Slaying the "zombies" of climate science — Dr. Marshall Shepherd — TEDxAtlanta

[00:00:00] Speaker ?: Tanya Cushman Reviewer: Peter van de Ven [00:00:16] Speaker 1: A much better-looking crowd than Congress, I must admit. I was just there a couple of months ago, and I'll be back there in about two weeks. It really is great to be here today. Just a disclaimer right off the top: I love polar bears. They actually are quite one of my favorite animals. But let me just say right off the bat that the reason that I'm up here talking about this topic and I'm so passionate about it are those two reasons right there. Climate change, to me, is a human issue. It's an important issue to understand that this issue is affecting human beings right now, and it is probably the most grand, challenging problem that these two will face in their lifetime. And so, the passion that I hope to convey today and the message that I hope to convey today and the reasons to believe around this topic really squarely center around those two. In addition to that, I often get the question... I was at the Senate a couple weeks ago, and Senator Adal from New Mexico says, "Well, Dr. Shepherd, how can we bring this home to our constituents?" And I said Cheerios. The drought that we experienced the last couple of years, people are paying more for things like Cheerios or cereal or products that affect their day-to-day lives. So, these are dining room table issues. And so, this is how we have to convey this message. But there's actually something interesting that I have found in my sort of journeys and discussions on this. This is a look at what most climate scientists think about climate change and our concern. I'm a climate scientist. Study out of Illinois noted that 97% of climate scientists are concerned about climate. But look at what public surveys say. There's a disparity there. Now, just to bring this home, an analogy that might make sense to me, this is like saying 97% of heart surgeons agree on how to do a heart transplant, but the public disagrees. That's kind of how I think about it, at least. You got it. That's kind of how I think about it. So, there's a disconnect between the public and climate scientists. And how do we bring these two in line? This is really one of the grand challenges in my field and one of the things that I'm passionate about communicating. How do we get these two in balance? Well, there are some things that are at play here. And so, let me define to you what zombie theories are, because I'm here to slay the climate zombie theories and awaken climate literacy. So, what is a zombie theory? You know what, you've heard them. It's one of those theories that scientists have refuted or disproven time and time again, but they live on like zombies in the blogs and on the radio stations and in tweets. I see them and hear them all the time. Those are zombie theories. And I'll come back to those, because we're going to slay them today and then talk about how to awaken climate literacy from that perspective. So, let's take a look at what's going on in the climate so far. This is data from NASA. I actually worked at NASA for 12 years. This is from one of my colleagues at NASA Goddard. And this is a look at the changing temperature over the globe over the last 100 plus years. And what you clearly see is that our planet is warming. Our climate is warming. Who in the audience is 28 years old or less? Okay, some of you, a couple of you put your hands down. You're not, I'm just kidding. If you're 28 years or less in age, you have not lived on this planet where a month was cooler than the 20th century average. And this really reflects that. Looking at it another way, so this is the trend in climate. And, you know, I checked the Dow before I came in here. We can't say anything about my retirement by looking at the Dow's performance or the stock performance today. The reason I mention this is because people look at trends like this and look at those little down periods and say, well, you know, the climate hasn't warmed in a couple of years. What are you guys talking about? But we clearly see that the trend is upward. And so that's one of the zombie theories that I'll talk about a bit later. We have to consider the fact that we cannot cherry pick the data and look at pieces of the data. The trend is very clear. And boy, by the way, that's 2010 data. When I add 2011 and 2012, that trend is going to be solid. More importantly, let's look at the last 11,000 years. This is really interesting because there's something called the hockey stick, which says that over the last two or three thousand years, the planet was warming rapidly after about 1850. And we all know in 1850 industrial revolution, we figured out how to burn fossil fuels. What's interesting about that is if you look carefully over the last 4,000 years or so, the planet was actually cooling. But then after 1850, it went through the roof and warming, relatively speaking. And what this tells us, who had calculus in high school? I'm going to bring back some old calculus memories. For us as scientists, we're worried about the rate of change, the derivative. See how fast it warmed in 100 years or less? The same magnitude of change it took thousands of years. So the type of change we're seeing in terms of our climate system are happening on much more rapid time frames. And that's what worries us as scientists. So what is an impact of this? Again, some data from NASA, satellite data, showing the change in sea ice in the warm season in the Arctic. And one of the things that you see is that from 1979 to the present, roughly 