Changing the World (Literally), with Daniele Visione & Holly Buck

Summary

In this episode of StarTalk, host Neil deGrasse Tyson, along with co-hosts and experts Daniele Visione and Holly Buck, delve into the controversial subject of geoengineering as a potential solution to global warming. They discuss the science and ethics behind climate intervention methods like stratospheric aerosol injection, and explore historical examples from volcanic eruptions. While acknowledging the promise of these techniques to reduce global temperatures, the conversation also addresses the complexities, potential risks, and ethical dilemmas surrounding the deliberate alteration of Earth's climate systems.

Highlights

• Neil deGrasse Tyson discusses geoengineering with scientists Daniele Visione and Holly Buck. 🧪
• The conversation touches on the potential and risks of stratospheric aerosol injections. 🚀
• Historical volcanic eruptions like Pinatubo serve as case studies for climate intervention. 🌋
• Ethical and political challenges are central to the future of geoengineering. 🔍
• The balance between technology and nature is highlighted in efforts to combat global warming. ⚖️

Key Takeaways

• Geoengineering might be key to managing global warming, but it comes with ethical and scientific challenges. 🌍
• Stratospheric aerosol injections aim to cool the planet but rely heavily on international collaboration. 🤝
• Natural events like volcanic eruptions provide insights into potential geoengineering outcomes. 🌋
• Public understanding and international regulations are crucial to implementing geoengineering strategies safely. 📜
• Future climate solutions may include a mix of geoengineering, renewable energy, and conservation efforts. 🌱

Overview

This engaging episode of StarTalk dives into the world of geoengineering with Neil deGrasse Tyson hosting climate experts Daniele Visione and Holly Buck. The episode kicks off with a fascinating discussion about geoengineering—intentionally modifying Earth’s climate—as a countermeasure to global warming. They explore the idea of stratospheric aerosol injections, drawing parallels with natural occurrences like volcanic eruptions that have historically cooled the planet.

Dr. Daniele Visione brings her expertise to the table, explaining how stratospheric aerosols could act as a sunscreen for our warming planet. However, she underscores the scientific uncertainties and the ethical dilemmas of deploying such techniques at a global scale. The conversation also sheds light on the socio-political hurdles, as the stratosphere remains a largely unregulated territory with no clear ownership.

Holly Buck adds depth by discussing the social dynamics and geopolitical aspects of climate intervention. She emphasizes the need for robust international dialogue and consensus-building, underscoring that technology alone won’t solve the climate crisis. Rather, a hybrid approach involving renewable energy sources and geoengineering initiatives might hold the key to a sustainable future.

Chapters

• 00:00 - 01:00: Introduction to Geoengineering Geoengineering refers to intentional and large-scale intervention in the Earth's climate system to counteract climate change. This chapter introduces the concept as a strategy to consciously impact global climate for human benefit, often involving management of solar radiation and greenhouse gases. Geoengineering is framed as a branch of science aimed at addressing climate-related issues.
• 01:01 - 03:30: Panelist Introductions The chapter begins with an introduction by Neil deGrasse Tyson, who announces a special edition of the Star Talk show focusing on geoengineering. He introduces his co-host, Gary, and they engage in light banter about Gary's well-being and physical fitness, specifically joking about the challenges of breathing out. The conversation is casual and sets up the topic for discussion.
• 03:31 - 09:00: The Science of Aerosols and Volcanoes This chapter discusses the Azimoff Memorial Debate held at the Hayden Planetarium in 2025, focusing on the topic of geoengineering, specifically as it applies to global warming. The chapter explores the controversial nature of geoengineering, weighing its potential effectiveness against scientific and ethical concerns. It highlights differing perspectives on the use of geoengineering as a solution to climate change challenges.
• 09:01 - 14:30: Aerosol Injection and Climate Cooling In this chapter, the focus is on 'Aerosol Injection and Climate Cooling'. The content seems to involve a debate or discussion among experts, as suggested by the informal tone and setting described in the transcript. A guest named Danielle, an assistant professor in the department of earth and atmospheric science at Cornell, is introduced. She has traveled to join the discussion, and there's a light mention of the perennial snow in Cornell, indicating a possibly humorous or casual tone in the conversation. The actual technical details of aerosol injection and its impact on climate cooling are not detailed in this excerpt.
• 14:31 - 20:00: Ethical and Political Considerations This chapter delves into the realm of climate science, focusing on the niche area of stratospheric aerosols—tiny particles suspended in the Earth's stratosphere. The discussion revolves around the behavior of these aerosols, particularly in the context of climate intervention methods. The aim is to understand how these methods might impact the global climate and ecosystems. Ethical and political considerations also come into play when discussing the potential of these interventions and the motivation behind scientific pursuits in this field.
• 20:01 - 27:00: Potential Risks and AI in Climate Science The chapter delves into the significant responsibility that comes with harnessing AI in climate science. Discussions have been ongoing for decades about the potential applications and implications. The narrative points to Edward Teller, known for the H-bomb, as an early contributor to this discourse.
• 27:01 - 52:00: Guest Interview: Holly Jean Buck on Climate Solutions The chapter "Guest Interview: Holly Jean Buck on Climate Solutions" delves into the longstanding conversation about the potential of deliberately altering the climate. It highlights how discussions on climate and weather modification have been ongoing for some time. As the issue of global warming gained prominence, the dialogue shifted from being a niche topic to one of increased seriousness and depth, attracting more scientific attention. The chapter reflects on these evolving perspectives and scientific considerations regarding climate interventions.

