WEBVTT Kind: captions Language: en 00:00:00.000 --> 00:00:14.680 [Music/Introduction] 00:00:14.680 --> 00:00:15.980 Good afternoon. 00:00:15.980 --> 00:00:19.800 [Pause] 00:00:19.800 --> 00:00:23.040 [Bill Hopkins] Well this is wonderful. It's great to see such a fantastic turnout. 00:00:23.040 --> 00:00:27.880 I know the weather's a little lousy and I know we're competing with the basketball tournament so thank you 00:00:27.880 --> 00:00:33.080 for taking time out of your day to come see this very important lecture and our distinguished guest, 00:00:33.080 --> 00:00:34.600 Dr. Michael Mann. 00:00:34.600 --> 00:00:39.400 Before I get started, I do want to acknowledge some folks that made this event possible. 00:00:39.400 --> 00:00:45.420 First of all, funding for this event was provided through the Fralin Life Science Institute and through the 00:00:45.420 --> 00:00:50.320 Virginia Tech graduate school so we're very fortunate to have them supporting our efforts. 00:00:50.320 --> 00:00:52.600 The Virginia Tech library is here today. 00:00:52.600 --> 00:00:57.360 They're actually filming this event, so this will be available through the Virginia Tech library system so that 00:00:57.360 --> 00:01:01.840 folks who couldn't make it out or were too stubborn because they had to watch the basketball game 00:01:01.840 --> 00:01:05.280 can actually have access to this event in the future. 00:01:05.280 --> 00:01:11.520 And I want to thank Gloria, Gloria Shawnholtz, so wherever she is, she's our center coordinator and 00:01:11.520 --> 00:01:17.560 she's been working for weeks to put on this event and some of the associated activities and so we're 00:01:17.560 --> 00:01:20.240 very fortunate to have Gloria working with us. 00:01:20.240 --> 00:01:23.420 And then, finally, I want to thank the Lyric Theatre. 00:01:23.420 --> 00:01:30.020 We're very fortunate in Blacksburg to have a community theater like this so just please join me in thanking 00:01:30.020 --> 00:01:31.940 the Lyric as well as our sponsors. 00:01:31.940 --> 00:01:41.280 [Applause] 00:01:41.280 --> 00:01:45.989 My name is Bill Hopkins. I'm a professor in the department of Fish and Wildlife Conservation here at 00:01:45.989 --> 00:01:52.740 Virginia Tech and I have the honor of working with 38 very innovative scientists, engineers, 00:01:52.740 --> 00:01:59.080 and social scientists who recently came together to establish the new Global Change Center at Virginia Tech. 00:01:59.080 --> 00:02:04.560 This center's mission is focused on trying to evaluate some of the most important environmental issues that 00:02:04.560 --> 00:02:12.780 we face today: things like invasive species, pollution, emerging diseases, and, of course, climate change. 00:02:12.780 --> 00:02:17.620 Importantly, these environmental issues and one of the reasons why we're very passionate about this center 00:02:17.620 --> 00:02:20.700 is these are issues that affect all of us. They affect society. 00:02:20.700 --> 00:02:27.260 They can affect our economy, our future way of life, our health, our accessibility to clean water, and 00:02:27.260 --> 00:02:29.260 our national security. 00:02:29.260 --> 00:02:31.300 The center has its own PhD program. 00:02:31.300 --> 00:02:36.720 This is a major part of what we do, is training the next generation of scientists and our goal is to provide 00:02:36.720 --> 00:02:42.320 these students with a broad interdisciplinary perspective on these important environmental challenges. 00:02:42.320 --> 00:02:48.583 And as part of that, we're trying to help the students understand the role of science in society and trying 00:02:48.583 --> 00:02:53.900 to help them become better communicators of science to the general public and to decision makers. 00:02:53.900 --> 00:02:59.940 And so part of the reason that we have Dr. Michael Mann here today is because he is also very dedicated 00:02:59.940 --> 00:03:04.560 to making accurate science accessible to the general public. 00:03:04.560 --> 00:03:09.240 Now we're also very fortunate to have another distinguished guest here today, Sue Hassol, 00:03:09.240 --> 00:03:14.160 who is an internationally recognized science communicator join Dr. Mann today and they put on 00:03:14.160 --> 00:03:15.920 an all-day workshop for our students. 00:03:15.920 --> 00:03:22.380 So, our PhD students in the center had Dr. Mann and Sue Hassol to themselves for the whole day and I sat in 00:03:22.380 --> 00:03:29.840 for part of this event and it was fantastic, truly engaging for an entire day. 00:03:29.840 --> 00:03:35.180 So before we move on to Dr. Mann, I just want to say a few things to introduce our colleague Sue Hassol. 00:03:35.180 --> 00:03:44.600 Sue has been a friend of ours. She gave the keynote address last year at our spring retreat for the programs. 00:03:44.600 --> 00:03:50.600 She is respected internationally for her contributions over the last 25 years as a science communicator, 00:03:50.600 --> 00:03:52.320 analyst, and author. 00:03:52.320 --> 00:03:58.160 She is the director of the nonprofit Climate Communication and she serves in a wide variety 00:03:58.160 --> 00:04:03.240 of scholarly as well as advisory positions within agencies such as: 00:04:03.240 --> 00:04:08.280 the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, the National Center for Atmospheric Research, 00:04:08.280 --> 00:04:12.860 the World Meteorological Organization and the American Geophysical Union. 00:04:12.860 --> 00:04:18.540 She was a senior science writer for all three of the United States National Climate Assessments and 00:04:18.540 --> 00:04:24.220 she's assisted the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change with some of their assessment reports. 00:04:24.220 --> 00:04:30.680 She's testified before Congress, she even wrote an HBO documentary which is cleverly titled 00:04:30.680 --> 00:04:37.140 "Too Hot Not to Handle," and she's appeared on a variety of national television and radio shows including 00:04:37.140 --> 00:04:39.500 shows like 20/20 and Frontline. 00:04:39.500 --> 00:04:44.040 In recognition of her achievements internationally in science communication, she's won a lot of 00:04:44.040 --> 00:04:45.580 different prestigious awards. 00:04:45.580 --> 00:04:52.040 And most recently she was named a fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science. 00:04:52.040 --> 00:04:55.220 And so please join me in welcoming Sue Hassol. 00:04:55.220 --> 00:05:05.520 [Applause] 00:05:05.520 --> 00:05:09.960 [Pause] 00:05:09.960 --> 00:05:15.640 [Sue Hassol] Good evening. It's my honor to be here to introduce Dr. Michael Mann: distinguished professor at 00:05:15.640 --> 00:05:19.720 Penn State University, where he directs the Earth System Science Center. 00:05:19.720 --> 00:05:23.860 He earned his PhD in geology and geophysics from Yale University. 00:05:23.860 --> 00:05:29.360 He's published over 180 peer-reviewed and edited publications. 00:05:29.360 --> 00:05:35.800 Scientific American called Dr. Mann one of the 50 leading visionaries in science and technology. 00:05:35.800 --> 00:05:42.020 In 2012, he received the Hans Arthur Medal for his contributions to paleo climate research. 00:05:42.020 --> 00:05:47.240 In 2013, he received the National Conservation Achievement Award for science from the 00:05:47.240 --> 00:05:55.100 National Wildlife Federation and was named one of the 50 most influential people by Bloomberg News. 00:05:56.020 --> 00:06:02.660 In 2014, Dr. Mann received the Friend of the Planet award from the National Center for Science Education. 00:06:02.660 --> 00:06:07.720 He's published two popular books: "Dire Predictions: Understanding Climate Change" 00:06:07.720 --> 00:06:12.940 and "The Hockey Stick and the Climate Wars: Dispatches from the Front Lines." 00:06:12.940 --> 00:06:18.500 From pushing the boundaries of climate science to tirelessly communicating about it to the media, public, 00:06:18.500 --> 00:06:24.360 and policymakers, Dr. Mann truly is on the front lines of climate change in every sense. 00:06:24.360 --> 00:06:30.480 While weathering coordinated personal and legal attacks on his work from contrarians, he's used his platform 00:06:30.480 --> 00:06:34.160 to bring greater attention to the threat of climate change. 00:06:34.160 --> 00:06:39.520 Dr. Mann's contributions to the popularization of climate science are unmatched. 00:06:39.520 --> 00:06:47.520 His dozens of op-eds and commentaries, more than 30 public lectures per year, writing for websites including 00:06:47.520 --> 00:06:53.480 The Huffington Post and Real Climate, quotes in the popular press that average one per day, 00:06:54.520 --> 00:06:58.440 he's continually reaching a broad cross-section of audiences. 00:06:58.440 --> 00:07:05.120 He also works with museums and zoos and aquaria, leaving no stone unturned in his efforts to reach people 00:07:05.120 --> 00:07:07.940 with the urgency of the climate challenge. 00:07:07.940 --> 00:07:12.780 He even appealed to his fellow climate scientists for greater public engagement. 00:07:12.780 --> 00:07:18.440 In an op-ed in The New York Times in January of 2014, Dr. Mann used a slogan from the 00:07:18.440 --> 00:07:25.560 Department of Homeland Security to urge his fellow scientists: "if you see something say something." 00:07:25.560 --> 00:07:28.420 And there's one more thing I want you to know about him. 00:07:28.420 --> 00:07:35.340 Knowing what we know, it's sometimes hard to remain positive, to keep our energy up for the ongoing battle 00:07:35.340 --> 00:07:41.460 that we face, to beat back the merchants of doubt as well as the ignorance and apathy and despair 00:07:41.460 --> 00:07:43.340 that can threaten our future. 00:07:43.340 --> 00:07:48.980 Michael Mann manages to do all of this while remaining positive and energetic. 00:07:49.780 --> 00:07:55.720 I'm honored to introduce a friend and a colleague who fights the good fight every day 00:07:55.720 --> 00:08:00.020 and remains tireless, fearless, and joyful. 00:08:00.020 --> 00:08:02.640 Please help me in welcoming Dr. Michael Mann. 00:08:02.640 --> 00:08:11.180 [Applause] 00:08:11.180 --> 00:08:15.640 [Pause] 00:08:15.640 --> 00:08:20.940 [Michael Mann] Thank you for that incredibly kind introduction Susan and I want to thank the folks here at 00:08:20.940 --> 00:08:24.940 the Global Change Center for a wonderful day. 00:08:24.940 --> 00:08:32.000 Susan and I just had a fabulous time with the students here, the very impressive students in this program. 00:08:32.000 --> 00:08:41.220 And frankly, after spending an entire day working with these students to improve their science communication 00:08:41.220 --> 00:08:47.080 and after being built up the way that I was just built up by Susan, I'm a little worried about violating all of the 00:08:47.080 --> 00:08:51.580 rules that we spoke of today so I'll do my best not to do that. 00:08:51.580 --> 00:09:01.140 I'm gonna tell a story and it's my own story as a science nerd, a computer geek, whatever you want to call me. 00:09:01.140 --> 00:09:11.240 Somebody who went into science because I loved working on solving difficult problems that tell us about 00:09:11.240 --> 00:09:18.440 how the world works and it led me down a path where I ended up publishing a curve, the so-called 00:09:18.440 --> 00:09:23.960 hockey stick curve that quickly rose to iconic status in the climate change debate. 00:09:23.960 --> 00:09:28.900 It became a symbol in the climate change debate, and all of a sudden as a young post-doc, 00:09:28.900 --> 00:09:34.100 I found myself in a world I never expected to be in, something I had never signed up for. 00:09:34.100 --> 00:09:40.660 I was suddenly in the center of what is arguably the most contentious societal debate that we have yet had: 00:09:40.660 --> 00:09:43.180 the debate over climate change and what to do about it. 00:09:43.180 --> 00:09:49.360 And so what I'm going to try to do is to talk a little bit about the science, but to also talk about my story, 00:09:49.360 --> 00:09:54.440 and some of the lessons that I've learned along the way, and how I have come to indeed embrace this role 00:09:54.440 --> 00:10:00.140 that I didn't sign up for, but a role that I think is a blessing. 