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Sept. 22, 2015 - Art Bell

02:15:25

Art Bell MITD - Dr Kevin Trenberth Climate Change

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dr kevin trenberth

01:05:04

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art bell ▲ ● ▼		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 zone, to 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 manor and his church of the poor to a rich and 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 U.S. 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 103.5 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 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, beginning in December, we have signed KFMB in San Diego, Los Angeles.
		Yeah, that's right.
		That's a big one.
		Really a big monster.
		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 them 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 Podicy on 104.3.
		They cover parts of four states, actually, really big.
		Then there's KBET, 760 a.m. in Las Vegas.
		KTKN, 9.30 a.m. in Ketchkin, Alaska.
		Been in Ketchkin.
		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 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.
unidentified		Clump, bump, bump, bump.
unidentified		One station, one city at a time.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		We're coming for you.
unidentified		We're coming for you.
		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-CALLART.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		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.
unidentified		Good evening, Art, to you, and hi to everyone.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		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 our world is warming.
dr kevin trenberth ▲ ● ▼		Well, it's in many respects.
		This is one of the great things about science, is that 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.
		And 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 the actual rates and the numbers and so on.
		But 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 the primary cause of the warming that's going on at the current time.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		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.
		Surely, 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.
dr kevin trenberth ▲ ● ▼		The Arctic is one of the spectacular places where changes have occurred.
		And 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.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		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 changes forms.
		It doesn't become so much additional water, at least.
		Am I right about that?
dr kevin trenberth ▲ ● ▼		Well, yes, the sea ice is floating, and therefore when it melts, it doesn't change sea level much to speak of at all.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		I understand that the United States and I don't want to say the Soviet Union, but pretty soon we may be able to say that again.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		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.
dr kevin trenberth ▲ ● ▼		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 seafloor 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.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		All right.
		I guess the next logical question is to lay out the proof.
		In other words, how does 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?
dr kevin trenberth ▲ ● ▼		Well, the first thing that scientists are basing 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 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 changed this?
		What would happen if I changed the composition of the atmosphere?
		What would happen if I changed 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.
		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 the that what is happening quantitatively is caused by the human activities primarily the increases in carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gases in the atmosphere.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		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 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.
dr kevin trenberth ▲ ● ▼		That's the pollution you're referring to, yes.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		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 a bad word, or a bad couple of words, a tipping point where if we don't turn it around, we can't turn it around.
dr kevin trenberth ▲ ● ▼		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 U.S. 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 U.S. 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, La Dicio C., Praise Be to You.
		He made a statement that 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 U.S. But if we all continue down this path, then it has some consequences and some implications.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Well, okay.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		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.
dr kevin trenberth ▲ ● ▼		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.
		I mean, 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.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		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?
dr kevin trenberth ▲ ● ▼		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.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Oh, I didn't even ask where you were.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		You're in Colorado.
dr kevin trenberth ▲ ● ▼		Yes, I am.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		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?
dr kevin trenberth ▲ ● ▼		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.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Yes, when you go on tours, you know, 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.
dr kevin trenberth ▲ ● ▼		Yes, well, we keep breaking records of all kinds, and the ones you're referring to primarily relate to temperature.
dr kevin trenberth ▲ ● ▼		But there are many other manifestations of climate change, and some of the biggest effects occur with associated changes in water and droughts.
unidentified		And out in California, main drought and all the wildfires.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		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.
unidentified		Midnight in the Desert.
		Hold on.
		And I'm waiting for the moment.
		Hold on.
		Want to take a ride exclusively on the Dark Matter Digital Network?
		This is Midnight in the Desert with your host, Art Bell, to call Art.
		Please dial 1-952-225-5278.
		That's 1-952-CallART.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		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 Perump, 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.
unidentified		That's how serious it is, Doctor.
unidentified		Yes.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		So the drought is really, really, really serious now.
		Do we have relief on the way?
		I understand.
		Is it El Niño that's on the way, I think?
dr kevin trenberth ▲ ● ▼		That's correct.
