Climatologist Dr. Gavin Schmidt is the Director of the NASA Goddard Institute of Space Studies. In a wide-ranging interview, we talk Climate Change, melting ice sheets, fossil fuels, the impact of COVID-19 and why people in movies don't listen to scientists. Then, we countdown the Top 5 Kinds of Cookies.

Interview with Dr. Gavin Schmidt on Climate Change

SPEAKERS

Nick VinZant - Profoundly Pointless Host

Dr. Gavin Schmidt - Director of NASA Goddard Institute for Space Studies

Note: Transcription is not 100% accurate. Please consult the episode for exact quote

Nick VinZant  00:12

Hey everybody, welcome to Profoundly Pointless. My name is Nick VinZant, coming up in this episode climate and cookies,

Dr. Gavin Schmidt  00:20

Climate it's everything that we see outside. And it's statistics and its processes. You know, it's the atmosphere is the ocean, it's the, the ice that floating on the Arctic is the ice sheets, you know, the trajectory we're on is putting us on a course for a climate on earth that has not been seen in millions of years. The scope of working for NASA allows you to think about things in a much, much broader context, then, then you would you'd be able to do in any other settings.

Nick VinZant  01:01

I want to thank you guys so much for joining us. If you get a chance, like, download, subscribe, share, we really appreciate it, it really helps us out. This is a really special episode for us. And I just want to start it off by saying thank you to everybody who has taken time to listen to the show. The guests that have come on the show, people who have commented, we really appreciate every single one of you. This is our 100th episode. And we definitely got farther than we ever thought that we could. And it's it's all because of our listeners and our guests. And I just want to say right at the beginning that we really, really appreciate it. Thank you so much. This is also a really important episode for us because we're going to be talking about something that is a huge issue now and is going To be a huge issue for the foreseeable future, climate change, what is going to be happening to our planet and what is happening with our planet right now? Our first guest is the perfect person to talk to about this. This is Dr. Gavin Schmidt. He's a climatologist, a climate modeler, and he is the director of the NASA Goddard Institute for Space Studies. When we talk about climate, like I think I know what we're talking about when we someone says climate but what are we really talking about?

Dr. Gavin Schmidt  02:37

It's everything that we see outside. And it's statistics and its processes. You know, it's the atmosphere, it's the ocean, it's the, the ice that floating on the Arctic is the ice sheets, the deep oceans, it's the stratosphere, and all the things that kind of intersects between all those realms. To give us the patterns of weather and climate, we can understand in a more colloquial sense

Nick VinZant  03:07

Climate is obviously that that's very different than weather, right?

Dr. Gavin Schmidt  03:11

So I think people get a little confused about the difference between weather and climate when it comes to forecasting. And, and they see the limits to weather forecasting. So we can't we can't make good weather forecasts beyond 10 days and not much, much beyond that. And, and they think, Well, you know, but the weather time is the same. So we can't make climate forecasts but but we're trying we're doing something very different or making a climate forecast. What we're doing there is is trying to say how the the average things are going to change how the patterns are going to change, not not the specifics of any one storm or or one hurricane or one weather system. And so the predictability and climate comes from a very different place. So the predictability of climate comes from the fact that you know, energy is conserved mass is conserved, that we understand radiation in and out of the atmosphere. Whereas, you know, the predictability of weather comes because we can, you know, we can track you know that like these big, Eddie's these big turbulent Eddie's in the atmosphere from one day to another, which is a very different kind of skill, but they are very related. I mean, we don't make tire predictions without including all of the weather. inside those those calculations. You talked about all the things that kind of go into into climate is there one that influences it, more than any of the others, like this thing has the biggest impact that doesn't really make much sense to us, because the interesting things about the climate are the emergent properties of what happens when it gets going, you know, the interactions between the ocean And the ice and the atmosphere, the wave patterns, the the variations, the El Nino patterns that you see in the Pacific, all of those things emerge because of the connections between the different realms and the different processes. So you know, if you take one thing out, then it's a very different system. And it has different properties. But we're really interested in the properties of the whole system. And it turns out that almost all of the interesting ones are coupled in, in various, sometimes subtle ways between all those different avenues.

