View transcript
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- Probably none of you would be here

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if you didn't have an idea

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of what atmospheric
CO2 is, carbon dioxide.

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You probably know more about it

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than your average Joe Citizen.

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But I wanna just add a few little things

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you may or may not know about it.

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The one, we know there's
a lotta greenhouse gases

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going in the atmosphere,
there's carbon dioxide,

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methane, chlorofluorocarbons,

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nitrous oxide, blah, blah, blah, blah.

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These are all important,
we cannot ignore them.

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But by far, far and away,
the largest contributor

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to global warming is CO2,
it swamps everything.

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It's a huge, huge contributor,

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it's really fundamentally
the cause of climate change.

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The second thing it
does, is you hear about

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ocean acidification, living on
the coast, I'm sure you have.

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It's the cause of ocean acidification.

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You put more CO2 in the
atmosphere, it dissolves

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into the water and that
makes the water more acidic.

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And the organisms in the water
don't particularly like that.

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So as we keep putting up
CO2 in the atmosphere,

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and you can see, and the
little light doesn't work here.

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But you can see when
measurements began in 1957,

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with Dave Keeling and Scripps
Institution of Oceanography.

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And then NOAA picked up measurements

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about in the 1970s and kept it going.

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This is a number that's
not just increasing,

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but it's increasing faster every year.

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You can see here, it's a very low slope,

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and over here, it's a very steep slope.

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It's going up faster.

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When Dave started, carbon
dioxide was going up

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half a part per million per year.

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Today, this last year went
up two and a half parts

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per million, and that's
what it's doing every year.

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So we've actually increased the rate

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that we're putting in the atmosphere,

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all while everybody is talking about,

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we're gonna do something about this.

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So meanwhile what goes into the atmosphere

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stays there a very long time.

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And I don't wanna go into the details.

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But when you put CO2 into the atmosphere,

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what's left there after
about a year or two

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is gonna remain there
for thousands of years.

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So once we put it in, we're stuck.

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Unless we come up with a way to remove it,

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and we haven't yet, and it's
not gonna be easy if we try.

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So going to the next slide here.

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This is from yesterday,
I should've grabbed

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it for this morning but I forgot to.

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But you can look here, in March 2015,

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CO2 at Mauna Loa is 401.52.

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Last year it was 399.58 on the same day.

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So we're measuring it
everyday, taking an average,

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putting those up there, and
if we have a little time

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at the end, I can possibly
reach out to that website

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and show you how that works,
because anybody get to it

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and download anything they want from it,

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including the movie I'm about to show.

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400ppm, probably rings
a bell to some of you.

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Back in 2012 we realized
that all of our Arctic sites,

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a network of about 75 sites,
we have bunch of them,

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there up in the Arctic,
reached 400 parts per million,

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for the first time.

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The next year, the next
two years I guess was,

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whoop, somebody didn't, okay
that was supposed to go down.

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There we go.

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So the next year we saw
the same thing happening

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in Mauna Loa, Hawaii, in other words CO2,

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the high values of CO2 were
showing up in the Arctic first,

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showing up at Mauna Loa next.

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This year, before it's up,
the global average of CO2

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will have reached 400 parts per million.

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That includes stations
like the South Pole,

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or Cape Grim, Australia,
but also everything.

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So it's going up, and
that's what you would expect

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if you just keep pumping it
into the Northern Hemisphere.

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But people hear about
400 parts per million,

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I get asked this by the press a lot.

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What does 400 parts per million mean?

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How do I get a grip on what that is,

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and where we're going and where we've been

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and where the planet has been?

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So I'm gonna try to show you some of that.

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We're gonna go back here,
whoop, get back up there.

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I should be able to hit a click here,

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and not have too much disruption.

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No, that was not it.

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Go back up, try that one.

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Okay, I'm gonna need
a little, there we go.

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Anytime.

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Where's my Mac specialist?

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(audience chuckles)

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There she is.

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Just guessing, click that right?

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Got it, okay, see all it
took was for you to show up.

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(laughing)

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Voila.

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And then she tells me if I
do a Command F, it gets big.

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That's exactly what I wanted to see.

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Okay, I'm gonna show you a movie,

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we're gonna start out here in 1979.

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What you're looking at is
several things, obviously.

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One, you're looking at
the observing system

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that we had in 1979,
those are the stations

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we were able to use, that could measure

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long term trends in carbon dioxide.

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There's not very many
of them, there's five.

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They're gray, those are
called background conditions.

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Those sites, because of their location

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and the wind direction,
all that, capture air

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that has been across the
ocean for a long time.

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Or isolated from human
activity, so that you're getting

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something that represents
a sort of an average

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for that latitude and
longitude, et cetera.

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The red one is Mauna Loa.

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And the blue one is South Pole.

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These are representative
of the two hemispheres.

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And then that light gray one
is Niwot Ridge, Colorado.

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It's there for convenience
'cause we're located

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in Boulder, Colorado,
but it's high altitude.

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Gets us some free tropospheric
air, but it does pick up

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a little bit of air from
Denver every now and then.

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And you see that in the record.

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So we're saying that that's
locally influenced on occasion.

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What you see over here,

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in a latitudinal
gradient, going from south

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to 90 degrees north.

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You see South Pole down
here, Mauna Loa here,

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and then there's your background stations

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and your locally influenced station.

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We're gonna watch those as we go forward.

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We got a clock here,

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and over here you're gonna
get a trace of Mauna Loa.

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It's gonna show you the
CO2 curve as it evolves,

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starting in 1979, then we'll start

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going back in time after that.

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From that point forward,
oh yeah the South Pole

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continues to go up as
well, so we're gonna follow

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this a little bit, I'm
gonna make a few stops

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and try to make a couple of
points that we have learned

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as a result of making these measurements,

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that are very important.

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So I should be able to
hit the click right?

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To make it go?

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And push that, yes.

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Now as you see this, if
you watch the months here,

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is January, July, October,
let's go back to July

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and see if we can stop it, okay,

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a little further, right there.

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We're getting into the summer.

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The Northern Hemisphere, it has plants.

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Most of the biosphere is
in the Northern Hemisphere.

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Throughout the equator, through that line,

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you'll see most of the land is up there.

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And that's where your terrestrial
plants are all growing.

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In the Southern Hemisphere,
Australia's a desert,

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Antarctica's a desert, the lower part

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of South America's a desert,
so you're not getting much.

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About 90 to 95%, I think
the latest decimal is 92%

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of the terrestrial biology is
in the Northern Hemisphere.

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So you're gonna see that really
kinda driving these swings.

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And in fact you can see that here.

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Because you get this oscillation
that's 10 times bigger

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then the oscillation at South Pole.

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That also tells you that
the biosphere is located

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mostly in the Northern Hemisphere.

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So let's let her run again.

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Think I have to hit the click, yeah.

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Now you see there, everything is going up,

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because CO2's going up in the atmosphere.

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And note how South Pole sort
of captures the global trend

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without a whole lot of oscillation,

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and that's how it shows up over here.

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The background stations
don't wiggle as much

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as some of these light stations.

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But we're getting at
point where I wanna kinda

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put a halt to this, right about here, yes.

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What you're looking at, is 1990.

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You can see we've got a fairly
well developed network now.

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We're able to monitor
CO2 at all these sites

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and get a very robust number.

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When we say the global average of CO2,

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we know that number to one part in 4,000.

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So there's really no question about that.

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And it's highly accurate.

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You can see a few of these
little local sites there.

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We're trying to understand how

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the terrestrial environment
influences the CO2.

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But another thing happened.

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From these data, when we
looked at the gradient of CO2,

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from here to here, and
we looked at the gradient

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of another compound that's called C13CO2,

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in other words it's an isotope of carbon,

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that's locked into the
carbon dioxide molecule,

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and it's supposed to show a certain trend.

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When you look at both
of those, and you look

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at the growth rates,
you couldn't explain it,

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based on what we knew
about the Earth's system.

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It turns out there was
a huge, unidentified

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terrestrial sink for CO2.

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As we went further in this to
study it and learn about it,

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we found out that lo and
behold, maybe it looks like

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about one third of the CO2
emitted through automobile

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tail pipes, power plants, et cetera,

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in the United States can
be accounted for by uptake.

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Long term uptake in the
North American continent.

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Now politicians were very
interested in this, right.

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Because if they can't do any negotiations

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they would say, well
gee, we're only emitting

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two thirds of what you say we're emitting

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because we're taking it up
over here with the land.

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But that was not our reason
to continue with this.

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Our reason to continue
was to try to understand

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the system a little bit better.

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So that was a big find, and
it took that network to do it.

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You can't do it with
one or two measurements,

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a little bit here and
there, high calibrations.

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Very high quality stuff.

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So as it goes forward, you
can see the trace continuing.

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There's your Southern
Hemisphere, it's off a little bit

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from the Northern Hemisphere, right,

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that's because summer is in January,

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and winter is in December.

