Cosmic Queries – Climate Science, with Bill Nye

Bill Nye the Science Guy is back to delve into one of his favorite topics of discussion: climate change. Joined by co-host Chuck Nice and Kate Marvel, an Associate Research Scientist at NASA GISS and Columbia University, Bill and company answer fan’s Cosmic Queries about our changing climate. IMPORTANT NOTE FOR STARTALK FANS: Hey, StarTalkers: How would you like to “Keep Looking Up” at clear, starry skies, from the deck of a StarTalk themed-cruise, along with Neil deGrasse Tyson and your fellow StarTalk fans? We’re considering a cruise, and we want to know what you think in this survey: www.startalkradio.net/CosmicCruise. NOTE: StarTalk All-Access subscribers can watch or listen to this entire episode commercial-free here: https://www.startalkradio.net/all-access/cosmic-queries-climate-science-with-bill-nye/

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.

• 0:22Bill Nye?

  Greetings, greetings, StarTalk fans. Bill Nye here. I'll be your host this week. Joined by none other, you're not going to believe this, or you probably will, Chuck Nice is here.

• 0:32Chuck Nice?

  Unbelievable.

• 0:33Bill Nye?

  And our special guest this week is Kate Marvel from Columbia University and the NASA Goddard Institute for Space Studies here in Manhattan, in New York, New York. The town's so nice, they named it twice. And so for this all-star edition, we are going to be talking about climate change.

• 0:49Speaker 03

  Yes, we are.

• 0:51Bill Nye?

  And Chuck, you've got a stack of questions from the peoples.

• 0:53Chuck Nice?

  Yeah, some queries from our, from our fans that have been taken from all over the interwebs.

• 0:59Bill Nye?

  Well, stand by a moment. So Kate, may I call you Kate?

• 1:03Speaker 03

  Please do.

• 1:03Bill Nye?

  Dr. Marvel?

• 1:04Speaker 03

  I like Kate.

• 1:05Chuck Nice?

  Dr. Marvel sounds awesome, though.

• 1:08Bill Nye?

  Pretty cool.

• 1:08Speaker 03

  I can't live up to Dr. Marvel.

• 1:11Chuck Nice?

  I just see a superhero standing there going, "You think you have me now, Dr. Marvel."

• 1:16Bill Nye?

  But then she does, because she's wearing her Modus scarf, right?

• 1:21Speaker 03

  I am, yeah. This is, this is the Aleutian Islands cloud cover taken by the Modus instrument.

• 1:27Bill Nye?

  Our good friend, the Moderate Resolution, uh, Imaging Spectroradiometer Spacecraft.

• 1:35Speaker 03

  Mm-hmm. Am I, am I going to blow the lid off everything if I say we literally just Googled that?

• 1:42Bill Nye?

  Well, the lid off which you would blow is, since you're wearing the scarf, it is reasonable that you would know what it stood for.

• 1:54Speaker 03

  It is true. I'm terrible.

• 1:55Bill Nye?

  All that aside.

• 1:56Speaker 03

  I blew off my own lid.

• 1:57Bill Nye?

  Shows you, oh, it shows you the value of acronyms. They're easier than, than, um... Then the full descriptions and they're not just a shorthand, they become a name. And then we'll get back to work in a moment. The word NASA itself has become a word. National Analytics and Space Administration is a word. And so it's appropriate that modus is a word. Now with that said.

• 2:18Speaker 03

  Mm hmm.

• 2:19Bill Nye?

  What is your, uh, what do you study clouds?

• 2:21Speaker 03

  Um, I study a lot of things. Um, that's the cool thing about being a climate scientist is you never get bored. Um, so I do a little bit of work in the oceans. I do a little bit of work with clouds. Um, I do a bit of a little, a little bit of work with trying to understand what rainfall is going to do as the climate changes. Um, so I'm really all over the place, but kind of the unifying theme of my work is I, I'm a physicist. Um, that's, that's my training. Um, and I use computer models and observations to try to understand what climate change actually means.

• 2:53Bill Nye?

  And listening to you, it sounds like water is a focus.

• 2:56Speaker 03

  Um, yeah, I, I'm a big fan of water. I, I like to drink it.

• 3:00Bill Nye?

  I'm, I'm full of it.

• 3:02Speaker 03

  Right.

• 3:02Bill Nye?

  Water.

• 3:05Bill Nye?

  If you know what I'm saying. So the warmer it is, the more ocean evaporates, the more clouds you get, the more clouds you have, the more sunlight's reflected back into space, which might cool the place. And the most powerful greenhouse gas is water vapor.

• 3:18Speaker 03

  Yeah, but clouds are so complicated though, because not only do clouds reflect sunlight, but they also trap heat from the planet.

• 3:25Bill Nye?

  Ah.

• 3:26Speaker 03

  So they kind of play this dual role, which means it's really hard to understand what's going to happen to them as the planet heats up. They're double agents. Right. Yeah.

• 3:33Bill Nye?

  You'd have to be like a scientist to figure that out. So you write community, computer models?

• 3:40Speaker 03

  Uh, I work with computer models. Yeah. Yeah, I do a little bit of writing them, but mostly using their output. So I'm essentially a data scientist in a sense.

• 3:48Bill Nye?

  Cause there's, there are many data to crunch.

• 3:50Speaker 03

  There are a lot of data, yeah.

• 3:52Bill Nye?

  And so. What is your feeling? What is, the word I'm going for here, I think the phrase I'm going for here is when do the curves cross? This is to say, the world's getting warmer. Humankind seems focused on not doing anything about it.

• 4:07Speaker 03

  Mm-hmm.

• 4:08Bill Nye?

  When will we do something about it? And when will we, uh, address climate change? No pun intended, globally.

• 4:16Speaker 03

  Mm-hmm. Oh, that's a really good question. Um, I mean, I should, I should say I am a physicist. So it's my job to tell you what happens when you put carbon dioxide in the atmosphere. So I don't really feel like I have that much special expertise in how we not do that or how we take it out. Um, but I am an optimist. Like, I, I mean, that's just kind of my personality. I want to believe that we're gonna do something about this. And, you know, I think we have seen this year, like, weather has been in the news a lot. Um, we've had major hurricanes. We've had major forest fires in California. And I think this is really getting people talking about this. Like, oh, hey, maybe there might be something to this climate change thing.

• 4:58Bill Nye?

  So along with something to this, uh, I was, uh, always, uh, what papers I've read and so on, it's very difficult to tie any one weather event to climate change. But then there was, I guess it was two years ago, people said you can tie warm weather events, extreme heat events to climate change, right? Now, are we able to tie for sure the fires to climate change?

• 5:23Speaker 03

  No, because there are, there's so many complicated factors, you know? Because it's not just about climate change. It's about land management. It's about our choices and, you know, when we let fires burn, it's about where we decide to live. So it's really difficult to kind of tease that climate change signal out of that noise. Um, but the way I like to think about it is in terms of doping. So Lance Armstrong is really good at riding his bike, right? Like Lance Armstrong would win bike races normally. Um, but we know that Lance Armstrong was doping. And it doesn't really make sense, or for me, it's not the right question to say, did doping cause Lance Armstrong to win that seventh Tour de France?