Changing the World (Literally), with Daniele Visione & Holly Buck Transcription

• 00:00 - 00:30 when we say what does geoeng engineering mean this would be the first time we consciously decide to globally affect climate to our benefit Engineering on purpose right you're talking about the radiation that's coming in and greenhouse gas is trapped It literally becomes kind of a a bounce board It's called science Yeah It's so cool isn't it it's pretty cool
• 00:30 - 01:00 This is Star Talk Neil deGrass Tyson here your personal astrophysicist and this is special edition and we're going to be talking about geoengineering Gary you cooked this up Yes My co-host Gary here How you doing man i'm good All right You're looking in good shape Um breathing in as we've discussed Breathing in It's the breathing out I'm not doing Yes or no welcome back as my co-host Pleasure All right So Gary what did you say all right So the annual Isaac
• 01:00 - 01:30 Azimoff Memorial Debate takes place here in the Hayden Planetarium and this year in 2025 it is geoengineering the pros and the cons Um seen by many as controversial It's an approach to solving solving global warming but there are others see it as potential as very very effective There are a number of different options up for consideration but uh with them come not just scientific issues but ethical considerations as well So pre-debate we kidnapped two of the panelists Sorry And
• 01:30 - 02:00 we've dragged them locked them in the office and we're going to have our own debate cuz we couldn't wait until this evening So uh did they did they come willingly help of course He's still in a box Who we have here danielle Vision Danielle welcome to Star Talk Thank you Neil Thank you Yeah Let me get a little bit of your bio here Assistant professor in the department of earth and atmospheric science at Cornell Thanks for coming down state to join us here Is it still snowing in Cornell it snows there all the time It is Yes it does Yes it is And it does Yeah we get
• 02:00 - 02:30 it Uh you're a climate scientist specializing in this cottage industry of people who care about stratospheric aerosols and their behavior Oo whether they misbehave or behave as you intend That's that's your whole Let's find out And you're also a specialist in what they're calling climate intervention methods and what its impact would be on the climate on ecosystems and even on
• 02:30 - 03:00 culture societies So I mean what a damn that's a very high responsibility Yeah it is In other words don't mess up Yeah If I lining up every lapel to say don't mess this up I you know so who had the idea that this is a thing that would work people have been discussing it for decades I would say some people point to Edward Teller actually being the first one discussing teller of the Hbomb fame
• 03:00 - 03:30 indeed or infamy um right people had discussion about could we fundamentally deliberately alter climate for a long time right as for as long as we understood what climate my weather machine I will one day rule the world Yeah Yeah No indeed So it was it is in a way one could say nothing new except then as the problem of global warming of climate change became more and more preminent more and more scientists started thinking about this maybe a bit more deeply So it wasn't just a fringe
• 03:30 - 04:00 idea It was a fringe idea in the sense that a lot of people no initially but now no longer fringe Many would still consider it fringe or at least would like not to talk about it too much That's different Okay Okay In that fringe in that sense as I would say that the scientific basis is as well established as for most of climate science but the most of the issues being in sort of the ethical societal dimension bring this topic into a different light So as I understood from my bit of reading here you had some
• 04:00 - 04:30 prior awareness and understanding of this problem or this solution with volcanoes Mhm Because they they pump all manner of nastiness Yeah Nastiness into the atmosphere Nasty Nastiness Into the atmosphere And you get to study that That's nature doing it And so what have you found from the history of volcanoes yeah So the interesting thing is that it was Benjamin Franklin one of the first
• 04:30 - 05:00 Everybody loves Ben Yeah And he was a great scientist too He was the first person to point out that potentially the weirdness in climate that people had seen in the early 19th century were due to the Tambbora eruption a volcano in Indonesia exploding in 1815 Okay So he's around of course at that time Just remind me I think Indonesia also has Crakatoa I mean there's no shortage of volcanic There's plenty of volcanoes in the tropical band Yes Yes
• 05:00 - 05:30 Close to the equator And sometimes they just go off They explode Yeah And you get to see which way the ejector goes Like it goes west to east right following prevailing air currents So people get to study this And he was clever enough to connect the dots between odd weather and an odd atmospheric phenomenon a volcano Okay So this is some of your foundational background for how you go forward from that Yes In the 20th century then there were at least three different volcanic
• 05:30 - 06:00 eruptions Not as big as Tambora but still big enough The last one being Pinatubo in 1991 And you know I was observing at a telescope and when Pinatubo went off it changed the optical properties of the atmosphere We had to redo all of our data Pissed me off It's not all about you Not not your favorite volcano I assume Cuz I was at the telescope when the stuff came by right not when it went off but it took a
• 06:00 - 06:30 while took a while Once again scientists taking their cue from mother nature And I don't mean that sarcastically It's a fact No it's great Yes So with putting it's sulfate aerosol What tell me what what is an aerosol okay So by aerosol us climate scientists define just every kind of solid or liquid particle suspended in air The suspended part that makes it an aerosol Yes The suspended part Yes Yes Okay This that the fact that it can be suspended at all makes it an aerosol no matter what it is like
• 06:30 - 07:00 SARS KV2 Mhm You see that that's a very interesting thing There were there were a lot of discussion about what constituted an aerosol when it came to the discussion around COVID because there were different definition between what climate scientists consider an aerosol These very tiny particles submicron scale they float around for a long whileic droplet is a millionth of a meter So very small very small So gravity doesn't really do much Turbulence actually keeps them afloat and the very large droplets like the one
• 07:00 - 07:30 like spit that medical practitioners consider aerosol aerosol Right so there was this was a lot of the confusion at the beginning around around airborne two slightly different usages of the term like the term of the same term same term to get to reducing mean temperatures here on earth What science do those aerosols have to perform by mean temperatures you mean average mean These are the temperatures that make fun of the lower temperatures They're mean temperatures They're pissed off temperatures There you go Okay go So the