00:10:00.140 --> 00:10:06.500 A role that has placed me in a position to inform what may be, you know, the greatest challenge that 00:10:06.500 --> 00:10:12.580 human civilization has yet faced: the challenge to do something about human-caused climate change. 00:10:12.580 --> 00:10:19.320 So, the first point I want to make is that despite what you may have heard or read, 00:10:19.320 --> 00:10:21.880 the basic science is not controversial. 00:10:21.880 --> 00:10:27.200 This isn't new, controversial science, it's straightforward physics and chemistry that we've known about 00:10:27.200 --> 00:10:28.780 for two centuries. 00:10:28.780 --> 00:10:34.820 Joseph Fourier, he's the same scientist who gave us the law of heat conduction, 00:10:34.820 --> 00:10:40.420 he understood that certain gases in our atmosphere, like carbon dioxide, have a warming influence on the planet. 00:10:40.420 --> 00:10:46.940 And mostly, we have simply been refining our understanding of the details over the past two centuries. 00:10:46.940 --> 00:10:52.260 We also know that we are increasing the concentrations of these greenhouse gases in the atmosphere through 00:10:52.260 --> 00:10:54.960 fossil fuel burning and other activities. 00:10:54.960 --> 00:10:59.840 This is a graph that I put together a few years ago and it is now fundamentally out of date. 00:10:59.840 --> 00:11:08.540 I need to update this because there's another vertical tick mark now, 400. We just passed 400 parts per million 00:11:08.540 --> 00:11:15.320 CO2 in the atmosphere a couple years ago for the first time in what we think is probably millions of years. 00:11:15.320 --> 00:11:21.400 Okay? So we are engaged in this unprecedented and uncontrolled experiment with the one planet that 00:11:21.400 --> 00:11:24.520 we know is habitable to life, our planet Earth. 00:11:25.520 --> 00:11:31.580 What I would not be able to explain to you as a scientist would be if the Earth were not warming up. 00:11:31.580 --> 00:11:36.800 The greenhouse effect is basic fundamental physics and chemistry. 00:11:36.800 --> 00:11:41.740 The measurements that tell us that we are increasing the concentrations of these greenhouse gases, 00:11:41.740 --> 00:11:43.200 irrefutable evidence. 00:11:43.200 --> 00:11:47.580 What we would not be able to explain would be if the earth were not warming up as a result of that, 00:11:47.580 --> 00:11:52.380 but of course it is. It's warmed a little less than a degree Celsius thus far. 00:11:52.380 --> 00:12:01.120 Now, the critics often like to point to this, the end of the graph, and say but if I start up here and I end down here 00:12:01.120 --> 00:12:04.560 well there's a cooling trend, right? The globe has stopped warming? 00:12:04.560 --> 00:12:07.600 How can there be global warming if the globe has stopped warming? 00:12:07.600 --> 00:12:13.920 And, you know, that's cherry-picking, that's starting picking a particular year and then, you know, 00:12:13.920 --> 00:12:21.440 trying to draw a trend line but, you know, that's all abstract and the best evidence that that's wrong is 00:12:21.440 --> 00:12:28.320 the fact that the numbers for 2014 just came in a couple months ago and we now know that 2014 was 00:12:28.320 --> 00:12:30.140 the warmest year on record on the globe. 00:12:30.140 --> 00:12:35.400 So, let's update that graph. Global warming hasn't stopped. It continues at pace. 00:12:35.400 --> 00:12:41.120 We continue to warm at a rate of somewhere between .1 and .2 degrees Celsius per decade. 00:12:41.120 --> 00:12:47.360 That might sound small but that's, you know, a degree to two degrees Celsius over a century. 00:12:47.360 --> 00:12:52.160 That's, you know, nearly four degrees, three degrees, four degrees, Fahrenheit over a century. 00:12:52.160 --> 00:12:59.000 We continue to warm and if you don't believe those thermometer measurements, we can throw them all out. 00:12:59.000 --> 00:13:02.720 Okay? If you don't like the ocean measurements that tell us the ocean is warming, you don't like 00:13:02.720 --> 00:13:06.040 the land measurements that tell us the land is warming, you don't like the measurements in 00:13:06.040 --> 00:13:09.880 the northern hemisphere that tell us it is warming or the measurements in North America that tell us 00:13:09.880 --> 00:13:12.180 it's warming, we can throw out all those thermometers. 00:13:12.180 --> 00:13:17.520 I could show you dozens of independent lines of evidence that would tell an eternally consistent story 00:13:17.520 --> 00:13:23.960 of a planet that is warming up and a climate that is changing precisely as we expect it to as we continue 00:13:23.960 --> 00:13:26.500 to increase the concentrations of these gases. 00:13:26.500 --> 00:13:31.760 And that sort of evidence has led the very austere, the very conservative, Intergovernmental Panel on 00:13:31.760 --> 00:13:37.040 Climate Change, which consists of thousands of scientists who contribute to these reports that come out 00:13:37.040 --> 00:13:41.280 every five years that detail our understanding of climate change. 00:13:41.280 --> 00:13:46.960 Many of you probably know scientists and you know that if you get three of us in a room, it'll be difficult 00:13:46.960 --> 00:13:49.660 to get us to agree upon just about anything. 00:13:49.660 --> 00:13:54.120 We're a fairly cantankerous lot. We're skeptics, and skepticism is a good thing in science. 00:13:54.120 --> 00:13:58.660 So when you have thousands of scientists coming together and concluding that the warming of 00:13:58.660 --> 00:14:05.140 the climate system is unequivocal. Scientists hate to use words like unequivocal. That's a real commitment. 00:14:05.140 --> 00:14:10.920 We hate to commit to things that strongly. That tells you that the warming of the climate system is unequivocal. 00:14:10.920 --> 00:14:13.320 [Pause] 00:14:13.320 --> 00:14:18.280 Well, is that all invalidated by the fact that it was cold in Blacksburg last couple days? 00:14:18.280 --> 00:14:21.620 We've had some cold weather. It gets cold in winter. 00:14:21.620 --> 00:14:27.160 Well, if you talk to folks like Donald Trump apparently that means we have to throw out everything we ever 00:14:27.160 --> 00:14:31.880 understood about radiative physics and fluid dynamics. 00:14:31.880 --> 00:14:34.800 Is that really true? 00:14:34.800 --> 00:14:39.280 Is what's happening, is the fact that there are cold temperatures, invalidating everything I just said? 00:14:39.280 --> 00:14:44.100 Well, let's look. Everywhere I go now and I give this lecture, I look at what's happening 00:14:44.100 --> 00:14:45.680 with unusual cold temperatures. 00:14:45.680 --> 00:14:51.480 What's the trend over time? In Dublin it's down, Santa Cruz it's down, in Cleveland it's down, 00:14:51.480 --> 00:15:00.320 in St. Louis it's down, where I live in State College it's down, and it's even down in Peoria. 00:15:00.320 --> 00:15:02.660 [Pause] 00:15:02.660 --> 00:15:07.880 It's down everywhere I go. I have not yet spoken in a location, I haven't found a location where 00:15:07.880 --> 00:15:14.380 unusually cold temperatures are not on the decline and that unusually warm temperatures are not on the incline 00:15:14.380 --> 00:15:17.900 exactly as we expect to happen as we continue to warm the planet. 00:15:17.900 --> 00:15:19.820 [Pause] 00:15:19.820 --> 00:15:25.680 Models. Okay, so some of you may have heard from the critics that, you know, our entire understanding of 00:15:25.680 --> 00:15:29.860 the problem of climate change depends on these untrustworthy climate models. 00:15:29.860 --> 00:15:35.000 And that statement is doubly wrong, because first of all the models are not untrustworthy and I'll talk about it 00:15:35.000 --> 00:15:37.360 in a minute, but it's not based on the models. 00:15:37.360 --> 00:15:41.220 I already explained to you the evidence for human-caused climate change in the first few minutes of this 00:15:41.220 --> 00:15:46.120 talk and it was based on irrefutable physics and chemistry, irrefutable measurements of our changing the 00:15:46.120 --> 00:15:52.080 composition of the atmosphere, and the fact that the climate is indeed responding exactly as we expect it to. 00:15:52.080 --> 00:15:56.060 But we use climate models to test hypotheses. 00:15:56.060 --> 00:16:02.220 After all, there's only one earth and, as I said before, we are engaged in an unprecedented and uncontrolled 00:16:02.220 --> 00:16:04.580 experiment with the one earth that we have. 00:16:04.580 --> 00:16:08.940 If we want to ask what if questions, what if we weren't increasing greenhouse gas concentrations? 00:16:08.940 --> 00:16:11.640 What if we were doing this? What would happen to the climate? 00:16:11.640 --> 00:16:19.260 Well all we have at our disposal is our understanding of the physics of this system, in the biology that governs 00:16:19.260 --> 00:16:24.460 the global carbon cycle, and the chemistry that governs the behavior of greenhouse gases. 00:16:24.460 --> 00:16:29.600 We take our scientific understanding of all of these components that comprise the climate system 00:16:29.600 --> 00:16:35.980 and formalize that understanding in the form of a model, which is our best estimate, our best ability, 00:16:35.980 --> 00:16:38.920 to formalize our understanding of the science. 00:16:38.920 --> 00:16:43.660 And we can make experiments. We can do experiments. 00:16:43.660 --> 00:16:51.400 In fact, you're probably wondering at this point what I'm showing you. What is that? Seinfeld restaurant. 00:16:51.400 --> 00:16:55.420 What could the Seinfeld restaurant possibly have to do with climate change? 00:16:55.420 --> 00:17:02.560 Well, on the upper floors of the Seinfeld restaurant sits the NASA Goddard Institute for Space Studies. 00:17:02.560 --> 00:17:08.260 I did a sabbatical there about eight years ago so I got to go to the Seinfeld diner for work every day. 00:17:08.260 --> 00:17:17.620 It was a lot of fun, actually, but back in 1988, three years before the Seinfeld show even went on the air, 00:17:17.620 --> 00:17:22.700 Dr. James Hansen, who was the director at the time of the NASA Goddard Institute for Space Studies, 00:17:22.700 --> 00:17:25.720 made a prediction using climate models. 00:17:25.720 --> 00:17:36.120 And, as we know, predictions are hard, especially about the future. And it's not Yogi Berra. 00:17:36.120 --> 00:17:37.700 You're probably thinking that's Yogi Berra. 00:17:37.700 --> 00:17:42.960 It was Niels Bohr, the physicist, predictions are hard especially about the future. 00:17:42.960 --> 00:17:47.140 And he made a prediction about the future back in 1988. 00:17:47.140 --> 00:17:50.760 You could see what the thermometer measurements showed in the decades leading up to that prediction and 00:17:50.760 --> 00:17:56.060 he said, well, I'm gonna make a prediction about the future based on three different scenarios. 00:17:56.060 --> 00:17:58.940 After all, he couldn't predict human behavior. How could you do that? 00:17:58.940 --> 00:18:01.620 He couldn't. He couldn't predict what we were gonna do. 00:18:01.620 --> 00:18:07.160 But what he could say is, well, here's my prediction for how global temperatures will change if we rapidly 00:18:07.160 --> 00:18:10.880 decrease our emission of carbon into the atmosphere. 00:18:10.880 --> 00:18:18.100 That's the purple. The green, that's what happens if we rapidly increase our burning of fossil fuels 00:18:18.100 --> 00:18:21.340 even beyond the historical trajectory. 00:18:21.340 --> 00:18:26.840 And the blue is what we would expect to happen if we fall somewhere in between those things. 00:18:26.840 --> 00:18:32.320 And guess what? If you look at our fossil fuel emissions, if you follow the pathway that we have actually pursued 00:18:32.320 --> 00:18:39.520 with our decisions and with our actions, we've pursued something roughly akin to that blue curve. 00:18:39.520 --> 00:18:46.860 That is what the prediction is for the fossil fuel scenario that we have actually followed and that's what 00:18:46.860 --> 00:18:51.240 the observations actually show happened over the next couple decades. 00:18:51.240 --> 00:18:54.740 I would argue that's a pretty impressive prediction. 