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So you're gonna catch it, and
it should be exactly opposite,

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and that's exactly what it is.

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Notice what happened after 1990 here.

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Look how many local sites there are now.

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We got a lotta partners out
there, collecting flasks for us,

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shipping them out so that we can analyze

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these, and understand what's happening

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on the terrestrial environment.

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And we're getting a better
and better handle on that.

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It turns out that half of the CO2 emitted

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into the atmosphere is
either taken up by the ocean,

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or taken up by plants on the land.

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We don't know the exact split,
we hear different estimates.

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50/50, I've heard 70/30, and
30/70, but the bottom line is

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we do know that half goes
into the ocean and land

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and doesn't come back again,
at least not in the near term.

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That's big.

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And notice the variability
on some of these local sites.

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If you get close to a source,
you're gonna get a lotta CO2.

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We don't use those to
compute global averages.

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They're just too locally
influenced and too variable.

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We do use them to
understand how the plants

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are breathing in and breathing
out and taking it all.

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You also will see them go lot lower,

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because if they're near a forest,

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they're gonna suck up more
CO2 out of the atmosphere

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right nearby, and you get that.

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When you're taking your
average, and we're just using

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these marine boundary layer
sites, these gray ones,

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we have a good picture of what
the global average is doing.

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Okay, now going forward.

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Gonna let this run a bit,
you'll see more sites go in,

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and the Mauna Loa curve go forward.

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And then we're gonna reach
a point where these graphics

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is gonna change, 'cause
we gotta go back a while.

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We wanna look at it and
see what was this all

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during human civilization.

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So what if CO2 is making it
to 400 parts per million.

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And you can see that they'll
reach, in the winter time,

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it'll reach the higher value in the north,

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and then it goes back
down again, every year.

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Plants are making leaves
and trunks and stuff

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in the spring and summer,
and they are emitting the CO2

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as they decay, dropping
their leaves, they all decay

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and you have CO2 going
back into the atmosphere.

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Now look at all the local
sites that have gone in.

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Because it's really a tough question

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that everybody's working on.

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We still don't understand it
as well as we would like to.

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But it's very robust numbers,
it's not gonna change

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one way or the other in the near term.

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So this is what we're gonna do now,

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this is Dave Keeling's
record, and Dave was the guy

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who started this whole
thing, by 1957 he said,

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I'm gonna pause it at the
end of this record here.

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Should be right about there, okay.

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Dave had a hard time convincing people

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that he could provide
the calibration scale

[00:13:33.04]
and standards and make some measurements

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of something that was parts
per million in the atmosphere,

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at very, very precise
levels, one part in 4,000.

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And he said, I need to do
this in places like Mauna Loa

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and the South Pole, so
I can have a picture

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of what the world is doing overall.

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So it was a bit of genius on his part.

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He didn't expect to see what he saw.

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He didn't expect to see
the season of the cycles,

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he didn't expect to see the
trend go up like it was going.

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So he learned a lot from
that, and so did the world,

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and we've gone forward.

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Now what's gonna happen next,

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and I hope I can stop it in time,

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is we're gonna zip back a little bit,

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maybe go back a couple hundred years,

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and we'll discuss where that is.

[00:14:13.04]
Because I want you to
understand the impact

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of human development on this cycle.

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We have a huge influence on this planet.

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And if you have a doubt about that,

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you can look at how many
aircraft take off every day,

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you can look at those
night lights pictures

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that are often put out
by National Geographic.

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Or you can look at the CO2
record, and see what it's doing.

[00:14:38.06]
So gonna drive it forward a little bit.

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Anybody have questions?

[00:14:47.08]
All right.

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Go baby, go, okay it's
gonna take a second here,

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and then it's gonna jump on me.

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There we go, perfect.

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Okay, now what you're looking at,

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notice there's two more sites here.

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There's one here, Law Dome,
of offshore of Australia,

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and there's the other
one here, Siple Dome.

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These are coastal Antarctic
sites with rapid snow buildup,

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and so you can go back
in recent time, maybe not

[00:15:16.03]
hundreds of thousands of
years, but a few thousand years

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before you reach the bottom.

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Basically you drill in and
you take a piece of ice.

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You grind up the ice
and you measure the CO2

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that's in the bubbles in the ice.

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Our colleagues in Australia
started this mess, (laughs)

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and they did a great job.

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These orange lines here,
are from the Law Dome site.

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You can see how they line up beautifully

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with the Mauna Loa record.

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So there's no bias, there's no issue

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with sampling problems
and things like that.

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We have a nice smooth record
going from recent time,

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going back about the beginning
of the Industrial Revolution.

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Which is around 1750, 1800 or so.

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There's a couple of things to notice here.

[00:16:01.03]
Siple Dome by the way,
they've got fewer samples,

[00:16:03.03]
but they show the same thing.

[00:16:04.09]
So again, there's no bias brought in

[00:16:08.06]
by the site we chose, et cetera.

[00:16:11.06]
But this was really, really telling.

[00:16:14.03]
Because we think of the
Industrial Revolution,

[00:16:16.02]
that was the 1800s, and
first thought comes to mind

[00:16:18.07]
is England, with smokestacks
spewing out smoke.

[00:16:22.04]
And all over Europe this was happening,

[00:16:24.07]
and air was bad and everything.

[00:16:27.03]
Well from 1800, right here, to 1900,

[00:16:33.04]
CO2 went up 10 parts per
million, over a 100 years.

[00:16:39.01]
From 1900 to 2000 it went
up a 100 parts per million.

[00:16:45.01]
10 times faster.

[00:16:49.04]
That is incredible.

[00:16:50.08]
When you think about
that impact on the planet

[00:16:53.00]
because CO2 is a greenhouse
gas, it's an important

[00:16:56.01]
greenhouse gas, we wouldn't
have life on this planet

[00:17:00.03]
as we know it, without
CO2 in the atmosphere.

[00:17:03.06]
It helps keep the planet from freezing.

[00:17:12.03]
Looking at this, and by the
way we haven't straightened out

[00:17:14.06]
any lines, these have all the wiggles

[00:17:16.06]
that you looked at before,
the red and the blue

[00:17:18.06]
and the green all have all the wiggles

[00:17:20.07]
that you've seen before.

[00:17:21.07]
So hang on to those,
'cause they're gonna get

[00:17:23.09]
a little tighter.

[00:17:25.02]
Now we go back a little bit further.

[00:17:29.05]
And we'll stop right about
here, we see something

[00:17:34.01]
a little strange, a little
dip in the CO2 record.

[00:17:37.09]
Anybody have an idea what that is?

[00:17:40.07]
- [Audience Member] Ice age.

[00:17:41.05]
- A little ice age, right,
I heard somebody say it.

[00:17:43.06]
It's a little ice age.

[00:17:44.04]
This is, Shakespeare was busy writing,

[00:17:46.09]
and several others, they
liked to stay inside.

[00:17:49.05]
We had coffee houses,
so you can stay inside

[00:17:51.03]
where it's warm, fomenting revolution

[00:17:53.00]
and creating things like
democracy and all of that.

[00:17:56.03]
All that was happening
during the little ice age,

[00:17:58.06]
and it was cold in
Europe, it was miserable.

[00:18:01.09]
But interestingly, note
that CO2 went down too.

[00:18:05.05]
So this says something about
temperature and carbon dioxide.

[00:18:09.02]
If you raise carbon
dioxide, it's like putting

[00:18:11.01]
a blanket on your bed,
you're gonna get warmer.

[00:18:13.09]
But if you raise the temperature,

[00:18:16.00]
it puts another blanket
on your bed, it adds CO2.

[00:18:19.09]
And this is something that
confuses people at times.

[00:18:23.01]
We're gonna look a little
more back into the record

[00:18:25.00]
and you can see how that happens.

[00:18:27.00]
They have this sort of
a game that they play.

[00:18:29.08]
So if you don't stop one or the other,

[00:18:33.05]
you're gonna continue going,

[00:18:34.06]
and then you keep going faster and faster.

[00:18:37.06]
So there's a little ice age,

[00:18:40.09]
and we go back a little bit further,

[00:18:43.00]
and now let's do a little
history lesson for everybody.

[00:18:48.09]
We'll go back right about here.

[00:18:53.04]
This period here is
warmer, there's more CO2,

[00:18:56.07]
there's more CO2 in this
thing and that's called

[00:18:59.00]
the Medieval Warm Period.

[00:19:01.01]
For 500 years, roughly
between here and here,

[00:19:05.04]
there was a civilization in Greenland.

[00:19:07.02]
They had ships going in and out,

[00:19:09.04]
farms and all kinds of
things, along the coast

[00:19:11.06]
of Greenland, it was big.

[00:19:13.05]
So again, a small shift in CO2 associated

[00:19:16.08]
with a significant shift in temperature.

