Cruel Summer

report just about a week later. Now this new report is very much in line with the trends that we're going to talk about in this episode. But in case you would like the updated facts and figures, I'm going to write a blog post about that. It is going to go up slightly after this episode airs, so go over to fw thinking dot com to check that out

and stay tuned. Thank you. Welcome to Forward Thinking Taylor to one and welcome to Forward Thinking, the podcast that looks at the future and says it's a cool, cruel summer leading me here on my own. I'm Jonathan Strickland, I'm Lauren Vogue Obama, and I'm Joe McCormick. And that sound of disapproval comes from Lauren, who is shaking her head at me. Today we're going to talk about climate change. What is climate change? What's global warming? Are they the

same thing? What's what's the deal? Yeah? Climate change? So I saw a movie about it, um, like convenient truth. You know. It was called The Day After Tomorrow. Oh that movie, right, it came out a few years back. I don't know if you saw it, but it had it had some very attractive actors in it, uh, and they fought against the evil villain of climate change. Basically, what I learned from it was that climate change creates uh intelligent anthropogenic ice that chases you down hallways or

or Jill down hallways. Right. It's really had it in for him. Um that that that everything happens in like I don't remember. It was like it looked like it was like an hour. My favorite part of that movie is watching characters running from the cold front as it's passing over and turning things instantly into ice, and just barely slipping inside a library and shutting the door to keep the cold front out people. It's like when people run away from an explosion, right and they're able to

outrun it. Yeah, it made me think that there was going to be a knock at the door, and then you just hear cold front like, no, don't get it. Yeah, but yeah, everything I learned from this movie, is this all correct? Let's just say that the film takes some liberties with science. Oh okay, so then climate change, global warming,

these things aren't really happening. See, as it turns out, there's actually a middle ground between the movie The Day After Tomorrow and the complete denial that climate change and global warming are a thing. Well, I like to uh listen to what scientists have to say. Let's so, well, first let's let's define some terms, right, okay, because I mean, obviously we're gonna be talking a lot about global warming

and climate change. And one thing that we notice is that maybe in popular science reporting and in general amongst the public, these two terms tend to be confused or sometimes used interchangeably, and that's not exactly correct. Yeah. It turns out that if you talk to scientists, how they use these terms is that global warming refers more often specifically to the increase in the mean surface temperature of

the Earth. It's caused specifically by human human emissions. Right, that this recent trend we're talking about, right, right, whereas climate change refers to both global warming and everything else that causes the climate to change over a given period of time a k a. Usually a very long period of time, right, Yeah, So you can think of global warming is sort of like a specific phenomenon and climate change is like that phenomenon plus all of its effects. Right.

And then on top of that, you also have the scientific literature that tends to use these these two different terms in very specific contexts. So if you were to actually read a paper, one paper might be about global warming, another one might be about climate change, and those two terms are not meant to be interchanged at all, Whereas, like I said, with some of the in the media, sometimes they just get tossed around without people really being

very aware of what right it's. It may be that someone is unaware of the difference or that they're just misspeaking, but at any rate, there does seem to be this this idea that the two terms are used, or that one was used before and now the other one is preferred. Like there there's a there's a perception and misperception. As it turns out that global warming was the term that everyone was using in the eighties, and then once everyone figured out, oh wait, no, no, no, it's not global warming,

it's climate change. It's switched. That's not actually true. Those two terms are still used pretty much just as frequently as they were before, but they're in that very specific context. So it all depends upon the context of whatever research you're reading as to which term will be used. But the difference is actually pretty intuitive. They're what they sound like. Global warming refers to the warming. Climate change refers to the overall climate. But wait a minute, Wait a minute, Joe, Joe,

I'm I'm confused. I mean, yesterday was not as hot as two days ago, which in turn was hotter than the day before that, and a few days before that was less hot. I don't see how this climate thing is affecting me. Am I making a mistake. You might be making a mistake. Um, For one thing, here, your sample size is one. It's you. Yeah, I'm a very reliable narrator. It's also a very small sample of days. Okay, sure, sure.

