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Sept. 22, 2015 - Art Bell
02:15:27
Art Bell MITD - Dr Kevin Trenberth Climate Change
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From the high desert and the great American Southwest, I bid you all good evening, good
morning, good afternoon, wherever you may be in the world's time zones, each and every
one of them covered like a blanket by this program, Midnight in the Desert.
I'm Art Bell.
It's my pleasure to be here this evening, and I hope it will be your pleasure to listen.
Well, the Pope is in America.
It's all over the news.
Pope Francis arrived Tuesday.
It is the first visit of his life to the U.S., bringing his humble manner and his Church of the Poor to a rich A powerful nation polarized over economic inequality, immigration, and equal justice.
That would be us.
The President actually went to meet the Pope.
The Pope came off the airplane, and very rarely, rarely do Presidents go to meet a Pope.
But President Obama did that, and welcomed him.
Brian Williams covered him!
That's right, Brian Williams!
Back on the airwaves at MSNBC to anchor coverage of the Pope's visit to the US.
Among other things, very high on the Pope's list of things to discuss will be climate.
And that will be very high on our list of things tonight to discuss.
By the way, a little personal note.
Poor little Asia.
My daughter.
Eight years old.
Hand, foot, and mouth disease.
Miserable.
Locked away in her room by herself.
Visits only from Mama.
Temperatures ranging from 103 and a half down to about 101, depending on.
And pretty miserable.
So, Asia Bell, get better, please.
And for God's sakes, don't give it to me.
I don't think I've ever had it.
Mostly it's kids that get it, but one never knows.
My competitor, I understand, after I wished Tommy a quick recovery when he had his stroke, made note of the fact that I did say something, which was nice, and then said that... What did he say?
I think he said that he wished me luck with my little internet show.
So, this morning, I would like to announce once again, we're on XDS beginning October 1st.
Also, the beginning in December, we have signed KFMB in San Diego, Los Angeles.
That's right, that's a big one.
Really a big monster if you look at their pattern.
If you're the kind of person who looks at patterns, that one's a knockout.
San Diego and just goes up the coast like a rocket ship.
50 KW.
KFRH.
100,000 watts in Las Vegas.
104.3.
Had a chat with him earlier.
A bunch of good guys over there.
Ham operators like myself.
Many of them.
That's KFRH, 100,000 watts Las Vegas, on top of Potosi on 104.3.
They cover parts of four states actually, really big.
Then there's KBET, 760 AM in Las Vegas.
KTKNA, 930 AM in Ketchikan, Alaska.
Been in Ketchikan, love the town.
So they're coming on board.
KLZ, 560 in Denver, Colorado.
These are all coming around the 1st of October.
KLZ 560 in Denver.
5 kilowatts.
They cover all the big cities in Colorado.
WDCD 1540.
Albany, New York.
50,000 watts.
So... You know, I don't know what to say except, uh... Pretty soon...
If you don't hear footsteps over there on the other side, you're going to hear them coming soon.
Real soon.
Listen carefully.
Clump, clump, clump, clump.
One station, one city at a time.
We're coming for you.
It's too late now.
It's 2 AM, dinner is done.
It's 2 AM, the sun is still warm.
The clock strikes 12 and Midnight in the Desert is pounding Package Your Way on the Dark Matter Digital Network.
To call the show, please direct your finger digits to dial 1-952-225-5278.
That's 1-952-CALL-ART.
Well, okay.
You're about to meet a real scientist, Dr. Kevin Trendring.
That's 1-952-CALL-ART.
Well, okay, you're about to meet a real scientist, Dr.
Kevin Trenberth, actually.
Dr. Trenberth is indeed a distinguished senior scientist at the Climate Analysis Section
at the National Center for Atmospheric Research from New Zealand, actually.
He obtained his Doctorate of Science in Meteorology from Massachusetts Institute of Technology, MIT.
He has been prominent in most of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, IPCC, Scientific Assessments of Climate Change.
And has also extensively served the World Climate Research Program in numerous ways, most recently as chair of the WCRP Global Energy and Water Exchanges Project.
He has also served on many national committees.
He is a fellow of the American Meteorological Society, the American Association for Advancement of Science, the American Geophysical Union, and an honorary fellow of the Royal Society of New Zealand.
In 2000, he received the Jewel G. Charney Award from the American Meteorological Society, and in 2003, he was given the NCAR Distinguished Achievement Award.
He has published over 528 scientific articles or papers, including 62 books or chapters, and over 242 refereed journal articles.
He has given many invited scientific talks, as well as appearing on a number of radio and television programs, and of course, newspaper articles.
Welcome, Dr. Trenberth.
Good evening, Art, to you, and hi to everyone.
It's great to have you.
It's kind of hard for me to even know where to begin.
I am such a believer In our warming climate.
So I'll just, I guess, begin by asking you if, in fact, it is, in your opinion now, scientifically settled, that's an important phrase, that our world is warming.
Well, in many respects, this is one of the great things about science, is that it's It's not just a matter of opinion.
It's a matter of the scientific evidence.
All of the facts that we have, the information, the observations, the understanding and the theories that go along with that.
Patrick Daniel Moynihan famously said, you're entitled to your own opinion but not your own facts.
And that's one of the key things about The climate system, the fact is that it is warming.
We've got very good measurements of temperatures around the world showing that the planet is warming and there are many other indicators as well.
The loss of Arctic sea ice, the warming oceans, the rising sea level that goes along with Both the warming oceans and the fact that there are melting glaciers and land ice so that there's more water going into the oceans.
And we can talk about, you know, the actual rates and the numbers and so on.
But, you know, together all of this evidence is extremely compelling to show that the planet is warming and at the same time there are increases in carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gases in the atmosphere from human influences and as a result we can actually tie those together and confidently say that humans are their primary cause of the warming that's going on at the current time.
And that's of course where you're going to meet a great deal of resistance from people.
A lot of people doctor have I guess come to the realization that well yes the climate does seem to be changing But they refuse to take any responsibility for it.
Shirley, when you look at a satellite picture from, I don't know, 10 or 15 years ago of the Arctic, and you look at one from very recently, if you don't go, oh my God, then you don't have good eyesight.
The Arctic is one of the spectacular places where changes have occurred.
Since the 1970s, in the last 40 years or so, there's been about a 40% decrease in the sea ice in around September, which is when the minimum occurs.
And so the loss of Arctic sea ice has been absolutely spectacular.
And that sea ice, I guess, is in some ways not too horrible.
I mean, it's horrible, but not as horrible as it might be, because it's ice, so as it melts, It just, you know, changes forms.
It doesn't become so much additional water, at least.
Am I right about that?
Well, yes, the sea ice is floating and therefore it doesn't, when it melts, it doesn't change sea level much to speak of at all.
I understand that.
of the United States and I don't want to say the Soviet Union, but pretty soon we may be able to say that again.
Russia are in contention with that whole area of the world right now, and it's being said that it may even make the
Panama Canal not irrelevant, but fairly irrelevant if we have shipping
lanes.
Well, of course, that's only likely to really occur in the peak summertime at the moment, but indeed, opening up the
Arctic and the mineral rights there and the ability to drill on
the sea floor and maybe produce even more fossil fuels that further
increase the carbon dioxide in the atmosphere and change the climate even further.
That is a big issue.
It's not a friendly environment, though.
It's pretty hostile.
Major companies like Shell have run into big troubles with huge rigs that have run adrift and gone astray, and there's been loss of life under those circumstances.
All right.
I guess the next logical question is to lay out the proof.
In other words, how do scientists actually know That the recent change in climate is due, in part or in whole, one or the other, to human activities.
How do we know that?
Well, the first thing that scientists are basing their, all of the information on, is our understanding of the basic physics and the laws of nature.
And so these are very well established now.
And we try to encapsulate all of that information in models, climate models.
And then we have all of the information, the observations of what is happening.
And we can quantitatively replicate Very, a great deal of that, a surprisingly large amount of that in our climate models.
And so one of the main tools of many of my colleagues, and we certainly do that at my center, the National Center for Atmospheric Research here, is to build the biggest and best climate models in the world.
And then one of the fun things about being a climate scientist is you can perhaps even sort of play being God for a while.
You can change things.
you can see, well, what would happen if I change this?
What would happen if I change the composition of the atmosphere?
What would happen if I change the surface of the land by cutting down all the trees or things like that?
And you can play these kind of, I'm tempted to say, games, but some of them have serious implications and consequences.
And by doing that, we can, in fact, replicate much of what has happened.
And of course, that has implications then into the future.
And so we can indeed demonstrate that what is happening quantitatively is caused by the human activities, primarily
the increases in carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gases in the atmosphere.
Mm-hmm.
Now I guess this is compounded by What's happening in the rest of the world, we were for a long time mostly the industrialized place.
Now, my god, take a trip to China.
I was there not long ago and what's happening in China, I don't think the people in this country have a sense of how big China is, how many people are there and how they are now acquiring Well, what all people want, you know, a couple cars in the garage, microwave, whatever all else modern living brings with it, a big flat screen TV and so forth and so on.
China is incredible, and it's using incredible amounts of energy, and let me tell you, if you go to old Shanghai, for example, On an average day, your health is in danger.
It is that bad.
It's so bad that you can barely see the skyscrapers.
That's the pollution you're referring to, yes.
It is, yes.
It'll endanger your health.
It will burn your eyes.
You will not have a good day.
It's that bad.
And it's pretty much across China.
I don't necessarily blame them.
They want what everybody else has.
But if they get it, and they are getting it, And the world continues to industrialize.
I kind of wonder, and maybe as a scientist you can answer this, but I wonder if there is, bad couple of words, a tipping point where if we don't turn it around, we can't turn it around.
Yes, well, this relates, of course, to what we do internationally and as a whole.
What China does is to alter the composition of the atmosphere.
Certainly, the air pollution aspects have the greatest effects locally, and air quality is a major issue in China, and they're working to clean that up.
But one of the other side effects of burning fossil fuels to generate electricity is to put more carbon dioxide into the atmosphere.
And carbon dioxide has a long lifetime, and that is distributed globally.
And what they do to the atmosphere has consequences for everyone.
Now, they can also argue that, well, the U.S.
has a lot of industry and burns a lot of fossil fuels in automobiles and in other ways, and is also contributing to the changes in the composition of the atmosphere.
Historically, the U.S.
has still outdistanced China in terms of the total amount that we've put into the atmosphere, and a lot of that is still there.