		There is substantial, a very strong El Niño already out there in the Pacific Ocean.
		El Niño refers to a warming of the tropical Pacific Ocean east of the date line in particular and from there to the California coast or to the Americas.
		And it mainly has a really strong influence on the weather patterns across North America in the Northern Hemisphere winter.
		And so the main influences on California begin to really pick up in November.
		They're 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 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.
		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.
		The coastal erosion.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Right, so the mudslides might put out the fires.
dr kevin trenberth ▲ ● ▼		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.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		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?
dr kevin trenberth ▲ ● ▼		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.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		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?
dr kevin trenberth ▲ ● ▼		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 there's no more growth of leaves, and instead the leaves on the forest floor and so on are decaying, that puts more carbon dioxide back into the atmosphere, and we're right at that 400 level.
		So we will This year probably be the first year where we exceed that level, 400 parts per million by volume.
		So the pre-industrial levels were around 280 parts per million by volume, and so there's been a 40% increase in carbon dioxide in the atmosphere.
		This is very well established, and we also know that carbon dioxide is a greenhouse gas, and so it has consequences.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		All right.
		You know, nobody likes to scare people, Doctor, but 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.
dr kevin trenberth ▲ ● ▼		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.
		I mean, 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.
		This is especially those in the fossil fuel industry.
		And so that's where this is certainly coming from.
		And it's been very nasty.
		There's 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 mean, these are the ones, I say denier when they're actually in denial of basic information and facts that we are well understood.
		And, you know, I think what we, 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.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		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.
dr kevin trenberth ▲ ● ▼		Well, the sun, as you say, is extremely important.
		If the sun were to change in a substantial way, then it would indeed cause 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 1%.
		And if that were to continue, if there were a tenth of 1% change over 100 years, then that would indeed make a difference.
		That would matter.
		But the thing is, it's on an 11-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.
unidentified		Actually, Dr. Quite the opposite.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		How about this?
art bell ▲ ● ▼		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.
dr kevin trenberth ▲ ● ▼		That's right.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		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.
unidentified		Yes?
dr kevin trenberth ▲ ● ▼		Well, perhaps, but there was 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 mona 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 monde minimum that we know of coming up.
		I mean, 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.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Okay.
		If the ice in Greenland melts, 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?
dr kevin trenberth ▲ ● ▼		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.
		And 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 3 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 over, 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.
		So 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 there being about an eight or nine 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, it 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, 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.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		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 timeframe 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.
dr kevin trenberth ▲ ● ▼		That's right.
		And another big factor, actually, is the El Niño 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 houses along the coast toppling into the ocean.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Doctor, thank you.
		Hold on.
		We're at a quick two-minute break.
		From the high desert and the great American Southwest, you're listening to Midnight in the Desert.
		I'm Art Bell.
unidentified		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.
		Don't call yet.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		We'll get to the calls in a bit.
		We have a very distinguished man with us, Dr. Kevin E. Trenbroth, 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 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?
dr kevin trenberth ▲ ● ▼		That is right.
		And of course, these small island states, and there are others in the Caribbean, for instance, are relatively innocent victims of this.
		They're not the cause of the increases in carbon dioxide in the atmosphere for the most part.
		But they do suffer the higher sea levels and the more intense hurricanes or typhoons that come along and can potentially inundate them.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		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?
dr kevin trenberth ▲ ● ▼		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, 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 kinds of things.
		But certainly, if you make very abrupt changes, it can be very disruptive of the economy.
		And so I would say again.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		No.
		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, Doctor, go ahead and hang up and try and re-dial 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. Trimberth 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.
dr kevin trenberth ▲ ● ▼		That was very odd.
dr kevin trenberth ▲ ● ▼		Yes, nothing happened at this end.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		You were able to hear me.
dr kevin trenberth ▲ ● ▼		I could hear.
		Well, you were breaking up.
		But yeah, something happened, obviously, on the line.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		All right.