• 6:03Bill Nye?

  Okay.

• 6:04Speaker 03

  But we know what doping does.

• 6:06Bill Nye?

  So the answer is yes.

• 6:09Bill Nye?

  The answer is probably.

• 6:10Speaker 03

  You know, the answer is probably. And so it's not really the right question to say, this particular race, would he have won it without doping? We say, we know what doping does, and we know what was in your bloodstream. And so we're going to take away those titles.

• 6:24Chuck Nice?

  Right.

• 6:24Bill Nye?

  So this isn't StarTalk Sports, but this is quite relevant. So what is the right question?

• 6:29Speaker 03

  I think the question is, are we doping the weather? And I think the answer is yes. So in the case of hurricanes, it's really hard to tell. For example, you know, is climate change going to lead to more frequent hurricanes? I think the jury's still out on that. And, you know, would there have been a Hurricane Harvey without climate change? You know, like hurricanes happen all the time, right? Like, we get them.

• 6:51Chuck Nice?

  But what about the number of hurricanes and the intensity of these hurricanes?

• 6:56Speaker 03

  Well, yeah, so that's where you start to get on really solid, physical ground. So warm water is hurricane food. Hurricanes draw their energy from warming oceans, so warm ocean temperatures. And we know that the oceans are getting warmer and will probably continue to get warmer in the future. We also know that warm water holds more, or warm air holds more water vapor. And so that means when hurricanes dump rainfall on areas like Houston, there is a lot more water that they can dump. And so that's kind of turbocharging. That is how we're doping the weather. And so, you know, would there have been hurricanes without climate change? Yeah, hurricanes happen. Would Hurricane Harvey in particular have happened without climate change? It probably wouldn't have been as severe.

• 7:41Bill Nye?

  Because the ocean's warmer than normal, so it got more food.

• 7:44Speaker 03

  It got more food, and then there's more water vapor in the atmosphere, so it can dump more rain.

• 7:49Bill Nye?

  So I read a paper, this is several years ago, where people were trying to parse, in the case of hurricanes, trying to decide whether there would be more stronger hurricanes or would the jet stream move so far south that would essentially decapitate hurricanes and this convection situation wouldn't be as strong. And so it's hard to figure out, is what you're saying.

• 8:11Chuck Nice?

  But wouldn't that lead to its own little special spate of unbelievably disastrous ecological problems?

• 8:20Bill Nye?

  The whole problem, if I understand it, Doc, is the ocean's getting bigger because it's getting warmer. And so coastal cities are going to be affected. And then for me... Peoples as a citizen.

• 8:37Chuck Nice?

  Hmm.

• 8:38Bill Nye?

  If Houston gets a hurricane like this every couple of years, every five years, if there's a Katrina every 10 years, are people gonna leave?

• 8:46Chuck Nice?

  Hmm.

• 8:46Bill Nye?

  And apparently, they did a study and uh it's or ask yourself, listener viewer, ask yourself. Your house is destroyed, you're standing there, where are we in New Orleans or we're in Houston?

• 8:57Chuck Nice?

  Hmm.

• 8:58Bill Nye?

  Your house is not destroyed, it's there, but all the walls have to be removed, it probably has to be mostly torn down.

• 9:05Chuck Nice?

  Cut it.

• 9:06Bill Nye?

  Your car is ruined.

• 9:07Chuck Nice?

  Right.

• 9:07Bill Nye?

  Everything you own is ruined, you got a couple of pictures that are soggy and crinkled up. And someone says to you, I'll give you a hundred thousand dollars for your house, which you paid in Houston area three hundred and fifty thousand dollars. Many people would go, yeah, I'm leaving.

• 9:22Chuck Nice?

  Taking the deal.

• 9:23Bill Nye?

  Yeah, and where are they gonna go?

• 9:25Chuck Nice?

  Uh, I'm hopefully not New York, that's all I'm saying.

• 9:29Bill Nye?

  Why not New York?

• 9:29Chuck Nice?

  Cause I'm here and it's crowded enough, so.

• 9:32Bill Nye?

  You know, that's what amazes me about New York. You and I, the three of us.

• 9:36Chuck Nice?

  Yeah.

• 9:37Bill Nye?

  We're busy.

• 9:38Chuck Nice?

  Hmm.

• 9:38Bill Nye?

  But who are these other people?

• 9:43Bill Nye?

  On the subway, there's just, there's thousands of people on every train.

• 9:47Chuck Nice?

  Don't you people have homes?

• 9:49Bill Nye?

  Yes.

• 9:49Chuck Nice?

  What are you doing out here?

• 9:51Bill Nye?

  Yes.

• 9:51Chuck Nice?

  Go home!

• 9:53Bill Nye?

  Notice that in its weird way, this uh crowded city of New York is more efficient living than for example Houston and so on. So doctor, as you study this, you gotta be thinking the situation's getting worse and worse or more and more pronounced. By situation, I mean, the climate is changing more and more rapidly.

• 10:13Chuck Nice?

  Hmm.

• 10:14Bill Nye?

  Can that be shown scientifically or is that just intuition on my part?

• 10:18Speaker 03

  Um, I mean, in terms of the, you know, the, the rate is, is accelerating, it, it, it matters what variable you look at, like are you looking at something like?

• 10:29Bill Nye?

  X.

• 10:29Speaker 03

  Yeah, X, yeah, oh, let's look at X, um.

• 10:31Chuck Nice?

  How did that happen? How did X become the variable?

• 10:34Bill Nye?

  Oh, there's some uh, there's some, some tradition.

• 10:36Chuck Nice?

  Yeah.

• 10:37Bill Nye?

  I know, I read a, a thing. A long time ago about algebra and the big question was where did R come from? That's where I started.

• 10:46Bill Nye?

  R for the ideal gas law constant.

• 10:48Speaker 03

  Oh yeah, where did it come from?

• 10:49Bill Nye?

  Somebody writes a math paper and it sticks. So few math papers. Anyway, but I caused us to digress. We pick a variable, take it, Dr. Marvel.

• 11:01Speaker 03

  I mean, it depends on what you're looking at because I think a lot of people think, oh, climate change means the average temperature of the earth is going to change. And that's true, but like, nobody cares about the average temperature of the earth, right?

• 11:14Bill Nye?

  Hang on a second Chuck.

• 11:16Chuck Nice?

  I'm gonna agree.

• 11:17Bill Nye?

  You not, do you care about the average temperature of the earth?

• 11:19Chuck Nice?

  I tell you, until this time, right here, never really thought about the average temperature, always concerned about the temperature where I am.