Nick VinZant  05:37

So we're recording this towards the end of May right now, what are you kind of seeing in terms of changes related to COVID-19? What kind of an impact is that having?

Dr. Gavin Schmidt  05:48

Right, so so what's happening so basically a lot of activities that would have taken place or not taking place Now, some of those activities would have used fossil fuels, right? driving around in cars, public transport, all of those things have gone way down. So that means that the the emissions from those activities have gone down. We're also the air pollutants from those activities have gone that we're also not doing some things that we would have done otherwise. Right? So for instance, in this time of year, quite often in places like California, they do controlled burns of forest areas to try and avoid larger burns later on the season. Okay, we're not doing that. So there are there are some odd things that are happening in terms of the atmospheric composition, emissions that impact climate and air quality that are quite noticeable right now. So for instance, you know, air quality has improved, you know, pretty much across the board LA, New York. northeast northern Italy, Europe, China, India have all had huge reductions in the amount of air pollutants. And that's mainly from car driving. But But carbon dioxide emissions they've gone down a little as well. But the interesting thing there is that coming dockside is accumulating so and we're putting so much more into the atmosphere than the planet can deal with that even you know,  a10 percent 15% reduction in global emissions it's still the conductor demand is still gonna go up

Nick VinZant  07:36

We seem to be heading a certain direction in terms of climate change, correct me if I'm wrong, has what's been happening with the reductions made any dent or are we still headed in the wrong direction?

Dr. Gavin Schmidt  07:49

No, it's like, it's like you're filling a bath and somebody is like kind of slightly turned down the tap. But really, the bath is still continuing to fill And what you need to do is turn off the tap is completely. And that's the only way that the tablet the bath is going to stop rising. So that's a huge task. And I don't think anybody is unaware of how difficult a task that's going to be. And it's a task that needs to be sustained over not just a few months, not just a few years, but for pretty much the rest of the century. So I, you know, we were, we're seeing this decrease this year. That that's, that's clear. But to the extent that it helps in any important way, is the extent to which any habits that have been ingrained right now, stick or that when we kind of restart economic activity that we do so in a way that puts us on a more sustainable path going forward. And those Those issues really very much still to be determined.

Nick VinZant  09:03

When we're talking about climate change kind of as a way for me to understand it on a scale of like one to 10. One, everything's gonna be fine, don't worry about it.  10 kiss your butt goodbye kind of thing life as we know, it is changing forever. Where are we kind of at now?

Dr. Gavin Schmidt  09:22

I'd say about eight.

Nick VinZant  09:23

That bad?

Dr. Gavin Schmidt  09:25

Yeah, I mean, you know, the trajectory we're on is putting us on a course for a climate on Earth, that has not been seen in millions of years. Right. I mean that and let me let me discuss, you know how long the period is like. So humans have only been around in our kind of modern form for about 200,000 years. The environment in which, you know, Homo sapiens evolved You know, the the African savannas, the ice ages coming and going the end of hills, all of those things, you know, all of those things have kind of fit in the last, you know, 3 million years a, where we're going in terms of climate, it goes back even before that, right. So it goes back to the prior scene, maybe even the minor scene, you know, periods that were significantly warmer where there was very little ice on the planet, or much less ice on the planet. sea levels were, you know, perhaps 20 meters so what's that 60/65 feet higher than they are now? You can still see the Paleo shorelines you know, where the where the beaches used to be on the east coast. And they're in the middle of New Jersey, not anywhere near where the present day coasters. So you know, that's kind of where we're headed andan only with You know, pretty dramatic reductions in carbon dioxide emissions will we avoid it

Nick VinZant  11:06

Is this something that we can really solve? Or are we just kind of gonna treat the symptoms of the disease and not the disease itself, so to speak?