		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?
dr kevin trenberth ▲ ● ▼		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 anticyclones.
		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 Niño 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 Niño 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.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Okay, some have said there is no recent global warming, that there's been a kind of a hiatus in global warming.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		I'm sure you've read those articles, yes?
dr kevin trenberth ▲ ● ▼		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.
		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 Niño 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 10-year timeframe.
		And we know that some of this is very much tied up with the oceans and how they respond to the changes in the climate.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Okay, going back to what Travis said a moment ago about not being a climate denier, but whether we should destroy our economy, how would you see us modify our behavior in a way that would have a meaningful change and slow down this horrible mess without really adversely affecting the economy?
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Have you given that some thought?
dr kevin trenberth ▲ ● ▼		A little bit, yes.
		And the thing about the 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.
		And 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.
		So it's certainly in the tens of billions of dollars.
		And 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 the suggestion that many have made, which I endorse, is that there should be a price on carbon.
		There should be the easiest way to do that is probably through a carbon tax.
		But there are other ways of potentially putting some kind of a price on carbon.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		And this is where you're going to run into really, really heavy political opposition.
		A tax correct.
		Yes, a tax on carbon.
unidentified		And this is where they go crazy.
dr kevin trenberth ▲ ● ▼		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.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		All right.
		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 a billion different ideas that don't get pursued because they're not yet economically viable.
dr kevin trenberth ▲ ● ▼		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?
art bell ▲ ● ▼		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 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?
dr kevin trenberth ▲ ● ▼		But 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 timeframes associated with it, tens of thousands of years.
		And so that is indeed an unsolved problem.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Well, they have done some work, I think, in France in terms of recycling some of 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 Trimbreth.
		He is a distinguished senior scientist in the climate analysis section at the National Center for Atmospheric Research.
unidentified		You're happy when you're great.
		Baby, when you're feeling right, you'll never see the morning light.
		Come to me, baby, you'll see.
		Remember, when calling midnight in the desert, let the phone ring until answered.
		These calls are unscreened for your listening pleasure.
		Call 1-952-CALLART.
		That's 1-952-225-5278.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		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, even if you disagree, I'm going to ask you to please be respectful.
		And if you want to challenge, do so at your scientific best.
		Because I think what's been laid before you tonight are scientific facts.
		So if you want to 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 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?
dr kevin trenberth ▲ ● ▼		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 organisms within the ocean.
		And so this is another side effect of increasing carbon dioxide in the atmosphere and the burning of fossil fuels.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		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 you talk about?
dr kevin trenberth ▲ ● ▼		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 helped 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.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		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?
dr kevin trenberth ▲ ● ▼		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.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		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?
dr kevin trenberth ▲ ● ▼		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.
		We have some ideas there.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		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?
dr kevin trenberth ▲ ● ▼		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 4.5 to 8.5 degrees Fahrenheit by the year 2100.
		That is actually an exceedingly large number.
		Those kind of numbers are getting up to the kind of numbers that make the difference between a major ice age and the current climate, for instance.
		They're approaching those kind of numbers.
		And so when you have that on a global basis, it means locally that the extremes that are occurring, the very high temperatures and associated issues with that, things like droughts, are so much worse than they are now.
		I mean, we're already getting glimpses of the sort of things that happen through 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.
		In 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 makes, confuses the general public, perhaps, that 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 and different times.
		Storms don't all happen along the eastern seaboard all at once.
		There's a hurricane that comes ashore in one location.
		The next year it's a different location and so on.
		Eventually, everywhere gets hit, but not all at the same time.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Yes, well, what happens is the media covers, for example, somebody in Buffalo, New York this last year, buried in probably about 110 inches of snow, unable to get even out of their house, and they're quoted frequently as saying, global warming, my butt, look at this.
		And, of course, that's what sticks in people's minds.