[00:19:21.03]
Okay, we're gonna go
back a little further.

[00:19:27.09]
I notice the left graph
is disappearing on you.

[00:19:30.07]
So take a close look.

[00:19:32.04]
From looking at these numbers, we can say

[00:19:34.02]
the pre-industrial CO2 was
about 270 parts per million.

[00:19:37.03]
And, yes sir?

[00:19:38.04]
- [Audience Member] Could
you just explain again

[00:19:40.01]
why increased temperature
releases more CO2?

[00:19:43.05]
- Yes, yes it increases
respiration on the planet.

[00:19:47.01]
If you get warm you breathe faster,

[00:19:49.04]
plants do the same thing.

[00:19:51.01]
And soils respire more
rapidly so they're putting

[00:19:55.09]
more CO2, and so if you
raise the mean temperature,

[00:19:58.02]
you're gonna kinda kick that up

[00:20:00.04]
and put more into the atmosphere.

[00:20:03.04]
- [Audience Member] When's
it's gonna start taking

[00:20:05.01]
CO2 out of the atmosphere?

[00:20:06.08]
- They do that seasonally.

[00:20:09.01]
Every season, every spring,
they're taking it out,

[00:20:11.03]
and every winter they're putting it back

[00:20:13.04]
because they're dropping their leaves,

[00:20:15.07]
and the leaves are decaying.

[00:20:17.09]
Or the trees are falling over
and the trunks are decaying,

[00:20:21.01]
and all of those things go forwards.

[00:20:23.05]
It's a cycle of carbon
that's constantly going on

[00:20:26.04]
among the biology on the
planet, I mean somewhere

[00:20:29.01]
this gets washed into the ocean

[00:20:30.03]
and it goes through marine cycles as well.

[00:20:33.06]
That's more of a long term
thing, but the plants,

[00:20:36.07]
if you just raise the mean temperature,

[00:20:38.01]
you're gonna have more respiration,

[00:20:39.04]
you're gonna get higher numbers over here.

[00:20:44.00]
But notice this, we're
about zero, zero down here.

[00:20:48.06]
Jesus was born, Roman Empire,
Greeks were kinda starting

[00:20:52.06]
in their decline, there
was a lot going on.

[00:20:56.02]
All of Western civilization,

[00:20:58.02]
every bit of Western
civilization was what?

[00:21:00.09]
280 parts per million plus
or minus about 5.2, not much.

[00:21:08.07]
This is significant, this
is a period in history

[00:21:12.03]
where human civilization
actually could survive,

[00:21:15.00]
and develop and evolve.

[00:21:17.05]
Let's go a little further.

[00:21:22.02]
And this is gonna disappear on you there.

[00:21:24.06]
And now we're gonna go to another ice core

[00:21:27.02]
from a different part of the planet.

[00:21:28.06]
I'll even go a little further here.

[00:21:31.05]
Okay, this is the Vostok ice
core and we have that up here.

[00:21:37.02]
The Vostok ice core runs from,

[00:21:42.04]
it's in Antarctica,
it's a Russian station.

[00:21:45.08]
There was a big core done
there, but that's a low

[00:21:47.09]
deposition area, so you can go back

[00:21:49.04]
very far in time with these samples.

[00:21:51.07]
You just get a wide time
interval between each sample.

[00:21:55.09]
But you can see it matches
up pretty well with this,

[00:21:58.04]
as far as we can tell.

[00:22:00.06]
But this is the bottom, this
is the last ice age, down here.

[00:22:06.05]
CO2 at the last ice age was
around a 180 parts per million.

[00:22:12.03]
Throughout most of human civilization,

[00:22:15.02]
which goes back to where?

[00:22:16.05]
The Egyptians 5,000 years
ago, that would be 3,000 B.C.

[00:22:19.05]
The Chinese maybe a few
thousand more, 5,000.

[00:22:23.06]
Let's push it and say 10,000.

[00:22:26.00]
It really doesn't matter,
you're looking at 270, 280

[00:22:29.04]
parts per million carbon
dioxide in the atmosphere

[00:22:32.00]
during the entirety of human civilization.

[00:22:35.02]
Allowing us to have
temperatures such that we could

[00:22:38.03]
have agriculture, create
cities, make inventions,

[00:22:42.06]
invent the wheel, et cetera.

[00:22:44.04]
Do all these things that we needed

[00:22:45.08]
to propel society forward.

[00:22:50.01]
I'll go a little further now.

[00:22:52.03]
Take a look at this ice age.

[00:22:54.08]
Hello, maybe, there we go.

[00:23:04.02]
This is a 20 here, in
case you can't see it.

[00:23:07.08]
How long did it take CO2 to rise

[00:23:10.05]
from a 180 to 280 parts per million?

[00:23:14.05]
15 to 20,000 years.

[00:23:19.03]
100 parts per million, natural
cycle, 15 to 20,000 years.

[00:23:27.03]
We did it in the 20th
century in, how much time?

[00:23:30.08]
100 years.

[00:23:33.04]
This is scary when you
start to think about it.

[00:23:36.00]
It's a 150 to 200 times
faster then we've seen

[00:23:40.00]
since the last ice age, and even before.

[00:23:42.05]
Which I'm going to show you.

[00:23:47.01]
Now there is a curiosity,
it's still in the ice age,

[00:23:49.08]
but it's gonna swing back again.

[00:23:51.05]
We can talk about that too,
because it's a good example

[00:23:54.00]
of temperature and CO2 influences.

[00:23:57.03]
Okay, what you're looking
at here, the ice age,

[00:24:00.04]
we also call them glacials.

[00:24:02.09]
There's another glacial,
this is an interglacial.

[00:24:07.00]
And this is an interglacial.

[00:24:10.00]
Carbon dioxide is around 280 here,

[00:24:12.06]
it's around 270, 280 here.

[00:24:18.05]
Where was human civilization?

[00:24:21.04]
Wasn't there.

[00:24:22.07]
We don't have any evidence
of it, it might have been.

[00:24:24.08]
But even a 100,000 years
ago, we should probably

[00:24:27.08]
be able to detect some
resemblance of that.

[00:24:31.00]
I mean Rome was 2,000, we
see lots of Roman ruins.

[00:24:33.06]
Egypt goes back a little
further, we should see something

[00:24:36.05]
somewhere in the world, we see nothing.

[00:24:38.09]
So here was it was ripe for agriculture,

[00:24:41.03]
development, et cetera.

[00:24:42.06]
This would have been homo erectus,

[00:24:45.04]
not homo sapiens at that point, probably.

[00:24:47.05]
But nevertheless, we just
weren't quite there for that.

[00:24:51.04]
I might miss that on the anthropology,

[00:24:53.07]
I'm not an anthropologist.

[00:24:55.02]
But the point is, that
there were the conditions

[00:24:58.01]
right there, just perfect, interglacial,

[00:24:59.09]
a 100,000 years ago we
didn't have civilization.

[00:25:02.00]
This is a jewel.

[00:25:05.01]
What we've got now is a jewel.

[00:25:09.02]
Science, art, literature,

[00:25:12.02]
everything we do.

[00:25:15.05]
Let's go further.

[00:25:17.07]
Now you see another
interglacial, interglacial.

[00:25:22.01]
Now the ice core record
gets a little messy here.

[00:25:26.02]
Because the integrity of
the ice is not so good

[00:25:30.07]
to go further and further back in time.

[00:25:31.09]
And there's shifting,
even beneath the continent

[00:25:35.04]
and these big sheets, they're
shifting and mixing up.

[00:25:39.02]
And it's also hard to sample sometimes.

[00:25:41.06]
So the basic idea is there,

[00:25:43.09]
it's just not as clean
as the recent years.

[00:25:48.02]
The interesting thing about these cycles,

[00:25:49.07]
they're called Milankovitch
cycles, and they're named

[00:25:51.07]
after a fella who
described them in terms of

[00:25:56.05]
the wobble in Earth's orbit,

[00:25:59.02]
which is caused by orbits
of Jupiter and Mars

[00:26:04.01]
so we won't go into that too much.

[00:26:06.02]
But the point is, that
is a driver that drives

[00:26:08.06]
temperature first and CO2 second.

[00:26:11.05]
So the thing that stopped
CO2 from going up here

[00:26:14.09]
is that you kinda went to the next phase

[00:26:16.05]
of the Milankovitch cycle,
'cause you had that play

[00:26:19.02]
off of each other all the
way up, and down again.

[00:26:22.05]
By the way, down here the
geologists are all telling us

[00:26:26.04]
that the temperature is
about four or five degrees

[00:26:30.04]
colder then today, Celsius,
four or five degrees Celsius.

[00:26:35.07]
We're anticipating that doubling CO2

[00:26:38.02]
will take it two degrees Celsius.

[00:26:40.07]
What it means is that part of that is due

[00:26:43.01]
to the increased insulation and part of it

[00:26:45.03]
is due to the carbon dioxide.