• 11:26Speaker 03

  Exactly, exactly. And so, you know, nobody experiences the average temperature, right? And, you know, like, right now, when it's cold outside in New York, I think, sixty degrees Fahrenheit, like, that seems like a pretty nice temperature. I'd like to experience that. But we experience climate change through all these other different factors, right? So we experience changes in rainfall, you know, like you pointed out, sea level rise. We experience things like, you know, changes in the frequency and severity of extreme events. And so not all of those things are sort of changing nicely and linearly. We are expecting kind of step changes. We're expecting really rapid changes in different variables.

• 12:07Bill Nye?

  What's a variable that's gonna have a step change or dramatic change? Cause while you're sipping, I'd like to talk again briefly about...

• 12:17Chuck Nice?

  Me!

• 12:18Speaker 03

  Yes.

• 12:19Bill Nye?

  So, I offered both Mark Moreno and Joe Bastardi, notorious climate contrarians that appear often on Fox News. I offered them each two $10,000 bets that 2016 would be the hottest year on record, so far, at that time. And 2010, 2020 will be the hottest decade on record. And neither one of them would take the bet. I've got $40,000 on the table, neither one of them would.

• 12:45Chuck Nice?

  They wouldn't take it?

• 12:46Bill Nye?

  No, no.

• 12:46Chuck Nice?

  Even though they are dyed-in-the-wool climate deniers.

• 12:50Bill Nye?

  Yeah, well...

• 12:51Chuck Nice?

  Still wouldn't take the bet.

• 12:51Bill Nye?

  Joe Bastardi's problem, I mean, I'm sympathetic to him. He's a Penn State guy, known Penn State, University of Pennsylvania, State University of Pennsylvania, known for its meteorology department. Uh, he has confused the idea that carbon dioxide is a small fraction

• 13:09Chuck Nice?

  Mm-hmm.

• 13:10Bill Nye?

  of the Earth's atmosphere with the idea that it has a small effect.

• 13:13Chuck Nice?

  Huh.

• 13:14Bill Nye?

  And so he's just gone down a dead end there. Then the other guy is just a, how to describe? He's

• 13:19Chuck Nice?

  A-hole?

• 13:20Bill Nye?

  Well, he's amoral.

• 13:21Chuck Nice?

  That was a joke. I should not have said that.

• 13:23Bill Nye?

  No, no, he's, he just doesn't have morals.

• 13:26Chuck Nice?

  Gotcha.

• 13:27Bill Nye?

  The way other people do. He's an interesting guy, I gotta say.

• 13:30Chuck Nice?

  Mm-hmm.

• 13:30Bill Nye?

  In that regard. So, Doctor.

• 13:32Speaker 03

  Mm-hmm.

• 13:33Bill Nye?

  Kate. Doctor Marvel. What variables should we be looking at?

• 13:38Speaker 03

  Um, I mean, for me, kind of the, like, an extreme weather event is a, is a good example. Because you're kind of going along, living your life, you know?

• 13:48Bill Nye?

  The way you do.

• 13:49Speaker 03

  The way you do. Um, you know, beating up people on the subway when they walk slowly or, or whatever we do in New York.

• 13:54Bill Nye?

  Those people!

• 13:55Speaker 03

  Those people, right? Uh.

• 13:58Bill Nye?

  Chuck can't even breathe. It, it hit him so, with such profundity. It hit him so close to the solar plexus.

• 14:05Chuck Nice?

  Go home!

• 14:06Bill Nye?

  Walk on the right side, let people off the train before you get on.

• 14:10Chuck Nice?

  Right.

• 14:11Bill Nye?

  I know you're all new here. Okay, Doctor.

• 14:14Speaker 03

  But, you know, the thing is, like, we, we have all these modern conveniences, right? We have a, you know, partially functional subway system. We have roads, we have electricity. And then when there's an, a weather event, like a blizzard or Hurricane Sandy, kind of all that stuff goes out the window. And we're so helpless, right? Like, we're so helpless in the face of it. All of our technology cannot prevent that storm from landing. It can't prevent the blizzard. It can't prevent the hurricane. And that, for me personally, like, as a human, not just as a scientist, like, that really focuses my attention on like, oh, that's what climate change means. It means this thing that we can't control. It means getting more of these things.

• 14:53Chuck Nice?

  Until very recently, um, most of the science community would not make any correlation between extreme weather events and climate change. Are you saying that that is now not the case?

• 15:04Speaker 03

  Well, I think what Bill has said, what Bill said is right, that any particular individual event, it's really hard to say this would have happened or not without climate change.

• 15:14Chuck Nice?

  Mm-hmm.

• 15:14Speaker 03

  But we're talking about statistics here. We're talking about things like hundred-year floods. Floods that used to come along every hundred years.

• 15:21Chuck Nice?

  But now come along every five years.

• 15:22Speaker 03

  Every five years, every three years, every one year. And it's those things, and those are really sort of viscerally terrifying, right? To think about, you know, we live this comfortable life and it can all be destroyed by a weather event. Like, that, that really focuses my mind.

• 15:37Chuck Nice?

  I like that, I like it, and I'm all about the scare tactics, okay? That's what I say. Scientists do not use enough scare tactics.

• 15:45Speaker 03

  It's not a tactic.

• 15:47Chuck Nice?

  Well, not, no, and you're right, because here's, here's what, climate deniers, they have one tool and one tool only: propaganda. That's all they have.

• 15:57Bill Nye?

  Well, what they've done.

• 15:58Chuck Nice?

  They're not telling the truth.

• 15:58Bill Nye?

  Yeah, well, what it is, they've been able to introduce the idea that doubt.

• 16:02Chuck Nice?

  Right.

• 16:03Bill Nye?

  Is, uh, doubt about climate change is the same as scientific uncertainty.

• 16:07Chuck Nice?

  Exactly.

• 16:08Bill Nye?

  This is to say, Kate, Kate, you agree with this, that the climate contrarians have introduced the idea that plus or minus two or three percent in your computer model result is somehow equivalent to plus or minus a hundred percent.

• 16:23Speaker 03

  I mean, the way I like to put it is, we don't know everything, but we don't know nothing. And.

• 16:28Bill Nye?

  Ah, ah, what about Chuck?

• 16:31Chuck Nice?

  Chuck don't know nothing.

• 16:34Bill Nye?

  deploying a double negative for comedic effect.

• 16:36Chuck Nice?

  There you go. Thank you, Bill.

• 16:38Speaker 03

  Well, well played.

• 16:41Speaker 03

  Um, but, you know, I, I do get a little bit annoyed when people use the continued existence of science to attack science. You know, like, we're never gonna know everything, and we're, you know, there are still things to study, I still go to work every day. But that doesn't mean that carbon dioxide isn't a greenhouse gas. Like, if we are wrong about carbon dioxide being a greenhouse gas, like, we are wrong about, like, all of physics and chemistry.

• 17:04Bill Nye?

  Like, gravity.

• 17:05Chuck Nice?

  Right, everything is wrong.

• 17:07Speaker 03

  Like, this is like a very basic thing, and there's, you know, fascinating complexity on top of that, and that's why I love my job and it's so fun, but like, there are certain things that are just so basic.

• 17:18Bill Nye?