So to understand global trends in climate, we need to step back and look at really massive systems and averages across a lot of different time scales and geographical location, right, because climate is global, whereas weather, which is what you're talking about, is is local. Yes, yes, weather is local. And weather is something that we usually refer to in terms of, well we can it can be as short as a few minutes and as long as a few months, but that tends to be what we're referring to when

we talk about weather. Climate is a much longer term, uh, subject matter. And like you said, Joe, we're talking about global scale with climate, not just Jonathan in the metropolitan Atlanta area over the course of the last two weeks.

So that that but that's one of those other things that we see get confused often as the idea between climate and weather, and in fact, that can cause confusion when you're discussing things like climate change and global global warming, because if someone says, yeah, but you know, this summer just didn't seem as hot as last summer, it's it's

a total different scale than what we're talking about. Basically, if you can make small talk about it in an elevator with someone that you don't know politely, then its weather, not climate. That's a good rubric. Did you did you notice that the glacial ice is two less over the last twenty years than it was over the last hundred and twenty years. I see, I have different elevator experiences that you clearly do. Okay, Jonathan's elevator experiences are just primo.

You gotta ask him about them sometimes, Okay. Uh, So let's talk about temperature, okay, because clearly the central feature of climate change is this idea that the temperature is increasing? Number one? Is that true? And number two? How do we know? Uh? It is true? And we know because we take measurements and we examine them. The acceleration of heating that we've seen over the last century is far greater than what we can account for using the natural

cycles of the Earth. So, in other words, we're seeing a more rapid acceleration in heating than we would normally see if, in fact, human intervention had not been a factor. So what kind of differences are we talking about in

recent years? Is it like a hundred degrees hotter? Well? So, okay, So over the past five thousand years or so, global temperatures rose a total of four to seven degrees celsius, depending on you know, the absolute liability of our data, And um, that's that's what like seven point two to twelve point six degrees fahrenheit. I didn't just make that up off the top of my head. I wrote it

down just to have a saying. Um, but uh, in the past century alone, um temperatures rose point seven degrees celsius. That's one point to six degrees fahrenheit, which is about ten times faster than the average rate of ice age recovery warming. And on top of that, projection suggests that by the end of the twenty first century, the temperature will continue to arise between two degrees celsius and six

degrees celsius. That's kind of a range that's given. Uh. You know, six obviously would be the worst case scenario. But even if we were to quote unquote fix all the problems, and we'll talk about fixing the problems in the future podcast, but if we were to fix them, we would still experience, uh, an increase in temperature because there's a lag between addressing the problem and having the problem actually resolve in any way, right, UM, And all of us data is based on a whole lot of

figures that we are collecting about um. You know, the the amount of radiation we're getting from the sun and everything unhouse gases that are present in the atmosphere, uh, everything from the cloud cover that can be a factor. In fact, there's some people who suggest that uh, through increased evaporation due to heat heating of the oceans, that that will increase the cloud cover and that's that would

actually help help cool the earth. Uh. I'm not I'm not a sold on that particular, on that particular interpretation. Got I've got a bunch of information on that one. The general answers, We're not sure yet, but we'll talk about that in a future podcast. But but but now, the kind of data that we collect is about the aerosols, the particles in our atmosphere, atmosphere gases, the ocean surface temperature changes, global sea level, extent of ocean, ice, plant growth, rainfall,

cloud structure, uh, ground temperature, snow depth records. I mean, like all of this data is going into the way that scientists define these estimates of global warming and UM. When they take all of this data from natural events and from human created events, they try to kind of reverse engineer the temperature ranges that we've seen and UM, the models that they create bork around nineteen fifty. If

you don't take into account human intervention. Right, So in other words, when you if you were to say this is only based this is just part of the Earth's natural cycle, like this is exactly the same sort of thing that's happened in the past. You can't account for the amount of change we're seeing now in the in

the time span. That's the really important part is that these are changes that we would see happen to the Earth in a natural warming trend, but we would see them stretched out over a much longer time span than half a century. Okay, so the Earth is definitely warming recently, and basically nobody denies this, right, And dude, that's well, well, basically, I think most people who look at the science say no, there's there's plenty of evidence here, pretty straightforward data. It's

just getting hotter. It's not like a question about that, although there are people who will say that, no, it's not getting warmer because look, the Arctic ice has recovered from ice recovered compared to Therefore the worth the Earth is not warming, or it's warming at a slower pace, or it's declining. Again, a single year of data isn't enough to base a trend upon, and the trends that we are talking about have lasted since um at least

