StarTalk Podcast
Hosted by Neil deGrasse Tyson
Original podcast
Planetary scientist Dr. David Grinspoon is back as guest host to answer your questions about the human impact on Earth during the “Anthropocene Era.”
6,853 words · 3 speakers
Speaker names marked ? are inferred from speaking time and the show’s known hosts — they are not voice-verified.
Welcome to StarTalk. Your place in the universe where science and pop culture collide. StarTalk begins right now.
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.
Hey, Dave, how are you?
I'm fine. How are you doing Chuck?
Great, man. So I'm happy to see you.
Yeah.
And I am also curious as to where Mr. Tyson, Dr. Tyson is.
Oh, I'm busted. Now, now people know I'm not Neil Tyson. I am sitting in for Neil Tyson, who's off filming cosmos somewhere, right?
Yeah, literally, he has left the galaxy.
So Neil's off doing the cosmos as he has want 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.
Yes.
Answering your questions. And what's, what's the topic today?
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.
Oh, yeah. Earth is a planet.
And therefore it's part of space. And so it belongs to StarTalk, right?
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.
I've not seen the questions.
And I understand that even though you are an astrobiologist, that this is also something that you are a subject expert? Would that be?
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. 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?
I'm going to say that what we can learn is that we, as human beings, suck when it comes... I've got a feeling Earth looks at us like we suck. I'm just sorry. That's pretty much how I feel.
Well, we've 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. 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. 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.
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 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, by..." 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!
Wow, we got quite, quite the menu there.
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 gonna 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.
Correct.
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-
Would be really significant.
As big a deal.
Right.
But I think-
Not to mention travel, cuz she says like pandemics, which honestly, that, that wouldn't happen if we weren't traveling all around to and fro the way we do.
Yeah, I mean, those are all related problems. I, 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.
So we don't have to fear cyberdyne systems quite yet, huh?
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.
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-
And dies, um, or at least- Destroys its civilization.
Then we ought to really be applying our intellect to dealing with that now.
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 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?
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.
So kind of roundabout, in a roundabout way.
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.
Yes, our savior, technology.
Thank you, Big Bang.
All right, well, we got to take a break now. More StarTalk when we come back.
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.
Hey.
And we're talking about the human impact on Earth and its space dimensions here. So let's see, what do we got for another question?
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?
I've met that guy before.
Ah, yeah. Oh, my God, you're an astrobiologist. Okay, how do I power the planet with poop?
All right, you gotta buy me a drink first and then maybe we'll get to that.
All right, here we go. 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. 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.
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
But so now the real question here.
Good question, yeah.
Yeah, the real question here is, because she's making a joke, but here's the real question here. Would we be considered a kind of a virus, a bit of a scourge 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 kind of 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?
Those are great questions. Thank you, Saba. And, you know.
And Chuck.
I'm got, yeah, and thank you, Chuck. I want to 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. You look at the pattern of our growth and you look at a virus and, you know. In an organism and 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.
Hmm.
Right?
True.
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 up the planet. There have been catastrophes that have come along before that 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 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 virus, we have been like a virus, but most viruses don't talk about the fact that they're like viruses.
And we do, we're talking and so maybe-
We're a self-aware virus.
Yeah, exactly. So that makes us a little different.
A little different. So there you go, there's your answer. Human beings, a little bit better than the cyanobacteria, so.
Slightly better.
Slightly, just slightly better.
We're a little bit better than slime.
That's it, just a little bit better than slime.
Smart slime.
Yeah, that's our new motto.
We're slime, but we're smart.
There you go. All right, let's, uh, let's move on to, uh, 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, does it hold water?
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, uh, 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, uh, you know, Earth has plate tectonics, the plates, uh, the crust, the solid part of our Earth is split into these, uh, 13 or so plates that are sliding around and crashing into each other. And some of 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, uh, 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. I'm all for it. If I could see the details, uh, 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, uh, a little more of the, uh, the details.
But in theory, he's got a pretty decent plan there?
Yeah, I mean, there's nothing that there's nothing that sounds wacky about it to me. It sounds, um, you know, like, and maybe, maybe, maybe there is a well-developed plan for this that I just don't know.
Mm-hmm. Give our trash to the Morlocks. It's their problem now.
Really?
There you go.
They might even like it.
Okay, here, let's move on to Yusef Vet Mark Esperza. What a great name, huh? Regarding these recent earthquakes in Texas, are there real, are they really attributed to natural gas fracking? Should we stop the fracking and find another way to get natural gas? Let me just, uh, 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.
No, no, there is a connection. It's pretty, it's pretty well-known, and it's, it's understood physically how it works. Uh, 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, so there have been fracking-related earthquakes. There haven't been like massive catastrophic ones. Uh, it does speak to the fact that there are unintended consequences
when we start doing these major engineering projects 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, uh, it's giving us fuel at a time that we need to reduce our foreign dependence on oil.
It's making America great.
Well, and natural gas is better than coal, but on the law, 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, um, mountaintop mining. There's a lot of 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, 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.
Hmm. So, uh, the answer is, without a doubt, these earthquakes are real.
Oh, yeah.
And, uh, we, we pretty much need to stop fracking.
Yeah, in the long run.
In the long run.
Absolutely.
Okay. And, um, you do realize that's never going to happen. No, I'm joking.
I'm joking. Lot of money we're talking about there.
Well, eventually, it's gotta happen because we're gonna run out of all that stuff.
