources and our relationships with other life. What lessons do you think we need to learn before we colonize other planets in order to avoid transporting the same patterns of mismanagement to other worlds?

• 36:15David Grinspoon?

  It's a really good question, because people tend to have this utopian view of, oh, we'll just go colonize other planets and everything will be fine. But, of course, we're going to bring our same mindsets and patterns there. And ultimately, do we want to just turn Mars into a giant strip mall and, you know, strip mind disaster zone? And, uh, no, of course, you know, I'm all in favor of humans going into space and exploring and living elsewhere. But, but we can't escape ourselves. And ultimately, the lessons of how to live sustainably on a planet are ones that we're going to have to learn and carry with us wherever we go in the universe.

• 36:49Chuck Nice?

  So there it is. Get it right at home first, then take it on the road.

• 37:14David Grinspoon?

  Welcome back to StarTalk. You've been listening to one of our classic episodes, originally recorded for season five of the podcast. But now I'm back in the studio to give you a little bit more, and I'm with my co-host Chuck Nice. Chuck, thanks for joining us.

• 37:30Chuck Nice?

  Hey, hey, Dr. Funky Spoon. How you doing, buddy?

• 37:34David Grinspoon?

  I'm doing great. How are you?

• 37:35Chuck Nice?

  I'm doing well, man. Doing well. What's happening? Anything good going on? Anything new and exciting in the life of Dr. Funky Spoon?

• 37:42David Grinspoon?

  Oh, you know, just doing what I do, going around the solar system and solving problems for people. I've just emerged from the process of finishing up my book, Earth in Human Hands, which is gonna drop later this year.

• 37:58Chuck Nice?

  Nice. Very nice.

• 38:01David Grinspoon?

  That and trying to just, you know, stay alive.

• 38:03Chuck Nice?

  And I know your book is about, you know, it's almost self-explanatory in the title, but Earth in Human Hands, it's how we affect this planet and our behavior, what it does to the planet long-term. And what is your prognosis right now?

• 38:21David Grinspoon?

  I'm taking a planetary science view of the problem, which means looking over billions of years and trying to see our current moment in that deep timescape. And I actually, I think that gives me a little bit more of sympathy for us than maybe some other people express in the sense that, you know, there's really something very unusual happening on Earth now.

• 38:47Chuck Nice?

  Go ahead.

• 38:47David Grinspoon?

  There's never before been a geological force aware of its own existence. So we're actually trying to do something really hard. Here we are, we're finding ourselves altering this planet and realizing we have to, we have to sort of manage this planet. But we don't know how to manage a planet. You know, we don't have a manual. And we're sort of almost surprised to find ourselves here. It's almost, it's like waking up. In the middle of driving a big rig down a road and you have to say, whoa, I better figure out how to drive this thing in a hurry. That's our situation on earth. So it's easy to get down on ourselves.

• 39:25Chuck Nice?

  David, I gotta tell you, I just have to tell you, that is one of the scariest situations that you could describe. Waking up in the middle of driving a big rig, 16 gears and all, that's horrifying. What are you talking about?

• 39:39David Grinspoon?

  Yeah.

• 39:40Chuck Nice?

  That's scary as hell.

• 39:42David Grinspoon?

  Yeah, but the thing is, we've done similar things before in the sense that human beings. If there's one thing that makes, differentiates us, differentiates us as a species. We're problem solvers and we're inventors and we've gotten out of some tight jams in the past. If you take an evolutionary look at us, there have been times in the past when the human species almost went extinct. There was a time 190,000 years ago when we were in Africa and there was a, there was climate change and ice age and the human, human species almost got wiped out.

• 40:20David Grinspoon?

  And we survived by inventing new technologies and inventing, uh, new ways of cooperating and working together and solving problems. And I think that's what we do.

• 40:31Chuck Nice?

  So you're saying that the innovation that.

• 40:35David Grinspoon?

  Challenging situation.

• 40:36Chuck Nice?