nine Yeah. So, so there are people who do deny that the Earth is warming, but they are not as numerous as those who deny the larger question of climate change in general. Okay, Um, so the Earth is warming, what's causing it? Well, that's where not some more the argument comes in? Right? Yeah, so have y'all heard of the greenhouse effect? Wait? What have you ever been inside a greenhouse? I have? Or have you ever been inside just a parked car out in the sunlight. My wife

leaves me there all the time. When into the story, I beg her to crack a window, she just takes the key out and it's power windows. So I'm just stuck. Seriously, people don't leave your animals. No, no, no, it's bad, very bad. Um. And it's bad because in a way of the green house effect. Okay, so the greenhouse effect happens when, um, there is sort of a differential in

the two way transportation of energy through a medium. So it happens in a greenhouse when the sunlight comes through the glass comes in and allows that that UV radiation, all the sun's energy to come through one way, but then it traps heat inside. Um. The Earth actually works in a very similar way in the atmosphere, right. Yeah, the atmosphere is kind of like the glass in a greenhouse. And this is totally natural and in fact, if it didn't happen, there wouldn't really be life as we know it. No,

if it didn't happen, the Earth would basically be the moon. Um. Right. The the the heat trapped by the atmosphere keeps the Earth at a habitable temperature. Right, that's exactly right. And um So the greenhouse effect is not a bad thing, and it's caused by multiple types of gases in the atmosphere. Um So, the biggest one actually is water vapor, right, that one. That one ends up trapping heat at an

efficiency far greater than that of other greenhouse gasses. Yeah, so water vapor, UM, cloud particles, carbon dioxide uh CFCs so chlorofluoro carbons um in O two I believe, and methane gases like this. Um. They hover up in the atmosphere and what happens is the sunlight passes through them on the way to the Earth, bringing energy with it. That sunlight hits the Earth's crust and gets absorbed, and

when it radiates back upward it is heat. That heat gets trapped under those gases and does not pass backward out of the Earth, so we get sort of a net gain of heat on the planet. Um. A certain amount of this of this, like we've said, is good

because it allows us to not freeze to death. But um, if you have too much greenhouse effect from an overconcentration of greenhouse gasses, you can trap more heat than you're used to, which is is what most scientists agree is going on right now to cause this heating trend we've observed recently, which in turn is driving climate change. So what can we do about this? Well, we can't really mess with water vapor much because there's a water cycle on Earth that we need. It turns out water is

pretty important. Rain is kind of critical, so we don't want to mess with the water. Um. But there are these other gases that are non condensing gases as opposed to water. Because water vapor condenses, it forms clouds. These non condensing gases, and mainly most scientists degree carbon dioxide are responsible for a huge part of the trend in global warming. And the reason this is happening is because we've increased the amount of carbon dioxide in our atmosphere

since the Industrial Revolution. So what you can do is you can you can drill a cylinder of ancient ice out of a glacier and pull that up and look at it. And it turns out when ice freezes, it traps little air bubbles in it, and those air bubbles are like little time capsules of what the atmosphere was like in throughout history. Yeah, and so we can look at these, and this is one type of evidence we have for the historical presence of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere.

What these ice cores tend to show is that pre industrial air had about two hundred and eighty parts per million of C O two um. This year we hit four hundred parts per million, so we uh, not nearly doubled, but we but half a yeah, yeah that's true, half again as much. And that's a big deal earlier. And so there are questions about exactly how much carbon needs to be in the atmosphere to cause a significant increase

in the greenhouse effect. Um, what I've heard some people say is like, well, we really need to get down to three d and fifty parts per million for a stable climate. UM four hundred was sort of like some people have said, that's like a sort of turning point or a point of stability that that really cannot be exceeded. And now it's like, well, we already hit that, and so there's sort of this smoothing scale of what can

feasibly be tolerated UM. The point is that is that there's a correlation between the amount of carbon in the atmosphere and the and the temperature the or the sorry the climate. So you can look at look at this.