		So the media...
dr kevin trenberth ▲ ● ▼		The biggest snowfalls occur when the temperatures are around 28 to 32 degrees Fahrenheit.
dr kevin trenberth ▲ ● ▼		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.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		I've heard that.
dr kevin trenberth ▲ ● ▼		Indeed, if you warm things up over the continent in winter time, you expect that there will be more snow Because the air can hold more moisture when it's warmer.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		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 an ice fog.
		It was indeed too cold to snow.
		We'll be back.
unidentified		We'll be back.
		I stopped an old man on the way, hoping to find some more forgotten words for ancient hell.
		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-CALLART.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Well, all right, 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.
unidentified		Bill.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Well.
		Not rich.
		I'm comfortable only.
		And Hayart says, Duck Speak Easy?
		What a name.
		Hey, Art.
		Climate Science is far from settled.
		Eagerly await you having on someone from the other side.
		I suggest Steve McIntyre from climateaudit.org.
unidentified		All right.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		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%, 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, just add us as a contact.
		We are MITD51.
		That covers America and Canada.
		M-I-T-D-5-1.
		If you're outside of North America, M-I-T-D55.
		Love to get a call from the Maldives.
		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.
dr kevin trenberth ▲ ● ▼		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 March rather than in the cold winter months in the middle of the year.
		And so cold does not go, snow does not go along with cold.
		That's been one of the mistakes that Senator Inhoff made when he actually took a snowball on the floor of the Senate onto the floor of the Senate earlier this year.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Well, without much hot air, it couldn't have survived very long.
dr kevin trenberth ▲ ● ▼		No, it didn't.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		All right.
		Well, here it comes.
		Stephen on Skype, you're on the air with Dr. Trenberth.
stephen in skype ▲ ● ▼		Hi, Art.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Yes, hello, Stephen.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Get close to your mic.
stephen in skype ▲ ● ▼		Hey, Art.
		Hey, he mentioned engineered solution earlier, and I wanted to ask him about if he's been watching this project, 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.
unidentified		And I think they're doing it in response to global warming.
stephen in skype ▲ ● ▼		And I was just wondering if he'd heard of it and if he sees that as a viable solution.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Well, I'm not sure it's up to the viable point.
unidentified		Have you heard of it, Doctor?
dr kevin trenberth ▲ ● ▼		Not really.
		I mean, I think it's the same thing, that 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.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		All right.
		Let's go to the phones.
		Hello there.
		You're Ani.
unidentified		Hi, Art.
		Thank you for taking my call.
		And thank you so much to Dr. Tremberth for being a guest tonight.
		And Art, just to you, you know, every one of your fans is wishing the best for your daughter tonight and hoping that she gets well soon.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Well, thank you.
unidentified		Briefly, if I may recommend two articles before getting to my question, I think that you'll find them fascinating.
unidentified		One is called The End of History by Noam Chomsky, and the other is called The End of Civilization is Your Day Job in GQ.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Okay.
unidentified		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 moves 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 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.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		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, 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.
dr kevin trenberth ▲ ● ▼		Yes, well, he mentioned Jason Box.
		I know Jason, he's and one of the reasons he moved to Denmark 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.
		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 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.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		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.
dr kevin trenberth ▲ ● ▼		Well, it'll be interesting to see.
unidentified		Yes.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		All right.
unidentified		Ben.
dr kevin trenberth ▲ ● ▼		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.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		All right.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Ben on Skype, you're on the air.
unidentified		Yeah, hi, Ari.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Hi.
		Back away from your microphone.
		Just a little bit.
		You're loud.
unidentified		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?
dr kevin trenberth ▲ ● ▼		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.
unidentified		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.
unidentified		Is that correct?
dr kevin trenberth ▲ ● ▼		That's correct, yes.
unidentified		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 has 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?
art bell ▲ ● ▼		It would.
dr kevin trenberth ▲ ● ▼		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 price is apt 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.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Well, and 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.
		Caller?
unidentified		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 decent.
		So, you know, that's more of a punishment.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Well, how would you do it?
unidentified		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.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Right, it'd be wonderful.
		Yeah, 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.
unidentified		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.