  Okay, hang, hang, you say your job is fun, doesn't it get you down a little bit right now?

• 17:22Speaker 03

  I feel like people are really disappointed that I'm not depressed, um, and.

• 17:27Chuck Nice?

  Um, you know, I'm gonna say.

• 17:29Bill Nye?

  Are you disappointed in Kate?

• 17:29Chuck Nice?

  I'm refreshed.

• 17:33Chuck Nice?

  You know, because I'm depressed, so I'm glad that you're not depressed, okay? Because I am absolutely crestfallen, you know?

• 17:41Speaker 03

  Yeah, no, I mean, I think like every, everything you're saying is true. Like, this is a big problem, and it's really scary, and it can feel really intractable. But also, like, the Earth is this great, amazing planet. I feel really grateful to live here, and, you know, like, I-

• 17:59Chuck Nice?

  I like that as an understatement of this-

• 18:01Bill Nye?

  Right? So, we are gonna talk about this. And we are gonna get to listener viewer questions in the next few moments. You're listening to StarTalk All-Star Edition. Today, talking with Dr. Kate Marvel from Columbia University and NASA Goddard Institute for Space Studies, and we will be right back.

• 18:24Bill Nye?

  Welcome back, welcome back to StarTalk. I'm your guest host, Bill Nye, and this week, we are talking about, I'm reluctant to call it my favorite topic, but something that I'm deeply concerned, I hope you are too, climate change, and for that, we not only have your beloved Chuck Nice-

• 18:40Chuck Nice?

  That's right.

• 18:41Bill Nye?

  We have this week, Dr. Kate Marvel from Columbia University and the NASA Institute, Goddard Institute for Space Studies, right here in Manhattan. And, Doctor, we were talking about your optimism, your, you love coming to work, you love talking about climate change, studying climate change, even though, climate is changing.

• 19:01Speaker 03

  Climate is changing, that's for sure. Um, but no, like, this is, this is a fascinating planet, and how, you know, we have oceans, we have an atmosphere, we have land, we have ice, and all of those things interact with each other.

• 19:14Bill Nye?

  I love it here, I mean, I'm from here, I'm not-

• 19:16Speaker 03

  Like, I'm, I'm, I'm, yeah, hometown crap, right?

• 19:18Bill Nye?

  My friends are from here, yeah. If it, no, if it's Earth versus Saturn, you know, in the solar system cup, I'm all about Earth.

• 19:25Speaker 03

  I mean, are you really gonna, like, go to Mars, and it's just gonna be like you and Elon Musk, and it's gonna be-

• 19:29Bill Nye?

  You guys, you're not gonna go too far afield with this, but I just wanna remind all you Mars buffs-

• 19:36Bill Nye?

  It's really cold. I mean, it's really cold on Mars.

• 19:40Speaker 03

  Hmm.

• 19:41Bill Nye?

  And it's very hard to get water. And this third thing, I talk about this, there's nothing to breathe.

• 19:48Speaker 03

  Hmm.

• 19:48Bill Nye?

  You will notice that right away.

• 19:50Chuck Nice?

  Sounds a lot like Minnesota.

• 19:51Bill Nye?

  Uh, no, Minnesota, you can breathe. Just run and breathe. So it's like a one-star Yelp review for Mars? Yeah, yeah, well, if that. And so this romantic notion of going to Mars and living under a dome, and then you go outside for a walk, you're gonna put on a space suit, which will be your own dome.

• 20:07Chuck Nice?

  Right.

• 20:07Bill Nye?

  And if you've ever worn the same clothes for two or three years, they'll start to smell like that. The whole thing will be an extraordinary camping trip that is not paradise. All right. Whereas the Earth is paradise.

• 20:22Speaker 03

  Hmm.

• 20:23Bill Nye?

  For us humans. Now, Chuck.

• 20:24Chuck Nice?

  Yes, sir.

• 20:25Bill Nye?

  We have questions from out there that Dr. Marvel Kate can, uh, uh, interact with.

• 20:30Chuck Nice?

  That's right. Uh, let's get to one. And we always start off with a Patreon patron.

• 20:35Bill Nye?

  Because Patreon patron.

• 20:36Chuck Nice?

  That's right. They support us financially, and therefore they get precedent because...

• 20:42Bill Nye?

  So you're saying?

• 20:43Chuck Nice?

  Go ahead.

• 20:44Bill Nye?

  You can buy your way onto the show.

• 20:45Chuck Nice?

  I, I, I did just say that.

• 20:48Bill Nye?

  Kinda. I did not say that. I'm a guest host.

• 20:50Chuck Nice?

  From that statement.

• 20:51Bill Nye?

  I'm a guest host.

• 20:52Chuck Nice?

  I will not back down from that statement. That's right. You can, just like your Congress, we can be bought. All right.

• 20:58Bill Nye?

  Chuck, he's, he's exaggerating.

• 21:01Chuck Nice?

  This message bought to you by, never mind. Uh, here we go. Uh, this is Jason, Jacob Casey from Buffalo, New York, and he wants to know this. He actually phrased it just like this. Tell me, Dr. Marvel. No. Uh, human behaviors are contributing to climate change dramatically. Was this inevitably going to happen at some time in the distant future anyway? Which is, and to just put on to, to piggyback on what he's saying, kind of what climate deniers, that's their go-to. Hey, man, this, yeah, we recognize that the climate is changing, but what are you gonna do? Climate changes, so. Would that be the case at some point down the line if we didn't, you know, if we didn't

• 21:45Chuck Nice?

  have our own contribution?

• 21:47Speaker 03

  So, I feel like climate deniers like to tell climate scientists that climate always changes. And we're like, we know, we told you that. So, we are very aware of the fact that the climate of the planet has been really different in the far past, and it will be really different in the future. But we have ideas about what caused that. Specifically, ice ages are caused by the planet sort of wobbling in its orbit, closer to or farther from the sun. They're called Milankovitch cycles. And that's-

• 22:20Bill Nye?

  Discovered by Steve Buford? No, I think his name was-

• 22:26Chuck Nice?

  Steve Buford, who discovered the Milankovitch cycles.

• 22:30Bill Nye?

  So, the Earth goes around, not in a perfect, goes around in an ellipse, but there's perturbations and there's wobbles.

• 22:36Speaker 03

  There's wobbles a little bit, yeah.

• 22:37Chuck Nice?

  And just to be clear, so those wobbles, they actually shift the Earth just enough to create what effect?

• 22:45Speaker 03

  Different climates.

• 22:46Chuck Nice?

  Okay.

• 22:47Speaker 03

  We get ice ages, we come out of ice ages. And, you know, so we know that there are natural factors that change the climate. Those orbital wobbles, when a giant volcano goes off and puts a bunch of gas and dust in the atmosphere, that blocks the sun and makes it colder. But similarly, massive tectonic activity can put a lot of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere, which makes it warmer.

• 23:09Bill Nye?

  There's a lot of volcanoes.

• 23:10Speaker 03

  Lot of volcanoes.

• 23:11Bill Nye?