I think you mentioned earlier that these ice cores, for example, you can look at dates um in the strata of the ice and it turns out that times when there was less carbon in the atmosphere or less carbon dioxide, there were ice ages or colder periods, and time when the carbon dioxide and the atmosphere spiked there were warmer periods, just like we're seeing now. And you can argue that

part of this is due to U volcanic activity. Even today, there have been a couple of large volcanoes that have erupted UM over the past few decades that have caused a significant amount of carbon dioxide to be released into the air. They also tend to release a lot of sulfur dioxide, which tends to lower it has a cooling effect from cloud creation. Yeah. From what I've read, it seems to be that they think that the volcanoes are

not a significant contributor, certainly not compared to cars. As it turns out there are more cars and there are volcanoes or factory power facilities. Yeah. Um, And so there are a few questions. Okay, so we're we're seeing this correlation between temperature and the concentration of CO two in the atmosphere. Um, but are there other things that might be causing it instead. Well, we don't know for sure,

but most scientists think not. Um. Well, you know, I mean, you know, alterations in them in the Earth's orbit and the Sun's orbit can change change the climate over a given period of time, but not the drastic way that we seen it in the past couple decades. Yeah. Like some objections you might see sometimes people who say like, oh, the Sun is just hotter, like it's warming the Earth

more than before. But we can actually test that hypothesis and that doesn't really stand up apparently, right, the Sun's energy varies on about an eleven year cycle. Um, it might vary also on a on a greater cycle, but we haven't had enough data yet to tell whether that's true. And um, as of early the solar brightness since two thousand five has actually been slightly lower yeah than in the past, So yet we have a warming trend during

that time. The bottom line is, uh, we're pretty sure that there is a substantial link between the amount of C O two especially, but other greenhouse gases like methane, chlor flora carbons and stuff like that, and the greenhouse effect that is causing the global warming trend we see, right, So let's um, I guess then we need to talk about some of the effects here, and we've touched on these obviously, because if you're talking about global warming, a

lot of effects become fairly self evident, but some of them you might not realize at first because they're kind of a it's kind of like a domino effect. Right, So, what's global warming going to do in the future? All right? Well, first of all, I sounded so, yeah, here's a trend that we're observing. What's it really going to do in the future? Okay, Well, um, there's there are a lot

of a lot of disagreements, well, maybe not disagreements. There's a lot of debate and conversation around this because frankly, climate is an incredibly complex thing. There are a lot of different factors that all influence one another in different ways, and changing the temperature of the Earth is definitely changing climates. It's just a question of how drastically are certain climates

going to change. And you know, once you get to a point where you're trying to predict what's happening in a particular region, it really gets tricky, right, right, So, in other words, saying this is exactly how it's going to affect the northeastern United States would be probably an irresponsible thing to say as a scientist, unless you were able to couch that in probabilities, making probabilistic models, where you say there's a certain percentage of likelihood that this

is going to happen. But keep in mind that's a percentage of likelihood, right, and there are just too many, too many factors, too many points of data to really be certain about that kind of thing. Yeah, and anytime we're dealing in um future projections, instead of just say I don't know, basic empirical observations. We're talking in terms of likelihood certainty. Seeing even with these things that were very sure about if it's future speculation, it's like, we're

not actually positive. And in fact, there there are percentages that are like that, there's essentially certainty that we're going to see uh increased heat waves in the future. So that's scientists have put that uh a near certainty. Other ones are you know, at different ranges. But for instance, ice, we can we're gonna see less of it. Yeah, there's gonna be a lot of melting. So we're gonna see a loss of sea ice. We're gonna see reduction in

glacier sizes. We're gonna see ice breaking up and melting earlier in the year on lakes and rivers and places where it does freeze over right. That's because every year um ice will will reform in the winter and then melting down in the summer. And when they talk about the glaciers melting, it's not that they're all doing it all at once. Forever's um it's it's just that less ice is being recaptured in the winter than it was the previous So the overall trend is that the glaciers

are getting smaller in size and over time. And then you also we see decrease decreases in snow packs, which means you're going to see some actual ecosystems change as a result. And by the way, all of this ice melting and decreases in snow winds up creating warmer temper cheers overall, because ice and snow are reflective, whereas um warm ground or warm water or even I mean, you know, room temperature ground or water are darker and therefore absorb

more of that heat coming down from the sun. Ye uh. NASA says that the green Land and Antarctic ice sheets have decreased in mass UH from two thousand two to two thousand and six. They estimate that Greenland lost between a hundred fifty cubic kilometers or thirty six to sixty cubic miles of ice per year, and an Arcticle lost about a hundred fifty two cubic kilometers or thirty six cubic miles of ice between two thousand two and two