But on an annual basis now, China well exceeds what the US is putting into the atmosphere.
And Europe is a little bit further behind.
Europe as a whole is just a little bit further behind.
But those are the big three.
And then there are other contributions from other nations.
But together, We're changing the climate, changing each other's climate.
And in many ways, it's outrageous.
I don't know why there isn't more of a sense of outrage that the Chinese are changing our climate, or why they're not more outraged that people in the US are changing their climate.
And instead, we rush down this together, this joint path, Which puts the livelihood of the whole world in some kind of jeopardy.
And this was indeed one of the things which Pope Francis focused on in his recent encyclical that came out Laudisio C praised BTU.
He made a statement that, you know, climate change is a global problem with grave implications, environmental, social, economic, political, and for the distribution of goods.
It represents one of the principal challenges facing humanity in our day.
and so he is very much aware of this and has tried to raise attention to this aspect and
the fact that what we are doing by in some ways building a better life and you certainly
can't argue that the Indians and the Chinese certainly want to have electricity and have
a refrigerator and the kind of capabilities that we have here in the US but if we all
continue down this path then it has some consequences and some implications.
Well okay let me come back to that question and that is whether there is a tipping point,
whether there is a point in whether you believe scientifically there could come a point where
if we don't turn back we can't turn back.
you.
Well, in some sense, That's probably happening already.
I don't think we can stop climate change.
We can certainly slow it down.
We may be able to, in some sense, manage it.
And that means we have to go with the flow.
We have to adapt to the climate changes as they occur.
But there may come some points, some real tipping points, where things get out of hand. One of them ultimately might be the
melting of Greenland for instance. Now that, even if it continues
relentlessly, at some point we may not be able to stop that from
happening.
Now it may not happen for many centuries. One of the estimates is it
may take 800 years for instance for that to happen.
But if that happens, then sea level goes up by 7 meters or thereabouts, over 20 feet.
And it inundates all of the coastal regions.
And, of course, that happens gradually, and sea level is already rising at rates which are causing problems.
And there are big consequences when there are nearby storms, which have a storm surge on top of that rising sea level.
All right.
Let me try this out on you, Doctor.
Whether you're talking about The Arctic, or you're talking about Greenland.
There are some in science who believe that the warming sort of feeds upon itself.
In other words, as something melts, you then get a dark surface below, particularly in Greenland, I would think.
And that, of course, promotes more adjacent melting.
It actually speeds it up.
What do you think about that?
Well, that's very much true, yes.
And that's the reason the Arctic is one of the focal points of this.
Why the polar bear is one of the primary indicators of endangerment of the polar bears is one of the key things with regard to climate change.
So, yes, we refer to that as the ice albedo feedback.
So albedo refers to the reflectivity, and it's snow and ice.
As snow and ice goes down, the planet gets darker, so it absorbs more radiation, and so it amplifies things.
That kind of effect also takes place in mountain areas, and so it's probably happening out here in Colorado as well, and some of the bigger changes, therefore, are also occurring in mountain areas.
Oh, I didn't even ask where you were.
You're in Colorado.
Yes, I am.
Okay.
Yes, I've seen it.
I've been up to Alaska and the effects in Alaska are, my God, they're absolutely remarkable and sad.
What's happening with the tundra is amazing.
Have you been up there?
I have indeed, and of course the President was up there not very long ago and highlighted a number of these aspects.
The thawing of permafrost in many places, and there are huge frost heaves, if you want to think of it that way, but huge heaves in the ground that can occur because of the uneven thawing of the permafrost.
The permafrost is the frozen layer in the upper part of the ground.
Some of that does tend to thaw on a seasonal basis.
And that's referred to the seasonal thermocline, but some of it is actually thawing altogether and buildings that have been built on top of that with the assumption that it would be permanently frozen have become completely mangled and toppled and so on.
And the infrastructure is under attack in some sense in a lot of Alaska as a result.
Yes, when you go on tours in Alaska, they point out the dying trees and the changes in their environment, and it really is sad.
We don't see it as much here, but what we are seeing are headlines That say, for example, we just had the warmest July in all of whatever, or we just had the warmest year in the last measurable years since we've been keeping records.
Constantly having headlines like that, that would seem to suggest to me that even the average person who's a casual watcher of the news would say to themselves, hmm, that must mean something.
Yes, well, we keep breaking records of all kinds, and the ones you're referring to primarily relate to temperature, but there are many other manifestations of climate change, and some of the biggest effects occur with associated changes in water and droughts, and out in California, major droughts and all the wildfires.
Doctor, we'll pick up on that in a moment.
I'm part of that drought.
Stay right where you are.
This is Midnight in the Desert.
This is a video of me playing the game.
I'm not a pro at this game, but I'm trying to get the hang of it.
For my life.
Tonight we're blessed with a distinguished scientist, Dr.
Kevin E. Trenberth.
He is with the Climate Analysis Section at the National Center for Atmospheric Research
and knows what he's talking about.
So, I ask that you... I understand there are political implications to what we're talking about right now, tonight.
I'm a libertarian, but I know on the right, you're sitting out there screeching and groaning and moaning and probably kicking the computer.
And so I would ask that when you do get on and you do speak with us, you do so politely.
You can disagree.
Do so scientifically, if you are able.
Now, Doctor, you mentioned the drought.
And that's a big item for me.
I live in a place called Pahrump, Nevada.
It's about six miles from the California border and not very far from Death Valley.
And so we are very much in the middle of a drought.
As a matter of fact, Lake Mead, which is just over the hill from me in Las Vegas, is now drilling a new, what they call straw, so they can tap water much lower down in Lake Mead because it is beginning to empty.
That's how serious it is, Doctor.
Yes.
So, the drought is really, really, really serious now.
Do we have relief on the way?
understand is it El Nino that's on the way I think? That's correct.
There is substantial, very strong El Nino already out there in the Pacific Ocean.
El Nino refers to a warming of the tropical Pacific Ocean east of the dateline in particular
and from there to the California coast or to the Americas.
It mainly has a really strong influence on the weather patterns across North America
in the northern hemisphere winter.
The main influences on California begin to really pick up in November.
not really there at the moment.
There are very profound influences on the distribution of hurricanes and typhoons, and it's been an extraordinarily active season out in the Pacific at the expense of the Atlantic, by the way, because when there's more action out in the Pacific, it actually suppresses the action in the Atlantic.
And so it's been a fairly quiet year in the Atlantic in terms of the hurricanes.
But boy, there's been some Some major activity that has caused extensive flooding, most recently in Japan and also in China and the Philippines, and there were at one point three hurricanes in the vicinity of Hawaii at one time, never seen before.
Right.
So there's certainly very warm sea temperatures out there.
That invigorates all of the storms that do come into California and then there's a real risk that there will be a major storm track come in with heavy rains and a real risk of flooding.
So suddenly you may have too much of a good thing, too much rainfall and the question will be whether you can manage that water adequately.
So the mudslides might put out the fires.
Yes by then hopefully the fires are out indeed but the wildfires goes along with the drought and the very high temperatures and so that's what's been happening now and it's of course not just California but Oregon, Washington, Western Canada And even earlier, right up in Alaska, they had an amazing number of fires this year.
Yes, it's really, really, really serious.
And being where I am, we get an awful lot of the smoke from those fires.
And I might add, when pollution is really, really bad in China, we have even been the recipients of this weird, orangish sort of haze that they say comes from Dust storms and pollution in China.
So that tells us, I guess, what a small world it is, huh?
That's right, yes.
And I mean, that's fairly unusual because the dust tends to get rained out.
And if you get dust or pollution in the atmosphere, it has a lifetime of about five to seven days, something like that, on average.
But there are certainly circumstances where It can last a bit longer, and there are occasions where it makes it all the way across the Pacific.
I remember, Doctor, several years ago, quite a few years ago, scientists were saying, look, if CO2 levels reach 400 ppm, parts per million, we're really going to be in trouble.
And it's also my recollection that very recently, in Hawaii, they measured something very close to, if not 400 parts per million.
Is that about right?
Yes, we're at that level now.
There is a seasonal cycle to the amount of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere, so there are little fluctuations up and down, and there tends to be a drawdown as the northern hemisphere greens up.
So that's the plants, through photosynthesis, taking carbon dioxide out of the atmosphere.
but as we go into the fall which we're doing now and uh... there's no more growth of leaves and instead the
leaves on the forest floor and so on
are decaying uh... that puts more carbon dioxide back into the
atmosphere and we're right at that four hundred level so we will
uh... this year probably be the first year where we exceed that level four
hundred parts per million by volume
so the pre-industrial levels were around two hundred and eighty parts per million by
volume and so there's been a forty percent increase
in carbon dioxide in the atmosphere this is uh... very well established
and we also know that carbon dioxide is a greenhouse gas and so it has
consequences All right.
You know, nobody likes to scare people, Dr. Butt.
There is such a rabid campaign against persons like yourself of science who are sounding the alarm that you're sounding.
And when I say rabid, I mean really rabid.
Just calling it pseudoscience, false, scare tactics.
A lot of it, no doubt, sponsored by oil companies.
In fact, when you see some of the men who claim to be climate scientists speaking in public on radio, most radio, frankly, is right-wing radio, they tend to be very anti-climate change and saying, oh, no, no, no, you know,
we're more likely going into another ice age or something completely opposite.
When you check their credentials very carefully, you find some connections to the oil companies.
I wonder if that has been your experience.
I think what you're saying is really true.
You know, the scientists in this case are the messengers, and this is sort
of the shoot the messenger kind of attitude.
The role of scientists is to lay out the facts and the prospects and the consequences, but the decision of what we do about this is not ours.
It's not the role of scientists to say whether we should continue along this path or not.
That decision involves everyone, and it does involve politics, and therefore, some of that politics is quite nasty.
It involves all kinds of vested interests, and some of them have very large, deep pockets, especially those in the fossil fuel industry.
And so, that's where this is certainly coming from.
And it's been very nasty.
A lot of this is happening at a very high level.
Many of the Republican presidential candidates, unfortunately, are, I think, deniers of climate change.
When I say a denier, that often is a word which some people don't like.
The deniers don't like it in particular.
I say denier when they're actually in denial of basic information and facts that are well understood.
I think my approach is certainly that we should Try to understand as best we can and make the best statements we can about what is happening and why.
But what we do about it really ought to be a separate part of that and unfortunately those things tend to get confounded and that's where the climate scientists unfortunately get caught up in politics and some of it's rather nasty.