• 07:30 - 08:00 aerosols we we think about again submicron scale that's ends up being the same size of the wavelength of most of the visible light that we get Oh so they are at the specific size where they really interact a lot with incoming sunlight That's wild So it's photochemical It's actual more like geometric No it's a physical block There's also some chemistry but mainly all of the aerosols that are around that size will reflect will interact with solar radiation through me scattering uh
• 08:00 - 08:30 through various scattering processes and scattering this MIE scattering So that's a simple scattering where the wavelength of the light matches the particle and then it redirects it because it goes off But we have like scattering is a different kind of scatter that gives us the blue sky the blue sky That's very much a whole episode That's for light Yes that was great By the way that makes so much sense because what's you're talking about the radiation that's
• 08:30 - 09:00 coming in and greenhouse gas is primarily carbon as trapped Carbon dioxide sorry is trapped because when the ground radiates heat it's the atmosphere that's trapping a different wavelength Correct Completely right Infrareds Infrareds Right So that's so wild It it it literally becomes kind of a a bounce board It's called science Yeah It's so cool isn't it it's pretty
• 09:00 - 09:30 cool How about that i'm just saying You can still call it wild but at the end of the day it's science So for this process to be successful to the level that we would all want it to be successful how much aerosols do you have to put into the stratosphere how long is it there i mean who gets to argue over where you put them does it matter then on seasonality and what have we learned from volcanoes about where it goes right and if I remember correctly I think it was the late ' 80s where there was there was talk of nuclear winter where a total
• 09:30 - 10:00 nuclear exchange would burn forest put I guess aerosols in the atmosphere blocking sunlight plunging all the earth into darkness and cold into so that would be a bad effect of it but now you're trying to make it a good effect Mhm So let me I all great questions but they can all and it can also all be connected right so aerosols we already have aerosols all around us right most of the pollution the haze that you see in New York City that's pollution Those are aerosols right but it makes for a
• 10:00 - 10:30 lovely sunset Let's be real Makes a lovely sunset It's super bad for your health When you when you burn fossil fuels you burn coal you produce these aerosols that are super bad for your health And once they has never been worse it's a beautiful sunset Wait for this I want to hear this I need to I'm just trying to think So they come down and they come down mostly we burn them very close to where we live They stay in the air but they are below the clouds So whenever then there's rain they just get washed out away Right So actually
• 10:30 - 11:00 currently we just to be clear a raindrop forms on these particles absorbs the not as much for sulfate Sulfate is actually not a as well as good as a cloud nuclei as other kind of particles Not all not all aerosol particles But when they say something things rain out they typically mean that the droplet formed on these particles No it can also mean that the droplet while falling absorbs these tinier particles That's called wet deposition or wash out of our What's the real term uh wet deposition Wash out I love that Yeah So
• 11:00 - 11:30 normally we emit as humans just as pollution over a 100red million tons of sulfur dioxide which is the precursor of all sulfate aerosols uh per year 100 million tons it's a lot and most of that falls down close to where we live right acid rain people who are alive in the 80s not me but people who are alive in the 80s will remember acid rain never because wait just so I get my chemistry remember my chemistry sulfur dioxide is
• 11:30 - 12:00 not itself acid but if combine with a hydrogen you get hydro H2SO4 which is itself sulfuric acid and that would be the acid range SO2 gets oxidized by O the radical O which is present everywhere in the atmosphere and this then eventually results another three reactions and results SO3 and then H2SO4 got and then this H2SO4 it's in vapor form sulfuric acid and then tends to nucleate into sulfuric acid particles liquid aerosol droplet acid rain Yep and
• 12:00 - 12:30 as it rained So back in the 80s the US was emitting way more sulfur than it is now And so the global emissions were 160 million 150 million tons Now we're getting the US has been going down for a while Europe as well China and India have been going up but in general we're still around 100 million tons These aerosol particles do have a cooling effect We know this The IPCC the Intergovernmental Panel for Climate Change has known these for a while They
• 12:30 - 13:00 do cover up a small fraction of the warming produced by the greenhouse gases What you're saying is our effort to clean up the air has taken these particles out and thereby increased the effects of global warming Unmasked It has unmasked unmasked That's the word that that normally it's used It has unmasked part of the global warming that before was sort of hidden So and this is the other part of the observation right you need but to do this masking close to the
• 13:00 - 13:30 surface you need hundreds of millions of tons because these aerosols stay just a couple of days Mhm Okay So the idea behind something like stratospheric aerosol injection is what if you could put a tiny fraction of these aerosols they would stay though for 100 times longer than they do at the surface before falling down right months up to a year Essentially you would get more bangs for your buck right with just a smaller fraction you would get the same amount of cooling but far away from where people live and breathe and you
• 13:30 - 14:00 could get the same effect while not pushing pull So what what's what makes the stratosphere special for how long something would last there is it because we're not making clouds there right So there's no clouds there's no water vapor The stratosphere is very dry So there's no rain out But also the troposphere it's called troposphere because it's turbulent right because there are turbulent the where we live right where where airplanes are above the troposphere there's a stratosphere that is called like that because it's very stratified things there's no turbulence
• 14:00 - 14:30 things move very slowly so once you I never thought about that because if you have turbulence it's turbulence up and down and if you're up and down turbulence it's not stratified so that's why you call it stratosphere very good thank you and so once you put in Italian what is is it stratosphera I knew it would be a cool word stratosphere Well that's where it comes from right yes Yes It's that the original Latinop Latin root So yeah once you put something especially in the tropical
• 14:30 - 15:00 stratosphere that's where there is the large scale what we call the breer doson circulation It's essentially this large scale stratospheric circulation that push thing pushes things up close to the tropics and then pushes them pole wward So eventually the air that is in the stratosphere goes back down but close to the pole and it takes a year a year and a half before a parcel of air that originates or of any material that is in the stratosphere goes all the way gets removed from the stratosphere Got it And you get a good spreading of the effect