[00:26:46.06]
So it does help us
filter those things out.

[00:26:52.08]
Going further, another
interglacial, every 100,000 years.

[00:26:59.01]
It's like clockwork, which is what it is.

[00:27:03.00]
So this is the record
as far back as we can go

[00:27:05.09]
with measurements of carbon dioxide.

[00:27:07.08]
There's other ways to go
back millions of years

[00:27:10.09]
by going into proxies,
like barium and that.

[00:27:13.06]
But this is the CO2 record,

[00:27:16.08]
note there's 10,000 or
10 to 20,000 years here,

[00:27:20.00]
there's a straight line,

[00:27:23.07]
but a 100 years, and that's
still got the wiggles in it.

[00:27:27.08]
It's incredible.

[00:27:28.08]
So what we've done is a huge experiment.

[00:27:35.06]
And when we look back at this and think

[00:27:37.00]
well a 180, 280, 380 if you will,

[00:27:40.00]
100, 100, 100.

[00:27:42.06]
Four degrees colder here.

[00:27:47.03]
Here it is and we're
anticipate it's gonna be

[00:27:49.09]
a couple degrees Celsius warmer.

[00:27:51.08]
But what is two degrees Celsius?

[00:27:54.01]
Two degrees Celsius is roughly
four degrees Fahrenheit.

[00:27:58.06]
Four degrees Fahrenheit over
the entire globe, average.

[00:28:02.00]
Most of that's gonna
be over the continents,

[00:28:03.05]
'cause the oceans will be more or less,

[00:28:05.08]
very small change over the oceans.

[00:28:08.00]
So you gotta multiply that by three,

[00:28:10.00]
in other words 12 degrees,
over the continents, average.

[00:28:13.09]
And some places on the
continents will get warmer.

[00:28:18.01]
What if it's more then
two degrees Celsius?

[00:28:22.05]
How hot's it gonna get?

[00:28:23.07]
How's our agriculture gonna be?

[00:28:25.09]
What's that gonna do to immigration,

[00:28:27.03]
what's that gonna do to poverty?

[00:28:28.04]
What's it gonna do to
opportunities to make money?

[00:28:30.03]
I mean there's a lotta
things happening here.

[00:28:32.06]
But it's change.

[00:28:34.08]
And we need to be prepared for change.

[00:28:36.04]
We need to be willing adapt to change

[00:28:39.01]
and we need to be able to try to deal

[00:28:42.02]
with those aspects of
change we don't like.

[00:28:45.07]
Those are all tough decisions for society.

[00:28:50.00]
I'm going to try to slip
out of this if I can.

[00:28:53.01]
Hit Escape?

[00:28:55.02]
Oh, is there any questions
while this is up?

[00:28:56.06]
'Cause I can go back and forth.

[00:28:57.06]
I can take this, I think,

[00:28:59.06]
and make it go back, by
being a good boy, whoop.

[00:29:03.03]
I'm right here.

[00:29:06.03]
There we go, so if you
wanna go back and look at,

[00:29:09.09]
hello?

[00:29:10.07]
- [Audience Member] Hit Play again.

[00:29:11.05]
- Oh yeah.

[00:29:12.07]
I gotta stop it, right?

[00:29:15.07]
Oh Macintosh, okay, hold on.

[00:29:18.09]
Okay, so we can stop anywhere we want

[00:29:21.05]
and take a look at things
if somebody has a question.

[00:29:23.08]
Did I confuse everybody into silence?

[00:29:26.02]
What have we have?

[00:29:27.09]
- [Man In Audience] Besides the ice cores,

[00:29:29.05]
is there any sort of like
other chemical testing

[00:29:32.09]
that you can do, say like
volcanic rock, or any other things

[00:29:36.06]
that are being used to
take you even further back

[00:29:38.09]
to see if this point's ever
been reached in the past?

[00:29:41.02]
- The question was, can we
go back further by looking

[00:29:44.01]
at volcanic rocks and
sediments and things like that

[00:29:46.05]
in the ocean, and the answer's yes,

[00:29:48.08]
and people are doing
that, and like I said,

[00:29:50.05]
they're are looking at proxies like barium

[00:29:52.03]
and other isotopes to try to
understand how what it was.

[00:29:58.01]
We do know about three million,

[00:30:02.03]
three million years ago CO2
was very high on the planet.

[00:30:05.05]
But it was a very different planet.

[00:30:09.07]
And then if we go back to the
Paleocene, Eocene boundary

[00:30:15.05]
back around 60 some odd million years ago.

[00:30:17.07]
It was pretty warm then too.

[00:30:20.00]
But right before that there were dinosaurs

[00:30:21.04]
all over the place and Denver was a marsh.

[00:30:23.08]
So it was a different planet
when those things happened.

[00:30:27.00]
And human civilization
has been at this 280,

[00:30:30.09]
plus or minus 10, and that's where we are.

[00:30:33.08]
Don't see a big change.

[00:30:34.07]
Yes sir?

[00:30:36.03]
- [Man] You talking about
the Industrial Revolution,

[00:30:37.08]
and then ending, it
seems to be it coincides

[00:30:40.03]
with the deforestation
that would have taken place

[00:30:43.00]
in order to supply the
Industrial Revolution.

[00:30:46.08]
Replanting of course has been taking place

[00:30:48.04]
for the last 30 years.

[00:30:49.07]
Does that have an effect?

[00:30:52.02]
- I'm not on that question again?

[00:30:53.06]
- Oh the deforestation, and
the replanting of the forest.

[00:30:57.09]
- Oh forests, oh yes, yes.

[00:31:00.01]
Well one of the things
that the United States did

[00:31:02.04]
in the 1800s, and
Europe, was get very busy

[00:31:06.00]
deforesting the continents.

[00:31:08.03]
We took down a lot of
forest to put in farms.

[00:31:11.08]
So you lose the longer term storage.

[00:31:14.06]
Forests, not only does the
carbon go into the tree trunks

[00:31:17.03]
but it goes into the
soils, and that's where

[00:31:19.02]
the long term storage is.

[00:31:20.05]
We don't quite understand how
fast or how well that works.

[00:31:23.03]
Certain aspects of agriculture do that,

[00:31:25.02]
and other parts don't, so it kinda depends

[00:31:28.06]
how we're working, 'cause we, like I say,

[00:31:30.00]
we don't understand it.

[00:31:31.06]
Going back in time, I don't
think that's the real driver

[00:31:36.07]
of the big changes we're seeing.

[00:31:38.05]
Although when you go to a ice age,

[00:31:41.05]
you have a lot fewer forests
there to take up CO2,

[00:31:46.00]
or to release it, or even respire.

[00:31:48.08]
So how that would play out
either way, it's hard to say.

[00:31:54.07]
Yes Mary?

[00:31:55.07]
- [Mary] So the slope of the curve,

[00:31:59.02]
no I'm not gonna do the
mic, you can repeat.

[00:32:03.00]
So that increase, that
almost vertical increase,

[00:32:06.00]
I've heard called the hockey stick, and--

[00:32:09.01]
- That's for temperature, okay.

[00:32:11.05]
- [Mary] The hockey stick
is temperature, okay.

[00:32:13.02]
CO2 is not the hockey stick?

[00:32:14.09]
- Well it looks like one, but no, no.

[00:32:17.09]
The hockey stick is a temperature thing

[00:32:19.05]
and the data were a bit scattered.

[00:32:22.02]
And Michel Mann put a line through it

[00:32:24.02]
and said, you know, it really looks to me

[00:32:25.08]
like there's a singularity here.

[00:32:27.05]
And others validated that,

[00:32:30.02]
and then it got to be a very stinky thing,

[00:32:31.06]
and then it got validated even further.

[00:32:34.05]
And that's related to what
we're saying here with CO2.

[00:32:36.04]
- [Mary] So I guess my question
is, that has been attacked

[00:32:39.08]
by climate denialists.

[00:32:41.03]
Does the CO2 record itself
also cause some controversy?

[00:32:45.04]
You get questions about
the validity of it?

[00:32:47.06]
- Yeah we do.

[00:32:49.04]
In terms of validity,
I think we've actually

[00:32:51.04]
got that one put down pretty well

[00:32:53.01]
and it doesn't come up much anymore.

[00:32:56.00]
In terms of the trends, I
think people will realize

[00:32:58.02]
that this is happening.

[00:32:59.07]
What they like to say,
if you're a denialist,

[00:33:01.09]
is that well we're not so
certain that man's causing this.

[00:33:06.04]
That's number one.

[00:33:09.01]
The jury is out.

[00:33:10.09]
We have to get more
data, more information.

[00:33:13.04]
That's good if you're a researcher

[00:33:15.00]
but it's the wrong thing to do.

[00:33:18.08]
Another denialist thing is
well we really don't know

[00:33:23.01]
that much about CO2's
influence on temperature.