It's very nasty, no question about it.
Let me ask you about this.
The sun Our sun obviously plays a role in some way in our climate.
I mean, it's up there, a heating machine, nuclear heating machine.
And I wonder if you can discuss whether you think the sun has played a role in climate change in recent decades.
Well, the sun, as you say, is extremely important.
If the sun were to change in a substantial way, then it would Indeed, caused major climate changes.
However, we have very good measurements of the sun and what it's doing ever since 1979 from spacecraft.
Before then, we only had measurements of the sun through the atmosphere, and a lot of the measurements were difficult to interpret because a lot of them were just measuring what was going on in the atmosphere rather than what was going on in the sun.
But since 1979, we know that there are variations in the sun.
There's the sunspot cycle.
The variations are of the order of a tenth of one percent.
And if that were to continue, if there were a tenth of one percent change over a hundred years, then that would indeed make a difference.
That would matter.
But the thing is, it's on an eleven-year cycle, and so it's going in one direction for five years, and then it's going in another direction for five years, and the effects are so small as to be almost imperceptible.
And we know that there has not been an increase in the solar radiation That we're receiving, and so we know that the warming that's occurring is not due to the changes in the sun.
Actually, Doctor, quite the opposite.
How about this?
I'm a ham operator, so I watch the sun like a hawk, because how the sun acts affects how well my radio works or doesn't work, put broadly.
That's right.
And here's the thing.
The sun, if you look back into the 50s, 60s, 70s, was really on a roll.
I mean, we were having some solar cycles that would curl your hair.
They were wonderful for radio, but I suspect they stirred up climate a little bit.
Now, things have changed, and they're actually in the business of predicting the possibility of another broader minimum Which means almost no sunspots at all in the next cycle.
Sad for Ham Radio, but if we are warming and the sun does play a part in that warming, then having it at a minimum could be a good thing in the short term.
Yes?
Well, perhaps.
A number of things you stated in there that are not well established.
Yes, through about the 1950s the sunspots cycle got more active in the first 50 years of the 20th century and may have contributed a little bit to some of the warming that went on through that period.
Since the 1950s, our best understanding is that There hasn't been very much change.
If anything, it's been a slight change to slight less action.
And the last sunspot cycle, the minimum was certainly less than it had been on any of the previous ones that were recorded.
And so this has led to the speculation that you mentioned about, is there going to be a more minimum, which happened back in the Little Ice Age period a few hundred years ago.
And indeed, that was a period where the sun may have played a role in a slightly cooler planet Earth.
But at NCAR and in other places, we have solar scientists who study this in great detail
and there's tremendous uncertainty about exactly what is going to happen to the sun.
At the moment, this current strong phase, the active phase of the sun is certainly going
on, it's not as strong as the previous one, but the sun is far from done by any means
and there's no sign of any mode minimum that we know of coming up.
So part of the argument you're making I guess is that if something like this were to happen,
then maybe we could counter it in some fashion by changing the composition of the atmosphere
and indeed sort of engineering our way out of some of these issues.
But at the moment, I don't think there's a prospect of that.
Okay.
If the ice in Greenland melts, Um, fully melted, as you pointed out, we'd have 20 feet of sea rise.
But a long time before it fully melts, we're going to get a lot of sea rise.
And it's not going to take very much sea rise for many of our coastal cities, like New York,
Miami, New Orleans, especially, and many, many others to simply disappear.
Would that be accurate?
Since 1992, we've had satellites in space with altimeters on board.
And so these are actually looking down at the surface of the earth,
and they're measuring the surface of the ocean to millimeter accuracy.
We get a global picture about every 16 days as to what the sea level is actually doing.
Prior to that, we only had measurements at coastal stations, tracking sea level.
The best estimate was that sea level went up about 6 inches in the 20th century as a whole.
Since we've had this satellite in space, we know that sea level has gone up About three inches.
Sea level is currently rising at a rate of about 3.2, 3.3 millimeters per year.
If you think about that, you think about the ruler that you have, a one-foot ruler.
It has a scale of millimeters on it, and it goes up to about 30 centimeters.
In other words, 300 millimeters.
And so the current rate of sea level rise is just a bit over a foot per century.
But it's possible that it's accelerating and certainly the forecasts are that we could easily exceed two feet of sea level rise and maybe as much as three feet of sea level rise by 2100.
Good Lord!
And so this is what is indeed causing problems in coastal regions.
So it contributes to storms like Superstorm Sandy that inundated New York City.
In the New York City area, we're not just concerned about sea level rise, but also what the land is doing, and the land has actually subsided a little bit there, and therefore together, instead of it being about an 8 or 9 inch rise in sea level, it's been more than a foot of relative sea level rise in that region.
And then we had the Superstorm Sandy, a major storm surge on top of that, and as a result there was the inundation of all of the subway systems and so on, and catastrophic results.
And so sea level rise is a big factor there, and it was also in Katrina that inundated New Orleans back in 2005.
And increasingly, as we look around the world, you know, one of the most devastating ones was Super Typhoon Haiyan that went through the Philippines in November of 2013.
And the devastation there was just amazing.
Doctor, I lived in the Philippines until about three years ago.
I lived in the Philippines.
Actually, in Manila.
I'm quite familiar with how outrageously strong typhoons are beginning to get.
People in the United States just don't understand that the effects of rising sea levels, warmer ocean temperatures, are going to be more apparent in the immediate time frame by gigantic typhoons and eventually hurricanes and the fact that we've got higher sea levels drives more water during the storm surges much further inland and kills many, many more people.
That's right, and another big factor actually is the El Nino phenomenon.
Along the coast of the Americas, sea level can go up by about a foot, and already it's about six inches higher than it was, say, at this time a year ago.
And so as storms come in in the wintertime, with a higher sea level and along with a bit of a storm surge, that increases coastal erosion.
And so this raises the prospects of, you know, houses along the coast toppling into the ocean.
Doctor, thank you.
Hold on, we're at a quick two-minute break.
From the high deserts and the great American Southwest, you're listening to Midnight in the Desert.
I'm Art Bell.
Call.
Midnight in the Desert, let the phone ring until answered.
These calls are unscreened for your listening pleasure.
Call 1952-CALL-ART. That's 1952-225-5278.
Don't call yet.
We'll get to the calls in a bit.
We have a very distinguished man with us, Dr. Kevin E. Trenberth, who is a distinguished senior scientist in the Climate Analysis Section at the National Center for Atmospheric Research.
And he's got a lot to say about what's going on with our climate.
Doctor, welcome back.
I would say this.
Here in America, most of us, People don't worry about places like the Philippines.
They don't worry about places like the Maldives, where people may have to actually pick up and leave their islands forever because they're about to be covered by water.
Right?
This is right.
And of course these small island states, and there are others in the Caribbean, for instance, All right, here's one.
I get messages on my computer as I do the program.
We call it the wormhole.
and carbon dioxide in the atmosphere for the most part, but they are, they do
suffer the higher sea levels and the more intense hurricanes or typhoons that
come along and can potentially inundate them. Mm-hmm. All right, here's one. I get
messages on my computer as I do the program. We call it the wormhole. This
comes from Travis, who says, it's not that we're climate deniers.
It's a question of whether we should destroy our economy to try and change an Earth cycle, and whether man is causing it.
Water vapor, volcanoes, sunspots, and so forth.
So, I do understand that argument.
In order to actually affect this in some positive way, we would have to change our economy in a very, perhaps, painful way, right?
Well, it doesn't have to be painful.
I think this is one of the things.
I don't think it's so much what you do, it's actually how you go about it.
And indeed, this is one of the key roles of politicians.
If you implement changes in the right way, and that means often gradually over a particular time horizon, Uh, then it doesn't have to hurt the economy at all.
In fact, it can stimulate the economy and help in many ways.
And there have been many examples of that kind of things.
But certainly, if you make very abrupt changes, it can be very disruptive of the economy.
And so I would say again... Uh-oh.
I think we just lost him.
To what, I don't know.
You hear that soft sort of hissing background?
That's really odd.
We lost our guest, and he's on a... Let me try again.
Nope, we definitely lost him.
That's really odd.
And so we're going to have to try and get him back.
Strangely, the phone is not disconnecting, so Doctor, if you can hear me...
If you can hear me, Doctor, go ahead and hang up and try and redial me.
So if I see you disconnect, I'll know you're doing that.
But we lost your audio.
I don't know why.
I have no idea what's going on there.
Isn't that odd?
I wonder if somebody doesn't like us talking about that.
Strangely, we're not getting a disconnect.
Very strange.
Okay, there we go.
We got a disconnect.
So, we'll see if Dr. Kremberth calls us back.
I'm sure he will.
And I think there he is.
That was very odd, doctor.
Very odd.
All of a sudden, all I heard from you was sort of a soft hiss.
That was very odd, yes.
Nothing happened at this end.
You were able to hear me?
I could hear, well, you were breaking up, but something happened, obviously, on the line.
Alright, at any rate.
People will say, look, climate is always changing, and they would be right.
It's hot, it's cold, year-to-year changes, and so can you prove to me that it's not just another natural change that's going on?
Well that's certainly one of the key things and that's the reason why it's easy to maybe cause problems in understanding what's going on.
There's always weather going on and there are always places that are much warmer than average and places that are cooler than average.
The way in which the atmosphere behaves, there are large-scale waves in the atmosphere There are so-called cyclones and anti-cyclones and so we always find that there are places
That are much above the average around the globe and below average.
And when it's above average, you can't point to that and say, oh, look, global warming.
And by the same token, when it's colder than normal, you can't point to it and say, oh, look, there's no global warming.
And so you have to indeed adopt a large scale perspective and understand that there is natural variability.
There are El Nino events that cause Substantial changes in regional climate around the world and so that's one of the role of the climate scientists is to try and develop this global picture and so there are certain metrics that stand out.
One of them is the global mean surface temperature.
That does fluctuate with El Nino events and naturally and to a limited extent but the warming that's going on is well outside of the so-called noise of natural variability.
And there are other clear indicators, and sea level is one of my favorites.
The rising sea level is relentless, and a clear indicator that the warming is occurring, and that even if you're not experiencing above normal temperatures at one particular time, somewhere else is.
And if you look around the world in this past summer, some of the records that have been broken have just been amazing to see.
Okay, some have said there is no recent global warming, that there's been a kind of a hiatus in global warming.
I'm sure you've read those articles, yes?
I have even written a couple of them, yes.