• 15:00 - 15:30 that too because right because the other thing is that both on a latitude but even more importantly on a longitudinal way as in once if you put and this is another one thing that makes stratospheric aerosol injection complex from a political point of view is that you can't put these aerosols on top of the US and they're not going to stay there They're going to spread throughout definitely the whole latitudinal band So China which is on the same latitude as the US or Europe they're all these aerosols are going to in a week So
• 15:30 - 16:00 longitudinally the winds are very fast and so it in a week or two there's a complete spread and we see that with volcanoes all the time Small volcanic plumes spread in a couple of weeks throughout the whole that's how I know cuz I was in the Chilean Andes and the Pinatubo was east of us that just came due west just messed all to mess you up mess mess me up So when we had that explosion in Iceland it brought civil aviation to the ground test to see if he
• 16:00 - 16:30 can pronounce the name of that volcano What was the name of that volcano in Iceland everybody calls it a a uh I have a lot of volcan volcanologist They just call it You got the answer you deserved That's the answer I deserve But that stopped air traffic in and out of Heathrow and everywhere in Europe Yeah But that was not the sulfate because So do do we have a potential issue because you say it's going to sit above this area of commercial airflight Will it not descend so two things So volcanoes explode all the times and when they
• 16:30 - 17:00 explode the main thing they do the short-term larger effect is the ash Right Right So that's the thing that is very dangerous for aviation because when ash interacts with the with the aircraft it can up everything right It can glassify and so it can be a real danger Some volcanoes Did you say glassify i think so And I'm not sure whether that's an actual scientific term but let's pretend it is I love that So this is the ash getting heated in the engine right turning into glass Glass But wasn't it already heated in the volcano right But
• 17:00 - 17:30 then it cools down pretty quickly and so the ash actually forms that way and then it can sort of undergo So the ash is pretty okay So when people get buried in ash like they did in Pompei No no Uh no Pompei was not ash Eolano was ash Okay Pompei was a was just a magma Yeah The lava was a magma flow It it was a actually a mud flow really Oh that's right That's why everything was preserved Preserved right that's right That's right It was mud flow Yeah So I hadn't fully appreciated what the ash was and what it can be at its worst Yeah
• 17:30 - 18:00 So the this ash is the first thing the thing you actually see You don't really see the sulfate right but it's the thing that is dangerous over a one two days time scale a week right also because this ash is also very tiny and so you can breathe in It's very dangerous and so on and it's dangerous for aviation Some volcanic eruptions also have what for climate scientists is a lot of sulfate Not all volcanic eruptions also launch sulfate in the atmosphere For instance Hunga Tonga that happened in
• 18:00 - 18:30 2022 was a huge volcanic eruption There was almost no sulfate It was just water vapor pushed up from from the ocean but there was almost no sulfate Hunga Tonga had something like 300,000 tons of sulfate Pinatubo had 17 million tons of sulfate in a couple of hours And how much does a kuna matata have um I would have to go back and check my numbers I don't know Good question So we're putting aerosols into the stratosphere and we've got the the
• 18:30 - 19:00 natural cycle Mhm of the the wind systems How do you discuss this with sovereign nations and and they say "Well I don't want that flying over my territory." who then owns the territory above particular country Do you have to find your counterpart in every country so that they can speak to their governments to come to an agreement on this that's definitely what we do as scientists Yes I constantly talk and work with climate scientists from all over the world Um for sure For your question though I would say nobody knows
• 19:00 - 19:30 who the stratosphere belongs to The stratosphere of all places is actually one of the least regulated Uh we know air airspace is in the troposphere and so we know how what who's who's liable for things that happen in the troposphere and then there's space and some other treaties regulating that but nobody really had to regulate the stratosphere for a long time The only treaty that exists is the Montreal protocol for the for substances that affect stratospheric ozone which protects us from damaging ultraviolet
• 19:30 - 20:00 light But that whole protocol was just for the ozone Just for the ozone It was just for the ozone And a couple of years ago there was an increase in one of these ozone depleting substances that was not predicted was not expected and it took countries a year to figure out from which country this depleting substance this increasing depleting substance was coming from But even then the hanging who which country was it well it was a country in Asia Okay Okay uh even you see interesting thing was that the agency the US scientific agency
• 20:00 - 20:30 that found out about where this uh product was coming from couldn't just point the finger and say this is coming from you right they could say we think that this increase is coming from this region of the world but there was no there is no enforcement mechanism even in the mon protocol uh that could say oh you have to stop I mean they the country voluntarily agreed to stop right so a lot of these international treaties don't really have enforcement mechanisms for the Montreal Protocol It's all a
• 20:30 - 21:00 matter of all countries agreeing that ozone is important and it should be protected I think more countries signed that than any other treaty ever It is the most successful climate and environmental protection treaty in the world Yeah Every country signed it because every country realized how important it was to have an ozone year Yeah So Chuck you missed it Yeah Okay It was a cosmic phenomenon that affect mostly white people and so they acted they that is surprisingly correct But yeah
• 21:00 - 21:30 what does it take to motivate the powerful countries of the world Just say not get their tan If their tan is at risk you're going to lose the beaches Yeah So what could the stress aerosols achieve so first of all very clear these aerosols cannot solve climate change Climate change is a whole other problem It comes from the greenhouse gases that we have in it's a band-aid say it's a
• 21:30 - 22:00 band-aid It's a stop gap You can call it however you want It's something you know some people dismissively say well it's like taking an aspirin if you have cancer It's not treating the underlying causes but even if you have cancer you're the right to a dignified life and not to suffer from other pains right and so in a way is a band-aid in the sense that yes it could help temperature from going up right it could prevent further warming and this way could reduce some of the risks that come from this warming that we know are going to come from this warming and that we already observing