00:18:54.740 --> 00:19:00.600 And I could bore you to tears discussing the hundreds of pages of model validation, exercises, and 00:19:00.600 --> 00:19:07.120 various reports of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, but suffice it to say that there are some 00:19:07.120 --> 00:19:12.880 very convincing simple experiments that tell us that there's reason to take these models quite seriously, 00:19:12.880 --> 00:19:13.800 what they say. 00:19:13.800 --> 00:19:18.620 Now, if you're a critic, you know, as I've said there are critics out there, believe it or not. There are some critics. 00:19:18.620 --> 00:19:19.880 [Pause] 00:19:19.880 --> 00:19:25.300 You might say, well look, look how much it cooled here and, you know, if your model, the blue curve is your 00:19:25.300 --> 00:19:29.760 model, if your model is so great, how come it couldn't predict something as big as that cooling signal? 00:19:29.760 --> 00:19:36.020 And it is true that James Hansen didn't know in 1988 that in 1991 Mount Pinatubo would erupt and put 00:19:36.020 --> 00:19:41.860 large amounts of particulates into the stratosphere where they block out a certain amount of sunlight. 00:19:41.860 --> 00:19:47.740 But what Hansen did know is that it would take about six to nine months for that particulate cloud to spread 00:19:47.740 --> 00:19:50.560 around the globe and begin to have a cooling effect. 00:19:50.560 --> 00:19:56.640 So he had enough time to do another model experiment and predict the cooling that would be expected to result 00:19:56.640 --> 00:20:03.280 from that distribution of volcanic particulates and he predicted that the globe should cool by about a half a 00:20:03.280 --> 00:20:06.320 degree Celsius for a few years, exactly what happened. 00:20:06.320 --> 00:20:11.460 What might look like a flaw in the climate model prediction was actually an opportunity, an example, 00:20:11.460 --> 00:20:13.880 for another successful prediction. 00:20:13.880 --> 00:20:19.280 So there are reasons to take the models seriously and there are reasons to test hypotheses for them. 00:20:19.280 --> 00:20:24.180 And again, if you're a critic, you might say well, okay. So the globe is warmed. 00:20:24.180 --> 00:20:28.320 How do we know that it's due to human activity? Maybe it's those natural factors. 00:20:28.320 --> 00:20:30.140 You just talked about the volcanic eruptions. 00:20:30.140 --> 00:20:33.900 Well maybe it's the coming and going of those volcanic eruptions that's responsible for 00:20:33.900 --> 00:20:34.880 the temperature changes. 00:20:34.880 --> 00:20:37.800 Or the small but measurable changes in solar output. 00:20:37.800 --> 00:20:42.600 We can measure them with satellites, we can extend them even further back with sunspot measurements 00:20:42.600 --> 00:20:44.180 and other data. 00:20:44.180 --> 00:20:50.120 Well, let's test that. Let's take the volcanoes and let's take the measured solar output changes and drive 00:20:50.120 --> 00:20:53.800 the climate models with those two factors, those natural factors, and see what happens. 00:20:53.800 --> 00:20:59.600 And that's what happens. So, in fact, the globe should have cooled over the latter half of the 20th century. 00:20:59.600 --> 00:21:05.020 And that's because there were some large eruptions like that Pinatubo eruption, solar output was fairly flat or 00:21:05.020 --> 00:21:09.420 even declining slightly, but we warmed in spite of those natural factors. 00:21:09.420 --> 00:21:15.740 And it is indeed only when we put in the human impact, in particular of increased greenhouse gas 00:21:15.740 --> 00:21:21.320 concentrations from fossil fuel-burning, that we are able to explain the warming that we've seen. 00:21:21.320 --> 00:21:28.760 And so, that's the sort of evidence that has led, again, the quite austere, quite conservative, IPCC to conclude 00:21:28.760 --> 00:21:33.940 that it is extremely likely that human influence has been the dominant cause of the observed warming 00:21:33.940 --> 00:21:35.660 since the mid 20th century. 00:21:35.660 --> 00:21:41.560 Again, the IPCC scientists hate to use words like extremely likely. They hate to use words like dominant. 00:21:41.560 --> 00:21:47.580 That's a real commitment and that's an amazingly strong conclusion to be reached by a consensus, a lowest 00:21:47.580 --> 00:21:53.420 common denominator of something that hundreds and even a few thousand scientists can agree upon. 00:21:53.420 --> 00:21:54.340 [Pause] 00:21:54.340 --> 00:22:04.740 Well, even here, it turns out that the IPCC is being its characteristic conservative, reticent self because 00:22:04.740 --> 00:22:10.460 it isn't true that human influence is just the dominant cause of the observed warming. 00:22:10.460 --> 00:22:14.960 If you read the technical chapters upon which that statement is based, what you will learn is that 00:22:14.960 --> 00:22:19.800 human influence is responsible for more than a hundred percent of the warming that has been observed. 00:22:19.800 --> 00:22:21.080 [Pause] 00:22:21.080 --> 00:22:25.940 And I already explained why that's true because natural factors were actually pushing us in the other direction 00:22:25.940 --> 00:22:27.460 and we warmed in spite of them. 00:22:27.460 --> 00:22:28.480 [Pause] 00:22:28.480 --> 00:22:35.140 All right. So what about our future? What about our future as we move forward? 00:22:35.140 --> 00:22:40.620 Well, the good news is that we hold the future in our own hands. It's up to us to a great extent. 00:22:40.620 --> 00:22:49.480 If we were to rapidly decrease our burning of fossil fuels we could avoid warming the planet by more than 00:22:49.480 --> 00:22:52.540 2 degrees Celsius, 3 and a half degrees Fahrenheit. 00:22:52.540 --> 00:22:57.180 That's a level of warming that most scientists who study the impacts of climate change will tell you is when 00:22:57.180 --> 00:23:02.520 we really start to venture into the most serious and potentially irreversible changes in climate. 00:23:02.520 --> 00:23:05.700 We could avoid doing that. We have the technology. We have the ability to do that. 00:23:05.700 --> 00:23:12.000 But if we continue with business as usual then we're talking about four to five degrees Celsius 00:23:12.000 --> 00:23:14.180 warming of the planet by the end of the century. 00:23:14.180 --> 00:23:19.720 That's 7 to 9 degrees Fahrenheit by the end of the century. 00:23:19.720 --> 00:23:27.320 Twice that much, 14 to 18 degrees Fahrenheit warming of the Arctic because of the amplifying effect 00:23:27.320 --> 00:23:28.360 of melting ice. 00:23:28.360 --> 00:23:31.500 [Pause] 00:23:31.500 --> 00:23:35.940 And if you look, here's 2 degrees Celsius warming of the planet. 00:23:35.940 --> 00:23:42.040 This is a thermometer scale published by the IPCC that measures the detrimental impacts of climate change 00:23:42.040 --> 00:23:46.800 across various sectors of our environment and society. 00:23:46.800 --> 00:23:52.003 And what you see is that once you go beyond about two degrees C, you really start to venture into 00:23:52.003 --> 00:23:54.540 the red zone across all sectors. 00:23:54.540 --> 00:23:57.660 You're really starting to see bad things happen. 00:23:57.660 --> 00:23:59.780 [Pause] 00:23:59.780 --> 00:24:04.760 And this is a complicated graphic from an article I published in Scientific American, 00:24:04.760 --> 00:24:06.800 and the bottom line of which, is we can still do it. 00:24:06.800 --> 00:24:10.700 We can avoid warming the planet by more than two degrees Celsius. 00:24:10.700 --> 00:24:13.780 It's still possible, but it's a window that's closing. 00:24:13.780 --> 00:24:18.767 And if we pursue business as usual, we're up in here we're again talking four to five degrees Celsius, 00:24:18.767 --> 00:24:21.060 seven to nine degrees Fahrenheit. 00:24:21.060 --> 00:24:26.460 That's a different planet, okay? It's not the planet that I grew up on. I would be leaving my daughter 00:24:26.460 --> 00:24:29.400 a different planet if that's what we pursue. 00:24:29.400 --> 00:24:38.340 [Pause] 00:24:38.340 --> 00:24:45.940 And I used to leave it with the polar bear stranded on the ice floe because it's the law if you give 00:24:45.940 --> 00:24:47.620 a talk about climate change. 00:24:47.620 --> 00:24:51.340 You have to show a polar bear stranded on an ice floe. 00:24:51.340 --> 00:25:03.240 But I think in doing that, in making the polar bear the poster child of climate change, we have somewhat 00:25:03.240 --> 00:25:12.100 accidentally we have somehow communicated to the public at times that this is a very distant exotic problem, 00:25:12.100 --> 00:25:17.760 that may be climate change is a problem for polar bears up in the Arctic decades down the road. 00:25:17.760 --> 00:25:21.580 But it's not impacting me. Why should I care? 00:25:21.580 --> 00:25:29.880 Well everywhere I go now I talk about how climate change is impacting us negatively now where we live. 00:25:29.880 --> 00:25:32.300 Because that's true wherever you go 00:25:32.300 --> 00:25:40.140 This is a year and a half ago, I gave a talk in Central Texas in San Angelo and I felt I needed to talk about 00:25:40.140 --> 00:25:45.160 the devastating impact of the 2011 Texas drought, which has been attributed to climate change. 00:25:45.160 --> 00:25:49.740 Scientists have concluded that that drought, the magnitude of that drought, would not have been 00:25:49.740 --> 00:25:53.860 observed if not for the effect of human-caused climate change. 00:25:53.860 --> 00:26:01.960 And ranchers lost about 25 percent of their cattle. Texas, Oklahoma, agriculture across the state was devastated. 00:26:01.960 --> 00:26:06.760 And I felt I needed an image. So you go to Google image. Do a search, 2011 Texas drought. 00:26:06.760 --> 00:26:10.440 Something that looks pretty good comes back. You use it in your presentation. 00:26:10.440 --> 00:26:14.720 I give my presentation and somebody in the audience says, wait a second, you know what lake that is? 00:26:14.720 --> 00:26:17.560 That's our lake. That's Lake Fisher. 00:26:17.560 --> 00:26:23.180 No. It's what we used to call Lake Fisher until it disappeared in the 2011 drought. 00:26:23.180 --> 00:26:26.120 And we can take you to see it if you want after your lecture. 00:26:26.120 --> 00:26:27.280 [Pause] 00:26:27.280 --> 00:26:30.660 I gave a talk up in Maine where they understand. 00:26:30.660 --> 00:26:34.960 It turns out the two icons of Maine are threatened by climate change: the moose and the lobster. 00:26:34.960 --> 00:26:41.760 The lobster are migrating poleward farther into the North Atlantic as the seas warm up and become 00:26:41.760 --> 00:26:42.960 too warm for them. 00:26:42.960 --> 00:26:44.220 [Pause] 00:26:44.220 --> 00:26:51.620 Moose are being impacted by warmer winters that allow parasites and pests to persist through the winter 00:26:51.620 --> 00:26:53.800 that are a problem for moose. 00:26:53.800 --> 00:27:03.020 I gave a talk in the UK some months ago where they just experienced the worst flooding on record 00:27:03.020 --> 00:27:04.920 over a large part of the UK. 00:27:04.920 --> 00:27:12.080 And the very conservative Meteorological Office, some of the most conservative climate scientists on the planet 00:27:12.080 --> 00:27:17.280 are the scientists, trust me, at the UK Meteorological Office. 00:27:17.280 --> 00:27:21.840 And they've said that flooding would not have happened without climate change. 00:27:21.840 --> 00:27:26.140 Our models show that we just would not have seen that extent of flooding. 00:27:26.140 --> 00:27:32.900 The atmosphere just wouldn't be warm enough to hold that much moisture and dump it all out at one time 00:27:32.900 --> 00:27:35.860 if it were not for human-caused climate change. 00:27:35.860 --> 00:27:37.140 [Pause] 00:27:37.140 --> 00:27:39.840 You go to California. I was there a couple months ago. 00:27:39.840 --> 00:27:44.400 You don't have to convince Californians about climate change anymore because they're seeing it. 00:27:44.400 --> 00:27:50.300 They're seeing the devastating impact of the worst droughts in at least twelve hundred years. 00:27:50.300 --> 00:27:56.900 In fact, on this Monday, my colleague Peter Glick and I have a commentary that'll be coming out in the 00:27:56.900 --> 00:28:02.940 Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences which explains why this drought was indeed made worse. 