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0:00
♪ [Opening Music] ♪
0:19
Barry: Hi, I'm Barry Mitchell and welcome to this very special edition of Simply Science dedicated to climate change and the unprecedented impact humans have had on our planet. According to the UN, climate change remains the greatest threat to global security. So is the United States finally facing this head-on? Mike Gilliam takes a hard look. Pres. Biden: The first order I'm signing is tackling the climate crisis at home and abroad. Mike: And with the stroke of a pen President Joe Biden
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signaled an end to the climate change policies of former President Donald Trump. Pres. Biden: In my view, we've already waited too long to deal with this climate crisis. We can't wait any longer. Mike: Bill Solecki is a professor of geography at Hunter College and is in the Earth and Environmental Science program at the CUNY Graduate Center. He's the former chairman of the New York City Panel on Climate Change, where he served for more than a decade.
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Bill: I think one of the things to recognize is that climate change is no longer in the future. It's now in the present and the fact that we've seen evidence of it over the last several decades. So what does that mean? Increasing frequency of heat waves in the summer. Often longer and hotter heat waves and the implication of heat stress from that is certainly, that's a key concern of the city of New York. Another one of course is accelerated sea level rise and
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the potential for a stronger or more impactful flooding events. So these are trends that are reflective of climate change. Mike: According to NASA, the planet's average surface temperature has risen more than two degrees since the late 19th century with most of the warming coming in the last 40 years. 2016 to 2020 are tied as the warmest year on record. The oceans are warmer and ice sheets are shrinking while sea levels are rising. Some of this was evident during Superstorm Sandy.
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Solecki says when it comes to policy, he sees major differences between the administrations. Bill: The Biden Administration has put forward a very aggressive policy with respect to climate action, even more so than the Obama Administration and certainly much more than the previous administration. And I think there's a lot of optimism. Mike: But this comes after four years of an administration that did not tackle the issue and instead, rolled back
2:40
some 80 regulations aimed at cleaning up and protecting the environment while dealing with climate change. The Trump administration also left the Paris Climate Agreement that set voluntary goals for reducing greenhouse gases. Biden, who wants to get to net zero emissions by 2050, tapped one of the architects of the agreement, former Secretary of State, John Kerry, to take on the issue as his climate czar. John Kerry: And this is an issue where failure literally is not an option.
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Bill: Certainly it's a step in the right direction. Mike: Solecki says the previous administration's policies led to increased emissions and had another detrimental effect. Bill: The US has to be a global leader in this fight. And by not pushing forward a robust agenda on climate change, it allowed other countries to sort of relax. Mike: Over the last four years with the feds backing away, Bill says, one of the things that happened was a shift to efforts at the state and local level.
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Now coordination will be key. The Biden Administration is also working to get a buy-in from the business community, which it got almost immediately from General Motors when the automaker announced it would sell only electric cars by 2035. Bill: I think it's a great step forward and it's illustrative of a whole series of movements that we're seeing in the business community. Mike: President Biden wants to create 10 million jobs by combating climate change, but there are many
4:08
who say they look at the world around us and climate change simply doesn't exist. Professor Solecki says it does and it's here, but there's still time to turn things around. Bill: The opportunities and the technology and the experience are available to us for us to turn it around. The challenges, the institutions, and sort of, and financing, and sort of making it palatable to abroad, and equitable to a broad audience. But this decade is critical. Every month is critical in this decade.
4:42
Mike: I'm Mike Gilliam for Simply Science. Barry: Fossil fuels supply about 80% of the world's energy and they're one of the primary contributors to global warming and climate change. But what makes them so bad and how come it's been such a challenge for us to stop using them? Here's Lisa Beth Kovetz.
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Sanjoy: Fossil fuel obviously produces both greenhouse gases, which have the property that, you know, radiation from the sun can come in, get absorbed on the earth but when it radiates back, it gets trapped just like in a greenhouse. And then that leads to the temperature rising in the biosphere. So that's one consequence of fossil foods. Lisa Beth: Another problem is that fossil fuels are just dirty, throwing off soot and ash, which is bad for everyone's health.
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CO2 acidifies the ocean, bleaching coral reefs. So how urgent is it that we wean ourselves off fossil fuels? Sanjoy: It's almost too late in some ways, but what we're hoping to be is carbon neutral by 2050. Lisa Beth: According to the UN in order to have a 50% chance of keeping global warming in check, we need to be carbon neutral by 2050. But what exactly do we need fossil fuels to do? Turns out it's a lot of spin, but like literally spin.