• 22:00 - 22:30 are coming with the warming that we see now So a couple questions fast ones Mhm Climate seems to me even as an astrophysicist to be an immensely complex problem to solve given all the variables given the turbulence in an atmosphere with gas and different gas species and the interaction of the atmosphere with the ocean and the land all of this So is AI helping you in any of this we are
• 22:30 - 23:00 definitely exploring a lot of ways in which AI could help reading the the huge amount of data that we already have For instance from satellite observation of things like plumes coming out of volcanoes Nobody could look at all of them right that's what AI is very good at Pattern recognition finding stuff that humans would have a hard time with So this is really an emerging field but there's a lot of interesting things that we are starting to do with AI Okay So then here's a risk that I learned about
• 23:00 - 23:30 and I just want to know is it authentic and is it the worst thing to worry about if the temperature starts rising and you say we need more aerosols and so you got this these two competing forces you get to tamp it down then there's a terrorist attack on the people putting up the aerosols Then the aerosol falls out Mhm And now you have a catastrophic shock to the system because the the greenhouse gases going up Thought you were masking for so long You were asking for so long then it's instantly you have a
• 23:30 - 24:00 catastrophic exposure to greenhouse warming How much do you think about contingencies here mhm That's a great question and I would say it is something to worry about except I would say it would not be instantaneous if you stopped putting since these aerosols stay for so long If you stop putting them for a day a week a month nothing really changes because the aerosols stay on for a long time Now if you stop for a year or two years that's where you
• 24:00 - 24:30 unmask all the worm right so this is your So that gives you some you have time You have a cushion Yeah to find the terrorist to find the terrorist and kick their ass and rebuild and rebuild but of course you would have I think this is a very valid concern when it comes to um strpheric carousels but it's also one that points out to the fact that essentially you would need to plan carefully have contingency plans and you could not rely on just one actor doing this right because this is a worldwide thing could someone go up and put
• 24:30 - 25:00 something sure maybe they could before they were stopped but that's not how you would achieve anything to achieve anything you would need a carefully planned thing with contingency plans for what happens if we need to stop for instance I've done research on what would happen if a volcanic eruption happened while you're doing this what would you do and well it turns out that you know then you would ramp down or maybe shift where you're putting the aerosols to try to manage this is true geoengineering you understand your planet and you interact in a way to your benefit yeah the key difference is
• 25:00 - 25:30 really in the word deliberate when we say what does geoengineering mean and a lot of people ask me well haven't we been geoengineering the planet already uh with all the greenhouse gases maybe in a way but the point of gineering we say deliberate because this would be the first time we consciously decide to globally affect climate to our benefit yeah now what about unintended consequences because you do something here something else has to happen over there so what do you anticipate or what
• 25:30 - 26:00 have you seen that's way too polite Uh how can this go horribly wrong there you go That is a perfectly fair question The things you look that you know could go wrong and then there are the things you don't know can go wrong For something as catastrophic as Earth's atmosphere where does your confidence come from our confidence comes from a lot of different observation The main one being we do have an upper bound for
• 26:00 - 26:30 how wrong things can go And that's again Pinatubo If a volcano can dump 17 or 20 million tons of sulfate all at once into the stratosphere into the stratosphere and things happened after that right temperatures cooled There were changes in atmospheric chemistry and so on But fundamentally that's really as catastrophic as it can get And we've been able to understand what happened there Right on top of all of that all of these sulfate came down Yes But there is
• 26:30 - 27:00 so much more When we talk about sulfate the reason we do that is because we understand the environmental impacts They're not good for sure but we understand them Now you could be thinking of what if we try to engineer a perfect compound to put in the stratosphere instead of sulfate something that works better that is not as toxic You could do that People are thinking about that That's legit But in that case that's not something that we understand how it interacts with the environment long term Well sulfate is
• 27:00 - 27:30 something we understand very well So I would say that it's the devil you know right it's a devil we know It's we understand the upper bound of how wrong You mean you have experience with it You've seen it happen in before And just to be clear when the rain comes out you acidify you can acidify regions that could be harmful to wildlife or plant life So again um in this as opposed to when we do it through pollution these aerosols would mix very well and most of that actually would fall most of the aerosols that would fall over the oceans
• 27:30 - 28:00 where really sulfate is not something that affects ocean acidification that much because that's mostly carbon driven right again that's a clear trade-off you would increase pollution by a little bit right 10% more than now in many locations you would spread it evenly but it will still come down and does that as affect fact Yes that's one of the again the that's one of the things we definitely are looking into and should be looking into more actually quantifying and understanding these trade-offs all the things that could go wrong and it could very well be that
• 28:00 - 28:30 there are other things that could go wrong that we don't know yet or maybe we haven't thought about which is why I always welcome other climate scientists starting to look into this field because there if suddenly we found we found a roadblock something we hadn't thought about nobody had thought about in the last 30 that would make this no look we really can't do this is too dangerous for this reason okay at least we know right the point of doing research is that then at least we can say nope we've thought about this here's the reason why we
• 28:30 - 29:00 can't do that so so I I have an analogy from physics where in the large hadron collider where they're creating energies where there was some risk that you might create a black hole small risk it's a small black hole yeah Yeah that would then consume the earth as it moved through And so why do you proceed even if that's such a small risk because that's a small risk but it it's