[00:33:26.07]
And that's true.

[00:33:29.00]
When we say if you double CO2,

[00:33:33.01]
what do we call it, help me here Ron.

[00:33:36.05]
- [Ron] Climate sensitivity.

[00:33:37.03]
- Climate sensitivity, thank you.

[00:33:39.00]
The climate sensitivity for
CO2 is about three degrees

[00:33:42.01]
plus or minus one, one and
a half degrees, roughly.

[00:33:45.08]
So there is some uncertainty there,

[00:33:47.04]
but we do know that if you raise CO2

[00:33:49.04]
you're gonna cook things around you.

[00:33:52.00]
So again, that's a bad one too,

[00:33:53.02]
and we just have to admit
wherever somebody says,

[00:33:55.08]
I think there's uncertainty,
say yes there is uncertainty

[00:33:58.00]
but there's only so much uncertainty.

[00:34:00.04]
It doesn't mean we don't know anything.

[00:34:02.09]
And that's the question and
that's the big fight we have.

[00:34:05.08]
I think our biggest problem

[00:34:06.08]
with climate change today is being able

[00:34:12.00]
to communicate the issues

[00:34:15.07]
to a society that is largely
skeptical or unaware.

[00:34:21.04]
And I say that because not
everybody pays attention

[00:34:25.04]
to everything, you guys
are all here, I love it.

[00:34:27.02]
I wish there was more of this.

[00:34:29.05]
And a lotta places I
can go and give talks,

[00:34:31.02]
but it's only small fraction of the world.

[00:34:34.03]
So we need to have ways of reaching out

[00:34:37.02]
and communicating, and this
is where scientists need help.

[00:34:39.06]
Because, we can communicate
with each other real well.

[00:34:41.08]
We all speak the same language.

[00:34:43.06]
But when we reach out to others,

[00:34:45.04]
it's a little more difficult.

[00:34:46.06]
And we're dealing with
things like most of you

[00:34:49.06]
probably know, Elisabeth Kubler-Ross,

[00:34:52.02]
who wrote a book, the
five stages of grief.

[00:34:55.06]
One of my good colleagues, Steve Running,

[00:34:57.05]
posted a website, had the "The
5 Stages of Climate Grief".

[00:35:01.02]
And I thought it was good,
'cause they're exactly the same.

[00:35:04.04]
First stage, denial.

[00:35:07.04]
First thing, yup, not happening,
I don't believe it, at all.

[00:35:10.09]
This is BS you guys, you don't know

[00:35:12.03]
what you're talking about,
the uncertainty's too big.

[00:35:15.09]
The next stage, so they
ignore what's going on.

[00:35:18.00]
The next stage is anger.

[00:35:22.00]
What do you mean it's gone,
you mean it's gonna do this?

[00:35:23.08]
No, no, it doesn't matter,
I'm gonna drive my SUV anyway.

[00:35:26.07]
I gotta all this other stuff.

[00:35:29.03]
And that goes on.

[00:35:30.09]
The third stage is bargaining.

[00:35:32.04]
This is what I call the Al Gore effect.

[00:35:35.01]
(audience chuckles)

[00:35:37.05]
Al Gore was great when he said,
he still can drive his SUV,

[00:35:40.01]
because he's buying offsets,
nevermind that we have

[00:35:42.04]
a hard time measuring what
those offsets are doing

[00:35:44.06]
or if it's actually making a difference.

[00:35:46.05]
He was buying the offsets.

[00:35:47.06]
And you can go out on the
web and buy your offsets.

[00:35:49.07]
That's bargaining, say well I
still wanna have my lifestyle.

[00:35:51.09]
I still wanna do the things I'm doing.

[00:35:53.03]
I don't wanna change our energy source,

[00:35:54.07]
don't wanna do those
things, gonna try that.

[00:35:57.05]
The fourth stage is depression.

[00:36:01.01]
Totally, like oh man, we're screwed.

[00:36:04.08]
And then you just get bummed
and you can't do anything.

[00:36:07.09]
You can't get up outta bed,
you know, it's just awful.

[00:36:11.06]
The last stage is acceptance.

[00:36:14.01]
And this is where you
accept what's happening

[00:36:16.05]
and you move forward.

[00:36:19.01]
Scientists love to think
that we're at the stage

[00:36:20.09]
of acceptance, I disagree.

[00:36:24.07]
And this is depressing,
you can plug your ears

[00:36:27.03]
if you don't wanna hear it.

[00:36:29.04]
I think scientists are still bargaining.

[00:36:33.01]
We think we can do something about this.

[00:36:37.00]
And I worry.

[00:36:39.00]
'Cause when we hit depression,
it's not gonna be pretty.

[00:36:42.01]
So I hope that we can find ways,

[00:36:46.06]
'cause I'm not gonna give up.

[00:36:49.08]
I hope we can find ways to
communicate better to society

[00:36:54.02]
what this is and what it means.

[00:36:55.05]
How do you go to the guy, in Georgia,

[00:36:57.06]
driving this truck, and
he's got a small family

[00:37:00.01]
with a few kids and
trying to make a living.

[00:37:02.06]
And he loses his job
because they just shut down

[00:37:04.07]
something in the timber industry.

[00:37:06.07]
How do you get him to
think about climate change

[00:37:08.06]
when he's gotta feed his family?

[00:37:11.00]
How do you do it?

[00:37:12.06]
I don't know.

[00:37:15.08]
That's the thing that we
need to be thinking about.

[00:37:17.09]
We need to reach out to
what was it, Herb Kane?

[00:37:21.01]
It was Herb Kane, yeah it was Herb Kane,

[00:37:23.00]
back in the '70s and '80s.

[00:37:24.09]
He used to refer to Joe Sixpack.

[00:37:26.08]
Remember Joe Sixpack?

[00:37:27.06]
Yeah, how do we reach out to Joe Sixpack?

[00:37:29.09]
And get him to understand this in a sense

[00:37:31.08]
that he really wants to
do something about it.

[00:37:33.07]
There's so much we can do.

[00:37:36.03]
One, we know there are
renewable energy options.

[00:37:39.05]
We know there are efficiency options,

[00:37:41.09]
we know there's a lot,
in fact we can actually

[00:37:44.02]
get off of fossil fuels entirely,

[00:37:46.07]
and have more energy then we have now.

[00:37:49.02]
That's possible because
the sun shines everywhere

[00:37:51.04]
and it's a huge amount of energy.

[00:37:53.01]
We just have to find a way
to use it, effectively.

[00:37:55.04]
And transport, these
are issues, easy to do.

[00:38:01.01]
Got a man to the moon in eight years.

[00:38:03.09]
Not bad when we couldn't even
get a rocket off the ground

[00:38:06.00]
if you remember the Vanguard.

[00:38:07.08]
Flopped about three
times before they finally

[00:38:09.05]
got the Explorer up,
and it barely made it.

[00:38:12.06]
So those were challenges.

[00:38:14.06]
The one nobody mentions,
that I think is even bigger

[00:38:16.08]
then the moon shot,

[00:38:18.05]
is World War II.

[00:38:22.01]
The United States was
attacked on December 1941,

[00:38:25.00]
that means we really didn't
enter the war until '42.

[00:38:27.07]
Half way through '45, it's over.

[00:38:30.04]
We didn't have a plane,

[00:38:32.06]
half our navy had just been sunk,

[00:38:35.03]
our army was is disarray, we
just didn't have anything.

[00:38:37.05]
'Cause we just gone
through the depression,

[00:38:39.01]
we'd gone through this
whole thing of isolation.

[00:38:41.04]
Didn't wanna do anything.

[00:38:43.00]
Two and a half years, three years, bingo.

[00:38:46.07]
We pretty much flattened Europe.

[00:38:48.03]
Pretty much flattened Tokyo and Japan.

[00:38:51.06]
And basically supplying all of our allies

[00:38:54.06]
with all of the equipment that they needed

[00:38:55.09]
to help fight the war with us.

[00:38:57.08]
It was an incredible act.

[00:38:59.06]
And it was done in a very
short period of time,

[00:39:02.06]
and there was a national will.

[00:39:04.02]
So when you're talking
about renewable energy,

[00:39:06.00]
and I have my friends the
National Renewable Energy labs

[00:39:08.07]
saying that oh yeah, from
small little teeny patch

[00:39:11.02]
in Arizona, we can provide
seven times the electrical power

[00:39:15.00]
they were using today
in the United States.

[00:39:18.08]
What we're lacking here is a will.

[00:39:21.03]
I'm not speaking as a
representative of NOAA,

[00:39:23.08]
when I say these things,
(chuckles) but it is trying

[00:39:27.01]
to provide ways to get a solution.

[00:39:29.00]
And it's gonna require
communication to make that happen.

[00:39:34.05]
That was a long answer to
a short question I think.

[00:39:37.04]
- So I wanna thank Jim.