00:28:02.940 --> 00:28:04.120 It would not have happened. 00:28:04.120 --> 00:28:08.600 A record drought of this sort would not have happened in the absence of human caused climate change. 00:28:08.600 --> 00:28:10.860 And they're paying the price in California. 00:28:10.860 --> 00:28:16.240 At this point they're saying they have about one year left before they have to start doing water rationing. 00:28:16.240 --> 00:28:18.280 [Pause] 00:28:18.280 --> 00:28:20.340 And last week I was in Florida. 00:28:20.340 --> 00:28:24.960 Again you talk to folks in Miami, you don't have to explain that climate change is happening. 00:28:24.960 --> 00:28:31.331 You might have to explain to their governor because he actually doesn't want people using that term, 00:28:31.340 --> 00:28:32.740 [Pause] 00:28:32.740 --> 00:28:36.100 but the person on the street you don't have to explain it to them because you know they've always gotten 00:28:36.100 --> 00:28:38.140 this seasonal high tide called the King Tide. 00:28:38.140 --> 00:28:44.058 It comes in every year, but it didn't used to flood the streets of Miami Beach every time it comes in. 00:28:44.060 --> 00:28:47.880 And now it does because that's how sea-level rise is gonna impact us. 00:28:47.880 --> 00:28:52.060 It isn't just gonna be you know a slow inundation. 00:28:52.060 --> 00:28:55.380 It's going to be the extreme events are gonna be more extreme. 00:28:55.380 --> 00:29:01.320 And Hurricane Sandy had a 13-foot coastal surge rather than 12-foot coastal surge 00:29:01.320 --> 00:29:03.340 because of global sea level rise. 00:29:03.340 --> 00:29:06.320 It's going to make the extreme events worse. 00:29:06.320 --> 00:29:11.740 It's gonna give us the straw that breaks the camel's back when it comes to these sorts of events. 00:29:11.740 --> 00:29:19.020 And in Virginia, there are a whole host of impacts that climate change is already having as well. 00:29:19.020 --> 00:29:24.840 So at this point in the talk is where I ask the purely rhetorical question, why no action? 00:29:24.840 --> 00:29:31.200 If the evidence is this clear, if the threat is this great, why is it that we have not seriously entertained 00:29:31.200 --> 00:29:35.020 actions, the actions necessary to do something about this problem? 00:29:35.020 --> 00:29:39.600 And of course I can't answer that question from the standpoint of science. 00:29:39.600 --> 00:29:43.880 That brings us into the domain of policy and politics. 00:29:43.880 --> 00:29:51.220 Back in 2002, Frank Luntz, an advisor to Republicans, was advising his clients in this case, 00:29:51.220 --> 00:29:54.980 basically fossil fuel interests, that there was a closing window of opportunity. 00:29:54.980 --> 00:29:58.500 The public was becoming convinced that there was a scientific consensus about 00:29:58.500 --> 00:29:59.720 human-caused climate change. 00:29:59.720 --> 00:30:04.980 And if they were to become convinced that there was a scientific consensus, they would demand 00:30:04.980 --> 00:30:06.840 that policy action be taken. 00:30:06.840 --> 00:30:13.460 But what he said, based on his focus groups and his polling, there still was a window of opportunity to 00:30:13.460 --> 00:30:21.460 double down, to reinsert doubt and confusion into the public discourse over this issue, to fund 00:30:21.460 --> 00:30:28.060 contrarian scientists who would be willing to challenge the conclusions of the scientific community to fund 00:30:28.060 --> 00:30:33.660 front groups and organizations whose sole purpose was to try to discredit the case for concern 00:30:33.660 --> 00:30:36.200 over human caused climate change. 00:30:36.200 --> 00:30:43.400 Now, if that sounds a little familiar to you, like you know I've heard that tactic before, maybe because that's 00:30:43.400 --> 00:30:45.620 exactly what the tobacco industry did decades ago. 00:30:45.620 --> 00:30:46.680 It's the same playbook. 00:30:46.680 --> 00:30:52.260 And this wonderful book by Naomi Oreskes and Erik Conway, "Merchants of Doubt" is now a movie 00:30:52.260 --> 00:30:56.900 and I understand it may even be coming to the the Lyric Theatre at some point in the future. 00:30:56.900 --> 00:30:58.060 But the movie is out. 00:30:58.060 --> 00:31:07.960 It just premiered a week ago and it describes how the very same contrarian scientists who were hired by 00:31:07.960 --> 00:31:13.080 the tobacco industry to try to discredit the linkage between their product and human health effects like 00:31:13.080 --> 00:31:21.020 lung cancer the very same scientists are today working for fossil fuel interest to try discredit the relationship 00:31:21.020 --> 00:31:27.900 between their product fossil fuel-burning and the health not of individual people the health of 00:31:27.900 --> 00:31:32.120 the entire planet in this case. The stakes are actually quite a bit higher. 00:31:32.120 --> 00:31:40.540 So we have senators like James Inhofe, affectionately now known as "Senator Snowball." 00:31:40.540 --> 00:31:46.400 Some of you may have seen his stunt a week ago because there's snow in Washington DC in the winter, 00:31:46.400 --> 00:31:51.320 global warming can't be happening. It gets cold in winter therefore there's no climate change. 00:31:51.320 --> 00:31:52.580 [Pause] 00:31:52.580 --> 00:32:02.100 Well, James Inhofe is perhaps one of the most strident climate change deniers in the US Senate or the US 00:32:02.100 --> 00:32:09.160 Congress and he has described climate change as the greatest hoax ever perpetrated on the American people. 00:32:09.160 --> 00:32:10.740 [Pause] 00:32:10.740 --> 00:32:19.080 Now, it turns out, he was the choice for keynote speaker in 2011. Remember 2011, a terrible Texas drought? 00:32:19.080 --> 00:32:23.580 But he was chosen to be the keynote speaker at the climate change conference of 00:32:23.580 --> 00:32:26.060 the Heartland Institute that July. 00:32:26.060 --> 00:32:32.612 Heartland Institute is a front group who was funded by tobacco interests in decades past to discredit the 00:32:32.620 --> 00:32:35.960 science linking tobacco products to human health. 00:32:35.960 --> 00:32:43.020 And today it is, of course, working for fossil fuel interests to try to discredit the reality 00:32:43.020 --> 00:32:44.600 and threat of climate change. 00:32:44.600 --> 00:32:50.240 And he was their choice for keynote speaker and he had gladly accepted but he he did have to cancel out 00:32:50.240 --> 00:32:51.980 at the last minute, unfortunately. 00:32:51.980 --> 00:32:57.440 He had gotten sick swimming in a lake back in Oklahoma that was suffering from an algal bloom as 00:32:57.440 --> 00:33:03.200 a result of the unprecedented heat and drought that Oklahoma was experiencing at the time. 00:33:03.200 --> 00:33:04.240 [Pause] 00:33:04.240 --> 00:33:11.860 Well, I want to thank all of you for coming out. I know the NCAA tournament is going on right now and 00:33:11.860 --> 00:33:15.940 I'm particularly anxious to know how my old school, UVA, is doing. 00:33:15.940 --> 00:33:20.460 I understand they're playing right now. I'm not doing well in the tournament right now. 00:33:20.460 --> 00:33:26.760 I'm in last place in the pool that I'm in. My brackets are not looking good. 00:33:26.760 --> 00:33:31.360 But I'm doing really well in an alternative tournament that's occurring in parallel. 00:33:31.360 --> 00:33:39.360 This is the climate change, fantasy climate change denier tournament and when this tournament started 00:33:39.360 --> 00:33:43.860 I predicted that Jim Inhofe would go all the way. 00:33:43.860 --> 00:33:50.720 Although there were a couple possible bracket busters here but I really felt that Inhofe was looking good. 00:33:50.720 --> 00:33:55.080 And he's now in the finals. He's in the finals. He's up against Marco Rubio. 00:33:55.080 --> 00:34:03.380 I'm crossing my fingers we will find out tomorrow. So, how did I find myself at the center of this circus run? 00:34:03.380 --> 00:34:08.220 Because it feels like a circus at times, this ridiculous debate we are still having about whether climate change 00:34:08.220 --> 00:34:10.940 is real, whether or not we should do something about it. 00:34:10.940 --> 00:34:16.180 And, as you already know, it has to do with this graph that I published a decade and a half ago that has 00:34:16.180 --> 00:34:22.020 come to be known as the hockey stick graph because of its shape and it shows that the recent warming appears 00:34:22.020 --> 00:34:24.380 to be unprecedented as far back as we can go. 00:34:24.380 --> 00:34:30.700 It became an icon in the climate change debate and, as you may know, what happens to icons in 00:34:30.700 --> 00:34:37.340 the climate change debate, like the hockey stick, is that they get attacked. 00:34:37.340 --> 00:34:46.360 And I found myself at the center of these attacks aimed often at discrediting me personally in a cynical effort 00:34:46.360 --> 00:34:54.440 to discredit the hockey stick, which was supposedly the one pillar of evidence for the existence 00:34:54.440 --> 00:34:56.700 of human-caused climate change. 00:34:56.700 --> 00:35:00.980 Well, first of all, there's literally a whole hockey league. 00:35:00.980 --> 00:35:04.241 There are many reconstructions that have been performed since then. 00:35:04.241 --> 00:35:08.793 They all come to the same conclusion that the recent warming appears to be unprecedented over 00:35:08.800 --> 00:35:13.200 an even longer time frame, actually, at least the past 1300 years maybe longer. 00:35:13.200 --> 00:35:17.320 But you could throw out the whole hockey league, you could throw out all these Paleo climate data, 00:35:17.320 --> 00:35:19.740 throw it all out. It's not necessary. 00:35:19.740 --> 00:35:25.480 I explained to you in the first few minutes the basis for our understanding of human-caused climate change 00:35:25.480 --> 00:35:27.140 and the threat that it represents. 00:35:27.140 --> 00:35:32.200 Simple, basic irrefutable physics, chemistry, irrefutable measurements that will change the composition 00:35:32.200 --> 00:35:36.240 of the planet and how it's warming up and climate is changing as a result. 00:35:36.240 --> 00:35:42.460 But the hockey stick did become a symbol. It became a symbol of the climate change. 00:35:42.460 --> 00:35:47.580 And so it continues to be attacked. And now, just a couple years ago, there was a 00:35:47.580 --> 00:35:50.760 significant development in the science here. 00:35:50.760 --> 00:35:58.340 A group, they call themselves the pages 2k group, it's a international group of nearly 80 scientists from I think 00:35:58.340 --> 00:36:06.240 40 institutions, more than 20 different countries, using the most widespread data set ever used of 00:36:06.240 --> 00:36:11.060 Paleoclimate data to reconstruct temperatures back in time. 00:36:11.060 --> 00:36:18.720 And they published their article in the prestigious journal Nature Geoscience, which unfortunately overthrew our 00:36:18.720 --> 00:36:23.620 Oh wait, no, that's right sorry. Yeah they got the same answer that we had gotten a decade and a half ago. 00:36:23.620 --> 00:36:25.040 [Pause] 00:36:25.040 --> 00:36:29.200 And that's why the IPCC, they're not debating this anymore. 00:36:29.200 --> 00:36:40.120 It is now looked at as very likely that the recent warming is unprecedented in recent centuries, likely the warmest 00:36:40.120 --> 00:36:41.840 in at least the past fourteen hundred years. 00:36:41.840 --> 00:36:46.620 The conclusions are actually stronger than they were, as you would expect. More data, more independent studies. 00:36:46.620 --> 00:36:50.797 And even if we didn't have that evidence, we would still know that climate change is real, 00:36:50.800 --> 00:36:54.380 it's caused by us, and it's a problem if we don't do something about it. 00:36:54.380 --> 00:37:00.660 So the reason we're not doing something about it, or not nearly to the extent that we need to, some people 00:37:00.660 --> 00:37:03.680 would say, is because of the politicization of science. 00:37:03.680 --> 00:37:10.400 I disagree with that. I think what we're looking at is something different, something worse. 00:37:10.400 --> 00:37:15.840 It's the science-tization of politics. And what I mean by that, science is now used as a political football. 