• 29:00 - 29:30 catastrophic to the planet And it turns out nature gave us examples Mhm They're cosmic rays that come from deep space like the center of the galaxy at extremely high energies higher energy than anything we're making inside the accelerator And they collide with molecules in our atmosphere and it's not making black holes and we've been here for 5 billion years So so that's the that's that's the cosmic peanut pinatibu or pinatuba punatuba That's the cosmic
• 29:30 - 30:00 peanut butter We have nature to calibrate our expectations Yeah Where are we with the simulations and therefore then testing because we can sit here and have a talking shop for decades It sounds like we have because I'm part of the team now obviously right but surely this testing goes on but there must be something pushing back for this not to be the case because this sounds too good to be true to even if it's a band-aid I think we'll take the band-aid right now Yeah I think that's part of the issue right and I would say
• 30:00 - 30:30 I work a lot with social scientists as well and uh when it comes to this topic and one time I was talking to one of my colleagues and he really asked me the same question like well then this sounds good Why aren't we doing it and we kind of set out to think about this from a societal perspective Right As any good scientist should do You want to look at all angles even angles opposite what where you're trying to go with it Right Yeah And it is clear that there are a lot of worries right um when you talk to people about it they're like "Wow this sounds crazy." And that's a perfectly
• 30:30 - 31:00 good reaction Now the question is when do and when do people stop having that reaction will it ever happen and what is going to take some people suggest that once people are going to experience more and more the effects of climate change that's going to change their mind Desperation is what you're saying I don't think I do not think we should make plans out of desperation Okay On the other hand people are saying well will there be a point in which we are secure enough into our assessments that this will convince most people right i
• 31:00 - 31:30 think that's kind of the angle that I try to work with as in I think that the main ways in which we're going to have meaningful discussions about this and move forward and maybe start even outdoor testing is once we've put the whole scientific community in a way behind assessing robustly what do we know and understand about something like trosphicol injection So at this point there's just yeah honestly a handful of scientists compared to the whole climate science endeavor but the amount of people that are looking into this is
• 31:30 - 32:00 getting bigger and bigger and so I think we're pretty close to having broader international assessments around the topic which means that because eventually when I maybe talk to policy makers or to people in other country they don't want to know the results of my study or of my climate model run they want to know what's the agreement Yeah Right So that's kind of why it's so important to talk about this from an international you need you need a geopolitical scientific consensus consensus Imagine if they had thought
• 32:00 - 32:30 about that with something like the IPCC They really needed and once you have that you might be in a better position Then you get 10 people in a discussion You end up with 12 opinions Of course always the case But trying to get nations to sit around a table and well it's not bothering me or you're not putting that over my sky You Oh yeah They're not in my backyard So how far are we from making something like this implemented i would have absolutely no way to predict that I would say and be
• 32:30 - 33:00 honest But I think we can for instance look at climate change right and say honestly the first assessment report from the IPCC was in 1994 or was in the early 90s and we've advanced greatly but fundamentally conclusions haven't really changed from 1994 which is we add greenhouse gases that's bad that increases warming and that's going to make things worse True And there have been I want to take in this case the optimistic view of saying you know there have been many advances when it comes to
• 33:00 - 33:30 climate change mitigation and policy Have there been enough definitely not But there have been right there have been the Paris agreement Now is the United States of America out of the Paris agreement yes it is Will they stay for long i don't know But you know solar and wind are kind of unstoppable There's a lot of You're right They're going now Yeah Europe is very much um into renewable China is even more than Europe and the United States in spite of their
• 33:30 - 34:00 carbon footprint growing in some sectors So still making great advances Yes they are because they understand they see it as an economic issue They don't even care right now They look at it as this is a necessity for our economy unlike unfortunately the supposed greatest economy in the world So so in this sense I guess as a scientist I'm not going to be the one making the decision about whether to do this or not I shouldn't be It should be no sc you know me and I'm sorry Neil as well we've met enough scientists we shouldn't be the one
• 34:00 - 34:30 making this kind of decisions Come on Well you should if you can laugh maniacally while you're doing it That's how it gets done Yeah that's what you're doing But we can provide I still think that the overall the strongest merit of science is providing the information that can let people make the good decisions Will they make good decisions all the time no Because we're humans and we don't But that's not a good reason why not to provide the the information that could
• 34:30 - 35:00 allow people to make these decisions So let me land this plane by saying every this stratospheric plane Hey let me say every disaster movie begins with people in charge ignoring the advice of scientists Just saying I hear you That's it Danielle vit I love how you say that Oh I love thinking about how to say it Thanks for joining us here Oh my gosh We've loved your expertise and it put it in the mix
• 35:00 - 35:30 and stir it up and see what comes out the other side As these years progress we don't know where the valuation will land No we know Stop Come on guys It's America in 2025 We America right now America So again thank you for joining us Thank you So next up is Holly Jean Buck associate professor of environment and sustainability at the University of Buffalo That's Sunni Sunni
• 35:30 - 36:00 Buffalo Yeah So ain't that some when I was growing up no one would have imagined a department with this title environment and sustainability And that's why we're in this mess that we are in right now because nobody envisioned needing this need needing this Yeah I also have her down Radcliffe Salata climate justice fellow at Harvard Oh that sounds like a superhero That sounds badass right cape and everything And interdisciplinary environmental
• 36:00 - 36:30 social scientist and uh with special attention to how people engage with emerging climate control technologies Yeah that's a thing That's like a whole sociological thing It has to be It's got to be Why why not and my favorite title of them all uh author of a book from 2019 after geoengineering climate tragedy repair and restoration Wow Sounds very much like the movie The Day After Yeah Or or what's that other