		So 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 till gasoline's $10 a gallon or do you do it right now and focus on it?
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Well, unfortunately, recently, thank you very much for the call.
		It was a good one.
		The price of gasoline is going down right now.
dr kevin trenberth ▲ ● ▼		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, they do have effectively a tax on gasoline or a tax on carbon.
		Electricity is much more expensive in Britain than in Europe.
		Oh, yes.
		And yet they have a very similar standard of living.
		They have adapted to it reasonably well.
		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.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		All right.
		To the phone we go.
		Christopher, I think.
unidentified		Hello.
		Yeah.
		Hey, Eric.
		I wanted to get a couple of comments about, so I'm not sure if you're familiar with, I believe it was the New York Times that came out with a climatologist had mentioned.
		The article was entitled The Drunken Jet Stream.
		And this climatologist had theorized the reason why you were seeing 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, where it's colder, it's getting colder, that it's making the jet stream instead of like a curved S, it's making it like, you know, like a huge S. 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 faws and that gets into the atmosphere, I mean that's what caused the last Permian mass extinction was methane.
		And as those ice crystals, the permafrost at the bottom of the ocean start to melt, don't you think that could exacerbate our problem?
art bell ▲ ● ▼		It certainly could.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Doctor?
dr kevin trenberth ▲ ● ▼		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 Niño, 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 the waviness in the atmosphere.
		So that's a fairly complicated issue.
		On the other issue with methane.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Yeah, the other issue is methane, but again, we're at a breakpoint, so hold tight.
		We will come back to methane.
		So stay right where you are.
		I'm Art Bell.
unidentified		Ain't got no trouble in my life.
		No foolish dreams can make me cry.
		I'm never frightened or worried.
		I know I'll always be.
		Remember, when calling midnight in the desert, let the phone ring until answered.
		These calls are unscreened for your listening pleasure.
		Call 1-952-CALLARS.
		That's 1-952-225-5278.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		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.
unidentified		Yes.
dr kevin trenberth ▲ ● ▼		So this relates to methane hydrate.
		It's also called clathrates.
		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.
		And 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.
		And so the ability For the various gases, including methane and carbon dioxide, to be absorbed in the water varies with temperature.
		And 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.
		The risk of the methane hydrates melting, so to speak, and being released is currently regarded as quite small, or some quite a long distance into the future, because the oceans would have to warm up quite a lot.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		If there was a sudden release of methane, the result of that, I'm sure, would be evident in one of your models, and you probably have looked at that, right?
dr kevin trenberth ▲ ● ▼		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 changes 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.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		All right, so go Japanese.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		On Skype, you're on the air.
unidentified		Hi.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Hi.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Yes, go ahead, sir.
unidentified		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.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Congratulations.
		Move away from your microphone a little bit.
		You're awfully loud.
		Sand, go ahead if you have a question.
unidentified		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, so 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 show.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		You're beginning to load us with too much here.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		So give me your number one thing you want him to respond to.
unidentified		You know, the government's pay scientists grants to give them the global warming numbers.
		They want those numbers.
		All right.
		So give them those numbers.
		They don't get the grant.
		Okay.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		All right.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		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.
dr kevin trenberth ▲ ● ▼		I wish.
unidentified		No, that's certainly not true.
dr kevin trenberth ▲ ● ▼		I mean, we, yeah, no, scientists don't benefit from this.
		We're in the business by trying to understand the system and not usually for monetary gain.
		And 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.
		And it's more likely that we'll end up with a continuing resolution, but no funds are drying up, if anything.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		You know, I would much rather suggest to that caller that he, to be some sense of fairness, go to one of these other stations that's all the way over on the right and see if Dr. Trenberth would get an invitation to speak there.
		And good luck with that.
		On the phone, you're on the air.
		Hello.
unidentified		Yeah, how are you doing?
unidentified		This is Steve from Dewajek, Michigan.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Yes, sir.
unidentified		How are you doing, Art?
		Fine.
		Many Roswells to you, by the way.