2012, warm season sea ice is going away. In fact, some scientists project that by the end of this summer, the Arctic in the warm season will be totally ice-free. We've never seen that. And in fact, climate scientists didn't think that would happen for several decades. And so that actually has some profound impacts on even our weather here in Atlanta, Georgia, for example, or changes in the ocean circulation. If you saw that movie, The Day After Tomorrow, that whole premise of that movie was that the ocean circulations were being changed by adding fresh water from the Arctic region to the saltier ocean. And so that's kind of a side-by-side comparison of what we see in terms of changes in the Arctic. And this is just one of many changes that I could have given you. So the question that I get now from congressmen or people at Kroger or any, what is the superstorm Sandy, was that caused by climate change? Is this drought caused by climate change? That's the wrong question. So when someone asks that question, as climate scientists, we think that's the wrong question because almost all weather is happening now within the context of a warmer, more moist climate. So a better question than one that I like to say is that climate change is likely loading the deck. It's increasing risk and probability of storms like Sandy. Give you an example of that. Let's imagine we have a deck of cards. And every time we pull an ace or draw an ace, you get a storm like Sandy. You can think of climate change as adding an extra ace to the deck. So I can't pinpoint one storm as being caused by climate change, no more than I can pinpoint a baseball player's home run being caused by steroids. But I know that steroids increase the length and number of home runs in Major League Baseball. And that's how we have to think about climate change and extreme events. So perhaps we are in a new normal period, but we have to think of it in terms of the right questions. So that's kind of a snapshot on what we think is happening. Let me think of, talk about a little bit as I lead into this discussion of climate zombie theories. Upton Sinclair, he wrote The Jungle, we all, most of us read The Jungle. Upton Sinclair has one of my favorite sayings. He said that it is difficult to get a man to understand something when his salary depends on him not understanding it. That's, that's powerful, isn't it? Because it really can give you some context into what's going on and why there is a perception of controversy. There's some good news and bad news. The bad news is perceptions by the public on climate change are lower than they were in the 1980s. But in recent years, they're actually increasing. Irrespective of your political background or viewpoint. It's not a left-right issue. And I think people are finally realizing that. So now let's talk about the zombie, these are the cutest zombies I've ever seen, by the way. But let's talk about zombie theories. And what are they? Again, remember there are these theories or things that get around the internet, or even in blogs and even in some reputable media outlets, too, that have been long disproven. So the one that I hear often, Dr. Shepherd, climate change is natural. Climate change is natural. And when I get this one, I often have to pause. And I'm like, how did I get through three degrees and not understand that? That's sarcasm. But the bottom line is we know that climate change is natural. We're leaving things like Milankovic cycles, the change in the planet's orbit tilt. We can have ice ages. Those things happen periodically. The sun's energy changes through solar variability. But that natural change is superimposed on a steroid now. And that's how we have to think about that. It's the sun, Dr. Shepherd. I was in an elevator in Denver with a pilot. I don't know what airline. He was like, he heard us talking. He was like, well, you know, you guys know the reason climate's changing. It's the sun. We were all climate scientists. He's a pilot. I wasn't telling him how to fly the plane. But we explained to him that, yes, the sun varies. There's solar variability, but it happens on cycles that cannot explain the climate changes that we're seeing. 11-year cycles. We understand that. 1998. The climate hasn't warmed since 1998. Well, 1998 was a relative maximum period. And yes, there has been some leveling off in terms of the atmospheric temperature profile, relatively speaking. But we're also finding that a lot of that heat is warming in the ocean. And if we add, as I said, 2011 and 2012, we're going to clearly see that our trend continues upward. So we can't, as I said earlier, we can't cherry pick little pieces of the record. No more than we can say anything about our retirement plan based on what this week's Dow Jones Index looks like. Can't trust the climate models. I get this one quite a bit too. Well, you guys tell me that I can't trust the weather forecast that's 10 days old or 10 days out. How can I trust the climate model that's telling me something about the year 2080 or 2100? Well, it's apples and oranges because a weather model, the ones that predict our weather for Saturday or next week, is trying to predict what our atmosphere outside looks like seven days from now. A climate model is not trying to do that. It's not trying to tell me what it looks like Thursday in the year 2090 exactly. It's trying to predict the climate state. And so it's an apples and oranges discussion. And by the way, I want to leave you with something that I always like to talk to when I talk about climate. Weather is your mood, climate is your personality. This is