And this refers to the fact that the rate of rise of global mean surface temperature has paused, if you like to think of it that way, or certainly slowed down in the 2000s.
And that's clearly over at the end of 2013 and it didn't actually cool, but it does relate
very much to the starting point of where you pick that up from.
And the place that it's usually picked up from is the big 1997-1998 El Nino event.
That's the biggest one up until now that we have on record.
So in 1998 it was the warmest year of the 20th century and so since then you can argue
maybe there hasn't been that much warming, but you don't have to go back very far.
If you just compare with the 1990s, then the 2000s as a whole were substantially warmer than the 1990s, and the 1990s were substantially warmer than the 1980s.
And so this does relate to, I suppose, what you might call decadal variability.
so this is variations natural variations that occur on about a
ten-year time frame and we know that uh... that some of this is very much tied
up with uh... the oceans and how they respond
to the changes in the climate okay going back to what travis said a moment ago about not
being a climate denier but
whether we should destroy our economy uh... how would you see us
modify our behavior in a way that would have a meaningful change
and slow down this horrible uh... without really adversely affecting the economy.
Have you given that some thought?
A little bit, yes.
And the thing about climate change then is that there are Substantial costs.
The costs are in the tens of billions of dollars per year in the United States.
The Superstorm Sandy, you know, $70 billion, and that had a component of climate change in it.
The major drought that occurred in 2012, which is the warmest year across the U.S.
as a whole, the cost of that was about $70 billion.
I don't know what the assessment is with all the damage that's occurred in the wildfires on the West Coast this year, but all of these things have major costs.
It's certainly in the tens of billions of dollars.
what we're where is that coming from it's coming from all of the
contributions of especially the burning of fossil fuels around the world
and so uh... the the suggestion that many have made which i endorse
is that there should be a price on carbon uh... there should be uh... the easiest way to do that is
probably through a carbon tax but there are
other ways of potentially putting some kind of a a price on carbon
This is where you're going to run into really, really heavy political opposition.
That's correct.
A tax on carbon, and this is where they go crazy.
This is absolutely correct, and yet if you think about it, if you can get some kind of attacks gradually increasing on carbon, and that has occurred in various places, in individual cities, In some states, and in some countries even, then the private sector gets involved.
There are incentives to do things a bit differently, and sometimes it's amazing to see what can actually happen.
And so this relates to the idea that if you do it in the right way, it can actually be a positive thing and not a negative thing.
Alright, so make it more expensive to burn carbon.
is what it boils down to. And make it expensive enough that people seek other avenues. They begin
putting together various solar ideas and wind ideas and there's a billion different ideas that don't get pursued
because they're not yet economically viable.
That's exactly right, yes. That's exactly the sort of thing that gets triggered
and many of the people in industry, I've testified before Congress alongside
people from power companies and many of the power companies, they are
not worried about having a price on carbon.
What they want to know is some kind of certainty as to whether there will be a price on carbon, because they're planning whether they're going to build a new coal-fired power station 35 or 40 years from now.
The average life of a power station is something like that.
And so there's these long time horizons associated with things, and it's the uncertainty about what politicians might do about this, which is actually a bigger problem than actually doing something, and doing it in the right way.
Well, of course nuclear power is one option, but it is, you know, at this point, with what's happened in Japan, I'm afraid it's politically not particularly viable.
It may be.
Maybe I'm wrong.
But, you know, there are many, many problems associated with it, like where to store all this nasty stuff we get.
There are variations in nuclear power that are used in Europe that allow some sort of recycling and so forth and so on.
I guess we have to begin to look into all this.
And the question is, if we don't, if we continue in gridlock, and boy are we good at gridlock, We're going to continue along exactly the same road we're on.
Until what?
Until we begin losing coastal cities?
Until people can't live in certain places anymore at all?
I mean... Yes, so it's coming back to nuclear power just briefly.
You mentioned the disaster in Japan, and that has been a major setback for nuclear power.
But you know France has many nuclear power stations and a lot of their grid, their electrical grid is actually run with nuclear power and they've been able to do that reasonably successfully for some time.
People worry about nuclear power because of the association with nuclear bombs as well and so that relates to security kind of issues.
I mean, I think nuclear power could indeed be a part of the solution, but it's not the whole solution, and it does have these other worries that you generate nuclear waste, and that nuclear waste has long time frames associated with it, tens of thousands of years, and so that is indeed an unsolved problem.
Well, they have done some work, I think, in France, in terms of recycling some of that That really nasty stuff.
I don't know how viable it is on a larger scale, and I know we've got an awful lot of it.
Hold on, Doctor.
We'll take this quick break.
My guest is Dr. Kevin Trembath.
He is a distinguished senior scientist in the climate analysis section at the National Center for Atmospheric Research.
You're happy when you're brave.
Baby, when you're feeling right.
You'll never see the morning light.
Remember, when calling Midnight in the Desert, let the phone ring until answered.
These calls are unscreened for your listening pleasure.
Call 1-952-CALL-ART.
That's 1-952-225-5278.
That's right.
They are unscreened.
And so, toward the bottom of the hour here, next few minutes, after the break, we're going to open the lines.
And I'm going to ask, again, Uh, even if you disagree, I'm going to ask you to please be respectful, and if you want to challenge, do so, uh, at your scientific best.
Because I think what's been laid before you tonight are scientific facts.
So, if you want to, uh, argue about it, try and argue scientifically.
I understand all of you are not scientists, but I think it is important, really, really important, that we come to some kind of conclusion about whether all this is true, or You know, they're just making it up to scare us, which is what a lot of people say.
Doctor, what is ocean acidification and why does it matter?
So one of the consequences of burning fossil fuels, as we mentioned before, is that more carbon dioxide goes into the atmosphere and about half of that carbon dioxide ends up going into the ocean.
And so this then forms a very mild acid called carbonic acid and the ocean as a result is becoming more acidic.
This has consequences for many organisms.
It means if there's more acid in the ocean it's harder for organisms to form shells or it can even erode shells and it can affect the bones of Okay.
There are dead zones in our oceans.
Now, you know, they're laid off on many things.
side effect of increasing carbon dioxide in the atmosphere and the burning of fossil fuels.
Okay, there are dead zones in our oceans. Now, you know, they're laid off on many things.
Some say it's algae blooms or something else, and some scientists are not exactly sure what
the dead zones are and why they're dead zones. But could these be related in any way to this
acidification talk about?
Maybe not quite so much to that aspect.
Most of them, and especially in the Gulf of Mexico, for instance, it's very much related to nutrients that have been run off fertilizer that has flown down the Mississippi, for instance, and gone into the Gulf.
And so it's the fertilizer that has triggered the growth of certain kinds of organisms that have taken
the oxygen out of the ocean
and help to form these dead zones. The way in which climate change
plays a role is that the ocean warms from the top down and the ocean
is a stable configuration where there's warm water on top of cold water. The deep parts of the ocean are
actually very cold and as a result if we warm the ocean a bit more it becomes
even more stable which means it's harder to mix
oxygen and air down into the ocean.
Yet, that is vital for all of the fish and mammals and organisms that exist within the ocean.
And so, yes, these dead zones have grown in part, but a lot of it is related to runoff nutrients.
Still scary.
I mean, areas of the ocean where life just isn't.
And I guess in the long run we pretty much, man that is, pretty much depends on the ocean for, well gee, a lot of things, right?
Well yes, I mean there are certainly, there are major fisheries and the health of the oceans, I mean the oceans are so vast that we often think of them as being infinite and yet increasingly we are beginning to realize that that's not the case.
At the beginning of the program, I asked you, Doctor, if climate change is now settled science.
And again, I ask, is it settled science?
I mean, yes, some disagree.
But if you look across the spectrum of reputable scientists not connected to the fossil fuel industry in some way or another, is there pretty much universal agreement on what you're telling us tonight?
Well, yes and no.
There are many aspects of it which are settled science, that humans are causing a change in the composition of the atmosphere, the increases in carbon dioxide, and that produces a warming, and that the climate is changing as a consequence.
And so all of that is very well settled.
When you come down to put exact numbers on it, or what is happening at an individual place,
then there is a bit more wiggle room, there's a bit more uncertainty.
And there are many aspects of climate science where there's a lot more to be learned
and we can build better models and make better predictions as to exactly what will happen.
And one of the biggest complications relates to all aspects relating to exactly what will happen with rainfall and the drought and even snowfall and things like that.
All right.
We have some ideas there.
All right.
Let me ask you about something a little speculative, because models are a little bit that way.
You said that you play with models with regard to the climate, and I fully understand that.
It's like the Pentagon playing war games, sort of.
What is the best scenario and the worst scenario that you've seen in some climate models as you have, in quotes, played with them?
Well, there are projections that are made, and these are coordinated internationally through this organization called the IPCC, the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change.
And the projections are under most, well, a lot of what happens in the future, of course, depends on what we continue to do and how much carbon dioxide we continue to put into the atmosphere.
But the projections are that we will experience considerable warming over the 21st century.
The best guesses are that it will be in the range of about four and a half to eight and a half degrees Fahrenheit by the year 2100.
That is actually an exceedingly large number.
uh... that those those kind of numbers are getting up to the kind of numbers that make the difference between uh... a major ice age and and the current climate uh... for instance uh... they're they're approaching those those kind of numbers and so uh... when you have that on a global basis it means locally that the the extremes that are occurring the very high temperatures and associated uh... issues with uh... with that things like droughts are are so much worse uh... than they are now and we're already guiding getting uh... glimpses of of the sort of things that happen uh... through uh... that the drought in california for instance
I mean, that's regional, but it's happening every year.
It just happens in different places.
You know, 2010 it was in Russia, the major Russian heat wave and wildfires and so on, and other years it's been in Australia and so on.
So it moves around, it happens in different places, but increasingly It's more and more widespread, and this is one of the things which confuses the general public, perhaps.
It's not happening everywhere all at once, but this is the way in which the atmosphere and the climate system actually works.
It's going to continue to happen at different places in different times storms uh...
they don't all happen uh... along the uh... eastern seaboard all at once uh... there's a
hurricane that comes uh... shore in one location in the next year it's a
different location and and so on
uh... eventually uh... everywhere gets hit but not all at the same time
yes well what happens is the media covers uh... over example uh...
somebody in buffalo new york this last year uh... buried in probably about a
hundred and ten inches of snow unable to get even out of their house and they're quoted uh...
frequently as saying
global warming my butt
uh... look at this and of course that's what sticks in people's minds so
uh... the media Well, I would like to pick up on that particular point, because snow is actually an interesting case.