[00:39:39.00]
(Audience applauds)

[00:39:46.00]
If he's staying here longer to talk--

[00:39:47.06]
- Tell her I like to talk too much.

[00:39:48.05]
- I just wanted to make
sure, 'cause some people

[00:39:49.09]
actually are on their lunch hour.

[00:39:51.09]
That if people needed to
leave, they could leave.

[00:39:54.02]
That was a fantastic talk, and we can have

[00:39:57.07]
more questions if people have them.

[00:40:01.06]
- [Audience Member] Very
interesting description

[00:40:03.05]
of how the CO2 was measured
in the last 10 centuries.

[00:40:09.07]
What missing CO2 measurements are there,

[00:40:12.02]
in other words if you could
measure it where you wanted

[00:40:15.04]
what would you like to have,

[00:40:16.06]
and why would you like to have it?

[00:40:17.06]
- Excellent question.

[00:40:19.04]
What we're working on now, is we get

[00:40:21.02]
the global trend very well.

[00:40:23.00]
We're not worried about that.

[00:40:24.05]
We get the global distribution quite well.

[00:40:26.04]
We can tell you each latitudinal band,

[00:40:28.02]
what the average is there.

[00:40:29.09]
That's all very straight forward.

[00:40:33.03]
But what we can't do,

[00:40:38.09]
is provide the kind information

[00:40:40.06]
that people are going to
want 10 years from now,

[00:40:43.03]
at policy relevant scales.

[00:40:46.02]
On time scales and spatial scales.

[00:40:48.02]
They say gee, Governor
Brown, you're efforts

[00:40:51.03]
at reducing greenhouse gas emissions

[00:40:54.06]
look to be working for the most part

[00:40:56.05]
but we see a problem in your power sector,

[00:40:59.06]
but your automobile
sector's doing just great.

[00:41:02.00]
Basing this on atmospheric observations

[00:41:04.01]
which are completely
independent of inventories

[00:41:06.05]
and all of those other things.

[00:41:07.04]
We can say, is the atmosphere consistent

[00:41:10.02]
with what you're saying you're doing?

[00:41:13.00]
And if not, here's some
information for you.

[00:41:16.02]
See if you can work on the problem.

[00:41:18.04]
We're just scientists, we
don't want to regulate somebody

[00:41:22.04]
or fine anybody or any of that.

[00:41:24.06]
We simply wanna provide information.

[00:41:26.02]
And this is a global effort, we're working

[00:41:28.02]
with the World Meteorological
Organization on this

[00:41:30.09]
to try to fill these gaps
in both space and time

[00:41:35.04]
so that policymakers,
resource managers, Joe Sixpack

[00:41:41.06]
can all make good decisions
based on good data.

[00:41:44.04]
So we need more observations, and we need

[00:41:47.06]
better transport models then we have

[00:41:50.02]
to keep it all globally coherent.

[00:41:53.07]
Oh, he's got the mic there, see.

[00:41:57.02]
- [Man] Over there next.

[00:41:58.03]
- [Jim] Okay.

[00:41:59.01]
- [Woman] I was gonna ask,
coming from a position

[00:42:01.08]
within the government,
how do you feel about

[00:42:03.07]
the changes that are going
on in the government now?

[00:42:06.02]
- Am I allowed to answer
that question? (laughs)

[00:42:10.08]
I worry about any change in government.

[00:42:13.03]
It doesn't matter what it is.

[00:42:14.04]
You can overreach, you can undershoot,

[00:42:16.04]
you can do all of those things,

[00:42:17.06]
but I think I'm a little
worried this time.

[00:42:21.08]
If they wanna cut funding for research,

[00:42:24.02]
not just in climate but
a whole bunch of things.

[00:42:26.07]
To me that's like,

[00:42:29.02]
that's heresy (laughs)
but I'm a scientist.

[00:42:32.03]
I do think civilization has gone forward

[00:42:34.06]
during this time we were looking at,

[00:42:36.02]
since the Industrial Revolution,

[00:42:37.08]
and good part because of
advancements in science.

[00:42:40.01]
And I think the Romans
would agree with that,

[00:42:42.00]
as would the Greeks.

[00:42:43.03]
That those are the things that
propel their society forward.

[00:42:46.02]
So if we refuse to invest in the future,

[00:42:48.03]
we're gonna be left
behind, it's that simple.

[00:42:50.08]
So I worry about that,

[00:42:52.04]
and that's my biggest worry with Congress.

[00:42:56.03]
- [Audience Member] So I wanted to ask if,

[00:42:59.03]
when you said when
scientists get depressed.

[00:43:04.00]
Would scientists get depressed
because it's so damn slow

[00:43:09.08]
to convince people in power
to relinquish what's going on.

[00:43:16.09]
Or are you saying that
there is no irreversibility

[00:43:21.08]
of what's happening now, or both?

[00:43:25.00]
In terms of what's happening
with climate change.

[00:43:28.01]
- The one word answer would be both.

[00:43:29.06]
But I think there is
some flexibility on this.

[00:43:32.09]
One thing that scares us a lot,

[00:43:35.02]
humans are not facing this.

[00:43:36.07]
If CO2 keeps going up
more and more every year.

[00:43:39.01]
We say we're doing these
things which is what

[00:43:40.07]
that last slide I'm gonna show
you here before we're done.

[00:43:42.08]
We say we're doing things
and yet it's not working.

[00:43:46.07]
That's what gets us depressed.

[00:43:48.04]
And so we worry about that.

[00:43:49.09]
But there is something, it just came out,

[00:43:51.05]
the National Academy of Sciences came out

[00:43:53.04]
with two reports called
Climate Intervention.

[00:43:57.04]
This scares us as scientists, a lot.

[00:44:00.04]
Because the idea is to
intervene with what the climate

[00:44:03.02]
is doing, to try to make it
so that we can still have

[00:44:05.04]
good conditions for humans on this planet.

[00:44:09.06]
Wow, that's a lot.

[00:44:10.09]
And they broke it into two categories.

[00:44:12.03]
One is CO2 removal, and the other one

[00:44:14.09]
is albedo modification,
in other words changing

[00:44:17.08]
the reflectivity of the
surface of the Earth.

[00:44:20.01]
The albedo modification
thing was proposed years ago,

[00:44:23.01]
in which they launch rockets
up into the stratosphere.

[00:44:26.06]
Put a lot of particles
there, and they'll reflect

[00:44:28.08]
the sunlight and you won't be
warming as much as the planet.

[00:44:32.02]
This happened when
Mount Pinatubo went off.

[00:44:33.09]
It happened when El Chichon went off.

[00:44:35.09]
Whenever you get these big volcanoes,

[00:44:37.01]
they put something up there.

[00:44:38.03]
It stays there for three years,

[00:44:40.07]
then it comes back out again.

[00:44:42.00]
But to deliver what a Pinatubo does,

[00:44:45.00]
takes many shuttles worth of particulates,

[00:44:49.00]
if you're gonna be launching.

[00:44:51.01]
And to sustain it, I
calculated a while back,

[00:44:53.08]
I wish I could remember
the number exactly,

[00:44:55.02]
but I think it was like
50 shuttles a year.

[00:44:57.08]
Continuously forever, to
just get the Pinatubo effect

[00:45:00.08]
which is about a half a degree, maybe,

[00:45:02.09]
or a degree.

[00:45:04.08]
That's Fahrenheit, so it
really, it doesn't do it,

[00:45:08.03]
but the climate engineering is something,

[00:45:10.03]
when things really get
bad, and they haven't done

[00:45:12.03]
their research to understand the system.

[00:45:13.08]
Haven't moved into these other things,

[00:45:15.05]
that's gonna be invoked by politicians,

[00:45:19.04]
by industries, by
shysters, by all kinds of

[00:45:24.08]
approaches here, it's gonna be pretty bad.

[00:45:28.00]
We wanna be able to,
and we're trying to say

[00:45:29.08]
well let's gather information
together and try to inform

[00:45:32.02]
these questions and
decisions to go forward

[00:45:33.08]
with the climate engineering.

[00:45:35.00]
That's scary too, so those
kinds of things are scary.

[00:45:38.06]
And most of us can't give up.

[00:45:43.06]
So, yes?

[00:45:47.03]
- [Woman] I have a comment,
first I wanna thank you

[00:45:49.02]
for this fantastic presentation,

[00:45:51.05]
and these keywords like
scary and realistic--

[00:45:55.07]
- Apologize for that. (laughs)

[00:45:56.09]
- [Woman] No, no, but I'm
wanting to comment on the stages

[00:46:00.05]
that you were talking about.

[00:46:01.04]
There's the depression stage
which was just super real.