00:37:15.840 --> 00:37:22.100 It's just another way of waging politics and, you know, if you don't like the science as assessed by the IPCC or 00:37:22.100 --> 00:37:26.900 the US National Academy of Sciences, which I would remind you was founded by a Republican president, 00:37:26.900 --> 00:37:31.920 Abraham Lincoln, in the 19th century to advise Congress about matters of science 00:37:31.920 --> 00:37:35.700 that have importance for policy. 00:37:35.700 --> 00:37:43.540 If you don't like the conclusions of all of the scientific societies, nearly forty of them in the US, that deal in 00:37:43.540 --> 00:37:47.000 any of the underlying stuff, the American Chemical Society, American Physical Society, 00:37:47.000 --> 00:37:50.920 American Meteorological Society, American Geophysical Union, and on and on, all of which 00:37:50.920 --> 00:37:54.480 are on record with statements. 00:37:54.480 --> 00:38:00.620 There's a consensus: climate change real, caused by us, problem if we don't do something about it. 00:38:00.620 --> 00:38:05.800 If you don't like the conclusions of the world scientific community, you know what? 00:38:05.800 --> 00:38:11.980 There's a whole cable network for you and there are certain editorial pages that are perfectly happy 00:38:11.980 --> 00:38:17.640 in presenting an alternative reality where the laws of physics no longer apply as we thought they did. 00:38:17.640 --> 00:38:25.580 And there are people who now feel like, you know, the words of Daniel P. Moynihan, the Senator from New York, 00:38:25.580 --> 00:38:29.180 who once said, "You're entitled to your own opinions but not your own facts." 00:38:29.180 --> 00:38:34.780 Well, increasingly in today's world, people sort of isolate themselves in bubbles that reinforce their own 00:38:34.780 --> 00:38:40.460 misconceptions and they feel they are entitled to their own facts when it comes to matters like climate change. 00:38:40.460 --> 00:38:45.680 That makes it really difficult to have the meaningful discussion that we need to have about 00:38:45.680 --> 00:38:47.040 what to do about the problem. 00:38:47.040 --> 00:38:54.680 Now, back in 2005, along these lines, I got a letter from Joe Barton. Well actually, it wasn't a letter. 00:38:54.680 --> 00:39:03.300 It was actually a Congressional subpoena asking for all of my personal emails based on the fact that he had 00:39:03.300 --> 00:39:09.480 read a criticism of my work in that most prestigious of scientific journals, the editorial pages of 00:39:09.480 --> 00:39:17.280 the Wall Street Journal and he believed that this was cause for an open-ended fishing expedition 00:39:17.280 --> 00:39:21.340 to look through all my personal emails, all of my documents from my entire scientific career, 00:39:21.340 --> 00:39:28.480 every scribbling on the back of a napkin in a bar and all that information for my two senior co-authors whose 00:39:28.480 --> 00:39:38.420 decades went back many decades, whose careers went back decades presumably in an effort to discredit us. 00:39:38.420 --> 00:39:43.840 I should mention, I think it's a total coincidence that he was the largest recipient of fossil fuel money 00:39:43.840 --> 00:39:45.740 in the US House of Representatives. 00:39:45.740 --> 00:39:47.600 [Pause] 00:39:47.600 --> 00:39:52.100 Well, the scientific community didn't take kindly to what they thought is a transparent effort to intimidate 00:39:52.100 --> 00:40:00.500 scientists whose findings might be inconvenient to the special interests that fund Mr. Barton's campaigns. 00:40:00.500 --> 00:40:05.000 The AAAS, American Association Advancement of Science, the American Meteorological Society, 00:40:05.000 --> 00:40:13.920 American Geophysical Union, The Journal of Nature, basically the scientific community weighed in 00:40:13.920 --> 00:40:17.060 unanimously that this is not okay. 00:40:17.060 --> 00:40:19.060 [Pause] 00:40:19.060 --> 00:40:28.080 Now, it might not surprise you that a, sort of, very progressive Southern California Democrat like 00:40:28.080 --> 00:40:36.920 Henry Waxman, who had worked hard to bring the tobacco industry to justice for their hiding the impacts 00:40:36.920 --> 00:40:40.780 of their product, the tobacco products, in past decades. 00:40:40.780 --> 00:40:49.300 You might not be surprised that he would come out and support us against this attack by his colleague 00:40:49.300 --> 00:40:51.100 on the other side of the aisle, Joe Barton. 00:40:51.100 --> 00:40:56.160 What might surprise you, though, is the fact that the biggest hero in the story was a Republican. 00:40:56.160 --> 00:41:05.040 It was an old-school, pro-science, pro-environment Republican, Sherwood Boehlert, who is the, 00:41:05.040 --> 00:41:07.440 Barton was the chair of the House Energy and Commerce Committee. 00:41:07.440 --> 00:41:09.620 He was a powerful committee chair, 00:41:09.620 --> 00:41:11.620 but so was Sherwood Boehlert. 00:41:11.620 --> 00:41:17.600 He was the chair of the House Science Committee and he condemned Barton's actions in among 00:41:17.600 --> 00:41:22.400 the harshest terms of anyone, stopping just short of calling him out for engaging 00:41:22.400 --> 00:41:24.120 in modern-day McCarthyism. 00:41:24.120 --> 00:41:26.860 Now, he wasn't the only one. You might recognize this guy as well. 00:41:26.860 --> 00:41:28.580 [Pause] 00:41:28.580 --> 00:41:34.220 John McCain at the time wrote an op-ed in The Chronicle of Higher Education," where he said that 00:41:34.220 --> 00:41:39.020 the message sent by the congressional committee to the three scientists was not subtle, 00:41:39.020 --> 00:41:43.700 published politically unpalatable scientific results, and brace yourself for political retribution. 00:41:43.700 --> 00:41:48.940 It represents a kind of intimidation which threatens the relationship between science and public policy. 00:41:48.940 --> 00:41:51.700 That behavior must not be tolerated. 00:41:51.700 --> 00:41:59.600 Now, students of modern American politics out in the audience may know that it's almost unprecedented 00:41:59.600 --> 00:42:05.560 to see one prominent Republican call out another Republican in such harsh terms. 00:42:05.560 --> 00:42:12.800 And what it means is that there are politicians of conscience on both sides of the aisle who know that 00:42:12.800 --> 00:42:17.920 we have to get past this fake debate about whether climate change is real, past the witch hunts and 00:42:17.920 --> 00:42:25.080 the show trials aimed at distracting the public, and on to the worthy discussion to be had 00:42:25.080 --> 00:42:27.040 about what to do about the problem. 00:42:27.040 --> 00:42:29.140 Well, it didn't stop there, though, it didn't. 00:42:29.140 --> 00:42:31.700 Hey! Now wait a second, I haven't even said anything yet. 00:42:31.700 --> 00:42:34.380 [Laughter] 00:42:34.380 --> 00:42:44.180 So back a little bit later, 2009, many of you may remember this fake scandal called "Climategate." 00:42:44.180 --> 00:42:48.440 All of a sudden, and again I think it's a total coincidence that it happened in the lead-up to 00:42:48.440 --> 00:42:52.900 the Copenhagen summit, which was the first opportunity for meaningful international progress 00:42:52.900 --> 00:42:54.880 in dealing with climate change in years. 00:42:54.880 --> 00:43:00.480 I think it was a coincidence that all of a sudden, at the last minute, this scandal, fake scandal, 00:43:00.480 --> 00:43:07.720 was drummed up, first in the conservative media and eventually even into the mainstream media 00:43:07.720 --> 00:43:15.320 where thousands of emails had been stolen from a server in the UK, from a university in the UK 00:43:15.320 --> 00:43:19.240 and they had been combed through and individual words and phrases were taken out of context 00:43:19.240 --> 00:43:26.100 to try to make it sound like scientists had been fudging the data, to try to make it sound like climate change 00:43:26.100 --> 00:43:31.500 was indeed this massive global conspiracy and hoax like James and Huff had claimed it was. 00:43:31.500 --> 00:43:35.620 And, at the time, Sarah Palin wrote an op-ed in the Washington Post where, among other things, 00:43:35.620 --> 00:43:39.524 she claimed that the emails revealed that climate experts manipulated data 00:43:39.524 --> 00:43:42.500 to hide the decline in global temperatures. 00:43:42.500 --> 00:43:47.560 Now, that's very interesting because I actually was a recipient of the email she's referring to 00:43:47.560 --> 00:43:52.340 and the email was written in early 1999. 00:43:52.340 --> 00:43:54.420 It was on the heels of the warmest year we had ever seen. 00:43:54.420 --> 00:43:59.800 1998 was the warmest year we had ever seen and was boosted by a big el niño event. 00:43:59.800 --> 00:44:03.580 If anything, scientists at the time would be would have been talking, and we're talking about 00:44:03.580 --> 00:44:06.200 is global warming unfolding faster than we expect? 00:44:06.200 --> 00:44:07.560 It may be. 00:44:07.560 --> 00:44:09.780 So there was no decline to be talking about. 00:44:09.780 --> 00:44:15.480 It turns out what they were talking about was a graph that they were preparing for a government report 00:44:15.480 --> 00:44:22.320 that detailed long-term temperature trends and one of the graphs was based on tree-ring information 00:44:22.320 --> 00:44:23.940 that go back many centuries. 00:44:23.940 --> 00:44:30.080 And these authors had actually published a paper in the journal Nature a year ago, in 1998, 00:44:30.080 --> 00:44:35.580 talking about how these particular data become problematic after about 1960. 00:44:35.580 --> 00:44:41.960 The trees stopped responding to temperature in the same way and so the data shouldn't be used after 1960. 00:44:41.960 --> 00:44:47.360 They're not reliable. And so he was talking about getting rid of the bad data that would have misled readers 00:44:47.360 --> 00:44:49.700 of that report if they had shown it. 00:44:49.700 --> 00:44:54.800 And I pointed this out, and a number of other things that Sarah Palin had gotten wrong in her op-ed, 00:44:54.800 --> 00:44:58.800 in my own op-ed that appeared in The Washington Post nine days later. 00:44:58.800 --> 00:45:02.920 And it appears to have even had an impact on Sarah Palin herself, okay? 00:45:02.920 --> 00:45:08.840 Because some time later she said, she admitted, that a lot of those emails obviously 00:45:08.840 --> 00:45:10.600 weren't meant for public consumption. 00:45:10.600 --> 00:45:15.000 Those are her words, and that they could be misinterpreted if taken out of context. 00:45:15.000 --> 00:45:21.260 Those are her own words describing the release of her own personal emails in response to a 00:45:21.260 --> 00:45:26.260 Freedom of Information Act request from her time as governor of Alaska. 00:45:26.260 --> 00:45:27.480 Well, I didn't stop there. 00:45:27.480 --> 00:45:28.920 If you thought I stopped there, no. 00:45:28.920 --> 00:45:46.120 James Inhofe felt that these stolen emails were an adequate reason to investigate 17 climate scientists 00:45:46.120 --> 00:45:51.640 who should be prosecuted for perpetrating the hoax of climate change as revealed by these stolen emails. 00:45:51.640 --> 00:45:58.120 And I'm proud to say that I was among that list of 17, along with Presidential Medal of Science winner 00:45:58.120 --> 00:46:00.860 Susan Solomon of MIT. 00:46:00.860 --> 00:46:03.260 It didn't stop there, if you thought it stopped there. 00:46:03.260 --> 00:46:11.240 You guys recognize this guy. You know who I'm talking about, the cooch to those of us in the know. 00:46:11.240 --> 00:46:12.600 [Pause] 00:46:12.600 --> 00:46:20.700 So, he was newly minted Attorney General of Virginia, typically described as a Tea Party Republican 00:46:20.700 --> 00:46:27.040 and as his very first act as Attorney General of Virginia you may remember that 00:46:27.040 --> 00:46:28.760 Oh, I'm sorry. That's right, yeah. 00:46:28.760 --> 00:46:34.800 His first act as Attorney General, he wanted to change the state seal because it revealed part of the anatomy 00:46:34.800 --> 00:46:36.760 of the Roman goddess Virtus. 