  A way of example.

• 23:12Speaker 03

  And, so, in the past, we have geological and all this corroborating evidence for those orbital wobbles or volcanic activity. And all that stuff is not happening right now. So, that's actually how we know that it's us. We can, we can measure how close are we to the sun. We can measure that solar irradiance. We can measure, you know, we would notice if a giant volcano was going off all the time. And it's, it's, it's not.

• 23:36Chuck Nice?

  Maybe it's a really quiet volcano, Dr. Well, no, but people talk about- One that doesn't want to disturb us.

• 23:40Bill Nye?

  -seeps and methane getting in the atmosphere, but this can all be measured. With extraordinary precision nowadays.

• 23:46Speaker 03

  Yeah, so we can measure it. And moreover, we know exactly what carbon dioxide does.

• 23:51Chuck Nice?

  Okay.

• 23:51Speaker 03

  So, the, getting back to the question, you know, was this gonna happen in the future anyway? If, you know, if you wait for millions of years, like, yes, the climate will change. And we know what makes the climate change. But right now, what's happening is we're so sure that we can attribute it to carbon dioxide in the atmosphere. And we know who put the carbon dioxide there. And it's really, getting back to the question of rate, it's really that rate that's incredibly terrifying.

• 24:16Chuck Nice?

  Gotcha.

• 24:16Speaker 03

  This has never happened before in the Earth's history. Never has the climate changed this quickly.

• 24:24Bill Nye?

  So I think that answers the, uh, question. Let's take another question.

• 24:28Chuck Nice?

  Yeah, it's like, the answer is, it would happen in, uh, whatever million years, but not, not for us. We're doing it. All right, let's go to, uh, Facebook, and this is Matt Eli, uh, wants to know this. So, you've been able to convince a diehard, uh, humans have nothing to do with climate change per, uh, person otherwise, and if so, what has worked? So, in other words, have you been able to convince anybody? And how did you do it, if you have?

• 24:58Speaker 03

  Um, the answer is yes.

• 25:00Chuck Nice?

  Oh!

• 25:01Speaker 03

  Um...

• 25:01Chuck Nice?

  I'm surprised! I'm really shocked!

• 25:05Bill Nye?

  He's a media professional.

• 25:07Speaker 03

  Um, unfortunately, the person in question is my dad. Um, but my dad is a Republican, has always voted Republican. And, you know, just thought this climate change thing, it's, it's nonsense.

• 25:20Bill Nye?

  It's a liberal, progressive...

• 25:22Speaker 03

  It's a liberal, progressive conspiracy. Um, and, you know, my dad knows that I love him. And I didn't come in and say, "You're an idiot, and I hate you, and you don't understand anything."

• 25:36Chuck Nice?

  Oh, wow. Have you been eavesdropping on my family conversation?

• 25:39Bill Nye?

  Wow, it's all over town, Joe.

• 25:46Bill Nye?

  You wear your, your holiday dinner on your sleeve. Anyway, you talked to your dad.

• 25:52Speaker 03

  Yeah, I talked to my dad and the thing that I thought really convinced him is you know who takes this really seriously is the US military. And they're not a bunch of hippies. I mean, maybe they are, but I don't, I don't think they are.

• 26:06Bill Nye?

  They have to cut their hair short if they are.

• 26:08Speaker 03

  Cut their hair short. Um, so the military takes it incredibly seriously. Insurance companies who are responsible for paying out policies, they take this incredibly seriously. And so the mil- these institutions, like my dad doesn't listen to scientists who live in Brooklyn. My dad listens to the military. He listens to large corporations. And there are a lot of those institutions that are actually taking this really seriously.

• 26:37Bill Nye?

  Which we hope will trickle up into voters' brains and will make decisions in the future to address this.

• 26:45Chuck Nice?

  Like that trickle up.

• 26:48Bill Nye?

  So try another question Chuck. If we got to her dad, maybe we can get to our listeners.

• 26:52Chuck Nice?

  We can get to our listeners. The answer is, uh, everybody needs a, um, uh, a physicist in their family who's studying the climate.

• 27:00Bill Nye?

  Well, we're here for you. We are physicists here for you. You're the StarTalk family out there.

• 27:09Bill Nye?

  Take it Chuck, read us another question.

• 27:11Chuck Nice?

  Oh, that was great. Here we go. Um, here you go. This is, um, Ave Valencia who wants to know this.

• 27:22Chuck Nice?

  What is the link between plastic in our oceans and climate change? Now, is there any, is there any link?

• 27:29Bill Nye?

  Well, there's a manufacturing link for sure. I just, I mean, when you make plastic. Uh, Doctor, were you gonna say something?

• 27:36Speaker 03

  No, I was just gonna say, we did both of them. That's.

• 27:38Bill Nye?

  Yeah, yeah. The wind that's.

• 27:41Chuck Nice?

  The link is us.

• 27:42Bill Nye?

  Her answer is better. No.

• 27:44Chuck Nice?

  There you go.

• 27:44Bill Nye?

  So we extract oil and we make plastic, make these long polymers. Oil will have a bunch of carbons linked together, um, often in single bonds. Uh, and then you take them out and you make them into polymers. Very long change. You know this, we have this expression, uh, high molecular weight.

• 28:04Bill Nye?

  Ultra-high molecular weight, polyethylene and stuff where these things are really long and then you make them into milk jugs and sweaters.

• 28:11Chuck Nice?

  Right.

• 28:12Bill Nye?

  But then when you throw the milk jug away and people dump it off the back of a ship and it ends up in the ocean, in the Indian Ocean gyre, it's giant spiral.

• 28:20Chuck Nice?

  Right.

• 28:21Bill Nye?

  Or whirlpool.

• 28:22Chuck Nice?

  Is that the big trash?

• 28:23Bill Nye?

  Yeah, the thing ends up in the middle, yeah. And so through secondary flow, our favorite. So, uh, humans, when they make plastic, among which we are home, uh, you extracting oil and you're gonna use fossil fuel burning to run the chemical process to make the plastic and then when you throw the plastic overboard, you're putting in the ocean and so the link you, Kate, you hit the nail on the head, is us. And plastic has improved the lives of a lot of people, let's face it.

• 28:55Chuck Nice?

  Yeah.

• 28:56Bill Nye?

  Just the medical profession, let alone, just having food that doesn't kill you is of great value and plastic helps us with that. And then airplanes nowadays are made of plastic, your car is lousy with plastic.

• 29:09Chuck Nice?

  Yeah.

• 29:10Bill Nye?

  And, uh, this microphone, this insulation, all this stuff is plastic. But moderation, people, and wouldn't it be great if we could recover the plastic and not throw it away and wouldn't it be great if we got our energy renewably instead of burning fossil fuels, instead of combining carbon with more carbon and fluorine to make plastics and instead of combining carbon with oxygen to make CO2? Wouldn't it be great if we did something cool with it? Take it Chuck, Bill, pull back, pull back, Bill.

• 29:40Chuck Nice?