• 36:30 - 37:00 movie uh uh uh Snowpiercer Snowpiercer That was after Yeah that that's where climate people messed up Yeah exactly Welcome to Star Talk Holly Thanks so much It's great to be here Do we call you Holly Jean or just Holly either one's great Either one's great Holly Jean's kind of it's called Holly Jean Holly Jean sounds like a uh country western star you know Hi Jean Hi Jean Uh so we've just come off of a conversation looking at the pros and cons of aerosol
• 37:00 - 37:30 injections into the atmosphere Could you just give us some options on how to achieve the same effect that are banding about today the same effect as solar geoengineering Yeah I mean it's it's it's got it's got a noble goal to sort of protect Earth from our own misdeeds regarding climate And so if we don't do that what are you going to offer us um am I was that Did I direct
• 37:30 - 38:00 that question to you oh I'm sorry Cuz I had an answer Well there's plan A Shall we go over plan A please yes So a whole bunch of countries including the US up until a minute ago but states as well New York State have signed on to these net zero targets right so ideas that it's net zero carbon dioxide or greenhouse gas in general Yeah I mean they're a little bit different targets but yeah the the main idea is you don't put out more than you
• 38:00 - 38:30 can remove Oh And that needs to happen by midcentury which is actually yesterday Really soon It could have happened yesterday and we've needs to happen yesterday Yeah And we and we still got some issues if if it would have happened yesterday But go ahead So basically remaking our whole energy system right our built environment It's a big transformation That's that's why people are talking about Yeah geoengineering All right So I get that And this aerosol in the atmosphere solution sounds so Bonvillain
• 38:30 - 39:00 It it it does sound sexy doesn't it you know it sounds like this should be in a movie right but why not just take the carbon dioxide out of the atmosphere and they don't have to worry about any of this well you sound like my mother You know what you need you need a sitcom Why don't you have a sitcom in other words yeah that's Go ahead We do need to do some of that but there's a limit at how much we can do I mean think about think about all the effort it took
• 39:00 - 39:30 to take it out of the ground right all the pipes all the refining all the distribution all of that infrastructure We're talking about building that basically all over again to put it back underground So and there are limited places where you can actually store CO2 Yeah it's interesting sort of macro way to see that It is Yeah that's a really interesting way to look at it because you never really consider how much infrastructure is involved in just oil
• 39:30 - 40:00 extraction and then refinery just that let alone everything else involved to get it to you where you know everything which I can put it I don't have to bury it do I for example the white cliffs of do that's limestone cliffs and that's a repository of carbon from our environment and they're not buried but not that we're making that but I'm just that didn't involve a pipe to put it back into the ground Yeah So people talk about closed system and open system carbon removal So in a closed system you
• 40:00 - 40:30 would have an injection well You'd be injecting that into rock formations deep underground You more or less know where it is But what you're just talking about is more of an open system approach Putting it into the ocean putting it into fields where you can make rocks weather faster That's a bit trickier because it's harder to measure what's going on How are we transporting this because you've got certain industries that produce an awful lot of CO2 and then they don't have somewhere right on
• 40:30 - 41:00 their doorstep to screw all this away I'll call it that So how are we pipes one are we transporting it in any other way barges rail trucks the same as the same as oil It's exactly the same two trucks go opposite directions on the highway They took each other in two So that's that that was my that was my soft point That's funny So if we're spending how many billions on carbon capture plants right and I just say to
• 41:00 - 41:30 myself just are we actually is that a real thing we spent a few billions trying to start them We'll see if they still it's still a nent Yeah very much nent Okay Are they better than trees at capturing goods that's a very good question I love that Yeah I mean trees are great for a whole bunch of reasons The thing with these land-based approaches we need more of them for providing habitat for a million reasons but we can't expect nature to do all the work here of what we took out of the
• 41:30 - 42:00 ground Yes Right We have limited land for for trees unfortunately because we want that land for growing food and and so basically we should stop eating That's really answer here Stop eating and heating Eating and heating Let it go So I get many of the land solutions to this but how about ocean solutions other than CO2 just getting absorbed into the water surely there are creatures out there that would value some uptake in CO2 If you're talking about the whale concept that one might not scale to the
• 42:00 - 42:30 levels we need it to But if you're talking about plankton on the other hand that seems more promising These are really early stages of research though But the theory seems really positive So you how does it work what's the procedure basically the concept of ocean iron fertilization would be to add nutrients to the ocean to create a big plankton bloom The plankton falls down to the bottom of the ocean What do
• 42:30 - 43:00 plankton blooms have anything to do with CO2 or are these the photosynthetic plankton yeah Yeah Oh like a tree Yeah Yeah like a doing what a plant would do right yeah exactly Oh okay The light bulb went on Yeah Thank you Thank you So it's an LED light bulb I would expect nothing Thank you So you're growing plankton in the presence of the CO2 No differently how you would grow trees in the presence of CO2 Except oceans are huge So what happens when the
• 43:00 - 43:30 plankton die and then they fall to the bottom then what i mean ideally that CO2 would stay at the bottom but that this is the issue with this category of approaches is that the science is really early and the science is expensive right because you need ocean chartered vehicles going out there doing experiments and we just haven't really begun that process it's not a laboratory but the potential for this sink and die of the phytolankton is capturing massive
• 43:30 - 44:00 amounts of CO2 but surely that has some toxicity in in the ecosystem Yeah What does it do with oxygen right exactly There's little creatures down there that they do matter I care about them What was the little microscopic creature that was here that put all the oxygen in the air oh yeah Cyanobacteria Cyanobacteria right yeah So there are consequences that happen when you do this kind of stuff Yeah But they would absorb CO2 and release oxygen So what what's so bad