[00:46:04.00]
And then there's the "we gonna
need to accept this" stage,

[00:46:07.04]
and move forward, so I'm
just wanna make a comment

[00:46:10.00]
that in this last 100
years of our civilization,

[00:46:13.07]
we have this new thing called the Internet

[00:46:16.08]
which may be the answer
the communicating piece

[00:46:19.05]
that you're putting, I
just wanna make a comment

[00:46:21.09]
that just less than a month old,

[00:46:24.04]
there's a new top level
domain that's green.

[00:46:27.07]
And it's putting that into
the hands of the people.

[00:46:31.03]
To communicate, to share the science.

[00:46:33.05]
To share business, to share
what the consumers want.

[00:46:36.07]
We can use this top level
domain just for an awareness.

[00:46:40.06]
So the Internet's one way
to do the communication

[00:46:43.01]
question that you've asked.

[00:46:44.08]
- That's excellent, 'cause
that is a big issue.

[00:46:49.02]
Yes sir?

[00:46:50.00]
- [Man] Yeah, this analogy
that you used earlier

[00:46:51.09]
about the blanket on the
bed, like an electric blanket

[00:46:54.04]
on the bed, and I can
just envision turning up

[00:46:57.06]
the blanket to high, which
is kinda the direction

[00:47:00.06]
we're headed right now.

[00:47:02.00]
Can you expand a little more on that?

[00:47:03.09]
Because I talk to people all the time,

[00:47:06.07]
that think that we can just
turn the faucet off on CO2.

[00:47:09.05]
And if we just ramp down
what we're pumping out

[00:47:12.05]
right now, we're gonna be fine.

[00:47:14.04]
But it's not that easy is it?

[00:47:16.02]
- No it's not.

[00:47:17.01]
And thank you for asking that.

[00:47:20.00]
The electric blanket
analogy's one that I use more

[00:47:23.07]
then I do the adding blankets,

[00:47:25.00]
because it's almost perfect
except for one thing.

[00:47:28.02]
Imagine electric blankets
you can't turn down.

[00:47:30.08]
So you're lying in bed,
you've been in the same bed

[00:47:33.03]
for 20 years and you're
always just a nice,

[00:47:35.08]
comfortable temperature.

[00:47:37.07]
You decide one night
to raise it up to four.

[00:47:40.07]
You think ah, it's not so
bad, I'll raise it up to five.

[00:47:42.08]
Yeah, still fine.

[00:47:44.04]
The reason is there's a lag.

[00:47:45.08]
There's a lag between
the change in temperature

[00:47:48.03]
and the increase in CO2.

[00:47:49.08]
We've put CO2, a 100 ppm
up there in one century.

[00:47:54.01]
Remember that last one that
had 10,000 years to evolve,

[00:47:57.00]
so it's gonna take a little while,

[00:47:58.02]
it won't take 10,000 years,

[00:47:59.05]
but we're gonna see things cooking up.

[00:48:01.04]
If we stop emitting CO2
today, temperature's still

[00:48:04.08]
gonna go up, because it's gotta catch up

[00:48:06.09]
with what we've already done.

[00:48:08.09]
So we can count on that.

[00:48:10.03]
You wanna get into acceptance,
that's one of the things

[00:48:11.07]
we have to accept that
that's going to happen.

[00:48:13.09]
Unless we come up with this
climate intervention thing

[00:48:16.02]
and we don't have ways of doing that yet.

[00:48:18.00]
Not yet on a level.

[00:48:20.00]
We're putting in nine, no 10
now, 10 billion tons a year

[00:48:25.01]
of CO2 into the atmosphere,
imagine removing that.

[00:48:28.08]
That's a lot, and where you gonna put it?

[00:48:30.08]
And what's is gonna be?

[00:48:31.09]
So those are issues.

[00:48:33.00]
Yes sir?

[00:48:34.01]
- [Audience Member] All right,
I was trying to figure out

[00:48:36.00]
how to phrase this, because
of the increased warming,

[00:48:40.03]
the CO2, the permafrost
that's melting and creating

[00:48:45.00]
methane releases, and does
methane affect environment

[00:48:49.02]
carbon dioxide increase,
or is it just another gas

[00:48:52.04]
that you measure separately?

[00:48:55.03]
- Methane is another gas
that we measure separately

[00:48:57.06]
but we measure it right with CO2.

[00:49:00.00]
They're both carbon, methane
is CH4, carbon dioxide is CO2,

[00:49:03.02]
they're very close to each other.

[00:49:05.09]
Methane has a global warming potential

[00:49:08.08]
of 25 times that of CO2.

[00:49:12.03]
But methane is measured
in the parts per billion,

[00:49:15.05]
not the parts per million,
so you increase methane,

[00:49:19.08]
it still has a temperature
effect because of that.

[00:49:21.08]
But it's not as bad as you might think,

[00:49:23.08]
'cause it's not equal in
concentration to the CO2.

[00:49:27.04]
But the methane, when
it does get destroyed

[00:49:31.03]
it turns into CO2, so it
adds a small amount of CO2.

[00:49:34.07]
And it has a shorter
lifetime, about 10 years.

[00:49:37.04]
But if a lot of methane comes out fast,

[00:49:39.06]
it's gonna warm things up fast and drive

[00:49:41.06]
more CO2 out, and that sets
up another nasty little cycle.

[00:49:45.08]
And then we could end up having it

[00:49:48.01]
out of our control entirely.

[00:49:49.04]
We worry about the Arctic, we know methane

[00:49:52.01]
has started going up again
after not going up for a while.

[00:49:55.01]
But we also know that it's
not the Arctic releasing it

[00:49:57.06]
right now, it's mostly in the tropics.

[00:50:01.03]
And we know that from this
network, we can tell that.

[00:50:07.02]
Yes ma'am?

[00:50:08.05]
Oh I'm sorry, right here.

[00:50:10.07]
She's in the back there, next okay?

[00:50:12.05]
In the orange.

[00:50:13.04]
Yes?

[00:50:14.05]
- [Woman] First of all
I'd like to thank you

[00:50:15.03]
for this opportunity to come and learn

[00:50:17.04]
about this subject, that
I'm totally not aware of.

[00:50:21.05]
And from a layman's point of view,

[00:50:26.00]
my question to you is that,
we are very privileged

[00:50:30.01]
to come here for free,
and I also will have

[00:50:33.09]
delicious lunch provided.

[00:50:35.07]
In countries that they're poor, and people

[00:50:37.09]
have problems surviving,
how are you going to

[00:50:41.04]
make that become a global
concern and awareness?

[00:50:45.00]
- Two things on that, one,
you're absolutely right.

[00:50:47.06]
That is an issue, most of the world

[00:50:52.04]
is impoverished by far,
and we are very well off.

[00:50:58.00]
We use most of the resources,
we emit most of the CO2,

[00:51:03.06]
by far.

[00:51:05.02]
And so United States, Europe,
China, these countries

[00:51:09.04]
can talk to each other, these countries

[00:51:11.04]
can manage and do things.

[00:51:13.00]
If we can control most of
that, we're in good shape.

[00:51:16.01]
If we

[00:51:20.03]
cut CO2 emissions by 80%,

[00:51:23.09]
okay so only 20%, that will allow us

[00:51:26.03]
to hold CO2 where it is, without going up.

[00:51:29.07]
At least for a short period of time

[00:51:31.00]
before it starts taking off again.

[00:51:34.00]
If we cut it by 90%, it'll
be very, very long time

[00:51:40.00]
before it goes down.

[00:51:41.00]
So the first step is let's get
the industrialized countries,

[00:51:44.08]
parts of the world to get on board.

[00:51:46.08]
The rest of the world will follow.

[00:51:49.00]
And I think the Third World
that deals with a lot with,

[00:51:51.07]
we don't call it the Third World anymore,

[00:51:53.01]
the developing world deals a lot more

[00:51:55.05]
with air quality then
they do with climate,

[00:51:57.03]
because it's an immediate concern.

[00:51:58.06]
That's something we relate to very well.

[00:52:01.00]
We evolved on this planet under conditions

[00:52:04.01]
that said you will survive.

[00:52:05.03]
Not if you think long term,
but if you think about

[00:52:07.05]
feeding your family and
keeping the wolves at bay

[00:52:10.04]
and building a fire.

[00:52:14.09]
Yes ma'am?

[00:52:17.00]
- [Audience Member] My concern
is you get more consumers,

[00:52:20.02]
you get more demand.

[00:52:21.08]
So is population control a viable tool

[00:52:25.01]
in reducing CO2 emissions?

[00:52:28.00]
- The answer on that is no.

[00:52:31.00]
Because it's going to control itself.

[00:52:34.03]
And I don't mean that
in a devastating way.

[00:52:37.08]
There's a fellow named Hans Rosling.

[00:52:39.05]
Gave a wonderful talk
when I was at a meeting

[00:52:42.03]
in Copenhagen, and it
turns out he has a website

[00:52:44.05]
called Gapminder, gapminder.org.

[00:52:47.01]
I don't know if any of
you have been on there?