thousand five. So an Arctica is not losing it at the same rate as Greenland, but it's still losing ice on top of that we're seeing the possibility of of

drastically shifting weather patterns. We're talking massive changes in precipitation levels, so the day after tomorrow, not that dramatic in that quick Not not this this flip flopping effect where you suddenly have temperatures dropped to thirty below zero in a blink of an eye, but rather that you're going to see areas get more rain than they normally would, while other areas become get less rain and end up having severe droughts. Um but not intelligent droughts, not not as

far as I can determine. They might still chase Jake Jillen Hall, because wouldn't we all? I would like to have an intelligent drought on this podcast to replace a certain co host who's getting a little, little, little little beans in the system. I'm just kidding too. He can sit next to you. So yeah, we're changes in precipitation levels. Also, projections suggest that there's a possibility that will see more rainfall in high latitudes and less rainfall in subtropical climates.

So that's going to dramatically change those ecosystems, which brings me to other ecosystem changes, plant and animal ranges are going to shift as environments become less suitable for over time. We've already started to see that where we're seeing animal popular lations move from where they traditionally would range because those areas are no longer suitable for them. That's going to continue. In Latin America, UH rainforests are starting to

change over into savannah's now. That means that there's also been a decrease in precipitation there, which means that there's uh greater strain on fresh water resources, so people are having to work harder to get fresh water in those areas. Also means that because the rainforest is converting over to a different kind of ecosystem, you're seeing a real risk to bio diversity. Lots of species that are put at

risk because of that loss of their environment. In Europe, there's been an increase in flash floods and coastal flooding. Projections for Africa indicate that severe droughts and larger strain of water resources will be in the near future. That of course, will also affect food resources. We've discussed this in the past, how water and food are so closely related. Asia is also going to experience increased flooding and decreased

access to fresh water, so lots of rough things. They're on top of that, the ocean is being affected in a couple of different ways. A salinity is changing, that's the amount of salt concentration in the oceans um that changes, and drawing on observations from nineteen fifty five to two thousand four, researchers found that the ocean sealinity changed throughout the study period, and that the changes were independent of known natural variability, and that the shifts were consistent with

the expected effects of anthropogenic climate change. So, in other words, this is not due to some sort of undersea activity or natural cycle. This is something means caused by by humankind. The pH of oceans is changing. This is because when carbon dioxide reacts with seawater, it lowers the pH of the sea water. Uh so that means it makes it more acidic um, which if you've ever had a a fish tank at home, and that could be a bad thing.

That thing. Yeah, so it absorbs a lot of carbon dioxide and it that kind of does that, you know, it just does that naturally over over a long period of time. It would absorb like if we were to stop producing CO two today and and only natural sources were producing it. Uh, the ocean would end up absorbing that CEO two over the course of you know, a couple of thousand years. Um. But uh, it's and that

would dramatically change that ocean over that time. But we're also talking about using the ocean as a possible sink for carbon dioxide, which we'll talk more about in another podcast. But that would mean pumping up the acidity level of the oceans, at least in a regional area wherever the pumping was being done. Uh, in a in a time scale that would be much shorter than what we would see naturally. So in other words, we'd be seeing something happening in the oceans that is akin to what we're

seeing in our atmosphere right now. It would be the the effects would be different, but it's the same sort of thing where you know, it's not necessarily a solution to a problem, it's creating a different problem. It's it's it's sort of a lateral shift. On top of that, we're talking about the complexity of climate. You know, It's like we said, it's it's complicated stuff. There's so many different things to bring into consideration that it is very difficult for us to say for sure what is going

to happen in the future. It's just, uh, we know that these basic things are very likely to happen. When you get more specific, like, well we see greater cyclone activity and intensity in the future, that's a possibility, but

it's not a certainty. And I think that's r rated about the sixty six percent level of certainty, which is still over more certain than not, but still a pretty huge But then when it comes to things like you know, there'll be more heat waves and there will be less rain in some areas and more rain in other areas, the certainty level is way higher like or above. So so there are some things that we just cannot know right now because we don't have all the information we