Oh, 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.
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.
All right, well, let's take a break and we'll come back in a little bit and we'll have some more StarTalk.
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.
That's right.
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?
Well, 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.
That's so interesting. You know, I've got a Twitter handle, too.
And what would that be?
That would be Dr. Funky Spoon, @DrFunkySpoon.
That is awesome. Dr. Funky Spoon? I love it.
Yeah, yeah, thanks. And my website is funky science dot net.
Funky science dot net.
And the StarTalk website is star talk radio dot net.
That's correct.
So you can find all kinds more cool stuff at that address. Anyways, let's get back to doom and destruction. It seems like we've been on this riff of, you know, the whole, everything about the human impact on Earth isn't like negative and destruction and terror and doomsday, but it seems like that's what people associate with a topic.
That's true.
Yeah, it's understandable why.
It is, only because, 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.
Given enough time, the lemurs would evolve to the point where, you know, they would be causing horrible industrial damage too, I'm sure.
Dag gone those lemurs. Eight million years from now, you just watch what they do to the planet.
Exactly.
You love your lemurs so much. All right, here we go. Let's go to, let's go to Libby Powell Crowe, who said, "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.
That's good, that's good. Yeah, well, it's a great question and it's catchy too. You know, and superficially, yes. I mean, you know, everybody's, let's face it, taken a leak in the ocean at some point in their life and you don't think 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? Because that's like little. And, but ultimately, of course, the world is more like that hot tub. And, 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 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-
It's not harmful.
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.
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-
Is not dilution. It's a short-term fix for an awful horrible problem-
Yeah, exactly.
That you should probably look to something else other than the dilution.
Yeah, but it is catchy.
But it is catchy. I do like it.
And you know what I've learned from this question? Why no one wants to get in my hot tub.
That's pretty much what I've figured out.
That's right. Hey, I'm not saying I do that. I was just, you're setting an example.
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 and so, etc. Are we now developing industrial aspects of Asia going through the same thing now?
Yeah, it's a great question. You know, when did this problem really start?
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 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.
Some people say it started even before then, by the way, with agriculture.
Yeah, I was gonna say it kinda starts with agriculture, with a lot of cow farts. Let's be honest, you got a lot of cow farts.
Cow farts and clearing the land.
Clearing the land.
Deforestation. Yep, changing the, the, the carbon cycle. Humans really started changing the carbon cycle and changing the climate thousands of years ago.
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.
So also is, is it also too because now we're all doing it? You know, it, you know, before it was just Europe and America.
Now it's Europe, America, China, Russia, uh, the, all of brick. Uh, you know, it's, it's like everybody's doing it.
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 we're all in this together.
All they're gonna say back is, I learned it from watching you.
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.
Cool. Now, very quickly, what was that era you, you said again?
The Anthropocene era, Anthropo, human.
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.
Yeah, all right. Well, on that note, we'll be back in a few minutes with more StarTalk.
Welcome back to StarTalk Radio. I'm astrobiologist David Grin spoon, sitting in for Neil Tyson, and I'm here with Chuck Nice.
Yes, yes.
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.
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?
Well, that's a tough question. 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-
That there's a great deal of money being thrown at the problem by energy companies who want to confuse the issue maker.
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, 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 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 it's not like-
Good luck with that!
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.
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.
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.
Yeah, that kind of makes Earth seem creepy, right?
Just like, you know, hey, what are you wearing? You know, that the global weirding, that's maybe not the best.
Yes, they're getting weird.
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?
Well, what else would it be? I mean, okay.
Now, I think he means like on a permanent basis.
Ah, like permanent. Is it permanent change?
Yeah, is it like a permanent change?
Well, no.
Not just crazy weather patterns.
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. But that takes a few million years to happen. So that will not help us.
Oh, there you go.
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.
Gotcha. So here you go. Catastrophic for us, nothing to the Earth.
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.
Right. So basically, when you talk about these debates, it's about our own carcasses.
Well, and all the other species that were taken with us.
You know, I really don't care about them, David. I gotta tell you the truth.
Well, you should, because we need them.
I gotta tell you, I'm a little partial to human beings, because I happen to be one.
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.
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.
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.
That is correct, sir. And whenever you are done with your answer to me, that it's time to move on.
I'm gonna do this.
And there we have it.
Oh, that felt good.
That doesn't that feel good?
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."
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.
There you go. All right, this is from Mark Wright on Twitter. Is nuclear power maybe our best real choice morally? Chernobyl Police territory beyond human use, but plants and animals thrive.
The morality of nuclear power is a lightning question. Sure, that's easy. 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.
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?"
Ah, good question. Because everybody's worried about climate change, more and more CO2, getting hotter. What would happen if the CO2 went away?
Right away, today.
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'd 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.
Awesome answer. I love it. Yeah, but would it help if we just all hyperventilate it? You know?
It may help you.
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?
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
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.
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?
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.
So there it is. Get it right at home first, then take it on the road.
This has been really fun. I think we're going to wrap it up now. This has been StarTalk Radio. Thank you so much for joining us today. I've had a great time here with Chuck, Chuck Nice. And Chuck, one more time, what's your Twitter?
You can find me at ChuckNiceComic. Thank you, Dave.
And I'm at DrFunkySpoon. And you can find out more on StarTalkRadio.net. Thank you so much for listening.
Page updated September 29, 2026 · transcript and summary are machine-generated