  I love it, I love it, I love it. All right, so speaking of what you just said there, uh, Bill, um, Septura, uh, coming to us from Instagram says, nuclear power?

• 29:55Chuck Nice?

  Or renewable energy, so wh- what, what are the advantages of both and which is preferable? Given, this is not all in the, but I know what they're saying.

• 30:08Bill Nye?

  You're embellishing.

• 30:08Chuck Nice?

  I'm embellishing, but given the current needs of the globe and the fact that you have emerging economies where there are people in two different continents.

• 30:18Bill Nye?

  Chuck, you are a nerd, man.

• 30:19Chuck Nice?

  I know, I can't help it.

• 30:20Bill Nye?

  I love it.

• 30:21Chuck Nice?

  Where you have a billion people in one and a billion plus people in the other, and they all need energy and we've given them a taste of this and they gotta produce. So, is, is it fair to say that, uh, nuclear power is something that we want? Or do we just go the renewable route?

• 30:38Bill Nye?

  Kate, do you have an opinion? Cause I do.

• 30:40Speaker 03

  Um, I would love to hear your opinion because I will get yelled at on Twitter if I have an opinion on this.

• 30:46Chuck Nice?

  Really?

• 30:47Speaker 03

  By, by a whole different set of people.

• 30:49Bill Nye?

  So here's the problem with nuclear power.

• 30:50Chuck Nice?

  Okay.

• 30:51Bill Nye?

  It looked, it looked like a great idea. You dig these rocks up, purify them, fish in them, and put them back in the ground. This would be great. Fabulous. But what's made nuclear power so expensive is the so-called low level or secondary waste. All the rubber gloves and coveralls and everything that get radioactive.

• 31:10Chuck Nice?

  Oh my god, really? I've never heard of this.

• 31:12Bill Nye?

  Well, it's a big expense, getting rid of it.

• 31:13Chuck Nice?

  It's fantastic.

• 31:14Bill Nye?

  Well, meanwhile, and then the biggest problem, everybody, is nobody wants it.

• 31:18Chuck Nice?

  Right.

• 31:18Bill Nye?

  Let's say it's the greatest thing ever, nobody wants it in their neighborhood.

• 31:21Chuck Nice?

  Not in my backyard.

• 31:22Bill Nye?

  And then here's, so just consider the following, okay, bite my head off, Twitarians, but my fellow Tweetists.

• 31:32Chuck Nice?

  Wait, I gotta write both of those down. Twitarians.

• 31:35Bill Nye?

  Well.

• 31:35Chuck Nice?

  That's perfect.

• 31:36Bill Nye?

  Uh, note, well, there are about 432 nuclear, commercial nuclear power plants around the world. The US Navy BT dubs is really good with its nuclear material. As long as you think really good is burying it literally in Idaho when you're done with it. Uh, in remote area, what we consider remote areas here in the US. So, that's good. But, commercial plants, four hundred and thirty-two plants. There were four hundred and thirty-three, but Fukushima blew up and so there's only four hundred and thirty-two. (laughing) Alright, so, Three Mile Island, which is right at the end of the runway, at Harrisburg, Harrisburg, Pennsylvania, like, state capital, almost blew up. And the evacuation plans had this side of town going that way and that side of town going this way.

• 32:21Bill Nye?

  And so, it would never have worked. Then, Chernobyl blew up. Yeah. And then Fukushima got awash and a mess. And then you can say, as a proponent of nuclear power, I am hip, I'm a mechanical engineer. Who doesn't love thermodynamics more than I? No one. Alright. You could say, well, these, these kooks just won't let us have nuclear power. But, everybody, you would not get in a car that had a catastrophic failure three out of four hundred and thirty-two times. It wouldn't even occur to you. (laughing) And so, you can say, well, the nuclear industry shouldn't have put that plant in, at the end of the runway, but they did.

• 33:04Bill Nye?

  They shouldn't have put Fukushima on a geologic fault, but they did. They shouldn't have allowed it to get hit with a tsunami. They did. They shouldn't, those engineers in Chernobyl shouldn't have allowed the graphite to overheat. But, they did. And so, this is the problem, is the perception of the nuclear industry makes it so nobody wants it. So, uh, what I would prefer is for everyone, now look, it's Kate Marvel is our guest, Chuck Nice is our commentator, but I'm ranting. I've been done momentarily. This is a good rant. I'm enjoying this rant. I will be done momentarily. Uh, uh, there is enough sunlight, enough wind, enough geothermal energy and enough renewable energy

• 33:46Bill Nye?

  to run the whole place right now, enough, uh, uh, renewable energy to run the whole place right now. And I encourage you to check out thesolutionsproject.org. The problem is gonna be, the opportunities are gonna be moving the electricity around, storing the electricity overnight.

• 34:06Bill Nye?

  But we can solve these problems if we just go after them. And so let's not shut down existing nuclear power plants. But let's deal with the reality that it takes 10, 15 years to license one. This is StarTalk All-Stars. I'm here with Dr. Kate Marvel from Columbia University and NASA and Chuck Nice. And we'll be back right after this.

• 34:32Bill Nye?

  Welcome back to StarTalk All-Star Edition. I'm Bill Nye, your guest host this week. And I'm here once again with your beloved Chuck Nice.

• 34:41Chuck Nice?

  Thank you, Bill.

• 34:42Bill Nye?

  And our guest this week is Dr. Kate Marvel from Columbia University and NASA's Goddard Institute for Space Studies. And she is an expert on climates, which we have here on Earth. And so we, of course, as you might expect, are talking about climate change. So we are in the segment of the show in which we take your questions. Let's take one more, Chuck. And then Kate, if you will, give us your amazing insights.

• 35:13Chuck Nice?

  Sure thing. This is Josephina.

• 35:16Bill Nye?

  Josephina.

• 35:17Chuck Nice?

  Quero from Facebook wants to know this. Is there a volcanic event or system that could cool Venus to any extent? I'm not sure.

• 35:29Bill Nye?

  That could cool Venus.

• 35:30Chuck Nice?

  Cool Venus.

• 35:31Bill Nye?

  The way it does. Everybody, Venus is so hot.

• 35:36Chuck Nice?

  How hot is it?

• 35:37Bill Nye?

  It's so hot that lead would melt. And this is where, when I was in school, in engineering school back in the day, this is where climate change was really discovered, was exploring Venus. James Hansen, Jim Hansen, was looking at Venus. So.

• 35:56Chuck Nice?

  The Muppet guy who was studying Venus?

• 35:59Bill Nye?

  Uh, that's a different Jim Hansen.

• 36:01Chuck Nice?

  Oh, okay. I'm sorry.

• 36:02Bill Nye?

  Place is lousy with them.

• 36:05Bill Nye?

  So, Kate, can you talk about the role of volcanoes writ large, Venusian or terrestrial?

• 36:12Speaker 03

  Um, yeah, can I, can I go back to Earth? Cause I feel like it's not fair.

• 36:15Bill Nye?

  I went with terrestrial.