The biggest snowfalls occur when the temperatures are around 28 to 32 degrees Fahrenheit, and you may have heard the expression that the air can be freeze-dried, or you can freeze dry things, or that it's too cold to snow.
I've heard that.
Indeed.
If you warm things up over the continent in wintertime, you expect that there will be more snow because the air can hold more moisture when it's warmer.
All right, Doctor.
Hold it there.
We've got to break.
We have to break.
I'm sorry.
Yes, I lived in Alaska.
I saw ice fog.
It was indeed too cold to snow.
We'll be back.
Well, alright.
We're about to open the lines.
and midnight in the desert is pounding package your way on the dark matter
digital network to call the show please direct your finger digits to dial
1952-225-5278 that's 1952 call art. Well alright we're about to open the
lines Dr. Kevin E. Trenberth is my guest a distinguished senior
scientist in the climate analysis section at the National Center for Atmospheric
research and listen to me I'm getting a lot of messages like this.
Bill in Ohio says, hey Art, we must kill off humans to save the planet, but not the rich people like you, though.
Well, not rich, uncomfortable only.
And Hayart says, Duck Speakeasy?
What a name.
Hayart, climate science is far from settled.
Eagerly await you having on someone from the other side.
I suggest Steve McIntyre from climateaudit.org.
All right, well, you know what?
As I mentioned, I'm not anything but a libertarian.
I'm in the middle.
And I'd be happy to have somebody on from the other side.
Unlike, I might add, those right-wing... about 80 or 90 percent, it seems like, of talk radio is right-wing, right?
And inevitably, they have climate deniers on the air.
I mean, there's no question.
If you want to know about some of these people, and I'm not talking about this gentleman I just mentioned, but many of them are tied to the fossil fuel industry in one way or the other.
Again, feel free to call, feel free to disagree, but please do be polite.
That's all I do ask.
So, if you want to call, our national number is area code 952-225-5278.
Put a 1 in front of that.
So it's 1-952-225-5278.
By Skype in North America.
Put a 1 in front of that.
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By Skype in North America.
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M-I-T-D-5-5.
And I'm not going to depend on a Maldives call.
We were talking briefly about snow, Doctor, when the break arrived.
Yes, let me try and wrap this up.
The key thing about snow is that or the atmosphere is that if it warms up by one degree Fahrenheit, the water holding capacity of the atmosphere increases by 4%.
And since the 1970s, there's about 5% more moisture in the atmosphere as a whole.
What we find in terms of snow is that there has been increases in snow cover from about November through to February but in all the other months of the year in March through to October there are substantial decreases across the northern hemisphere in terms of snowpack and this is not at all surprising this is exactly what you expect because of the fact that the atmosphere can hold more moisture and so out here in Colorado our biggest snowfalls occur in November
and in uh... march rather than in the cold winter months in the middle of of the year and so cold does not go snow does not go along with cold that's been one of the mistakes that uh... senator inhofe made uh... when he actually took a snowball on the floor of the senate uh... uh... onto onto the floor of the senate earlier this year well with that much hot air it couldn't survive very long no it didn't All right, well, here it comes.
Stephen on Skype, you're on the air with Dr. Trenberth.
Hi, Art?
Yes, hello, Stephen.
Get close to your mic.
Hey, Art.
Hey, he mentioned Engineered Solution earlier, and I wanted to ask him about if he's been watching this project, this international project that they're building in the south of France called Eater.
It's a fusion project.
It's fusion of hydrogen suspended in plasma.
And it's clean.
There's no negative impact.
And I think they're doing it in response to global warming.
And I was just wondering if he'd heard of it and if he sees that as a viable solution.
Well, I'm not sure it's up to the viable point.
Have you heard of it, Doctor?
Not really.
I think it's the same thing.
It would be wonderful if you could develop that technology, but it's not at a point where it's mature enough to actually be able to use at the moment.
But yes, having an unlimited supply of energy would solve a lot of the problems, but it's not a solved problem yet.
All right, let's go to the phones.
Hello there, you're on the air.
Hi Art, thanks for taking my call, and thank you so much to Dr. Trenberth for being a guest tonight.
And Art, just so you know, every one of your fans is wishing the best for your daughter tonight and hoping that she gets well soon.
Well, thank you.
Briefly, if I may recommend two articles before getting to my question, I think that you'll find them fascinating.
One is called The End of History by Noam Chomsky, and the other is called When the End of Civilization is Your Day Job in GQ.
Okay.
And that leads to my question.
The GQ article talks about a glaciologist who's received a lot of notoriety over the past year or so.
I think his name is Jason Box.
And he takes a very pessimistic view of our future and believes that, essentially, we're done here.
You know, he's moved his family out to Denmark as a preemptive move in light of global warming.
And I'm curious, Doctor, if you believe, first, if we are so doomed, and second, regardless of if we are or aren't, Is there anything that we individually can hope to do?
For example, I try to not eat beef to minimize my impact, but it's hard to think that that does much.
And finally, my last comment, and I'll take my question off the air, is...
Is it not just a bit ironic for us in the developed world to condemn countries like India and China, like you said Art, for developing and yes, polluting, and while it may be deplorable, it just seems a bit big of us, in my opinion, to condemn others for trying to get a degree of comfort.
Once we've already gotten ours, after we've wrecked our havoc upon the globe.
Yeah, well that's an easy answer.
Of course it's wrong of us to condemn them for wanting what we have.
That's ridiculous.
As to whether or not we're doomed, Doctor, you know, I understand you have to be careful of what you say in public, but there are some people who think that we're almost at the irreversible Point.
I live in an interesting area, Doctor.
You know, out near Death Valley, we get summertime temperatures that, on occasion, have hit 115, 116 degrees.
Now, you add 5 or 10 degrees to that, and it's not livable, even with the best air conditioning.
Yes, well, he mentioned Jason Box.
I know Jason.
And one of the reasons he moved to Denver was not just to get out of the way, but because he's a glaciologist and he works extensively in Greenland, and he's done a lot of work there.
I do not agree with his statement about that we're doomed by any means, though.
I mean, we're certainly headed in the direction where we're going to experience Significant climate change and exactly what magnitude that climate change will be is still somewhat in our hands, but we are going to experience some of it and it will have some consequences.
Uh, you know, the way in which we often talk about this is that there are two parts to the overall solution.
One of them is so-called mitigation.
This relates to slowing down or even stopping the problem from happening in the first place by limiting emissions of carbon dioxide into the atmosphere.
And that's what a lot of the negotiations that are going to peak in Paris at the end of the year are
focused on.
The other part of it is adaptation, living with the consequences, if you like to think of that,
or planning for the consequences.
And if we can plan for them, then indeed we can live with some of those consequences.
But some of the consequences that we've already discussed about the rising sea level
and coastal flooding are ones that are going to be very expensive and hard to avoid.
And certainly if we can slow down or stop this process, then it's a better way to do that.
Just a quick comment on the last point relating to India and China.
Yes, I think...
All of the countries have an admirable goal of trying to decrease poverty and increase the standards of living of their people, but this does raise the question of the carrying capacity of the planet and the total population.
And you mentioned before that that's one of the maybe scary things about China is How many people they actually have, and nobody is really talking about population, and that's one of the things that the Pope will not be talking about either, I don't think.
Good point.
I also doubt that, although he is going to address climate change, but you raise an awfully good point.
I wonder if that might be a counterpoint that somebody might raise with the Pope.
Well, it'll be interesting to see.
Yes.
All right, Ben.
There is one other aspect that we could touch on briefly.
I won't go into it in detail now, but there's a lot of, in the absence of action in the Senate, of course there is a lot of action in this country in the EPA.
This is through the Clean Power Plan, and that has a goal of 32% lower emissions relative to 2005 by 2030.
And I think that that plan they came up with was actually Pretty amazing, and quite good.
I don't think it's quite the right way to do it, as we mentioned before, but we could discuss that also.
All right.
Ben, on Skype, you're on the air.
Yeah, hi there.
Hi.
Back away from your microphone.
Just a little bit, you're loud.
There you go, pardon me.
So, Doctor, just a quick question.
It's clear that you're definitely an expert on climatology and especially global warming and climate change.
But I'm just curious, when you make a statement that a policy such as taxation or carbon tax, you're not an economist or a sociologist, correct?
That's correct.
And indeed, I don't want to say how that should be done.
I was fairly careful in originally wording it by saying, I think we should put a price on carbon.
But just how you do that and how you implement it is not something that I claim to be an expert on.
Because, you know, you did make a correct statement where you said there were several power companies or energy companies that didn't seem to have a problem with that.
Is that correct?
That's correct, yes.
And do you know why that is?
The reason why that is, is they pass the cost on to the consumer.
So, there's no pure competition in energy.
Basically, when you're in a municipality, you have one energy provider, and therefore, that's the only one you can go to.
So, if the government adds a new tax, it doesn't matter what you call it, they just pass it on to the consumer.
So, knowing this, is it possible that, and there are some studies out there, That an energy tax would hit hardest the poor and the middle class?
It would.
Well, yes, that potentially could be the case, but it depends on whether there is innovation and other means of generating power in new ways, and so this relates especially to the revolutions that we're already seeing in various ways With things like electric cars, you know, the company Tesla, and other kinds of developments that are occurring.
Ultimately, when those occur, then the prices have to go down.
So, the whole way in which we have set up the grid based upon centralized facilities rather than a distributed system, If that evolves over time, you know, my vision would be solar panels on the roof of every house and maybe a small windmill on the roof of every house.
Why not?
But how do you get there from here is part of the question.
Well, and he's right.
He is right, though.
It's going to hit the poor, no matter what, harder in the beginning.
No matter where we eventually go, the poor are going to get smacked.
No question about it.
Yeah, I was just saying, I'm a scientist, too.
I'm a chemist by trade, and I own a recycling company here in Tucson.
And so it's very important to me that we be as efficient as we can in our society without necessarily applying penalties.
So, you know, a carbon tax, that really isn't an incentive, that's a decentive.
So that, you know, that's more of a punishment.
Well, how would you do it?
So what I would do is, part of the problem is, I think most of us, we're so focused on technology, especially information technology, you know, I think we have to have a fusion reactor.
We have to have fusion energy for the future.
It would be wonderful, it's just not here yet, that's the problem.
And I don't know how many years away it is, but fusion would be wonderful, but it's not here.