		Thank you.
		Got kind of a few topics to hit on, and I kind of would like a little dynamic conversation if I could with your guests.
		And by what I mean dynamic is kind of, you know, talk with me as I ask the question.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Okay, well, I'll ask.
unidentified		Out of CO2 and methane, which one is more detrimental to the ozone as far as keeping in the rays of the sun?
dr kevin trenberth ▲ ● ▼		to ozone.
dr kevin trenberth ▲ ● ▼		If you are talking about the greenhouse of...
unidentified		Yeah, there you go.
		There you go.
		I'm sorry.
dr kevin trenberth ▲ ● ▼		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 8%.
		And the dominant component of the greenhouse effect 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 methane only has a lifetime of about 10 years or so before it ends up as carbon dioxide.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Okay, Collar?
unidentified		Okay.
		The next thing I want to touch on, too, is: you know, as a diesel technician, you know, I see the bottom line of all these emission chokeholds that the government is requiring of the automotive manufacturing companies.
		What I don't see anybody talking about is the agricultural industry.
		And what I mean by that is the agriculture in raising and slaughtering livestock and producing methane.
		And from what I've 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 lives.
		That means what I'm saying is...
dr kevin trenberth ▲ ● ▼		We're going to come back on that right...
		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.
		And 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 maybe do a little bit around the edges by changing the food.
unidentified		I mean, from what I understand, I mean, these farms and whatnot, they're actually raising and slaughtering these.
		That's basically what it amounts to.
		That's what they're doing.
		And they're producing all of this methane.
		And 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.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Were you listening, though?
art bell ▲ ● ▼		He said not really true because it has a certain life, which is not nearly as long, correct, Doctor?
dr kevin trenberth ▲ ● ▼		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 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 that escapes in that process.
		And I don't think there's a full accounting of that.
		My worrisome to me.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		All right.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Scott on Skype, you're on the air.
unidentified		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, 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 we have to all take responsibility today.
		You know, I'm in a field in an industry that's growing exponentially.
		41% growth last year.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Well, the current economics are not in your favor.
dr kevin trenberth ▲ ● ▼		Art, you're wrong.
unidentified		The solar industry...
		Yeah, but gas, you see, the thing is, people are starting to get it.
		And, you know, I think.
		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 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 call, 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.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Trust me, you're going to get solar panels up much faster than you're going to get people to quit quarter panels.
unidentified		Well, 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.
		Other than recycle, 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.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		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.
dr kevin trenberth ▲ ● ▼		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.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		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.
unidentified		Feeling away on the crest of a wave, it's like medicine.
		All rolling and riding and sleeping and sliding and sled.
		In the darkest time, between dusk and dawn, from the high desert, it's Art Bell's Midnight in the Desert.
		Now, here's Art.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		I am, and my guest is Dr. Kevin Tremberth.
		He is a distinguished senior scientist in the climate analysis section at the National Center for Admonition.
		No.
		Atmospheric research.
		Doctor, welcome back.
		Obviously, we're 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.
unidentified		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 guests' math, and I can address it in less than two minutes.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Go for it.
unidentified		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 Mir Shaviv from Hebrew University of Jerusalem showed that the total radiative forcing associated with solar cycles is five to seven times the total solar irradiance variance at approximately one 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 1,000 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.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		All right.
unidentified		Wait, one last map.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Let the doctor go now.
unidentified		Come on.
unidentified		Go.
dr kevin trenberth ▲ ● ▼		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.
unidentified		I'm reading from Shabib's paper directly for three sentences here.
		Well, you know, 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.
		All right, all right, call her about seven times total solar irradiance variation.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		All right, call her.
unidentified		Wait.
unidentified		Okay, I just want to say the last math problem is the Earth radiates energy into space more appropriately modeled by blackbody radiation, which is proportional to the temperature of the radiating body radiation.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Hold on.
		Hold on.
		Go ahead, Doctor.
dr kevin trenberth ▲ ● ▼		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.
unidentified		Blackbody radiation is correct.