• 36:16Speaker 03

  Yeah, okay, great. Um, so, um, volcanoes, um, the volcanoes that we've experienced kind of over human history mostly have a cooling effect on the climate. So in 1991, Mount Penatubo in the Philippines exploded and just put so much gas and dust and dirt, basically, into the stratosphere that that blocked the sun and that made the planet a lot cooler.

• 36:42Bill Nye?

  You say a lot. Some fraction of a degree Celsius, yeah?

• 36:46Speaker 03

  Yeah, but noticeably cooler.

• 36:48Bill Nye?

  But on a huge planet, that's a lot of heat.

• 36:49Speaker 03

  Exactly. On a huge planet, that's, it's, it's a big deal. Um, so, um, over kind of recent history, if you take humans out of the equation, volcanoes have been...

• 36:59Bill Nye?

  There are a few I wouldn't mind taking out.

• 37:01Speaker 03

  Right.

• 37:02Bill Nye?

  Am I right?

• 37:02Speaker 03

  Those people on the subway. Um, but, um, so if you, if you ignore humans, then volcanoes are generally the biggest external contributor to climate change.

• 37:13Chuck Nice?

  Right.

• 37:13Speaker 03

  But we can't ignore humans.

• 37:16Chuck Nice?

  Right.

• 37:17Bill Nye?

  The place is, talk about lousy. It's overrun. But my understanding, if you're a volcano and you want to affect the climate, you have to be in the tropics.

• 37:25Speaker 03

  Yeah, yeah. So not every volcano is going to be able to affect the climate. You need to, you need to be in the tropics. You need to really get that plume really high up.

• 37:34Bill Nye?

  If you're a volcano.

• 37:34Speaker 03

  If you're a volcano, which...

• 37:35Bill Nye?

  So like Mount St. Helens, my beloved Mount St. Helens was not, didn't do much.

• 37:39Chuck Nice?

  Didn't do anything really, right?

• 37:41Speaker 03

  I mean, it, it did its best, guys, but not for climate.

• 37:45Bill Nye?

  It was spectacular. I was living in Washington State at that time. So Chuck, we have another question?

• 37:50Chuck Nice?

  Yes, let us move on. This is, uh, from CosmicallyCurious97 on Instagram. And, uh, Cosmically wants to know this.

• 37:59Bill Nye?

  Uh, we're... Call him Cos or her?

• 38:00Chuck Nice?

  I think I'm gonna call her Cos. Yeah, yeah, that's a good one. But, but not, not the Cos, cause that would be, you know, a little...

• 38:07Bill Nye?

  That's troubling. Right now, that's quite troubling.

• 38:10Chuck Nice?

  Exactly.

• 38:13Chuck Nice?

  We are currently working on ways to reduce our emissions of CO2. But are we attempting to make any strides in the removal of CO2 that is already in the atmosphere? And with that, it reminds me of a statement that I heard from Rex Tillerson, our now Secretary of State, but at the time, he was the CEO of ExxonMobil. And he said.

• 38:43Bill Nye?

  Chuck, he said.

• 38:44Chuck Nice?

  We can engineer our way out of this problem. Sure, sure. CO2 may be, and he said, may be a contributing factor. But if that is the case, we'll be able to engineer our way out of the problem. So are we making any strides? And was Rex Tillerson right?

• 39:02Speaker 03

  Oh, dear. So I'm not sure the, is this the first part of that question? We are currently working on ways to reduce our emissions of CO2?

• 39:10Chuck Nice?

  That was the first part of it.

• 39:11Speaker 03

  Are we, are we doing that?

• 39:12Bill Nye?

  Yeah, well, I've been to, I've been north of Fort McMurray, Alberta, where Shell Oil Company is doing two things. They are taking carbon dioxide out of their waste gases and liquefying it, or getting it really cold and pumping it underground. This would be carbon sequestration.

• 39:38Chuck Nice?

  Okay.

• 39:39Speaker 03

  Is that taking it up before it gets to the atmosphere?

• 39:42Bill Nye?

  Yeah, but the thing of it, it takes a tremendous amount of energy to do this. And it's a demonstration project and they're getting a big tax credit for it. And oil up there is coming from the tar sands. And this is so, by one reasonable estimate, a Canadian citizen.

• 40:03Bill Nye?

  is among the most environmentally responsible citizens, smallest footprint by one reckoning, smallest greenhouse footprint of any country in the developed world. But if you take into account the tar sands, a Canadian citizen is the worst. So, the tar sands are just this extraordinary place, everybody, in Alberta where the ground right under the topsoil is made of sand full of tar. And there's a trend to call it oil sand, and I've been there, it is tar, everybody, that's what it is, get over it. So it takes about thirty percent of the energy in the tar to melt it down and reform it into synthetic oil.

• 40:48Bill Nye?

  It's just, everybody-

• 40:50Chuck Nice?

  It sounds like an extremely inefficient way to get energy.

• 40:53Bill Nye?

  Well, it's, yeah, but it's just limitless, that's the deal.

• 40:57Chuck Nice?

  Oh, that's the deal.

• 40:57Bill Nye?

  Nineteen eighty-five is when they started doing it. Anyway, the, as the saying goes, the bad news is we'll never run out of tar.

• 41:06Chuck Nice?

  Wow.

• 41:06Bill Nye?

  Never run out of coal.

• 41:07Chuck Nice?

  Ugh.

• 41:08Bill Nye?

  Yeah, but this aside, here's the question, Kate. Written large, is, in my opinion, which Chuck, as you know from all these years, is correct.

• 41:21Bill Nye?

  We are already engineering the planet. This is to say, we have put, the old, the old analog, Richard Alley would make is, you get the roast, even if you're a vegetarian, you've heard of it, okay, they put roast in the oven, okay, listen, not go down that road right now. You take the roast out of the oven, the heat continues to move toward the inside of the roast. It's baked in, you're not gonna let go of that.

• 41:48Speaker 03

  Exactly.

• 41:49Bill Nye?

  So the carbon oxide that's already in the air is gonna continue to cause the world to continue to warm, even if we stopped everything right now, right?

• 41:57Speaker 03

  But you can turn off the oven, you know? So e- e- even though the heat still, you know, in- in- in the case of the earth, the heat is still gonna move into the ocean. It takes that deep ocean a really long time, like centuries to heat up. And so we have kind of put a time bomb in the system for ourselves. Like even if we've, you know, stopped the increase in emissions, even if we froze them at the current levels, we would still see warming in the future. But that doesn't, I don't think that's an excuse for despair. I don't think that's, you know, we can just throw up our hands and say, "Oh, it doesn't matter. Let's just keep increasing emissions." Because, you know, even though the roast is still cooking, you still can turn down the oven.

• 42:37Chuck Nice?

  That's funny. And as from a cooking standpoint, what you just said, sometimes when you turn off the oven, if you leave whatever's in the oven cooking, it gets overdone because the oven is still radiating heat.

• 42:50Bill Nye?