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Sanjoy: You know, what you're really doing is taking energy that has been stored from sunlight over millions of years as carbon, and you're taking it out and you're using it up really fast to produce heat, and of course, carbon dioxide, and in that process what you have is a heat engine. You're taking the heat and turning it into useful energy to make things spin so that, you know, you have cars. Another thing would be that you use it to produce
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electricity, either by making things spin or more directly. When you have sunlight falling on crystals of a certain type, you produce electricity directly. So that what we're trying to do is replace the fossil fuels that are used to generate electricity by more sustainable energy sources, renewable sources. Lisa Beth: When you talk about the sunlight that's stored in carbon, it's stored there really well, like to store a can of gas all you really need is a can.
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But to store these greener forms of energy that don't have a built in storage capacity, what are some of the tools that we need in order to really harness and share these new greener electors? Sanjoy: About 30% of renewable capacity has to be stored in some form. It could be hydro, it could be batteries, it could be pumped, air compressed air, but in some form about 30% of the renewable resources will have to be stored. So storage will play a major role and that's where the
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Achilles heel currently of this climate, you know, program that we have in mind lies. Because, you know, we know how to make solar panels pretty well. We know how to make windmills pretty well. But we don't know how to store energy very well. Our use of energy should be brought back to a human timescale. We use what we get so that we're in balance, because what we're doing is we're using resources that have been stored over millions of years, over a very short period of time
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and that's not sustainable. Lisa Beth: This has been Lisa Beth Kovetz for Simply Science.
8:56
Barry: 2020 had some of the most damaging wildfires in recent times. And 2019 was one of the wettest years on record. So why are some places going up in flames while others are inundated with wet weather? Andrew Falzon explains.
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Andrew: Fire and water may seem like opposites, but they're closely connected in the science of climate change. We spoke with two scientists to help explain the connection, Dr. Robert Field, an expert in wildfire from Columbia University and Dr. Gisela Winckler from Lamont-Doherty Earth Observatory, who's an expert in paleoclimatology and paleoceanography. The connection between fire and water starts with the water cycle. Gisela: And what that means is that water evaporates from
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the ocean or from any other water bodies like lakes. It evaporates as invisible water vapor up into the atmosphere, up into the air, and as it rises high enough, it condenses and forms clouds. And it eventually will precipitate from these clouds. Andrew: It seems like that was the easy part. Now the hard part is how does the water cycle intersect with climate change? Gisela: It's actually counter intuitive. The effect of climate change on the water cycle
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primarily is that in a warmer world the surface waters in the ocean are warmer. Andrew: Since there's more evaporation and warmer air holds more water, climate scientists also expect the water cycle to become much more vigorous. Gisela: But what we really do expect is these more intense events. You know, higher frequency of intense events. That is what we are predicting. Andrew: And this intensifying weather could have real world consequences.
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Gisela: If you imagined that, you know, a big monsoon lands, for example, in Asia, would have huge effects on food production. It's not just about, you know, a downpour here or there or, you know, a stronger precipitation event. But it really is about a change in these precipitation patterns and their effect on agriculture and food production ultimately. Andrew: And even though there could be more intense precipitation events in some parts of the world,
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the more vigorous actions of the water cycle could make dry climates drier. Gisela: With warmer temperatures you also get more evaporation, not just from the ocean, but also from these already dried surfaces and that makes them even dryer. Andrew: And when dry areas become dryer, that makes them even more susceptible to wildfire. That's where Dr. Robert Field comes in. He's an internationally renowned wildfire expert who helped develop the wildfire rating systems for Canada,
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Indonesia, and Malaysia. Is it a fair assessment to say that 2020 was an unprecedented year? Robert: So it depended on the location. But just to see the number, how much fire there was there in those places did make 2020 unique. Andrew: And while it might not have been the worst on record, it seems like one wildfire after another dominated the headlines. First in Australia, which started in late 2019 and continued into 2020. Through the summer of 2020 wildfire raged in
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Siberia, better known for its frostbitten winters. Around the same time, California's wild seasons started up. And then there was extensive fire in the Amazon where it's used as a tool to clear land. Robert: But inevitably, when it's dry enough, some of those fires will get out of your control. Andrew: And every time a large section of forested area burns that means there's less plant life to soak up carbon emissions, further intensifying the cycle that leads to climate change.
12:52
And Dr. Field believes the water cycle is already influencing wildfires. Robert: It is upon us already. It's not something down the road. And what we've seen over the last decade is really an indication of what we can expect more of in the future. Andrew: I'm Andrew Falzon for Simply Science.
13:19
Barry: Extreme weather events are not the only potentially deadly aspect of climate change pollution. Many of the risks are of a smaller individual scale, our own personal health. Here's Ari Goldberg.