Yeah, it's kind of like going to the moon, though, in 1961, when JFK said, you know, let's get there by the end of the decade.
Right.
So, you know, unless it's made a priority, then it won't be a priority.
Because, yeah, we are going to run out of fossil fuels at some point.
So, do you wait until gasoline's $10 a gallon, or do you do it right now and focus on it?
Well, unfortunately, recently, thank you very much for the call.
It was a good one.
uh... the price of gasoline is going down and uh... can i also comment here on this because
it's very interesting when you compare the u s versus europe
and you know if you've ever been to europe uh... they do have effectively
uh... attacks on on gasoline or they do it on carbon electricity
electricity is much more expensive than britain and in europe
and uh... and and yet they have a very similar standard of living
uh... they have uh... adapted uh... to it reasonably well and and so it's not the absolute cost
That necessarily matters.
It's also building the infrastructure for mass transit and other ways of getting around and the whole way of life.
But I think the comparison of Europe and the United States is a good case in point here.
All right.
To the phone we go.
Christopher, I think.
Hello.
Yeah.
Hey, Eric.
I wanted to get a couple of comments.
About, um, so I'm not sure if, um, you're familiar with, I believe it was the New York Times that had come out with a climatologist, um, had mentioned, um, the article was entitled The Drunken Jet Stream.
And this climatologist had theorized the reason why you were seeing, um, things like bitter cold and record snowfall in places like North Carolina and South Carolina.
is that because the temperature gradients at the equatorial versus the polar regions
have become so vastly different, you know, where it's hotter, it's getting hotter,
and when it's colder, it's getting colder, that it's making the jet stream,
instead of like a curved F, it's making it like a huge F.
So it's like dipping down farther and then going up, and it's like inconsistent and dragging cold air down.
Because of global warming A and B, I wanted to get your thoughts on the trapped methane
at the bottom of the sea ice that as the oceans are warming, if that trapped methane is thawed and that gets into the
atmosphere, I mean, that's what caused the last Permian mass extinction.
A couple of comments on that.
I mean, yes, I'm familiar with this idea about the drunken jet stream and the issue there is cause and effect.
Don't you think that could exacerbate our problem?
It certainly could.
Dr.
A couple of comments on that.
I mean, yes, I'm familiar with this idea about the drunken jet stream.
And the issue there is cause and effect.
Certainly if there is a wavier jet stream, then it's much warmer at high latitudes and
especially in places like Alaska, for instance.
And there is a reduced temperature gradient.
But the question is whether global warming caused that or the warming at the high latitudes is more a consequence.
And I'm more of the camp that thinks it's probably more, that's more of a consequence of things that are going on elsewhere.
And perhaps the center of action is more in the tropics and it relates to this current El Nino, for instance.
That's the sort of thing which causes major waves in the northern hemisphere, and those waves certainly penetrate into high latitudes.
And so this general idea of the temperature gradient between the equator and the poles, that's not just a cause or related to the strength of the jet stream, but it's also a consequence of Uh, the waviness in the atmosphere.
So that's a, that's a fairly complicated issue.
Okay.
On the, on the other issue with... Yeah, the other issue is methane, but again, we're, we're at a break point, so hold tight.
We'll come back to, we will come back to methane.
So stay right where you are.
I'm Art Bell.
Ain't got no trouble in my life.
No foolish dream to make me cry.
I'm never frightened or worried I know I always get it
Oh yeah When calling Midnight in the Desert, let the phone ring
until answered.
These calls are unscreened for your listening pleasure.
Call 1-952-CALL-ART.
That's 1-952-225-5278.
Okay, so, Richie in Ocean Park, Washington writes, Being a member of the Time Traveler Society is really awesome.
I like having access to the wormhole, but so far, I haven't seen any kind of response or acknowledgement to any of my comments.
Hoping to see some kind of action in the wormhole.
Peace be with you, Art.
Richie, I read this just to acknowledge you.
But to get real action in the wormhole, you actually have to ask a question.
That's what it comes down to.
Doctor, welcome back.
Methane, I think, is the subject.
Methane at the ocean floor.
Yes, so this relates to methane hydrate, it's also called clathrate, and under the right conditions...
The methane becomes something like a blob of ice and these have been found on the sediments of the ocean floor in rather cold parts of the ocean.
So one of the questions is what happens if the ocean warms up?
Would those be destabilized and then release methane which is another greenhouse gas into the atmosphere.
Before we go any further on that, in the ice ages, the ocean is a lot colder and as the
ocean warms up and we go into interglacials, there is a release from the ocean of both
methane and carbon dioxide.
It's often referred to as outgassing and it's the sort of thing that you see even if you
have a pot of water on the stove and you turn on the heat, there are bubbles that come out.
The ability for the various gases including methane and carbon dioxide to be absorbed
in the water varies with temperature.
That's probably a bigger threat that there is as you warm things up that there is outgassing and at some point the oceans may stop taking up carbon dioxide and become saturated.
uh... and uh... the risk of uh... the the methane hydrates
uh...
melting so to speak and and being released is currently regarded as quite small or
or some quite a long distance into the future because the oceans
would have to warm up quite a lot
uh... if there was a sudden release uh...
uh... of methane uh... the result of that i'm sure would be evident in one
of your models and you probably looked at that right
We could look at that kind of thing, yes.
You know the Japanese and some others are actually mining some of these and using them as a form of fuel.
So it contributes in general to the All right, so, go Japanese.
in the composition of the atmosphere.
Now methane is, when it's burned, it ends up as carbon dioxide.
Methane itself has a lifetime in the atmosphere of the order of a decade,
maybe 10, maybe as much as 12 years or something of that, and then it gets oxidized and it ends up as carbon dioxide,
so it contributes to the overall problem.
All right, so go Japanese.
On Skype, you're on the air. Hi.
Hi.
Hi.
Yes, go ahead, sir.
Um, yes, I'm here.
You know, I have to say this real quick.
I ended up marrying a Filipina gal because of some of the things you went through, and I took the leap of faith.
I flew to the Philippines, and I've been happily married for eight years now.
Congratulations.
Move away from your microphone a little bit.
You're awfully loud.
Sam, go ahead if you have a question.
Yeah, I do.
I'm just going to cover, just bang out some topics and then I'll listen for his answer.
The carbon credits go to the politicians.
I don't see how that's going to affect anything.
The ice sheet is the largest ever in Antarctica.
Global warming thermometers were placed by AC units on the rooftops of buildings so that they could get a skewed number.
The government pays scientists grants to give them a global warming number that they like.
Otherwise, the grants aren't given.
What caused the other 11 ice ages that we went in and out of?
Does he believe in precession, wobble, and solar events?
The half emails of the professors... You're beginning to load us with too much here.
So, give me the number one thing you want him to respond to.
You know, the governments pay scientists grants to give them the global warming numbers.
They want those numbers.
Alright.
So give them those numbers, they don't get the grant.
Okay, alright.
So, kind of like on the other side, the oil companies perhaps sponsoring some scientists to say other stuff, he's saying that the government is paying people like you, doctor, to sing a global warming uh-oh song.
I wish!
No, that's certainly not true.
Scientists don't benefit from this.
We're in the business by trying to understand the system and not usually for monetary gain.
If anything, grants in recent years relating to anything on The climate science have dried up and this is especially because of attacks in this Republican Congress on organizations like NOAA and if you look at the current proposals within the House, the National Science Foundation, NASA, DOE and NOAA are all under severe attack to cut down on funding of climate science.
uh... and uh...
uh... it's more likely that will end up with a continuing resolution but uh...
no funds or funds or drying up of anything uh...
you know i i i would much rather uh... suggest Yeah, how are you doing?
This is Steve from Dowagiac, Michigan.
Yes, sir.
How are you doing?
Fine.
fairness go to one of these other stations that's a all the way around the
right and uh... and see if uh...
a doctor uh... trimbers would get an invitation to speak uh...
uh... speak their and uh... good good luck with that on on the phone you're on
the air hello yeah i don't know this is a steve from the water ignition
yes sir are you doing by uh...
many rosswell to you uh... by the way thank you
uh...
kind of few topics to head on and uh... i'd kind of like a little dynamic
uh... conversation if i could work your guest And by what I mean dynamic is kind of, you know, talk with me as I ask the question.
Okay, we'll ask.
Out of CO2 and methane, which one is more detrimental to the ozone, as far as keeping in the rays of the sun?
To ozone?
The, you know, if you're talking about the greenhouse of... Let him finish.
There you go.
There you go.
I'm sorry.
Well, methane is a more powerful greenhouse gas molecule for molecule, but there is a whole lot more carbon dioxide in the atmosphere than there is methane, and so carbon dioxide is responsible for about a quarter of the overall greenhouse effect.
Methane is responsible for about eight percent, and the dominant component of the greenhouse effect is Actually arises from water vapor, which is about what 60% of the overall contribution, something like that.
And as I mentioned before, methane has a relatively short lifetime.
So molecule for molecule, it's not just that factor.
It's also the fact that the methane only has a lifetime of about 10 years or so before it again ends up as carbon dioxide.
Okay.
Okay.
Um, but the next, next thing I want to touch on too is, you know, I, you know, as a diesel technician, you know, I see the bottom line of all these, you know, emission choke, choke holds that everybody, the, the government is requiring of the automotive manufacturing companies.
What I don't see anybody talking about is the agricultural industry.
And, but I went, what I mean by that is the, The agriculture in raising and slaughtering livestock and producing methane.
And from what I understand in a few documentaries and a lot of literature that I've read, that the methane that these farms are producing is actually putting a lot more methane in the atmosphere, which causes what you're saying is a more powerful But shorter lived, he said.
Right, right, shorter lived.
Let me come back on that right now because I actually come from New Zealand and when I grew up actually New Zealand had something like 50 or they got as high as 70 million sheep and another 10 million cows and so New Zealand was in the unusual situation of being the only country where the emissions of methane were greater than the emissions of carbon dioxide at one point.
I'm not sure whether that's still the case or not.
But there's been a tremendous amount of research in New Zealand and also in North America to see whether you can make the gut of a cow more efficient and cut down on the methane emissions that come out of the rear end and things like that.
But that's a side product of animal husbandry.
I don't know a great deal about it, but I don't know that you can do that much about it either.
You can, you know, maybe do a little bit around the edges by changing the food.
I mean, from what I understand, I mean, these farms and whatnot, they're actually, you know, raising and slaughtering these, you know, that's basically what it amounts to.
That's what they're doing.
And they're producing all of this methane.