important because I often get people that confuse what's happening today or this week with climate. I was like, boy, it's really cold last week. I got this last week, this last weekend. It's really cold, Dr. Shepherd. What are you guys talking about global warming? I get that often. There are people that have built igloos on the steps of the Capitol because of that. Those types of things happen. But weather is your mood. Climate is your personality. You might be in a bad mood today, but that doesn't tell me anything about your your personality. And it's the same with weather and climate. Well, there it is. You said it with Upton Sinclair. You guys just want. There it is. You want grant money. That's what it's all about. You just said what did Upton Sinclair say. There you go. You guys want grant money. No, actually, as a scientist, it would actually be in my best interest to say, we don't know. We don't know what's going on with climate change. Boy, we need more money to research this, right? So I've never quite understood that one. I mean, it's just counterintuitive to me. Plus, my zeros at the end of my grant are very much smaller than the zeros at stake in other parts of this issue. So a lot less zeros in those individual grants. So we've been warmer in the past, right? Well, yeah, we have been. But brontosauruses were roaming around and Georgia was covered with water. And there were probably crocodiles at the North Pole. The planet looked dramatically different. And if we get back to that type of state, then our planet would not be recognizable. Well, it's arrogant or blasphemous to think that human beings have even can even change the climate. We see this every day in Atlanta in the summertime when we see code red days. So humans are causing that with pollution. Ozone layer caused by chlorofluorocarbons drifting up into the stratosphere from our refrigerants and spray cans back in the 70s. Some of you that are younger, we used to have aerosol cans. Anyhow. Well, it's only a few degrees. What's the big deal? It's only one degree. That means I can barbecue in November here in Atlanta. Well, our body gets a temperature or a fever of one, two, or three degrees. Our body knows that. One to two to three degrees is a big deal to the human body. Climate system's the same way. One, two to three degrees, and we see what our climate system is doing. The scary part of that is that climate models project four to ten degrees of warming over the next 100 years. So with all of that, there actually is some things to be sort of optimistic about. But my big idea, if you will, is that we really have to raise climate change literacy or climate literacy. I think that's the key to many things. We have to bring these two in line with each other. In other words, public perception should mirror the scientist's perspective. But there is some good news. There are some things to be optimistic about. And you're going to hear some of these discussions today. We're seeing what I believe is the beginning of an energy renaissance. And I'm not just talking about solar, geothermal, hydropower. I mean, there are activities ongoing right now with biofuels, algae, tidal energy, wave energy. These are all a part of that energy renaissance that many of my colleagues are talking about. And I think the climate change discussion is spurring that. And so that's really a reason to believe. The way we design cities and the built infrastructure is evolving. Here in Atlanta, we have the green belt. There are proposals to paint asphalt roads white or rooftops in cities white because it reduces energy use. And that translates to less emissions at the power plant and also reduces the urban heat island, which is another source of temperature change. Something else to really be optimistic about. How many of you heard recently about the release of the next generation science standards? Exactly. That's a reason to believe because for the first time, the next generation science standards has climate change in it, K-8 level. So those kids that I talked about earlier, they'll be learning about this. Now, there are going to be challenges to this and there are going to be some that try to legislate that out. But that is a reason to believe that we have climate change in the core science standards that are emerging. And Georgia, right now, is one of the 26 states involved in those NGSS. Notice I said right now. And the president and the president in his inaugural address elevated climate change to the topic and that was quite encouraging as well. And the reason I believe that upping climate literacy is important is that in order to make the grand changes that we need to address this topic, we need a climate literate populace and voters because at the end of the day, a climate informed public is essential to moving solutions from incremental to monumental. That's key. There are things that we can all do. We can be more efficient in our homes, complex fluorescent light bulbs, more energy efficient cars. But those are incremental. There are some big changes that have to occur and they'll have to come at levels above our pay scale. So what can we do? We can stay informed, get information. The American Meteorological Society, I'm the president of that organization, released a climate statement that is science-based. If you see an expert on the news or quoted in a paper, go to Google Scholar and Google their name and see if they've actually published a paper on climate. They're an expert. And consume information that will help you slay climate zombie theories and awaken climate literacy. Thank you very much.