		And thermodynamic trends.
		A linear average is not correct.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Okay, Doctor?
dr kevin trenberth ▲ ● ▼		No, there's a real greenhouse effect, and the atmosphere or climate system does not act like a blackbody 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.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Okay.
		Somebody near you in Denver, Colorado.
		You're on there.
unidentified		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.
		Does the doctor know anything like evidence-wise that's going to point this towards man having an effect on it?
		I know like overhunting and stuff like that, but maybe climate change as well?
dr kevin trenberth ▲ ● ▼		This is not paleoclimate and the mass extinctions are not something I'm an expert on at all.
		But we have the influence of man, which is now competing with all of the major changes that have occurred in climate in the past.
		One of the earlier callers asked a little bit about that, and we never got to it.
		But the main cause of the changes in ice ages and the big cycles that have occurred in the past is the orbit of the Earth around the Sun and the shape of the orbit, the precession of the equinoxes, and these occur on 20, the tilt, which is a 20,000 year for the precession of the equinoxes and 100,000 year 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.
unidentified		Okay.
		Thank you.
		Can I give a shout out to the DM Talk hashtag on Twitter?
		And you guys have a good night tonight.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		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?
dr kevin trenberth ▲ ● ▼		Exceedingly rare, to the point I would say never.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		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 Trenberth.
		Again, some of you out there might note the doctor's name and phone it into your local talk station and see how you fare.
unidentified		Will you partake of that last offer cut or disappear into the potter's crowd?
		When the man comes around to initiate a dialogue sequence with Art Bell, please coordinate your Valanges and call 1-952-225-5278.
		That's 1-952.
		Call ART.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Hi, everybody.
		It's great to have you here tonight.
		It's a pretty spirited discussion, that's for sure.
		I've got to say this, Doctor, at the risk of sounding like or have it sound Trump-like, I understand the concept of a tax 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, I'll bet you.
		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.
dr kevin trenberth ▲ ● ▼		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.
unidentified		It is.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Completely irresponsible.
unidentified		That's why I said idiots around our country.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Let's go, I don't know, Monterey, California.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		How about that?
unidentified		Hey, Eric.
		Your name'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 Wind Jammer Restaurant, how it worked?
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Yes, I did.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Why?
unidentified		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.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		So you're suggesting that ocean levels are lower?
unidentified		Yes.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		It's simply not true, doctor?
dr kevin trenberth ▲ ● ▼		At least not on a global basis, but of course people uh do build barriers of various kinds and that's what I would uh look for.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		There you go.
		Uh 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 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.
unidentified		Hello.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Hello.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Going once, going twice.
unidentified		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 precedented history.
		Are we going to charge them for their carbon output or what?
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Okay, well, it's a good question.
		We have had a lot of volcanic activity, and it does affect the atmosphere.
		Doctor?
dr kevin trenberth ▲ ● ▼		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 a cooling for a couple of years.
		There's been quite a number of small volcanoes, 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.
		They just are 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.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Pennadubo also took out Clark Air Force Base.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Jeremy, you're on the air.
unidentified		Hello, Dr. Trunberth.
unidentified		This is Jeremy from Omaha.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Jeremy, you're kind of broken up, so you're going to have to get close to the mic or something.
unidentified		How's this?
unidentified		Is this better?
art bell ▲ ● ▼		A little.
unidentified		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.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Okay, Jeremy, it's really tough to get what you're saying, but go ahead.
unidentified		Well, I think that essentially they're pulling up the same arguments over and over.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Jeremy, are you on a speakerphone?
unidentified		No, I'm not.
unidentified		I'm on a webcam.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		On a what?
unidentified		On a webcam.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		A webcam.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Grab the webcam with your hand, Jeremy, and bring it to within about two inches of your mouth and just speak normally.
unidentified		Is that better?
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Oh, much.
unidentified		All right, sorry about that.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Now you know how to do it.
unidentified		Go ahead.
		There you go.