would need to project an accurate model. And it's just so hard to project in this realm because you're not talking about, say, predicting a chemical reaction and a beaker that's isolated. The climate is something that creates feedback loops within itself, so lots of different climate variables influence the

other ones. Uh, it influences whether weather influences ecosystems which affect the climate, and so there's just it's it's incredibly complex system and only that, but we can't even be certain how much greenhouse gas we're emitting on any given day, let alone. Like we can make estimates, but those estimates are based upon information that researchers can gather. And when

you think about it, that the world's a big place. Yeah, the UM So, like the estimates I was using earlier, they come from the Manoloa Observatory in Hawaii, and that that consistently has been collecting uh data on the atmospheric concentration of carbon dioxide for a while now, and so that can pretty steadily track what's going on. But the concentration might not be UM. Actually don't know the answer to this, whether it's concentrated more in some places than others,

or if it's pretty well dispersed. Yeah. Well, I mean the point being that even you know, even if if one nation were to cut out all carbon emissions, unless every other nation did so as well, Uh, you know, the the effect might be small at least in the short term. Maybe in the long term it would make a pretty big difference, But in the short term it would be negligible. We would have to have a much

larger effort to really make a huge impact. Okay, So looking forward into the future, we are certain that the Earth is warming, and the trend is that it's going to continue warming. We're very confident that human activity has caused this, and there are predictions we've made about lots of possibly very negative consequences of this, with varying degrees of certainty with each of those predictions. Um, what what

do we do next? Well? First, uh, I mean a lot of that we're going to address in our next episode. But first I think we need to talk a little bit about the concept of a scientific consensus. Yeah, there's sort of a public conversation going on about global warming. In case you haven't noticed change you're not on Twitter or something. Uh, So the scientific consensus is one of those terms that I think, uh, gets thrown around a lot, and there's not a full understanding and in the general

public about what that means. Yeah. Okay, Well let's just do a little experiment here. Imagine I am a lay person, uh that doesn't have a lot of expertise on climate science.

That's not hard to imagine. Um, But go on, but I recognize that there's this public to eight about climate change, and specifically, I think the most contentious part of the debate is the anthropogenic part, whether humans are causing this um, which I guess affects the idea of whether or not we can we have the power to stop it, or if we should, if we should take any efforts to stop it because of the potential impact that would have on economy, lifestyle side. Um. So, I am a lay person.

I have no expertise in this area, and I noticed that there are people who both seem to know more than me about it arguing about it. So how do I make a decision? How do I form an opinion about this that's over my head? Well, the scientific consensus in this case, when we talk about consensus, you're talking about a a large group of people who have all uh kind of come to the same conclusions, uh perhaps independently, and they are presenting a united front at least on

some level on the issue. Well, what is the consensus? What? Like? How many people agree about this? In In a study of papers that were expressing a position on um anthropogenic global warming, point one percent endorsed the consensus that humans are in fact causing it. Yeah, that's a that's a huge scientific consensus there. This is from a literature review that was published in called Quantifying the Consensus on Intropogenic Global Warming in the Scientific Literature, that the one in

Environmental Research letters. That is indeed. Um. So, the way this the study progressed, as I understand it is they looked at all these different reports and they looked for any mention of the causation for whatever the warming or climate change effect was, right, reports in fact and so eleven correct. Well, let's us read from the abstract to have some clarity here. Sure, they say, we analyze the evolution of the scientific consensus on anthropogenic global warming and

the peer reviewed scientific literature. Examining eleven forty four climate abstracts from two eleven matching the topics global climate change or global warming, we find that sixty six point four percent of abstracts expressed no position on a GW, thirty two point six percent endorsed it, points seven percent rejected it, and point three percent were uncertain about it. So, in other words, out of the ones that actually addressed what the cause was, point one percent said it was anthropogenic.

And then the but I understand that some people are framing this in a different way. Well, yeah, actually this is a good example of how, um, sometimes it can be difficult to interpret scientific literature. I was just looking around about this paper. I found one blog post on the internet that was like, look, you know, out of all these scientists, so thirty two point six percent endorsed it,

So that's the minority. Um, ignoring the fact that, Yeah, so sixty percent of the papers examined in this study didn't express an opinion. They didn't address about what caused it, whether it was anthropogenic or not. Um, they were you know, they just didn't address that issue. But so they looked at that and said like, oh, look it's it's the minority now. Um, of course it's not the minority in fact.