00:46:36.760 --> 00:46:39.580 He didn't think that was appropriate for it. 00:46:39.580 --> 00:46:47.120 It was his second act as Attorney General, was to take a page from the Joe Barton playbook and use his 00:46:47.120 --> 00:46:50.580 authority as Attorney General to issue a civil subpoena. 00:46:50.580 --> 00:46:51.980 Is this sounding familiar enough? 00:46:51.980 --> 00:47:00.860 A civil subpoena demanding all of my personal emails with 39 different climate scientists around the world 00:47:00.860 --> 00:47:07.380 based on this law that allows the Attorney General to issue a civil investigative demand. 00:47:07.380 --> 00:47:14.020 It was actually intended to ferret out Medicare waste and fraud, that's why it was introduced. 00:47:14.020 --> 00:47:19.400 But his reasoning was that since, while at the University of Virginia, I had been working on the science of 00:47:19.400 --> 00:47:25.400 climate change and clearly that's fraudulent science, this was a perfectly appropriate use 00:47:25.400 --> 00:47:26.940 of the civil investigative demand. 00:47:26.940 --> 00:47:30.440 Well, you know, others didn't necessarily think so. 00:47:30.440 --> 00:47:36.520 The Union of Concerned Scientists immediately spoke out, as it did the AAUP, the ACLU. 00:47:36.520 --> 00:47:39.860 That might not surprise you, they're typically thought of as progressive groups. 00:47:39.860 --> 00:47:48.420 But the conservative group, FIRE, which typically advocates against what they view as, sort of, 00:47:48.420 --> 00:47:51.480 political correctness in academia. 00:47:51.480 --> 00:47:54.520 They understood that it didn't matter what your politics are. 00:47:54.520 --> 00:47:57.540 It didn't matter if you're a conservative or, you know, a progressive. 00:47:57.540 --> 00:48:05.300 The idea that an Attorney General could engage in an attack, a witch-hunt, against an academic whose ideas 00:48:05.300 --> 00:48:09.280 he or she doesn't agree with, they represent, they recognize that that was a danger. 00:48:09.280 --> 00:48:12.820 That was a bad thing regardless of what your politics were. 00:48:12.820 --> 00:48:17.340 And there was a petition of 800 scientists from around the state of Virginia. 00:48:17.340 --> 00:48:23.880 I'll be honest with you I didn't know there were 800 scientists in the state of Virginia, that blasted Cuccinelli 00:48:23.880 --> 00:48:26.720 for what they saw as an attack against the scientific community. 00:48:26.720 --> 00:48:33.660 The AAAS, the American Meteorological Society, the journal Nature, all once again came out and spoke out 00:48:33.660 --> 00:48:39.600 against what they saw as a transparent effort by a politician to intimidate scientists whose findings might 00:48:39.600 --> 00:48:42.860 be inconvenient to the interest he represents. 00:48:42.860 --> 00:48:50.180 The conservative Richmond Times-Dispatch, that had actually endorsed his candidacy for Attorney General, 00:48:50.180 --> 00:48:55.960 it turns out they didn't endorse his candidacy for governor, first time ever the Richmond Times-Dispatch 00:48:55.960 --> 00:49:00.100 did not endorse the Republican candidate for governor, to my knowledge. 00:49:00.100 --> 00:49:06.280 But, at the time, they had endorsed his candidacy for Attorney General, but they saw that, you know, 00:49:06.280 --> 00:49:08.720 this was an abuse of power. 00:49:08.720 --> 00:49:11.720 The Washington Post they couldn't get enough of this. 00:49:11.720 --> 00:49:17.300 Wrote at least five editorials blasting what they characterized as Cuccinelli's witch-hunt against me 00:49:17.300 --> 00:49:19.640 and the University of Virginia. 00:49:19.640 --> 00:49:27.760 And their award-winning cartoonist Tom Towles couldn't resist commenting on the matter not once, but twice. 00:49:27.760 --> 00:49:30.640 And this is my personal favorite, I have to say. 00:49:30.640 --> 00:49:38.360 That's Cuccinelli up there in the judge's chair and that's Galileo down there. He wants to see his emails as well. 00:49:38.360 --> 00:49:43.040 I don't mind being compared to Galileo. I'll admit it, I'll admit it. 00:49:43.040 --> 00:49:48.980 Well, so Cuccinelli's civil investigative demand was quashed, as many of you will know, by a lower court 00:49:48.980 --> 00:49:51.520 based on a technicality, as it turns out. 00:49:51.520 --> 00:49:58.720 In his 40 page filing to the court, he had had forgotten to provide evidence of wrongdoing on my part, 00:49:58.720 --> 00:50:01.940 so it was rejected by the lower court. 00:50:01.940 --> 00:50:03.300 [Pause] 00:50:03.300 --> 00:50:13.640 He appealed, of course, to the state Supreme Court which, several years ago, rejected the case 00:50:13.640 --> 00:50:18.600 with prejudice, meaning they really don't want to ever see an Attorney General come to the court 00:50:18.600 --> 00:50:19.780 with something like this again. 00:50:19.780 --> 00:50:26.060 So that battle was won and this guy in the background here likes to think that he might have had 00:50:26.060 --> 00:50:32.440 something to do, at least some small role, in the victory of Cuccinelli's opponent, Terry McAuliffe, 00:50:32.440 --> 00:50:35.660 in the most recent gubernatorial race. 00:50:35.660 --> 00:50:37.760 [Pause] 00:50:37.760 --> 00:50:40.920 Ken Cuccinelli isn't governor. 00:50:40.920 --> 00:50:48.500 The actual governor has put me on the Virginia Climate Advisory Board and Ken Cuccinelli is now running 00:50:48.500 --> 00:50:54.700 an oyster farm on an island in the Chesapeake Bay that's slowly succumbing to sea level rise. 00:50:54.700 --> 00:50:58.360 [Pause] 00:50:58.360 --> 00:51:03.720 No, I'm really not making that up you Google this. You Google this. 00:51:03.720 --> 00:51:09.120 Alright, so, you've seen, though, that there were heroes in perhaps unexpected places, and one of the 00:51:09.120 --> 00:51:16.420 biggest heroes in all of this was Sherwood Boehlert, a true conservative Republican 00:51:16.420 --> 00:51:18.780 who was pro-science, pro-environment. 00:51:18.780 --> 00:51:19.900 [Pause] 00:51:19.900 --> 00:51:25.100 And there are others, like Bob Inglis, very conservative, had a perfect conservative rating, 00:51:25.100 --> 00:51:27.480 a congressman from South Carolina. 00:51:27.480 --> 00:51:32.700 He made the mistake of speaking out about climate change and so he got primaried by a couple brothers 00:51:32.700 --> 00:51:41.400 from Kansas and is no longer in that seat, but he is working now to advance conservative free-market 00:51:41.400 --> 00:51:44.600 approaches to dealing with climate change and I think that's wonderful. 00:51:44.600 --> 00:51:49.840 There is a very worthy debate to be had about how we go about solving this problem and 00:51:49.840 --> 00:51:52.260 conservatives need to be at the table. 00:51:52.260 --> 00:52:00.180 We need to consider, you know, approaches that are, you know, consistent with a wide range of ideological views. 00:52:00.180 --> 00:52:04.980 That's a very worthy debate to be had: how we go about solving this problem. 00:52:04.980 --> 00:52:11.300 What isn't a worthy debate to be had anymore is whether the problem exists. There is no magic bullet. 00:52:11.300 --> 00:52:19.960 It's gonna be difficult, it's gonna be a challenge to wean ourselves from what former President George W. Bush 00:52:19.960 --> 00:52:25.660 characterized as our addiction to fossil fuels and all of the ideas should be on the table. 00:52:25.660 --> 00:52:29.340 Let's have that debate. Let's have the debate about how we solve that problem. 00:52:29.340 --> 00:52:34.000 That's the debate we should be having in the US Congress right now rather than the debate over 00:52:34.000 --> 00:52:35.640 whether climate change even exists. 00:52:35.640 --> 00:52:38.180 We're better than that as a country. 00:52:38.180 --> 00:52:41.220 Finally, let me leave this on a somewhat personal note. 00:52:41.220 --> 00:52:45.200 This is my daughter Megan, who's nine and a half years old. 00:52:45.200 --> 00:52:52.240 This is from a few years ago, the Pittsburgh Zoo, and that is a polar bear on top of her and I promise 00:52:52.240 --> 00:52:57.900 we're not torturing our daughter here, what's going on is that she's walking underneath a plexiglass tunnel 00:52:57.900 --> 00:53:01.500 that goes underneath the polar bear feeding pool. 00:53:01.500 --> 00:53:07.640 And if you happen to be involved in an NSF-funded climate change outreach program for zoos and aquaria 00:53:07.640 --> 00:53:10.760 and you know the manager of the zoo, you might be able to convince him to throw the fish in the pool 00:53:10.760 --> 00:53:14.820 when your daughter's walking underneath the tunnel which is what's happening here. 00:53:14.820 --> 00:53:22.260 But on a serious note, you know, I'd hate to think that my daughter, you know, might return decades from now 00:53:22.260 --> 00:53:28.360 with her children, or maybe even grandchildren, and point to these magnificent creatures and talk about how 00:53:28.360 --> 00:53:33.640 they used to exist in the wild but we melted their home. 00:53:33.640 --> 00:53:40.840 And that, of course, is just one symptom of a much wider array of problems 00:53:40.840 --> 00:53:42.840 that we are going to create for future generations. 00:53:42.840 --> 00:53:47.200 We will leave behind a fundamentally degraded planet for our children and grandchildren 00:53:47.200 --> 00:53:49.380 if we don't act on this problem now. 00:53:49.380 --> 00:53:54.520 And I believe that, more than anything else, we often frame climate change as a problem of science, 00:53:54.520 --> 00:53:57.700 or economics, or policy, or politics. 00:53:57.700 --> 00:54:05.440 To me more than any of those things, it's a problem of ethics and our intergenerational ethical obligation 00:54:05.440 --> 00:54:11.020 that we have to not leave behind a degraded planet for our children and grandchildren. 00:54:11.020 --> 00:54:15.160 The good news is that there's time, there's still time to make sure that that is not our legacy. 00:54:15.160 --> 00:54:20.220 There's still time to fix this problem and we can do it while growing the economy. 00:54:20.220 --> 00:54:26.520 The good news is, for the first year on record, we actually had economic growth and no growth 00:54:26.520 --> 00:54:31.260 in carbon emissions globally last year tells us that it's already working. 00:54:31.260 --> 00:54:37.640 Efforts by some countries to do something about this problem are already showing up in the numbers and 00:54:37.640 --> 00:54:43.740 it isn't enough for us to just keep emissions flatlining, we have to bring them down pretty dramatically if 00:54:43.740 --> 00:54:48.380 we're going to avoid crossing into dangerous and irreversible climate change, but there's still time to do it. 00:54:48.380 --> 00:54:53.540 And there's some good news. We're already starting to see progress. We just need to try even harder. 00:54:53.540 --> 00:54:57.440 So I think I'll leave it there. I'll be happy to field questions. Thank you very much. 00:54:57.440 --> 00:55:14.360 [Applause] 00:55:14.360 --> 00:55:25.980 [Pause] 00:55:25.980 --> 00:55:31.560 So we'd like to ask that you stand up and please speak loudly, now we're on okay good. 00:55:31.560 --> 00:55:35.940 Please come up and speak into the microphone. We ask that you keep your questions to the point. 00:55:35.940 --> 00:55:40.600 We don't have a lot of time so we'd like to have a number of people be able to engage Michael and ask questions. 00:55:40.600 --> 00:55:43.460 [Pause] 00:55:43.460 --> 00:55:48.600 Dr. Mann, my name is Rod Adams. I published "Atomic Insights." I want to know if you're gonna join 00:55:48.600 --> 00:55:56.540 your colleagues James Hansen, Kerry Emanuel, Barry Brooke, in advocating for the use of nuclear energy 00:55:56.540 --> 00:55:59.580 as one of the tools to combat climate change. 00:55:59.580 --> 00:56:01.820 Thanks. Thanks for the question. 00:56:01.820 --> 00:56:09.400 As I mentioned, as alluded to briefly in that collage of photos that I showed, one of those was 00:56:09.400 --> 00:56:11.460 the cooling towers of a nuclear power plant. 00:56:11.460 --> 00:56:17.520 And I believe that, you know, those options should be on the table. Let's have that conversation. 