  The innovations that we are capable of may be the answer to our survival. So the fact that we were able to survive the ice age. Now, let me just ask you, since you bought up the ice age, um. When you look at climate change, now, you know, we've seen all the pictures, of course, in elementary school of the ice age and human beings being a part of the ice age and, you know, us. Uh, wearing our pelts and our, you know, fur skins and all that kind of stuff. Of course, we found fire. There were different things that we did that, that were able to make shelter, became part of what we did.

• 41:18Chuck Nice?

  Now, when you look at that, the difference is we're never going to have another ice age, if I'm correct. Uh, we're going in the opposite direction.

• 41:28Chuck Nice?

  What can we do to survive that? Because now you're looking at drought. You're looking at food shortages. You're looking at geographic changes in the topography of the earth. Because there are some places that are going to disappear because of the rise of sea levels. So, you know, what are some of the things that we're going to be able to do to survive that?

• 41:52David Grinspoon?

  Well, first of all, let me clear up a possible misconception. Because you talk about the Ice Age like it was one thing. In reality, if you look at the history of earth, the earth's climate, it's gone from Ice Age to Hot House to Ice Age to Hot House. And the last 10,000 years have been kind of unusual in that our climate's been pretty stable and pretty warm. And we've been lucky. We've flourished in this artificial, not artificially, but unusually stable, warm climate period. And so, the challenge, the immediate challenge we have right now, as you say, is to deal with this warming and sea level change and drought

• 42:32David Grinspoon?

  and all these things that are happening as a result of our emissions of fossil fuels. But, you know, that's temporary. One way or another, that's temporary. It can't go on very long. The bigger, longer picture is that the earth does go through climate fluctuations and will, yes, go through another Ice Age in another 50 or 100,000 years or so. Left to its own devices, natural climate change would do us in eventually. But I don't actually think there's going to be any natural climate change anymore. And I think in the long run, that's a good thing. Once we get over our immediate problem of sort of stumbling into this climate change that we're forcing,

• 43:15David Grinspoon?

  we'll learn a more thoughtful way to interact with the planet's climate. And in the long run, that will mean we'll prevent the next Ice Age and we'll prevent other disasters from happening. So the flip side of having to get a handle on our own behavior right now is that we're coming to understand the way the planet's climate changes. Much better, and that's gonna save our butts in the long.

• 43:37Chuck Nice?

  So what you're, what I hear you saying, because now, now, listen, I know you. I know you Dr. Funky Spoon. I know that you, my friend, are a. Uh, eternal optimist. You are always looking at the best case scenario. It sounds to me like you're saying that the problems that we have presented ourselves. Uh, we've created these problems, but these problems may be the impetus. For much greater success and sustainability of the human race going forward. We're gonna be forced to deal with something that may end up helping us much further down the line. And am I, am I right to hear you say, is that what you're saying?

• 44:19David Grinspoon?

  Yeah, absolutely. It, it. In fact, in my book, uh, Earth in Human Hands, I call this the twisted gift of global warming. There's a, it, it's obviously a tragedy i- in the short run. In the long run, it's a gift. Because we have no choice but to learn how to be planetary operators. Uh, if it's not climate change, it's other technology we're developing. We, we can't put the genie back in the bottle and not have. Planet changing technology, so we have to get good at it. And global warming is forcing us, forcing that reckoning. And in the long run, that's going to empower us, not just to save ourselves, but to save other life. Even though we're right now causing this mass extinction, or possibly causing a mass extinction.

• 45:03David Grinspoon?

  I think in the long run, humanity can prevent a lot more extinction than it will cause. There's not going to be another asteroid impact. And there's not going to be another ice age. Those things killed a lot more species ultimately than we're threatening now. So I'm not trying to get us off the hook. We have to. As quickly as we can, change our current behavior. But I do think in the long run, we can also see potential for us to learn how to actually be. The kind of constructive players on the earth that we should be and actually conserve and protect life. Once we get over our current problem of this sort of flagrant, uh, emissions that we, we have to curtail.

• 45:46Chuck Nice?