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Ari: When you think of climate change and consequences from air pollution, what do you think of? Hurricanes? Droughts? Melting ice caps? How about infertility or cancer or Alzheimer's? Indeed, while it doesn't grab as many headlines, new studies indicate 8 million deaths annually, 350,000 of which in the US, and illnesses you might not think are linked to air pollution. Ilias: It is now the last five, maybe 10 years, but definitely the last five years that human health is becoming part of the
14:07
discussion about climate change. Ari: Ilias Kavouras is a professor of environmental health at the CUNY School of Public Health. And he explained to us how when we burn fossil fuels, we're not just releasing carbon dioxide driving climate change, along with CO2 we're also releasing other carbon particles that may be harmful to breathe. Ilias: Particulate matter in the air, or atmospheric aerosol, are very tiny particles in the air that we cannot really see them.
14:37
And that typically comes from combustion processes, which in an urban environment, like New York City, for example, it will be mostly from traffic or industrial emissions. When we burn something, we produce carbon. Ari: Interestingly enough, carbon dioxide itself isn't toxic to humans, but these other bits of carbon, this particulate matter can be. But how do they interact with our body once we breathe them in? Ilias: The smaller particles can penetrate deeper into the lungs.
15:07
Now the lungs is not completely isolated from the rest of the body. They're in contact with the body and the medium that does that is the blood. So there is an exchange between lungs and blood. So how oxygen, for example, transfers from the lungs to the blood and then circulates through the body, right? But by the same way, other gases, but also there's more particles, can cross this barrier and go to the blood. Ari: And once they're in the blood, they may harm an
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organ directly or the body's reaction to them may cause harm. What kind of ailments are we talking about here? Ilias: Lung damage and lung disease. And that can be asthma, can be chronic obstructive pulmonary disease, and can be lung cancer. And this can be Parkinson's disease, can be Alzheimer's, can be even some of the mental diseases. So we know that there is a relationship between what we breathe and many human diseases, including obesity, diabetes, cardiovascular heart disease.
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We still need to understand the exact mechanism. What are the steps that take place in the human body. Ari: That is quite a list and only a partial one at that. But that's not to say everyone needs to move to the countryside or stay indoors. And according to Kavouras, it is not the only risk factor. Things like genetics, where you live, socioeconomics all play a role. But the risk of these fossil fuel byproducts are certainly an important angle to consider when we talk about climate change.
16:45
Sometimes an overlooked one. Do you think it would help if the repercussions of climate change on our own health was discussed more like this? Ilias: When health is part of the discussion, our health is part of a discussion, and we are more motivated to act as we know what goes around, comes around so now we are part of this environment so we're exposed to what we're putting into the environment. Ari: Another reason to take climate change seriously, our own personal health.
17:17
Not just in the future, happening right now already. I'm Ari Goldberg for Simply Science. Barry: The ocean absorbs excess heat trapped by greenhouse gases. The warmer waters cause a change in ocean currents. What does that leave us with? A floating smelly seaweed that's becoming an expensive problem.
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We're being invaded by seaweed and it's no day at the beach. Rosa: Not as much as in 2018 and 2019, but still a lot to cause problems to the ecology and the economy of the area. Barry: It's Sargassum. And in spring and summer tons of this smelly oily rutting algae has been inundating the East coast of Mexico, the Caribbean, and Miami Beach chasing away vacationers and causing big headaches for resort hotels. Rosa: We also know that the composition of the algae
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creates a lot of bacteria so it can also produce infections. Brian: It strips the oxygen out of the ocean, creates what we call a dead zone, and that's when you get the production of hydrogen sulfide that is toxic. Barry: Sargassum is not always a villain. It's an important ecosystem when it stays home in its North Atlantic Sargassum sea. Rosa: The Sargassum sea, they provide food and shelter for many species of invertebrates, of fish. Brian: It floats on the surface of the ocean with all
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these other organisms, this tremendous biodiversity, which includes endangered sea turtles. Barry: And then it began to migrate. A decade ago oceanographers noticed a new 5,000 mile long algae trail they dubbed the great Atlantic Sargassum belt. Brian: This is a region between Africa and South America, where we now have the biggest algae bloom on earth. Barry: Trouble begins when batches of Sargassum break loose, travel, and rot on our beaches.
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Rosa: Well, there have been many hypothesis on this explosion of Sargassum but one of them is the increase in temperature that is producing changes in the currents in the ocean. This can affect that usual trajectories that the Sargassum follow. Barry: And warmer oceans are more hospitable to Sargassum growth. Then there's deforestation, the controversial practice of cutting down trees to make more grazing and farm land. Brian: We've had a tremendous increase in deforestation over
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the last several decades that likely is contributing to what we see as increasing flux of nitrate, one of the reactive forms of nitrogen that can support the growth of Sargassum. Barry: When you cut down a tree, its roots also die. Roots are what keep nutrients like nitrogen in the soil. No roots? The nitrates are carried by rainwater into the rivers and oceans. Same with nitrates from fertilizer. They encourage crop growth on land, but in the ocean
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they make Sargassum grow too much and too fast. Brian: We hear so much about our carbon footprint and the need to reduce that carbon footprint, you know, to help to mitigate climate change. Well, we also need to simultaneously be thinking about our nitrogen footprint. Rosa: The amount of Sargassum we are receiving is huge. To dispose, the hotels and the government needs hundreds of trucks. And this is very expensive and they, when they just finished
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cleaning up the beach, then a new mat of Sargassum arives and it starts all over again. Brian: We've got to turn this nuisance and harmful alga into something beneficial. Sargassum could potentially be harvested at sea before it comes on shore. And then take it to a location where it can be either composted and used for a variety of purposes. And if nothing else, for the production of biofuels or biochar. Barry: Biochar is a charcoal like material used to enrich soil.