00:56:17.520 --> 00:56:25.420 Now, as a scientist, I believe that my role isn't to try to prescribe the policy solutions, but to make sure 00:56:25.420 --> 00:56:32.260 that the policy discussion is informed by a sober assessment of what the evidence is about the problem 00:56:32.260 --> 00:56:34.120 and the risks that it represents. 00:56:34.120 --> 00:56:39.620 And as long as we can start with those ground rules, as long as we have a policy debate that is premised 00:56:39.620 --> 00:56:45.100 on the acceptance of what the science says, the risks are of not acting on this problem, there's a very worthy 00:56:45.100 --> 00:56:51.600 and I hope we'll have a vigorous debate about the role of different mechanisms for pricing carbon, 00:56:51.600 --> 00:56:54.860 the role that nuclear energy might play in the solution. 00:56:54.860 --> 00:57:00.860 What about natural gas? Is that a viable bridge to an non-fossil fuel future? 00:57:00.860 --> 00:57:09.420 I try not to weigh in on one side of, any one side of those questions, but rather that's the debate that I would like to 00:57:09.420 --> 00:57:14.960 see taking place in our US Congress right now rather than a debate over whether climate change is even real. 00:57:14.960 --> 00:57:15.760 Thank you. 00:57:15.760 --> 00:57:21.360 [Pause] 00:57:21.360 --> 00:57:26.300 Hi, I'm Steve Schaefer. I've done some science in my past. 00:57:26.300 --> 00:57:30.940 One of the concerns I've heard is about the quality of the raw data. 00:57:30.940 --> 00:57:38.820 Of course, there's scientists for publications depend on let's go back to what it what it was at the very beginning. 00:57:38.820 --> 00:57:45.080 In particular, it came to my mind when I was driving by Charlotte, North Carolina a few years back. 00:57:45.080 --> 00:57:53.480 I noticed that the temperature sensor on my car slowly rose by about five degrees as I entered Charlotte and it 00:57:53.480 --> 00:58:00.460 was a spring day and I thought, well, I'm traveling south I might expect that, but then as I proceeded to Greenville, 00:58:00.460 --> 00:58:03.500 South Carolina it went back down five degrees. 00:58:03.500 --> 00:58:09.980 Of course what I'm referring to is the heat island effect, where a lot of these data stations are located. 00:58:09.980 --> 00:58:16.540 The concern is complicated by the fact that I've heard that some of that raw data has been lost, 00:58:16.540 --> 00:58:23.640 so that all we can see now is the adjusted data or use now as the adjusted data for our models 00:58:23.640 --> 00:58:27.320 or for our evidence of climate change. 00:58:27.320 --> 00:58:33.180 Okay. So thanks for the question I think you're alluding to the fact that there was one particular institute, 00:58:33.180 --> 00:58:41.280 The Climatic Research Unit in the UK, and some years ago during a move they threw out old paper printouts. 00:58:41.280 --> 00:58:43.480 Scientists don't work with paper printouts anymore. 00:58:43.480 --> 00:58:49.760 Pretty much all of our data are digital and all those data were preserved digitally, but, you know, paper printouts, 00:58:49.760 --> 00:58:53.560 those do get lost. They do get thrown out. 00:58:53.560 --> 00:58:59.960 The raw data are all available, but you ask another question which is an important one, you know, 00:58:59.960 --> 00:59:01.860 the urban heat island effect. 00:59:01.860 --> 00:59:08.640 And, you know, what keeps climate scientists busy is thinking about all the things that could be wrong, 00:59:08.640 --> 00:59:10.260 all of the possible problems. 00:59:10.260 --> 00:59:15.820 The way you make a name for yourself as a scientist is by figuring out, not agreeing with everybody else. 00:59:15.820 --> 00:59:20.780 You don't get papers in Nature and Science by saying, oh yeah, you know, the prevailing wisdom is right. 00:59:20.780 --> 00:59:23.040 There's nothing new to learn here. 00:59:23.040 --> 00:59:28.520 You make a name for yourself by figuring out something new, by finding a problem and explaining, you know, 00:59:28.520 --> 00:59:30.340 and finding a solution to the problem. 00:59:30.340 --> 00:59:37.900 And so, there would be a huge opportunity for somebody who could pick holes, who could in some way 00:59:37.900 --> 00:59:41.380 invalidate the overall global temperature curve. 00:59:41.380 --> 00:59:48.760 And so people try to, sort of, attack that data set from every possible angle and you know what? 00:59:48.760 --> 00:59:54.540 The most severe thing you could do, if you're worried about urban heat island effects, what the heck? 00:59:54.540 --> 00:59:57.880 Let's just throw out all of the urban stations. 00:59:57.880 --> 01:00:02.420 We're not gonna have as much data, but we'll only use the rural stations and if you do that you know what? 01:00:02.420 --> 01:00:04.040 You get the same answer. 01:00:04.040 --> 01:00:07.860 Well, let's throw out all the land. Let's just look at the ocean. 01:00:07.860 --> 01:00:13.120 I don't think there's any urbanization of the ocean taking place right now and the oceans show the same pattern 01:00:13.120 --> 01:00:16.371 of warming and so, you know, we try to look at this. 01:00:16.380 --> 01:00:22.180 We try to explore every possibility, every way we could be wrong. That's what a good scientist does. 01:00:22.180 --> 01:00:27.920 A good scientist is a skeptic and the more extraordinary the claim is, Carl Sagan once famously said, 01:00:27.920 --> 01:00:30.260 the more extraordinary the evidence better be. 01:00:30.260 --> 01:00:35.220 And so that's what drives science forward: the fact that there's a real incentive for somebody 01:00:35.220 --> 01:00:36.700 who can prove everyone wrong. 01:00:36.700 --> 01:00:41.300 That's the greatest incentive in science. If you can do that, you will make a name for yourself. 01:00:41.300 --> 01:00:43.720 You'll be publishing papers in the leading journals. 01:00:43.720 --> 01:00:48.360 So no, we've attacked this problem from every possible angle and there's no way around it. 01:00:48.360 --> 01:00:53.900 The globe is warming up much as the models predicted. Thanks for the question. 01:00:53.900 --> 01:00:59.560 Hello. My name is Paul Angermeier. You summarized very nicely how the science 01:00:59.560 --> 01:01:04.060 underpinning climate change is pretty irrefutable, straightforward. 01:01:04.060 --> 01:01:10.720 And my question is, now that the science-tization genie is out of the bottle, are there really any significant 01:01:10.720 --> 01:01:16.440 scientific questions that might be answered or addressed that could have a positive or negative effect 01:01:16.440 --> 01:01:22.180 on moving policy in a way that's productive? 01:01:22.180 --> 01:01:26.940 Thanks for that. That's a wonderful question because I think we do a disservice sometimes. 01:01:26.940 --> 01:01:31.740 When we talk about the fact that, you know, that certain things are decided, that the earth is warming, 01:01:31.740 --> 01:01:35.960 that we can only explain it from human activity, greenhouse gases, but we're still trying 01:01:35.960 --> 01:01:38.580 to work out a lot of really important details as well. 01:01:38.580 --> 01:01:40.060 We know enough to act. 01:01:40.060 --> 01:01:44.800 We already know enough to conclude that the things are gonna get bad if we don't do something. 01:01:44.800 --> 01:01:50.680 But what if you're a water manager here in Virginia and you want to know what sort of adaptive actions 01:01:50.680 --> 01:01:54.660 you're gonna take in response to shifting precipitation patterns? 01:01:54.660 --> 01:01:59.740 Well, it turns out, if you want to know what's going to happen to precipitation patterns in the southeastern US, 01:01:59.740 --> 01:02:03.020 you'd like to know something about what's going to happen to the El Niño phenomenon, 01:02:03.020 --> 01:02:05.040 which has an influence on those patterns. 01:02:05.040 --> 01:02:10.680 And one of the problems is that if you actually look at the climate model's dirty little secret, 01:02:10.680 --> 01:02:14.740 if you want to call it that, is that we still don't know the answer to that question. 01:02:14.740 --> 01:02:18.760 What is going to happen to El Niño? Are we going to see more El Niños or fewer El Niños? 01:02:18.760 --> 01:02:24.180 Are they gonna be bigger are they going to be smaller? We don't have the answers to that question. 01:02:24.180 --> 01:02:27.620 It's an example, though, where uncertainty is not our friend. 01:02:27.620 --> 01:02:32.180 What that uncertainty means is that we don't even quite know what to plan for. 01:02:32.180 --> 01:02:35.480 And how do we take adaptive measures when we don't know what to plan for? 01:02:35.480 --> 01:02:39.160 So when it comes to specifics like what's gonna happen to rainfall patterns? 01:02:39.160 --> 01:02:44.160 How bad is California drought gonna get? Depends, in part, on the El Niño issue. 01:02:44.160 --> 01:02:48.980 What's gonna happen to Atlantic hurricanes? That depends on El Niño. That's influenced by El Niño. 01:02:48.980 --> 01:02:51.880 So there are a number of outstanding uncertainties. 01:02:51.880 --> 01:02:56.380 The bottom line, though, is uncertainty is not a reason for inaction. It's not our friend. 01:02:56.380 --> 01:02:57.620 If anything, it works against us. 01:02:57.620 --> 01:03:02.220 It means that things could actually be worse in many respects than we think they are. 01:03:02.220 --> 01:03:08.300 But would answers to any of those questions change the policy as directed by the Inhofe's and the Barton's 01:03:08.300 --> 01:03:10.540 and the other folks who are driving the bus? 01:03:10.540 --> 01:03:15.480 Sure, absolutely because if you take you think about that carefully, it's like hmm, you know, well those folks 01:03:15.480 --> 01:03:18.180 are saying we can adapt to climate change. 01:03:18.180 --> 01:03:27.040 As, you know, Susan and I were talking about before, the presidential science advisor has framed the problem, 01:03:27.040 --> 01:03:28.140 I think, very effectively. 01:03:28.140 --> 01:03:32.800 That the solution to how we're going to deal with climate change 01:03:32.800 --> 01:03:35.880 is going to take the form of three possible solutions. 01:03:35.880 --> 01:03:42.320 You know, mitigation, doing something about our escalating carbon emissions, adaptation, you know, 01:03:42.320 --> 01:03:49.960 changing our way of doing things to try to reduce our vulnerability to the changes that are unfolding, 01:03:49.960 --> 01:03:51.180 and suffering. 01:03:51.180 --> 01:03:54.580 And it's up to us to decide how much of each we're going to do. 01:03:54.580 --> 01:04:05.260 If you're putting all your marbles in the, you know, the adaptation bag, then you're relying on the notion 01:04:05.260 --> 01:04:13.720 that we can indeed, you know, that with that we can reduce our vulnerability to the changes that are coming. 01:04:13.720 --> 01:04:16.980 But how are we going to do that if we don't know exactly what's coming? 01:04:16.980 --> 01:04:24.120 How are we going to do that if the changes are so great that they exceed any possible adaptive capacity that 01:04:24.120 --> 01:04:27.480 we have as a society or that other living things have? 01:04:27.480 --> 01:04:33.000 So, to the extent that there is uncertainty, and it really calls into question our ability to adapt 01:04:33.000 --> 01:04:35.720 to some of the changes that might be in the pipeline. 01:04:35.720 --> 01:04:39.520 Well, that leaves two options now. You've got suffering and you've got mitigation. 01:04:39.520 --> 01:04:42.460 I'm gonna go with mitigation myself. 01:04:42.460 --> 01:04:43.740 Thank you. 01:04:43.740 --> 01:04:47.300 [Pause] 01:04:47.300 --> 01:04:54.000 I agree with you that we need to do away with the fossil fuels and one way I think we can help is, 01:04:54.000 --> 01:05:01.700 if you have the governor's ear, ask him and give him some advice to give back the $15,000 he received 01:05:01.700 --> 01:05:09.700 from EQT, builder of the mountain valley pipeline and stop this fossil fuel boondoggle in its tracks. 01:05:09.700 --> 01:05:15.820 [Applause] 01:05:15.820 --> 01:05:18.660 I'm one of many, thanks for the comment. 01:05:18.660 --> 01:05:24.720 I'm one of many that has a small part of the ear of the governor and through the work of 01:05:24.720 --> 01:05:32.520 the Virginia Climate Commission these are important questions that we're asking and, you know, 01:05:32.520 --> 01:05:37.680 there are a lot of stakeholders at the table as you might imagine and we have to find solutions that are gonna be 01:05:37.680 --> 01:05:40.740 palatable to a broad group of stakeholders. 