  So I, what you're saying kind of like, cause I, I don't want people. What I don't want is for somebody who's a climate denier to hear this and say, "See, it doesn't make a difference anyway because it's a better, it's a good thing for us. Exxon is helping us, okay? Don't you understand? Exxon is saving us without even knowing it." But what you're saying is, in, in the vein of necessity is the mother of invention, once we're presented with these problems, we're gonna have to come up with a solution. And so the inspiration for, uh, solution building will be there. But that notwithstanding, we still have to make sure that we take care of this problem. And one of the ways that we are gonna have to take care of this problem is to get off of our dependency on fossil fuel

• 46:30Chuck Nice?

  and move towards sustainable renewable energies that, uh, do not, uh, cause, uh, uh, sea, the level, the rise in sea levels and, and global warming.

• 46:41David Grinspoon?

  Yeah, exactly. Basically, we have to grow up.

• 46:43Chuck Nice?

  (laughing)

• 46:45David Grinspoon?

  You know, we've, we've been able to get away with, the Earth is pretty big and we've, you know, until recently haven't completely taken it over. And so we've been able to get away with, uh, throwing stuff away as if there wasn't a way. But there is no a way.

• 47:00Chuck Nice?

  Right.

• 47:00David Grinspoon?

  We realize that it's finite. And, uh, part of maturity is realizing the limits and learning how to work within those limits. This is a time when the human species has to, has to gain that maturity to really see clearly the situation we're in. And global warming is the problem that is forcing us to really understand the, the nature of ourselves as a, uh, a species on a planet that is altering that planet. And that if we want to, uh, survive and we wanna be, uh, you know, good, good sort of citizens of this planet, we have to, uh, take a new look and, and reassess and reintegrate ourselves in a healthy way into the functioning of that planet.

• 47:42David Grinspoon?

  We no longer have the luxury, we cannot be a part of the way the planet functions. As, as shocking as that seems, our cognitive systems, our technology are now, I think, permanent parts of the way the Earth operates. You know, unless we blow it, which we could. But there's also a possible future where we learn how to do that well and we integrate gracefully. Into the functioning of the planet. And that's, uh, that's what I'm trying to push here. And that's, by the way, I have a name for that state and I call it Terra Sapiens.

• 48:13Chuck Nice?

  Terra Sapiens.

• 48:15David Grinspoon?

  Yes, I, I think Terra Sapiens is what we have to try to achieve. But we are Homo sapiens, supposedly wise apes. And we need to now recognize ourselves as a planetary species and build Terra Sapiens. Stay on Earth guided by wisdom.

• 48:31Chuck Nice?

  That's, that's the equivalent of us growing up. That's, so that's what a grown up Homo sapien is. When you grow up, you become a Terra Sapien.

• 48:40David Grinspoon?

  Yes, and your planet, that's also a name for the planet. Cause the point is we're becoming one with the planet. We're becoming integrated into it. So Terra Sapiens is what we have to become. And it's also what the kind of planet we have to build. And, and we have to realize that the boundaries between what we consider natural and artificial are, uh, sort of shockingly, uh, no longer there. It's all one.

• 49:03Chuck Nice?

  Awesome, man. I wish we had more time for this. That's, well, one thing I'm taking away from this is Terra Sapien. I want to be a Terra Sapien. I'm already a Terra Sapien. I don't know about anybody else. I'm already a Terra Sapien, cause I'm, I'm sold in. I'm sold in.

• 49:17David Grinspoon?

  Sitting there floating in front of that galaxy, uh, Chuck, you look like a Terra Sapien to me.

• 49:22Chuck Nice?

  That's right. I'm representing all Terra Sapiens. Check it out.

• 49:28Chuck Nice?

  Oh, man, this is great, man. Great talking to you again. I wish we had more time, but it looks like we're done on this one, man. Thanks so much.

• 49:35David Grinspoon?

  All right, well, thank you. This has been Star Talk and I'm astrobiologist David Grin spoon with my co-host Chuck Nice. And thank you very much for listening.