On between, Yeah, as we've just been pointing out of the papers that did express an opinion whether it was caused by humans or not, said that it was right. So that is a pretty that's a pretty uh big consensus there. Yeah, and only that, But beyond that, there have been plenty of of climatologist gatherings where more and more people are just saying like, no, that the scientific community at at large says that this is something that's happening.

That doesn't mean that there aren't people who disagree, but they are in a very tiny sliver, right. And we do want to say that we absolutely support skepticism. I think all three of us are are pretty big skeptics in general. We really appreciate the rigor of scientific research. You know, we want questions to be asked. That questions

being asked is the entire point of science. But if you aren't asking questions, if you're simply dissenting, then if you're simply denying something, then you're not really being scientific.

And you know so. In other words, what I would tell the lay person is that the majority of scientists who have devoted their their professional lives to studying this say that one, it's a thing, to it's it's being caused, at least in part by human activity, and that therefore we could do something that would reduce that um that those far outnumber the dissenting of and that it's not to say the scientists is smarter than you are, but rather that here's all the research that they have done

that has been reviewed and replicated. Well, it's not just that scientists are smart in fact, it's not even just that scientists are the people who spend a lot of time studying this, though both of those things tend to be true. Um, it's you're trusted when you trust in the scientific consensus. You trust not just in a person, but in a process. You're you're trusting in the fact that the way, um, the scientific community works is that

everybody's trying to prove each other wrong. Right, there's huge rewards for proving someone wrong with math. The way you would get accolades and attract a lot of uh, you know money, essentially is to um, look to say, actually, everybody's wrong about this, and here's why. And if you produce a good argument, people look at and they say, oh wait a minute, yeah, we do need to review our our opinions. Um, that's how you become famous as a scientist. Well, it's also think about most of the

most famous scientists are people who changed opinions in their field. Sure, sure, and it's but I mean, the the thing we're looking at here, and I mean I completely agree, but the thing is for the scientific consensus here is that I want to make sure that our listeners know we're not advocating you fall into the rhetorical fallacy of argument from authority, which is one of those ideas where you say, because this person is an authority in this place, everything they

say is right. But we're really saying is that there's been a massive amount of research. It all points to the same way. The scientific community at large agrees upon it. We're giving authority to their to their numbers and their methodology, not them themselves exactly well, And the fact that even this consensus doesn't mean that it's right. It just gives

you a more greater confidence that's right. Because in any case, if you don't know exactly for yourself, and nobody really does on these issues, you are making a value judgment. You know, you're sure you're estimating probability. Right. As more people who know a whole lot about this kind of thing agree, the probability that they're wrong is probably is decreasing, right, exactly, So could a lone voice of descent be correct and say that all of these studies are wrong and in

fact they were all misinterpreted. But that but that possibility is smaller, incredibly tiny, I mean very very tiny. Doesn't mean that it's impossible. It just means it's not plausible. Um, you know, it's it's something that could turn out to be the case. I seriously doubt it, just based upon the massive amounts of research and time that has been dedicated to studying this already. It could be caused by interdimensional reptiles. Okay, Tilly, sorry, so ignoring ignoring my co

hosts for the time being. Well, no, it's it's a hoax they came up with to fund their war against the Zeta reticulum. Attempting to continue to ignore my co hosts. All right, So anyway, it'll be our next episode. We're really going to be focusing on how best to address this, you know, assuming that all of the science is right, which I think is well within our rights to assume, because of the mass of probability that it is right. What can we do to reduce our impact on the

environment and try and mitigate climate change. We're gonna talk about that in our next episode. Now, I'm sure some of you listeners out there have a lot that you want to say about this topic. I recommend you go to fw thinking dot com. That's our website where all of our stuff lives. We're talking the videos, the blogs, podcasts, articles, join in the conversation. You can follow us on Twitter, Facebook, Google Plus just look for f W thinking We are

there as well. And meanwhile, we're gonna take a little break. Let this room cool down a bit. It's been warming up. I don't know if that's climate or whether or it's just you don't Oh well, you know it's so sweet and we will talk to you again. Really sorry. For more on this topic in the future of technology, visit forward thinking dot Com, brought to you by Toyota. Let's Go Places