[00:52:48.03]
But he has a wonderful
one about the birth rate.

[00:52:51.03]
You can choose statistics
any way you want to,

[00:52:53.00]
and plot them all kinds of different ways.

[00:52:54.08]
But he asked everybody at the beginning,

[00:52:56.03]
he says okay, the world's population

[00:52:57.09]
when President Kennedy
was in, was three billion.

[00:53:02.04]
Today it's seven billion.

[00:53:05.00]
We've more than doubled it
since Kennedy was president.

[00:53:07.04]
Launching, or thinking about launching

[00:53:09.07]
something to the moon.

[00:53:13.00]
That's a lot, that's huge.

[00:53:15.03]
And it's continuing to go up.

[00:53:17.06]
So he says, where do you
think this is gonna go?

[00:53:19.07]
Do you think it's gonna go up like that?

[00:53:22.04]
Do you think it's gonna go down like that?

[00:53:26.01]
Gonna follow some path upwards,

[00:53:27.05]
it's gonna level off, what is it?

[00:53:29.03]
And he showed, based on statistics,

[00:53:32.03]
from all the individual countries.

[00:53:33.07]
He says it doesn't matter
what country you're in,

[00:53:36.06]
whether you're rich, whether you're poor,

[00:53:38.04]
whether you're Christian,
Muslim or Buddhist or whatever,

[00:53:42.05]
all of those ways of
cutting through societies.

[00:53:45.00]
He said it doesn't matter, birth rate

[00:53:47.04]
is going down fast, everywhere.

[00:53:50.03]
He says the decision is
being made in the bedroom.

[00:53:53.02]
People are saying I don't
want to have a big family.

[00:53:56.04]
It's not gonna work for me
because I'm impoverished.

[00:53:58.06]
It's not gonna work for
me because I'm rich.

[00:53:59.09]
It's not gonna work for me
because I have opportunities

[00:54:01.08]
in the world, all of these
reasons add up to say.

[00:54:05.07]
And he said, I can tell you
with almost absolute certainty

[00:54:08.06]
that the world's population

[00:54:09.06]
will level off at nine to 10 billion.

[00:54:11.06]
Now that's a lot, but it's not over

[00:54:14.05]
twice as much as we had in 1960.

[00:54:17.08]
So can we deal with this?

[00:54:19.09]
Probably, now does that mean

[00:54:22.08]
we don't have too many
people on the planet?

[00:54:24.05]
No, we do have too many
people on the planet

[00:54:26.00]
for what we're doing.

[00:54:28.03]
The damage we're doing to the planet

[00:54:29.08]
is way beyond just climate change,

[00:54:32.06]
it touches on everything.

[00:54:34.03]
Species loss, resource management,
a number of other things.

[00:54:39.04]
So there's a lot of plays, a
lot of things come into play

[00:54:42.03]
with this population thing,
unless we get a grip on them.

[00:54:44.03]
Just like we need to get
a grip on what we're doing

[00:54:45.09]
to cause climate change, which we can do.

[00:54:49.02]
Yeah, we're heading down a bad path.

[00:54:50.08]
But I think, looking at those
things that we're doing,

[00:54:53.08]
envisioning them with the large population

[00:54:56.07]
that we have, and say
how do we deal with this

[00:54:59.05]
is a way that keeps our
diversity on the planet.

[00:55:03.00]
Keeps the temperature
in a reasonable place.

[00:55:04.07]
Allows us to continue our agriculture

[00:55:06.08]
without huge modifications
would be a good thing.

[00:55:10.05]
- [Woman] Jim, I think we need to wrap up,

[00:55:11.08]
I wanna see your last slide.

[00:55:13.07]
- Oh, this, okay this last slide,

[00:55:17.07]
I wish you could read it.

[00:55:19.09]
I was getting on a plane
in Frankfurt, Germany.

[00:55:23.01]
And it was Thanksgiving,
last Thanksgiving.

[00:55:25.01]
And I picked up a copy of "Die Zeit",

[00:55:26.07]
one of my favorite newspapers over there.

[00:55:28.09]
And I started reading through it.

[00:55:30.01]
And I got through the front
page, few of the key articles.

[00:55:33.00]
I like to know what the
Europeans are thinking.

[00:55:35.00]
Flipped over to the editorials, got bored.

[00:55:36.09]
Went over to the (speaks
in foreign language)

[00:55:38.09]
which is science.

[00:55:40.08]
Flipped over and there I opened it up

[00:55:42.08]
and there was a full page spread, titled,

[00:55:45.05]
"The Tricks of the Climate Politicians".

[00:55:48.00]
(speaks in foreign language)

[00:55:50.04]
Anyway, I translated it so I can show it.

[00:55:56.02]
The granularity is not
as good as I would like.

[00:55:58.02]
So I'm gonna Escape outta here,

[00:56:00.06]
and just, how do I close that out?

[00:56:05.00]
Go back over here.

[00:56:07.05]
Can't I just--

[00:56:08.04]
- Just click on your window
here, just click on the window--

[00:56:11.02]
- I want the PowerPoint.

[00:56:13.02]
- There you go.

[00:56:14.02]
- Is that it?

[00:56:15.00]
- Yeah.

[00:56:16.04]
- Hello, what'd it do,
so okay, so now I can go

[00:56:19.02]
down a slide, there it is.

[00:56:21.03]
"Tricks of the Climate Politicians"

[00:56:23.08]
Now, this is why scientists,
where's the lady,

[00:56:26.05]
oh she's not here, that
asked about being depressed.

[00:56:29.00]
This will make us depressed.

[00:56:33.04]
The black line is the emissions
that we've seen up to today.

[00:56:37.06]
This is a newspaper in
Germany, a full page spread.

[00:56:40.01]
Think about this.

[00:56:42.00]
And the brown line is business
as usual, going forward.

[00:56:46.07]
That's CO2 in the atmosphere.

[00:56:49.02]
The green line is where we
need to go to keep the warming

[00:56:55.08]
at two degrees Celsius.

[00:56:57.02]
And remember two degrees times
two, times three, et cetera.

[00:57:01.09]
That's our target.

[00:57:02.08]
The target is way too high.

[00:57:05.04]
But that's okay, let's try to get there.

[00:57:07.02]
You gotta start somewhere.

[00:57:09.04]
The problem is, is their solutions here.

[00:57:11.05]
Germany says we're gonna
base our reductions

[00:57:13.08]
40% from 1990.

[00:57:15.07]
European Union follows
and says 20% from 1990.

[00:57:18.03]
They just recently upped
that to 40%, from 1990.

[00:57:20.06]
That was good, they're both
consistent on the year,

[00:57:22.09]
both consistent on the amount.

[00:57:24.05]
U.S. says, well we're gonna
use 2005, you know why?

[00:57:27.02]
'Cause that's before
the economy collapsed.

[00:57:29.04]
And they can use that year
because there was a natural drop

[00:57:32.09]
in CO2 emissions during our
collapse of the economy.

[00:57:35.03]
And they said, oh we've
already reduced ours.

[00:57:37.06]
China and India both chose
2005, and have even weaker

[00:57:40.09]
commitments then the United States.

[00:57:43.01]
They went and added all
this up and said what's this

[00:57:45.01]
gonna take us to, it's gonna
take us to a 3.6 degree world.

[00:57:48.04]
On average, Celsius.

[00:57:51.02]
So it's not pretty, I'll
let you do the math on that.

[00:57:54.08]
The tricks that we do, that
was a different baseline,

[00:57:57.02]
as they mentioned, another
one is the offsets.

[00:58:00.08]
Britain says, well we're
gonna be emitting too much,

[00:58:02.07]
we're gonna buy offsets from Brazil.

[00:58:04.09]
Then Britain will count the
offsets in their emission

[00:58:07.04]
counting and Brazil will count the offsets

[00:58:09.03]
in their emissions counting,

[00:58:10.03]
because they're growing the forest.

[00:58:11.06]
And you get double counting,
and that's going on.

[00:58:15.05]
The other thing is using
an outdated scenario

[00:58:18.04]
like the United States, which picked

[00:58:20.05]
right before the
depression, or the recession

[00:58:23.02]
to capture a loss that
would have happened anyway,

[00:58:26.02]
so didn't represent
any effort on our part.

[00:58:30.05]
That's what we're doing.

[00:58:33.01]
And that's where we're going, at best.

[00:58:35.00]
Because we're not likely
to make that one too.

[00:58:37.09]
So yeah, this is what makes
us scientists depressed.

[00:58:40.06]
But we're not giving up. (laughs)

[00:58:43.04]
- I hate that I'm on that note,

[00:58:44.06]
but I do wanna thank you so much for--

[00:58:46.08]
- No, thank you, this has
been great, you've been

[00:58:48.07]
a great audience, I
appreciate it, thank you.

[00:58:51.00]
(audience applauds)

[00:58:54.00]