		Well, I think that essentially these deniers keep bringing up the same peer-reviewed paper for like the 24 that actually do support denial.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		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.
unidentified		Yes.
unidentified		I'm listening on the computer, and when I called in, I got this show, so I'm not real sure.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Okay, well, turn off whatever you're listening to, your device, we call it, and just ignore that, and go ahead.
unidentified		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?
art bell ▲ ● ▼		I was not aware they were treating the atmosphere with nanotechnology, doctor.
dr kevin trenberth ▲ ● ▼		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.
unidentified		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 help, 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.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Ma'am, I don't think that they have 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 the air.
unidentified		Hello, Art.
		Hi.
		I would just like to talk to the doctor regarding the satellite data analyzed by the University of Alabama in Huntsville.
		They do a lot of the, 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?
dr kevin trenberth ▲ ● ▼		Well, actually, the number that I've seen more recently is 18 years.
		22 now.
		Well, that's not true because it's not.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		No global warming in the world.
unidentified		Let him finish, please.
dr kevin trenberth ▲ ● ▼		It starts in 1998, which is the warmest year on record.
		But that record begins back in 1979.
		And if you look at the full record, there has been substantial warming, indeed.
		And this is cherry-picking the data to say it that way.
unidentified		I have another question regarding when you're talking about these warmest years in years.
		About two, 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 rearrangement the sensors, they were showing climate cooling, you know, hide the decline.
		Well, lo and behold, after they rearrange their sensors, my God, they're seeing warming again.
		And oh yeah, 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 had now.
dr kevin trenberth ▲ ● ▼		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 sight 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.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Okay.
		Sacramento, California, we're getting short on time.
		You're on here.
unidentified		Good morning, gentlemen, and thanks for taking the call.
unidentified		I do want to mention to you that I've been with you since you were working on Art's Parts on Dreamland, so it's been a long time.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Long time, yes, sir.
unidentified		Comment 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 Lindzen.
		Would he like to comment on that?
dr kevin trenberth ▲ ● ▼		I know Richard Lindzen, but most of those, the people who have signed that thing are not climate scientists and they're not necessarily well informed.
dr kevin trenberth ▲ ● ▼		And you know, with the petition.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Hold on, let him finish.
dr kevin trenberth ▲ ● ▼		Well, all right.
		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, a 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.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Is that a hominy?
unidentified		Well, that certainly counts his opinion, doesn't it?
		Yeah, that's kind of a bit of an attack there.
		Well, 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 varied together, but it turns out that 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.
dr kevin trenberth ▲ ● ▼		Well, yes, I mentioned that before.
		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.
		It 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 no longer just a feedback, it's also actually a forcing of the climate change that's going on.
unidentified		Isn't the human contribution to that feedback roughly 0.28%, which is virtually nothing?
dr kevin trenberth ▲ ● ▼		No, that's not correct.
unidentified		I guess you just checked the number.
dr kevin trenberth ▲ ● ▼		Carbon dioxide counts for about a quarter of the total greenhouse effect.
unidentified		That's wildly different from some of the numbers that I believe have been published.
unidentified		95% of the greenhouse effect is due to water vapor.
dr kevin trenberth ▲ ● ▼		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.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		All right.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Doctor, we're coming to the end of the program.
dr kevin trenberth ▲ ● ▼		Yes, we are.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		So I would like to ask you if there's anything you'd like to get on the air, like maybe a website or where you would suggest that people read or anything you want to get on before we're done.
dr kevin trenberth ▲ ● ▼		Well, if you Google my name, TrendBirth, 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 of them which are in the form of PDFs that you can download.
		There are also a number of PowerPoint presentations that are there that are often used by professors and others, and they're welcome to use them as long as they use them with attribution.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		All right.
unidentified		All right.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		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.
dr kevin trenberth ▲ ● ▼		All right.
dr kevin trenberth ▲ ● ▼		Thank you very much for having me.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Good night, sir.
		Dr. Kevin Trenbreth.
		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 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.

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