  It's an analogy. Here's the thing, I think every, all of us should consider, we are in charge of this planet. There's 7.3, almost 7.4 billion people today. By 2050, there'll be 20, there'll be 9 billion, 2060, maybe 10 billion people. We are in charge. We are running the place like on a science fiction show where they go to a planet and the whole planet is ice, the whole planet is tropical jungle, the whole planet is this and that. We are running the whole show. And we have to look at it that way. So what we want to do is stop pumping carbon dioxide in the air, provide clean water, renewable electricity, and access to the electronic information, internet to everybody in the world, and dare I say it, change the

• 43:35Bill Nye?

  world. Now that little beep chuk means...

• 43:38Chuck Nice?

  It's time!

• 43:39Bill Nye?

  For the lightning round. Now, Doctor Marvel, Kate, we want you to jump in there.

• 43:47Bill Nye?

  This for correct, this for not so much.

• 43:50Chuck Nice?

  Oh, no.

• 43:53Chuck Nice?

  All right, here we go. This is Mark Eric Svenson, Svenson. Mark Svenson. Mark Svenson from Facebook says, "I've been told my whole life to recycle paper and other goods, but if landfills are so bad at decomposition, isn't it just tossing things into the ground and sequestering carbon underground?" So now, landfills are not, are still exposed, so I'm not sure what he means. I think he means when you, when you cover it all over, isn't that just sequestering things underground?

• 44:27Bill Nye?

  Uh, yeah, but, uh, that stuff is gonna become carbon dioxide anyway. The bacteria are gonna, uh, attack it. But what you wanna do with a landfill is capture the methane. That's all the rage these days. So, the answer is, the longest journey begins with a single step. Some landfills are good, some of them not so good.

• 44:46Chuck Nice?

  Wow.

• 44:47Speaker 03

  That's a good answer.

• 44:48Chuck Nice?

  Great answer. Okay, here we go. Uh, Jay.

• 44:50Bill Nye?

  Thanks, you guys.

• 44:50Chuck Nice?

  J D, uh, as in J A Y D E E, says, "How long do you give the human race if nothing changes?"

• 44:59Bill Nye?

  Oh, humans are extinction-proof. They're just, they're gonna be here. They're just...

• 45:03Speaker 03

  I mean, I care about specific humans, right? And, and, you know, I think climate change is gonna really affect specific people and people we care about. But as a race, we're, we're gonna be.

• 45:13Bill Nye?

  We're fine.

• 45:14Speaker 03

  We're fine.

• 45:15Chuck Nice?

  Right.

• 45:15Bill Nye?

  It's good news and bad news, far as I'm concerned. Take it, Chuck.

• 45:18Chuck Nice?

  Exactly. Uh, Lea Pia. I don't think that's a real name.

• 45:24Bill Nye?

  It could be.

• 45:25Chuck Nice?

  Okay, you're right.

• 45:25Bill Nye?

  It's unforgettable.

• 45:26Chuck Nice?

  There you go. Uh, "About the hole in the ozone layer, how can there be a hole in a layer of gas? Wouldn't it just be gas getting thinner?"

• 45:35Bill Nye?

  Take it, Kate.

• 45:36Speaker 03

  Um, so, the hole in the ozone layer, um, mostly lives over Antarctica because of the way the, um, the circulation of the atmosphere transports ozone. Um, and the really good news, the thing that makes me so happy about the ozone hole, is that it's getting smaller.

• 45:52Chuck Nice?

  Wow.

• 45:55Bill Nye?

  And why is it getting smaller?

• 45:56Speaker 03

  Because we did something about it.

• 45:57Bill Nye?

  We stopped pumping fluorinated cor- uh...

• 45:59Speaker 03

  Stopped pumping CFCs into the atmosphere. Um, we got together as an international community in the face of massive corporate opposition, and we did something about it.

• 46:08Bill Nye?

  So, we had regulations for the common good? That's crazy. Take it, Chuck.

• 46:13Chuck Nice?

  You communist. Uh, uh, @CosmicKid1598 from Twitter wants to know this. "Is climate change cyclical, or is it entirely caused by humans? Our current state, is it entirely caused by us?"

• 46:28Speaker 03

  The percentage of warming that's attributable to humans that we've observed in recent history is over 100%.

• 46:35Chuck Nice?

  Oh, what?

• 46:36Speaker 03

  Over 100%.

• 46:37Bill Nye?

  How do you get over 100%?

• 46:38Speaker 03

  Without us, it would be cooling slightly.

• 46:41Chuck Nice?

  Whoa.

• 46:47Bill Nye?

  Pika Chuck, wow, that is the coolest, Kate!

• 46:50Chuck Nice?

  That was Kate, that was really a bomb drop, that was a mic drop.

• 46:53Bill Nye?

  That was my, it was a bell ring horn sweep.

• 46:56Chuck Nice?

  Yeah, man.

• 46:57Bill Nye?

  Alright.

• 46:57Chuck Nice?

  Alright, here we go, Mohammed Alenzi wants to know this, can we reset the Earth?

• 47:03Speaker 03

  Let's not try.

• 47:06Bill Nye?

  Wow!

• 47:06Chuck Nice?

  There you go.

• 47:07Bill Nye?

  That's a, that's a Bing drop thing.

• 47:09Chuck Nice?

  Mm-hmm, mm-hmm.

• 47:10Bill Nye?

  Mic drop. Nicely done, let's not try, it's just too big a problem.

• 47:16Chuck Nice?

  Alright, the legendary Pancakes.

• 47:19Bill Nye?

  Pancakes, a legendary Pancakes is the silver king, yes.

• 47:22Chuck Nice?

  Says, does climate change cause any specific health concerns?

• 47:29Speaker 03

  Ooh.

• 47:29Chuck Nice?

  That's a very good question, that nobody ever even talks about, whether or not our health-

• 47:33Bill Nye?

  Kate's gonna talk about it.

• 47:34Speaker 03

  Um, and the number one thing that pops to mind is tropical diseases, the tropics are expanding and the diseases are going with it.

• 47:40Bill Nye?

  And, uh, pests for crops in, uh, North America show up earlier and stick around later. Takes more pesticide, more herbicide to deal with it, and our crops, our farms are gonna have to move north from Central US into Southern Canada. So that's a big effect on a big thing. I think we're getting down to the last question.

• 48:02Chuck Nice?

  Okay, here's the last one, this is ma- handmade Ena wants to know this, does the cosmic rockets that burn their fuel impact the ozone or climate change in any way?

• 48:14Bill Nye?

  Yeah, when you shoot a rocket, you have to fill out an environmental impact statement, you're burning kerosene like a crazy thing.

• 48:18Chuck Nice?

  Oh wow.

• 48:19Bill Nye?

  Oh yeah, yeah, it's, uh, it's your tax dollars at work. This has been StarTalk All-Star Edition with Dr. Kate Marvel from Columbia University and NASA's Goddard Institute for Space Studies. Chuck Nice has been here reading your happy questions, this has been a fascinating show, thank you so much for joining us. I'm Bill Nye, your host, we'll see you next time on StarTalk.