Dr. Gavin Schmidt  11:16

Well, okay,so you know what it was told me that so so we're not going to stop it, but, but it is within our power to slow it down so that, you know, we have time to adapt. You know, part of what's happening now is that it's changing much faster than civilizations ever had to deal with climate change before. And that means that it's, you know, it's more of a challenge, you know, it's harder to get things moving faster or to adapt, when things are moving fast and not stopping. Right. So can we can we ameliorate the problem can we act and reduce the impacts is going to have absolutely we Gonna just make it go away entirely? No, never.

Nick VinZant  12:03

How big of an impact does the melting of the of the ice sheets have? Do we do we kind of fully understand what that could do? Or are we still kind of figuring that out?

Dr. Gavin Schmidt  12:13

So the melting of the ice sheets is one of the big components in rising sea level is rising because the ocean is getting warmer and they expand right that's about a third of the of the situation right now. We're also melting, you know, mountain glaciers around the world that's adding to the problem. we're extracting groundwater that's adding to the problem but the biggest, you know, about a third of the of the issue right now is melting of Greenland and Antarctica. Those are both both of those continents are adding water into the oceans at around 250 Giga tons of water every every year from from both from both ice sheets. And what we anticipate is as as the planet gets warmer, that those rates will increase. And so you're having an accelerating impact from the ice sheets on sea level rise. So that's that's a big concern. Right? So, do we know what it can do? Yes, obviously, I mean, like, you know it, I mean, if they all melted, it would be, you know, it'd be many, you know, maybe 100 meters of field rise now, that isn't going to happen anytime soon, thankfully. But there's there's plenty of ice and there's plenty of opportunity for that to do major damage to coastal infrastructure around the world. But I, you know, do we know everything about how the specific eye seats and the eye social cavities and the and the dynamics of ice sheets are all kind of interacting to produce that result? No, we don't. So we're spending a lot of time trying to understand those projects, those those processes better. We're spending a lot of time and effort and money are measuring those processes. You know, that's sending you know, unmanned autonomous vehicles underneath the ice sheets underneath the ice shelves to see what's going on. It's flying over the ice shells and ice sheets to see how the height is changing. It's measuring the velocity of these things from space, seeing how, you know, the math of these ice sheets is changing from gravity measurements in space. So we're, we're, we're studying this enormously hard. But, but there are there are still a lot of unknowns,

Nick VinZant  14:31

whether they're cities, countries, organizations, anything like that, because obviously there's going to be like, you kind of talked about winners and losers. Is there anybody that's kind of advocating for this, like trying to actively stop people from stopping climate change?

Dr. Gavin Schmidt  14:47

Well, yeah, they're not generally, you know, people as you would understand them, but they are, you know, people who are very invested in the resource industry and the countries that are benefit enormously. From the resource industry, and they just want to sell their product and the climate be damned. It's very short term thinking. It's, but But yeah, I mean, obviously there are, there are administration's and countries that that are doing that. But, you know, there's also a lot of pushback against that. Because there are people that do have a longer term horizon that can see where things are going. And, you know, this notion of, you know, having an economy in a situation where, you know, sea level is rising out of control. That doesn't make sense for a lot of people. How did you,

Nick VinZant  15:37

how did you get into studying this?

Dr. Gavin Schmidt  15:39

I was slightly planning by accident. I was, I was a math major. In college, I started doing applied maths, working to on on kind of, you know, relatively simple ocean models of various sorts, and then you No. And I've kind of gravitated to more and more complicated more and more realistic issues where, you know, you don't get an exact answer. But you do get answers much closer to the question that you really want to have answered.

Nick VinZant  16:13

Are there's some specific areas that were that are really in trouble when we talk about climate change.