And that, you know, it's just if not more detrimental to the environment and the greenhouse gases than burning fossil fuels.
And nobody's trying to do anything about it.
Were you listening, though?
He said it's not really true because it has a certain life, which is not nearly as long.
Correct, Doctor?
Yes, and there are some farms, I understand, where they actually catch some of that and use it as a fuel, so they recycle it.
I mean the main methane comes out of the gut, especially from cows, through Through the backside of the cow.
I don't think it's in the processing of the meat or in the processing plant and certainly if it was then that should be changed because there's no good reason for that.
You know another major source of methane and one which is really quite worrying is from fracking, hydraulic fracturing that's going on and there is far too much leakage of methane Uh, that escapes in that process, and I don't think there's a full accounting of that.
My, I have not at all.
It's not too worrisome to me.
Alright, Scott on Skype, you're on the air.
Hi Art, and Doctor, I want to say thank you, first of all, for doing the show, Art.
Very welcome.
I live this every day.
I've got a company that installs solar systems.
I'm a vegan.
You know, my epiphany, first of all, there's a couple comments and then a question at the end, but my epiphany was looking at my kids playing in a clean lake and seeing that and knowing that if we don't take care of what we have now, it's, you know, we have responsibility to this planet.
All of us do.
And it's really easy to shirk our responsibility and put it on to the next politician or the next person.
But, uh, We have to all take responsibility today.
You know, I'm in a I'm in a field in an industry that's growing exponentially.
Forty one percent growth last year.
Well, the current economics are not in your favor.
Art, you're wrong.
The solar industry... I want to be wrong, but I mean, the price of gas is just dropping like crazy.
Yeah, but gas, you see, the thing is, people are starting to get it.
Yes, they are.
We jumped forward a little bit on where I was going to go, but I think I have hope for the future, I really do, and I think that, you know, I'm seeing people adopt Solar Systems and put these technologies available today in their homes and they're cutting their consumption of power daily with net metering that's available through different utilities.
But the way you tackle this today, and this has come up in the previous caller, you can go to a meat free diet.
I mean, the amount of energy that goes into raising animals, it's phenomenal and it is the number one Carbon.
Trust me, you're going to get solar panels up much faster than you're going to get people to quit quarter pounders.
I agree.
I completely agree.
But if you're sitting on your couch listening to this show today, you have a choice.
You have a decision you can make.
And it's a really easy one.
You can go and actually have a healthier way of living.
You won't die from heart disease.
And you'll actually help the planet.
It's other than recycling.
I mean, you can recycle.
I do that.
I have solar panels in my house.
But I just take a step back and say to myself, what can I actually do?
The number one thing you can do is stop eating meat.
Believe me, I grew up eating meat.
I appreciate the suggestion.
Thank you very much.
And we'll leave it standing for those who want to quit eating meat.
They can.
But I'm telling you, Solar panels are a lot easier.
My own backyard is lined with solar panels.
I've got a wind generator.
I've got batteries.
I've got inverters.
I do all that, but I'm not giving up my burgers.
Let me comment also.
I mean I have solar panels PV on the roof of my house and have had for quite some time.
Maybe we can quickly run through some other things.
I mean there are energy-efficient light bulbs.
Certainly walking and bicycling is much healthier than driving a car.
That's another one you could add.
So driving less and drive a fuel-efficient car also.
Don't overheat or overcool.
I find it remarkable that you go some places and it's cooler in summertime because they
overcool than it is in winter when they overheat.
And wear a sweater in wintertime.
Insulate your house.
One of the easiest ways to capitalize on solar is to use a clothesline.
The dryer that you throw your clothes into is not very efficient and is a huge user of maybe gas or electricity.
So there is a whole lot of little things that you can do that indeed make you more responsible in this regard.
Yes, sir.
All right, Doctor, hold tight.
We're at a kind of a short break here.
My guest is Dr. Kevin Trenberth and we'll be right back.
In that darkest time between dusk and dawn, from the high desert, it's Art Bell's Midnight in the
Desert.
Now, here's Art.
Here I am and my guest is Dr. Kevin Trenberth.
He is a...
A distinguished senior scientist in the climate analysis section at the National Center for Atmospheric Research.
Doctor, welcome back.
Obviously, a lot of words stacked up here.
A lot of people want to talk to you.
Yes, all right.
So, here we go.
Scott, you're on the air.
Oh, great.
I'm getting a little echo.
I'll try and See what I can do here.
It's so great to have a show host who doesn't ask questions of the guests that they just answered in the last 30 seconds, by the way.
Thank you.
I completely disagree with your guest's math, and I can address it in less than two minutes.
Go for it.
Okay, first of all, the solar cycle peak to trough differential of energy impacting the Earth is not trivial.
In the paper by Shaviv in 2008, astrophysicist Nir Shaviv from Hebrew University of Jerusalem showed that the total radiative forcing Associated with solar cycles is 5 to 7 times the total solar irradiance variance at approximately 1 watt per square meter.
The IPCC claims 1.4 watts per square meter due to CO2, which completely disappears when using a dynamic model as I'll explain now.
The IPCC's radiative forcing model models the solar impact on Earth using an 11-year linear average, 5.5 years ahead and 5.5 years behind.
It does not take into account the temperature of the global oceans more than 5.5 years prior, but the half-life of the global oceans thermodynamic heat capacity is about 5.5 years.
And 5.5 years prior, there's still one-half the excess or depleted heat from the prior solar cycle.
The thermodynamic transfer is of the form A times e to the minus kT, not a linear average.
The solar cycle is not a constant 11 years.
Its amplitude varies by 50% and the period by 50%.
The current solar cycle is 55% the amplitude of the last cycle and is closer to 13 or 14 years compared to the prior three solar cycles which were less than 11 and contributed to accumulating heat.
The positive and negative phases of the cycle are nowhere near symmetrical, it is not a sine wave, and it is very highly distorted.
Also, the ocean heat capacity is more than a thousand times that of the atmosphere and land combined, and represents the only energy storage component in the entire system, and yet the IPCC model chooses to ignore it.
You're using a static model for a dynamic system.
No, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no No, I think there's a lot of things there that you've said that are not quite right.
The magnitude of the forcing is about a tenth of what you suggested from the sun.
It's about a tenth of a watt per square meter over the sunspot cycle.
Certainly the sunspot cycle varies in length and amplitude somewhat, but because the heat capacity of the ocean is so large, The system only just begins to respond before it's back on track going in the other direction, and the magnitude is less than a tenth of a degree in terms of the amplitude that you see in the climate system from the sunspots.
I'm sorry, it's just not... your numbers just don't add up.
I'm reading from Shabib's paper directly for three sentences here.
Okay, okay, they show that there is gain.
You're not well read in the literature.
He shows that there is gain using the ocean as a calorimeter.
Alright, alright, call her.
Seven times total solar irradiance variation.
Alright, call her.
Wait.
Okay, I just want to say, the last math problem is, the Earth radiates energy into space more appropriately modeled by black body radiation, which is proportional to the temperature of the radiating body radiation... Hold on, hold on.
Go ahead, Doctor.
So what you're citing is some paper that is not published in peer-reviewed literature, and what you're citing is simply not correct.
I'm sorry.
That is absolute nonsense.
Blackbody radiation is correct, and thermodynamic transfer as Ae to the minus Kd is correct.
A linear average is not correct.
Okay, Doctor?
No, there's a real greenhouse effect, and the atmosphere or climate system does not act like a black body at all.
And that's exactly why we have what is called the greenhouse effect.
And so, if we didn't have the atmosphere, and we didn't have the greenhouse effect, then the planet would not be livable.
The temperatures would be a lot lower.
Okay.
Somebody near you in Denver, Colorado.
You're on air.
Hey Art, it's Matt, your undefeated atheist, and I love this guest on tonight.
I am in complete agreement with the both of you.
I think there's a lot of things that resonate on it, but I would just like the doctor's opinion.
There was a current article that came out, I believe the study came out of Stanford, where they were talking about that we are actually in the sixth climate extinction, mass extinction.
Um, does the doctor know anything like, um, evidence-wise is going to point this towards, you know, man having effect on it?
I know big, I know like over hunting and stuff like that, but maybe climate change as well?
This is not, uh, paleo climate and the, the mass extinctions are not something I'm a, an expert on it all but you know we
we have the uh...
uh... influence of of man which is now competing with all of the major changes that have occurred
in climate in the past
one of the earlier uh... callers
uh... asked uh... a little bit about that we never got to it but you know the
main cause of the changes in uh... ice ages and the and the big cycles that have
occurred in the past is the orbit of the earth around the sun and the
uh... the shape of the orbit uh... the precession of the equinoxes and
and uh... these occur on twenty uh... the tilt uh... which is a forty thousand year twenty thousand year
for the for the precession of the equinoxes and a hundred thousand
year for the for the actual shape of the orbit
And so there are variations on those time scales that matter.
On much longer time scales, of course, is the whole evolution of the planet, the continental
drift and building of mountains and all other kinds of geological processes that comes into
play.
And I believe the mass extinctions occurred on very long time scales.
Okay.
Thank you.
Can I give a shout out to the DM Talk hashtag on Twitter?
And you guys have a good night tonight.
All right.
Thank you very much and take care.
I'm curious, Doctor, how many times have you been invited to a conservative talk show to air your point of view?
Has it been a common occurrence or is it fairly rare?
Exceedingly rare, to the point that I would say never.
Rare to never, huh?
Okay.
Well, I appreciate your coming on this program.
I certainly do.
We don't have time for another call right now.
We have our last break coming up, so we'll take it and then continue with Dr. Kevin Krenberth.
Again, some of you out there might note the doctor's name and phone it in to your local talk station and see how you fare.
the world.
It's great to have you here tonight.
the with our goal
coordinator of the land use and call one nine five two two two five fifty two
seventy eight that's one nine five two call art hi everybody
it's uh...
great to have you here tonight it's a pretty spirited discussion that's for
sure uh... i've got to say this uh... doctor at the risk of
sounding like have it sound trump like uh... if i understand the concept
of attacks on carbon
and it may be the only way we can do it but you know the idiots
that run this country even if they get a tax
they won't even use it to fix the potholes in our interstates all betcha
I mean, they manage to waste everything they get their hands on, and so I do understand the Conservative reluctance to have a big new tax.
I also understand the need for it, so I don't know where that leaves me.
The example you're really citing in many respects is the gas tax.