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Rosa: Florida has other industries, while the Mexican Caribbean coast is only depending on tourism so the governments need to provide resources to face this problem, because it will not go away by itself. Barry: The loss of habitats is one of the biggest concerns about climate change. And one of those threatened habitats is right here in New York state, the hemlock forest. Our Donna Hanover has the story about the valiant fight being made to save these important trees.
21:59
Donna: Climate change is allowing an aggressive insect to move North and kill our hemlock forest. Images from two satellites are helping scientists fight back. Andrew: They both essentially are taking pictures of the earth surface. In the case of Land Sat every 15, 16 days or so it's passing over the same point, snapping the picture. For Sentinel it's every five days or so. As the infestation progresses, trees will lose needles. They'll lose chlorophyll in the canopy.
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The color essentially of the canopy will change. It'll become less green. And that's what we're looking to detect with these satellites. Donna: Professor Andrew Reinmann of the CUNY Advanced Science Research Center says the culprit is the hemlock woolly adelgid, which came to the mid-Atlantic East coast on trees imported from Japan. Andrew: It's a tiny aphid-like insect. They're pretty noticeable. They sort of create these white sort of cottony or wooly
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little overwintering sacks, that's how they got their name, the woolly adelgid. And it's sort of looking for the different types of sugars and carbohydrates that the tree produces. And the needles begin to die over time. Donna: Scientists say they think the insect is moving North partly because climate change is causing seasonal changes like warmer winters. Andrew: The adelgid is from Japan in a place where the winters are mild. As the climate continues to warm, the amount of area that
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might have a climate suitable to the adelgid will also increase. Donna: And ironically, one way to slow down climate change a bit is to save the hemlocks because they help reduce carbon going into our atmosphere where it traps more heat. Andrew: Trees are really important for sequestering carbon and helping us to slow the rate of climate change. Donna: The Eastern hemlock trees we're talking about are totally unrelated to the hemlock that is poison.
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And they're not like deciduous trees that lose their leaves. Eastern hemlocks are conifers that keep their needles year round and they're vital to other species. Andrew: They create a really dense shade and so they create cooler damper conditions and the understory, they help to keep the streams themselves cooler, and colder water can carry more oxygen. Donna: That's essential for trout and other creatures in the water. Also -- Andrew: Because they have this dense foliage, the snowpack
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doesn't get as deep beneath them and this can sort of serve as a refuge for certain animals like deer and maybe moose. Donna: Dr. Reinmann and his team often go into the forest to confirm their satellite data. Andrew: As a forest declines, there'll be more and more light that penetrates and so making these ground-based measurements in the field, helps us to interpret the data that we're able to collect from the satellites. Donna: Also citizens out hiking sometimes report adelgid damage.
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With resources from the state and groups like the Fund for Lake George, foresters can go find the trees being hurt and use chemicals to kill the adelgid. Taking another approach, the New York State Hemlock Initiative at Cornell University has been working with a beetle and two flies as predators for natural control of the adelgid. Dr. Reinmann's team is also hoping to use new laser instruments on the International Space Station to see below the
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canopy of the forest and find the woolly adelgid before it does so much damage. Andrew: I grew up in Southern New York and my first exposure to the woods was in Harriman State Park and over the years, I've unfortunately seen that hemlock stand declined to the point now where most of those trees are dead. Donna: And there might be some people who would say, you know, he's trying to find a little bug that's hurting some trees. Why are you so passionate about this?
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Andrew: I've always had a soft spot for hemlocks and anyone who is perhaps wondering that question, and I would strongly encourage you to go and visit one of these forests. These trees are majestic. They can live for 600 or 800 years. To see this species largely disappear from the places where I fell in love with nature is a bit heartbreaking to me. And so it's exciting to have an opportunity to try and do something that will kind of help to ameliorate the problem.
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Donna: I'm Donna Hanover for Simply Science.
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Barry: Well, that's our show. Remember you can always find us at tv.cuny.edu, Facebook, YouTube, and Instagram. I'm Barry Mitchell. Thank you for watching. And we hope to see you next time on Simply Science. And we hope to see you next time on Simply Science.
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♪ [Closing Music] ♪
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