Dr. Gavin Schmidt  16:19

Yeah, it depends a little bit where you are, I mean, so places that are kind of Mediterranean climates where it's still pretty arid, they're generally going to get drier and so that's going to be a problem for them and their water resources. People that rely on mountain snow for water resources. Okay, well, that's going away. So now you're going to have to deal with, you know, kind of earlier spring melts and drier summers. That has implications for wildfires. If you're in an area that's prone to wildfires. You know, if you're in the far north, then you know, you have to worry about permafrost melts and you have to Worry about infrastructure that that relies on the frozen ground, you know, like the ice the ice roads to go to, to the north coast of Alaska, you know, those are much less possible now than they used to be. But if you know, you know, if you're a cruise ship owner and you want to do the northwest passage through the Arctic, well now you've got far more opportunities to do so though. I wouldn't recommend it. for for for various reasons.

Nick VinZant  17:28

I got distracted a little bit by my three year old. We did we talk about ways that we can kind of reduce it. Have we covered that I'm blanking for some reason all of a sudden?

Dr. Gavin Schmidt  17:39

No, well, we didn't discuss it but but the answer is not difficult, right. The answer is we have to reduce emissions. And we have to reduce emissions of carbon dioxide for the most part, but also we think that oxides now you know, reducing carbon dioxide emissions means no, no more fossil fuel. So no more coal, no more oil, no more natural gas and replacing those energy infrastructures with something else, whether that's solar or wind or combinations or nuclear power, or geothermal or better efficiencies or need the energy in the first place. All of those can play a role in, in moving us away from fossil fuels. Now there's there's one additional thing that you could be doing, which is capturing the carbon emissions and burying it somewhere. So theoretically, that works. But, you know, it's it's one of those solutions that really only works when you have a price on putting carbon into the air, so that it makes it worthwhile to not do so for the companies involved. And we are a long way from having such a market in the US.

Nick VinZant  18:59

Do you have a A couple more minutes for some listener questions. Sure. Like, let me warn you ahead of time our our audience is very nice. They're very smart. They're a little bit quirky. There. So some of the some of the questions are a little interesting. Um, yeah. This first one is best movie where a scientist warns people of a disaster and no one listens.

Dr. Gavin Schmidt  19:27

Like every single science, every single movie with the scientists, like that's, that's the stock roll. You know, whether it's Jurassic Park day after tomorrow jaws toward the Dante's peak, and we like it's a stock roll. So anytime you see a scientist on it on a TV show, oh, you know, they're they're going to be the ones that are telling people what's going to happen and nobody's going to believe them for dramatic effect. So, you know, we, we play that role on TV a lot. And you think people Look at it by now,

Nick VinZant  20:01

what is that like for, for you or other scientists, when you're kind of telling somebody about something, that's a real problem, and they just push it aside? Does that get just incredibly frustrating? Like, how do you keep doing that over and over and over again?

Dr. Gavin Schmidt  20:14

So, I mean, sometimes, you know, people arguing in bad faith, you know, it's just a waste of time. Right. So, as far as trying to try and avoid that other times, you know, there are really genuine questions behind that stance, overwhelming, you know, comments that people make, and, and sometimes those are worth kind of going into in detail, you know, why? Why do we think that these that we have confidence in these predictions, you know, how do we tell these things, you know, what is the difference between weather and climate? Why can we do these predictions out longer? I mean, that's, those are those are real questions. And, you know, for people that haven't thought about it very much. You know, I'm happy to, to explain these things. And you know, and sometimes you know, you can get feedback and, you know, and questions that seems sensible to somebody and you think, Oh, well, actually, we've, we've never really answered that in that particular way. So, you know, that kind of leads you down a kind of more productive path. And, you know, quite a lot of my research work and an outreach has been in answering questions that the community as a whole hasn't really answered to people satisfaction. So there's, you know, you have to listen as opposed to just be talking. And then that makes the whole communication thing kind of more

Nick VinZant  21:35

interesting. This might get a little bit more into weather than climate, so to speak, but best Where do you think has the best weather slash climate in the world?

Dr. Gavin Schmidt  21:44

New Zealand is looking pretty good right now.