01:05:40.740 --> 01:05:55.400 But these discussions are happening and have no, you know, you can be assured that all of the associated risks 01:05:55.400 --> 01:06:00.260 are on the table. We're talking about that. I can't promise you what's gonna happen. 01:06:00.260 --> 01:06:05.740 I don't have the ability to do that, but I can promise you that these concerns are being discussed 01:06:05.740 --> 01:06:07.880 and they're being raised, so thank you. 01:06:07.880 --> 01:06:10.620 [Pause] 01:06:10.620 --> 01:06:15.600 So there are all sorts of deniers of various phenomena in the world, so I would love to hear your thoughts on 01:06:15.600 --> 01:06:20.120 the differences in similarities of educating people about climate change as opposed to evolution 01:06:20.120 --> 01:06:22.460 or even the Holocaust. 01:06:22.460 --> 01:06:30.760 That's a good question. You know, you sometimes hear people say that denial in the context of climate change 01:06:30.760 --> 01:06:34.700 is a reference to Holocaust denial, and it simply isn't. 01:06:34.700 --> 01:06:39.240 It's a well-known term in psychology of just the rejection of evidence. 01:06:39.240 --> 01:06:44.580 And so it's unfortunate that there is this meme out there that when we refer to climate change deniers 01:06:44.580 --> 01:06:49.180 we're trying to draw an association with Holocaust deniers. 01:06:49.180 --> 01:06:54.180 There's absolutely no evidence in any discussion I've ever had with any fellow scientists, if that that's the case, 01:06:54.180 --> 01:06:55.560 that that's what we're getting at. 01:06:55.560 --> 01:06:58.800 But you you raised another really interesting question: 01:06:58.800 --> 01:07:06.260 What are the commonalities when you look at, for example, the rejection of evolution? 01:07:06.260 --> 01:07:11.200 It's really a somewhat different group, different constituency. 01:07:11.200 --> 01:07:18.980 There isn't an obvious vested interest in that particular debate. But there are, you know, very strongly held views. 01:07:18.980 --> 01:07:23.980 Passionately held views by, you know, a large number of people. 01:07:23.980 --> 01:07:32.460 And it is another example, like climate change denial, as we had a good discussion of this 01:07:32.460 --> 01:07:33.780 at the workshop today. 01:07:33.780 --> 01:07:40.960 When you dig just a little bit beneath the surface, what you often find is that it's not really about the science. 01:07:40.960 --> 01:07:49.440 It's about the ideological underpinnings. If you believe that all regulation is bad and that's a view, you know, 01:07:49.440 --> 01:07:54.260 that, you know, there are libertarians who are against all regulation. 01:07:54.260 --> 01:08:00.920 If you think that dealing with climate change is gonna demand regulation of carbon emissions, 01:08:00.920 --> 01:08:05.700 then the scientific evidence that we have a problem proves inconvenient because it forces you down 01:08:05.700 --> 01:08:10.500 this road of confronting, you know, the fact that hey, we may need to regulate this thing 01:08:10.500 --> 01:08:11.960 but I'm against regulation. 01:08:11.960 --> 01:08:18.560 There's a, sort of, I think you sometimes see a cognitive dissonance there, that the only way around it is to 01:08:18.560 --> 01:08:21.280 reject the evidence, to reject that the problem exists. 01:08:21.280 --> 01:08:29.120 And I think that that so powerfully held beliefs in ideology, I think that you can see that in the climate 01:08:29.120 --> 01:08:37.080 change case and you can see that, obviously, in the evolution versus intelligent design creationism debate. 01:08:37.080 --> 01:08:42.060 Interestingly enough, a lot of the same sorts of tactics that were developed in the 01:08:42.060 --> 01:08:50.000 evolution versus creationism debate are now being deployed in the climate change debate. 01:08:50.000 --> 01:08:54.840 And there's a group called the National Center for Science Education that has fought efforts 01:08:54.840 --> 01:09:03.480 to introduce the teaching of, you know, creationism into schools, public schools and they played a prominent role 01:09:03.480 --> 01:09:07.240 in the Dover case in Pennsylvania a few years back. 01:09:07.240 --> 01:09:13.460 In recent years, they decided to take on climate change as an additional issue because what they realized is a lot 01:09:13.460 --> 01:09:18.800 of the same tactics, the anti-science tactics that had been deployed there were being deployed now 01:09:18.800 --> 01:09:21.420 to confuse the discourse over climate change. 01:09:21.420 --> 01:09:25.540 So there are definitely commonalities, but there are obvious differences as well. 01:09:25.540 --> 01:09:33.080 Then, you know, we could have an interesting discussion about the debate over GMOs and, you know, vaccines. 01:09:33.080 --> 01:09:39.840 In every one of these cases, there are commonalities, anti-science tends to have certain commonalities 01:09:39.840 --> 01:09:43.660 regardless of where it comes from, but the specifics are often quite different. 01:09:43.660 --> 01:09:49.520 And so we can learn a lot from studying the commonalities and the differences and 01:09:49.520 --> 01:09:52.700 it's good to be thinking about these things and it's a great question. 01:09:52.700 --> 01:09:57.080 [Pause] 01:09:57.080 --> 01:10:01.800 I'm a student from Germany. I plan to attend a climate change conference in Paris later this year. 01:10:01.800 --> 01:10:07.280 So what are you expectations regarding the new climate treaty and how do you see America 01:10:07.280 --> 01:10:09.120 involved during the process? 01:10:09.120 --> 01:10:14.280 Thanks. That's a great question. I'm optimistic. I'm very optimistic for a number of reasons. 01:10:14.280 --> 01:10:21.080 You know, as I mentioned earlier, for the first year in modern history we saw a flat lining 01:10:21.080 --> 01:10:24.200 of carbon emissions with economic growth, decoupling. 01:10:24.200 --> 01:10:28.660 People said it couldn't be done. You can't have economic growth without growth in carbon emissions. 01:10:28.660 --> 01:10:36.780 Well, we just saw it. And we had it. And it may very well be an indication that, you know, countries like Germany 01:10:36.780 --> 01:10:42.660 and even, you know, states, the West Coast States, the New England states, that are engaging in efforts 01:10:42.660 --> 01:10:43.880 to lower their carbon emissions. 01:10:43.880 --> 01:10:48.980 We're already seeing, you know, a detectable influence so that gives me cause for optimism. 01:10:48.980 --> 01:10:54.180 What also gives me cause for optimism is the fact that the two largest carbon emitters on the planet, 01:10:54.180 --> 01:10:59.740 for the first time ever, China and the US came to an agreement last year, a historic agreement, 01:10:59.740 --> 01:11:03.980 to meet a fairly stringent reductions in carbon emissions in the years ahead. 01:11:03.980 --> 01:11:07.160 And some people have said, well, you know, how can? 01:11:07.160 --> 01:11:13.340 That's pie-in-the-sky, how do we know that you know China's really gonna, you know, keep their word? 01:11:13.340 --> 01:11:17.980 Well, if you look at what China is doing there's every indication that they're headed in that direction anyways. 01:11:17.980 --> 01:11:23.180 They're investing a lot more in renewable energy, wind and solar, than we are right now. 01:11:23.180 --> 01:11:30.700 They are already instituting carbon taxes at the regional level and they've committed to having 01:11:30.700 --> 01:11:36.140 a national carbon tax within two years, so they're ahead of us by many measures. 01:11:36.140 --> 01:11:41.220 And the fact that the US and China have come into an agreement, the two largest emitters, 01:11:41.220 --> 01:11:46.640 to make substantive cuts in carbon emissions, I think that sends a critical signal to the rest of the world 01:11:46.640 --> 01:11:50.400 as we go into the the UN summit later this year in Paris. 01:11:50.400 --> 01:11:57.000 So I, for one, am fairly optimistic, but that doesn't mean that we rest on our laurels, that we relax, 01:11:57.000 --> 01:11:59.060 that we become overconfident. 01:11:59.060 --> 01:12:04.400 It just means we have to work all that much harder to make sure that we hold our policymakers 01:12:04.400 --> 01:12:06.960 accountable, that we continue to move forward on this. 01:12:06.960 --> 01:12:11.520 [Pause] 01:12:11.520 --> 01:12:16.680 Thank you for coming Dr. Mann. I'm a president of Soil Science Association. 01:12:16.680 --> 01:12:19.700 You know, something about geology, you know, something about soils. 01:12:19.700 --> 01:12:26.200 We know that seasonal hot water tables are changing, we know that regulations affecting use of disposal 01:12:26.200 --> 01:12:30.160 of stormwater or sewage are also on the change. 01:12:30.160 --> 01:12:31.380 [Pause] 01:12:31.380 --> 01:12:41.760 How does the public weigh the cost of regulating and impact when the regulator does not have to 01:12:41.760 --> 01:12:44.960 disclose conflict of interest? 01:12:44.960 --> 01:12:54.720 Yeah, thanks for the question. I think it's critical that in these discussions that certainly scientists should be 01:12:54.720 --> 01:12:57.620 disclosing conflicts of interest when they publish scientific articles. 01:12:57.620 --> 01:12:59.840 There was a recent controversy. 01:12:59.840 --> 01:13:07.580 A scientist at the Smithsonian Center which is called the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics, 01:13:07.580 --> 01:13:11.680 although it isn't actually part of Harvard, but it bares Harvard's imprimatur, its name. 01:13:11.680 --> 01:13:18.380 And there was a scientist there, the name was Willie Soon, who was writing scientific papers, sort of, 01:13:18.380 --> 01:13:21.040 trying to debunk the science of climate change. 01:13:21.040 --> 01:13:31.000 And it turns out in some correspondence that were obtained about his funding, he was citing his 01:13:31.000 --> 01:13:36.780 scientific papers as deliverables to fossil fuel interests. 01:13:36.780 --> 01:13:42.120 The papers he was publishing in the scientific literature were listed, not as contributions to furthering our 01:13:42.120 --> 01:13:47.600 scientific understanding, as deliverables to fossil fuel interests for the money they were providing him. 01:13:47.600 --> 01:13:54.520 And there are very strict rules in science for disclosing those sorts of conflicts of interest. 01:13:54.520 --> 01:14:01.160 It turns out he wasn't doing that and so that has led to somewhat of an uproar now over the issue of disclosure. 01:14:01.160 --> 01:14:06.720 And I, my view, is that all scientists should be willing to disclose any conflicts of interest. 01:14:06.720 --> 01:14:14.800 In Virginia, under the Administrative Process Act, Section 2 of the code, there's no requirement for 01:14:14.800 --> 01:14:21.400 a public employee to disclose conflicts or for a subcontractor to a public board 01:14:21.400 --> 01:14:24.540 and I think it's incredible that we haven't had this changed. 01:14:24.540 --> 01:14:29.860 I agree with you. We should have total disclosure of those things and no scientist should be ashamed 01:14:29.860 --> 01:14:32.620 of disclosing, you know, who's providing them funding. 01:14:32.620 --> 01:14:37.160 I'm always happy to do that. I'm proud of who's providing me funding. Thank you. 01:14:37.160 --> 01:14:48.480 [Applause] 01:14:48.480 --> 01:14:53.800 Unfortunately, I have to cut us off because we actually have to be out of the Lyric, there's a film showing tonight. 01:14:53.800 --> 01:14:56.480 There is going to be a very brief book signing in the lobby. 01:14:56.480 --> 01:15:01.480 Michael's gonna meet with folks, but we do ask that you line up and he's not gonna be able to engage 01:15:01.480 --> 01:15:04.980 in a whole lot of discussion because we've got to keep moving to get out of here. 01:15:04.980 --> 01:15:08.760 Thanks everyone for coming out and please join me in thanking Michael Mann one more time. 01:15:08.760 --> 01:15:09.600 [Applause] 01:15:09.600 --> 01:15:25.520 [Outro music]