The gas tax is supposed to go in order to support the infrastructure of bridges and roads and so on, and it hasn't increased for, what, 20 years or something like that, and I think it's completely irresponsible on behalf of Congress not to at least keep that going.
It is.
Completely irresponsible.
That's why I said idiots.
We're on our country.
Let's go, I don't know, Monterey, California.
How about that?
Hey, Art.
It's Bob.
I remember that you used to be the 9-11 operator here in Monterey.
I was.
You were.
And at that time, did you ever go to the sandbar and grill?
It was called the Windjammer Restaurant when it worked.
Yes, I did.
Why?
Well, you remember you have to walk down those stairs, and that restaurant is at the high tide level.
Right.
And I grew up here, so I'm 68, and that restaurant used to flood in the 50s and 60s, up into the 70s, but it hasn't flooded in over 25 years.
So you're suggesting that ocean levels are lower?
Yes.
It's simply not true, Doctor?
At least on a global basis, but of course, people do build barriers of various kinds, and that's what I would look for.
There you go.
I mean, look, it's just science.
Doggone it.
How come people don't get that?
Ocean levels are higher.
They're going higher.
That's science.
It's fact.
And for some reason, I just, I don't get it.
People don't want to accept it.
No matter what, they don't want to accept it.
Escondido, you're on the air.
Hello.
Hello.
Going once, going twice.
Yes?
Hi.
I'd like to ask the professor about all this volcanic activity that we're in right now.
This has been the most underwater and above the water in precedent history.
Are we going to charge them for their carbon output or what?
Okay, well, it's a good question.
We have had a lot of volcanic activity and it does affect the atmosphere.
Doctor?
Not by historical standards, by any means.
I mean the last major volcanic eruption was Mount Pinatubo in 1991 that
injected a lot of debris into the stratosphere and produced the cooling
for a couple of years. There's been quite a number of small
volcanoes and and some of them are reasonably visible
in the 21st century that we've seen so far but the effects tend to be
relatively local.
Um...
They're all show and no real consequences to them.
I mean if you go back into the Middle Ages then there have been periods where there has been a lot more volcanic activity to the point where it has had a substantial impact on climate because clusters of volcanoes block the sun and ultimately end up with a substantial cooling and some of that can also have particularly dire regional consequences.
Mm-hmm.
Benadubo also took out Clark Air Force Base.
Jeremy, you're on the air.
Hello, Dr. Thornbrook.
This is Jeremy from Omaha.
Jeremy, you're kind of broken up, so you're going to have to get close to the mic or something.
How is this?
Is this better?
A little.
Well, I just wanted to say that out of all the people that are denying this kind of stuff, We're having a problem with them bringing up the same 24 or so peer-reviewed papers out of 14,000 that actually support climate change.
Okay, Jeremy, it's really tough to get what you're saying, but go ahead.
Well, I think that, essentially, they're pulling up the same arguments over and over.
Jeremy, are you on a speakerphone?
No, I'm not.
I'm on a webcam.
On a what?
On a webcam.
A webcam.
Grab the webcam with your hand, Jeremy, and bring it to within about two inches of your mouth and just speak normally.
Is that better?
Oh, much.
Alright, sorry about that.
Now you know how to do it.
Go ahead.
There you go.
Well, I think that essentially these deniers keep bringing up the same peer-reviewed papers, which are like the 24 that actually do support denial.
Okay, I said it was better.
It's not, Jeremy.
I'm sorry.
We're going to have to leave it there.
Let's go to Lufkin, Texas.
Sorry about that, Jeremy.
I'm listening on the computer and when I called in I got the show, so I'm not real sure.
Okay, well turn off whatever you're listening to, your device we call it, and just ignore that and go ahead.
Okay, my question is, when they decided to use nanotechnology as opposed to a homeopathic approach to treating the atmosphere, how did they decide to do that?
What led them in the path of nanotechnology as opposed to a homeopathic approach?
I was not aware they were treating the atmosphere with nanotechnology, Doctor.
Neither was I. I mean nanotechnology is a very small miniaturization.
And we certainly use that in instrumentation.
And so instruments are getting smaller and more efficient, lighter weight, and things like that.
And of course, that's a huge boon when we put that stuff up on satellites.
But I'm not quite sure what you're getting at there.
Perhaps I'm not asking the question correctly, because this is not my field of science.
I'm not a scientist at all.
But as a person who has used a homeopathic approach to health and realizing that our Earth is seemingly in peril because of this climate change, I do know that they are geoengineering and can actually manipulate the weather with it.
I don't think that they haven't yet manipulated the weather with nanotechnology.
There are theories and some science that points toward eventually
doing something like that but not at the moment so you're a little ahead of
times for the doctor here David on Skype you're on there. Hello Art. Hi. I would
just like to talk to the doctor regarding the satellite data analyzed by the
University of Alabama and Huntsville.
They take the satellite data as far as temperature.
According to them, they just put out an article, I don't know, about a month ago, there has been no global warming in 22 years.
How do you explain their data, doctor?
Well, actually, the number that I've seen more recently is 18 years, and... 22 now!
Well, that's not true, because it's not... Okay, so call her and let him finish.
Let him finish, please.
Okay.
It starts in 1998, which is the warmest year on record, but, you know, that record begins back in 1979, and if you look at the full record, there has been substantial warming, indeed.
This is cherry picking the data to say it that way.
I have another question regarding when you're talking about these warmest years in years.
About two or three years ago, NOAA decided, a caller before brought up the fact that they removed about 500 sensors in their global network.
And lo and behold, before they did this rearrange of the sensors, they were showing climate cooling, you know, high to decline.
Well, lo and behold, after they rearranged their sensors, my God, they're seeing warming again.
And oh, yes, now we're seeing record temperatures.
Well, I would like to, as a scientist, if you have an array that measures things, if you suddenly rearrange all the sensors, or most, or hundreds of them, I think even thousands, doesn't that kind of make all the data useless now?
Because you can't compare what you had before to what you have now.
Okay.
That is a substantial issue.
I mean, most of the observations that we make use of for climate purposes are not made for climate.
They're made for weather purposes.
And so people pick up and move thermometers.
They often site them in places that are not very good.
But there are a subset of standardized thermometers that are kept with high quality.
And there's a tremendous amount of detective work done to try to, what is referred to as homogenize the
record and correct for incorrect or very poor sightings or changes.
So if you move the thermometer from your backyard up onto the roof or something like that, it has
consequences.
And often that can be corrected by comparing that thermometer
with another nearby thermometer.
And that's the sort of activity which does go on.
And so there are indeed adjustments and corrections that are made to thermometers.
But there are thousands of thermometers.
And the scales of the variations in temperature tend to be relatively large.
So that there's very good confidence in the actual changes in temperature that are occurring.
And you mentioned before the satellite temperature record.
The satellite temperature record is another part of this, but it's not actually measuring the temperature at the surface of the Earth.
It's measuring the temperature in the lowest 10 kilometers of the Earth or something like that.
Okay.
Sacramento, California.
We're getting short on time.
You're on air.
Good morning, gentlemen, and thanks for taking the call.
Sure.
I do want to mention to you that I've been with you since you were working at ArtsParts on Dreamland, so it's been a long time.
Long time, yes, sir.
A comment, Art, on settled science.
I wonder if Dr. Trenberth is familiar with something called the Global Warming Petition Project.
That particular item is a Signature basis for 31,000 American scientists, including 9,000 PhDs, that do not concur with the current decisions and consensus, I guess, on global warming.
Included in that group, by the way, is a fellow named Edward Keller and someone that Dr. Trenberth may know named Richard Linzen.
Would he like to comment on that?
I know Richard Lindzen, but most of the people who have signed that thing are not climate scientists, and they're not necessarily well informed.
Well, alright, let me comment on Richard Lindzen.
Richard Lindzen is a professor at MIT, although he is now retired.
He's probably the, I suppose we should call him a skeptic scientist, who is best known, and he certainly has some excellent credentials in some areas.
But he also has an ideology which is very much opposed to anything relating to climate change, and he also has made some other peculiar decisions in his life.
he is grossly overweight and he smokes for instance.
Well, that's a homonym.
Well that certainly just sounds his opinion, doesn't it?
Yeah, that's kind of a bit of an attack there.
Another comment that I guess I would like to make is regarding CO2 levels and temperature.
For the last 400,000 years, temperature and CO2 levels have Well, yes, I mentioned that before.
the temperature always precedes CO2 levels by about 200 years. Can you really
account for that? This is just the opposite of the wildly famous hockey
stick that's caused all this. Well yes, I mentioned that before as as the
temperature goes up then there is outgassing from the oceans. There's also
increased activity on land which relates to the sort of thing that happens in a
compost heap and so there's more carbon that's released from the soils and so
the carbon dioxide responds but it's also a feedback process that amplifies
the changes that are occurring. On the other hand now humans are emitting
carbon dioxide into the atmosphere and so the carbon dioxide is is no
longer just a feedback it's also actually a forcing of the climate change
Isn't the human contribution to that feedback roughly 0.28%, which is virtually nothing?
No, that's not correct.
I suggest you just check the number on that.
Carbon Dioxide counts for about a quarter of the total greenhouse effect.
That's wildly different from some of the numbers that I believe have been published.
95% of the greenhouse effect is due to water vapor.
No, that's not true.
I've seen that number and that came out of some of Fred Singer's work and that's grossly incorrect.
The water vapor is about 60% of the greenhouse effect.
All right.
Doctor, we're coming to the end of the program.
Yes, we are.
So I would like to ask you if there's anything you'd like to get on there, like maybe a website or where you would suggest that people read, or anything you want to get on before we're done.
Well, if you Google my name, Trenberth, and NCAR, then you should find my website.
It's much easier than me giving you a URL.
And there's a lot of things there, including a list of my publications.
There are many All right.
Doctor, it has been an honor having you on the program.
I hope you felt we treated you well.
Thank you.
a number of PowerPoint presentations that are there that are often used by
professors and others that are and they're welcome to use them as long as
they use them with attribution. Alright, alright doctor it has
been an honor having you on the program I hope you felt we treated
you well thank you and we'll do it again sometime
alright Thank you very much for having me.
Good night, sir.
Uh, Dr. Kevin Trenberth.
All right.
So, there you have it.
Would I have somebody on with the opposite opinion?
Absolutely.
And I cite that as the difference between this and any other program, um, nearly, that you can name.
If it's interesting, I'll have them on the air.
Guarantee it.
In the meantime, here come those footsteps from the high desert.
Good night, all.
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