Nick VinZant  21:53

Yeah, they do look really good, don't they? There's one that just says how long before we're doomed.

Dr. Gavin Schmidt  22:01

Oh that's an odd thing to ask in the middle of a pandemic. I, you know, like, we're not we're not doomed, you know, the future is created by the choices that we're making today. And while there are still sensible people who have, you know, decisions to make, that can make things better or make things worse, and there's still enough people, you know, making decisions that are pushing us in a better direction, then you know, then that's that's that's positive, and we're never going to be not in that situation. So, you know, I don't I don't have a lot of sympathy for the over dooms, like just might as well party type of attitude. I don't I don't think we do. I think we just have to make better decisions.

Nick VinZant  22:50

This these two kind of go together a little bit. coolest thing about working for NASA. Has there ever been a moment where you are just working like Wow, that's really cool.

Dr. Gavin Schmidt  23:04

Um, so yes. So let me let me betray my, my slightly geeky side. working for NASA is indeed quite cool. You know, I've interacted with, with astronauts, I've interacted with people who've designed like the most amazing machines. We've, you know, we were on the receiving end of reams of data that show us things that that we never even dreamed were possible, let alone that we would actually see. And the scope of working for NASA allows you to think about things in a much, much broader context, then, then you would you'd be able to do in any other setting. You know, I mean, I've written papers about the possibility of ancient terrestrial civilizations and whether we know that they existed in The geological record, I've worked with people who are thinking about how habitable Venus was, until actually, relatively recently in solar system history, I'm working with people who are trying to work out what the techno signatures of an alien civilization around the planet on a planet around another star would look like. And I'm working on, you know, trying to see where what we're doing to the climate fits into all of those things. And so, you know, that's, that's, that's an enormous range of, of intellectual interest and joy, that we can do these things. So I love working for NASA.

Nick VinZant  24:49

Do you guys I mean, do you study like if we had to go to another planet? What planet would be suitable for us? Like, do you guys look at the client? Yes.

Dr. Gavin Schmidt  25:00

Getting off just, it's extortionate. So there's no we're not we're moving to another planet. It's much, much better to fix the one that we're on. You know, we're interested in about habitability of Mars and Venus and, and all of these other planets that we're seeing, but none of them are as habitable as this one right here.

Nick VinZant  25:17

I always kind of felt like those pursuits, like looking for how we can move to another planet would be like, mowing the yard while the house is on fire kind of thing.

Dr. Gavin Schmidt  25:28

Well, no, it's it's like designing a lawn mower for a lawn that doesn't exist while the house is on fire.

Nick VinZant  25:34

Yeah. Um, is there anything that we should be talking about that, that, that maybe you haven't covered or anything like that, like,

Dr. Gavin Schmidt  25:42

you know, I mean, the technology that we're putting together to see what's going on is extremely cool, right? So if you're interested in cool technologies, then look into that. But, you know, this technology, our understanding doesn't exist in a vacuum, right. It exists. You know, in the context of, you know, how society works, how society functions, you know the inequities in society, you know, who benefits who loses, who, who gets impacted and who doesn't get impacted. And we're seeing that writ large with the pandemic, you know, when when the stress comes along, you know, society fractures along the fault lines that already existed. And so if you're interested in you know, how society is going to cope, look at what's happening with the pandemic, look who's who's being served, look who is start looking was getting services, look who is getting, you know, who, you know, where, where the suffering is most and it tells you that we have a long, long way to go. In terms of, you know, fixing society and fixing the way things work, to do deal with with stresses like the pandemic or like climate change.

Nick VinZant  27:00

I want to thank Dr. Smith so much for joining us. If you want to connect with him, we have linked to him on our social media accounts where Profoundly Pointless on Facebook, Twitter and Instagram. And we have also included his information on the RSS feed that's on this podcast.  I think it's impossible to say enough about just how important dealing with climate change is going to be for all of us moving forward