• 44:00 - 44:30 about that i mean for ocean life what do you have against oxygen what kind of what kind of a person are you remember I'm a sociologist Okay now we get it No it's it's this lack of joined up thinking that's got us in this situation in the first place So surely we've got to look at the effect of every living thing in any environment we go into But the problem is we need to explore We need to research further And it doesn't look as if there's a desire or possibly
• 44:30 - 45:00 the finances to do it Or am I wrong it's just short of what's needed to really get into some of these questions All right So if if you're not a sociologist of plankton you'd be a sociologist of people So how do the effects of all these efforts land differently ac around the world either economically or geographically well the rest of the world is ripping us off That's the first thing And it's time for us to make sure
• 45:00 - 45:30 that we have dominance The kind of dominance that comes from drill baby drill Thank you Sure Chew on the nose No I mean there's a couple of issues here One is that unless people grasp the climate change the energy transition the situation we're in talking to them about these ideas is probably not going to land very well because if you don't know the you know why we would try it in the first place
• 45:30 - 46:00 right so but there are countries who have nowhere near the resources to participate in this So they would be passive observers possibly even victims of our efforts or our folly And oddly enough those countries are far more amendable to the solutions that we need to enact in order to solve this problem You would think that from what you said that they would be the ones who would be most skeptical They're not We're the freaking problem Was that right yeah Yeah We actually do have some research
• 46:00 - 46:30 that colleagues of mine have done in several different countries trying to learn about people's perceptions and they did find more support for countries in the global south countries that are facing a lot of climate impacts right now But I would caution that with most people haven't heard anything about any of these approaches So what somebody hears in a survey or initially is going to be shaped by what people say about it other messengers their friends and family once they start to discuss it
• 46:30 - 47:00 with other people which is I think it was this year's Yale report that still it's somewhere around upwards 53% of people say they rarely or never talk about climate change with friends or family That's this year's report So it's we're we're just not even discussing it at all We're we're la So right right now this little group here are outliers So how how do we then think about this the social consequences or ethical
• 47:00 - 47:30 issues of this down the line how do you handle that i mean I think the first step is just to involve more people in the conversation Okay And that can be done a lot of ways It hardly ever happens You need agencies or organizations that'll do that Yeah You need actually dedicated staff to work on it It's a big challenge So who's the most important voices that need to be heard in in regards of your voice no My voice Lean into the microphone My voice Go Do it ASMR
• 47:30 - 48:00 It's my voice Yes Holly Jean is speaking Is it Is it the powerful rich western nations or is it the global south is it African nations is that is there a demographic that or group well everybody has a stake and everybody needs to do something with with climate and energy right nobody can sit by Yeah Nobody Nobody's getting out of this one No So what of all the options that you've seen what horse would you bet on as the most
• 48:00 - 48:30 effective but also most humane if I may I think we need to triple nuclear capacity We have a goal about that or if we did I hope we keep doing that We need abundant clean energy for people um because a lot of people don't have access to energy and turn the tables on the anti-nuke movement that had been so strong over the decades I hope so We've seen public sentiment on that shift pretty quickly actually So that's the show we had with Katherine Huff on the
• 48:30 - 49:00 small modular reactors right because the nuclear reactors can be scaled and they and they can be built anywhere you need them right i don't think they're at the point where they can commercially put them in Although we've had nuclear reactors in submarines Oh yeah For some time So there must be some way to scale it and make it uh Oh yeah practical Oh yeah Completely Completely Plus there's not as much spoken of how dependent France has been on nuclear power for
• 49:00 - 49:30 decades And it's not even a thing right they'll protest anything at any time of day except smoking I give you I give you a true example about France's nuclear program New I have to say new killer Stop giving me France cancer Every every time you're imitating a French person They put they put a nuclear power plant on the northwest coast of France closer to London than it was to Paris That's how much the French love the Brits Okay So is there going to be a mistake that we make in our attempts to do the
• 49:30 - 50:00 right thing what are we most likely going to get wrong i mean you can see a lot of um problems considering that we're dismantling our capacity to even monitor what's going on in terms of you know attacks on science and government So yeah there's tons of risks Although people who are concerned I share their concern Okay Give us something positive here Please tell us tell us what are you hopeful for well I I think that public
• 50:00 - 50:30 um thinking about this can and will shift The question is one of timing That's why we're talking about geoengineering Yeah But you would know better than others what would help make that shift What kind of forces need to be in play to change an attitude or perspective has there been something in history that you're familiar with where a a public sea change of opinion has happened for the better because that's kind of the shift that we need to have for this at least here in America Some
• 50:30 - 51:00 of the examples people point to are the civil rights movement okay gay marriage these um social things I think it's a little bit trickier when you're talking about reconfiguring the built environment but but the mindset has to happen first How about we get ahead of the story there seems to be a fair bit of misinformation regarding climate global warming or disinformation Well that's exactly it So there's this disinformation How about we get ahead of
• 51:00 - 51:30 that narrative and start to put out real solid strong and take that 53% and make it much much bigger I mean you asked me about technologies and I said nuclear but we have to also shift the framing into investing in social infrastructure investing in people And I think that because we have an administrations that's backing away from that that's crashing our social infrastructure people are going to recognize the value in the relationships the agencies
• 51:30 - 52:00 functioning government and we'll build that capacity to when we do have the political will to build these new technologies we'll have the social will that matches it Not to put words in your mouth but are you saying that the dismantling of these social structures these social institutions may awaken people to their need in ways that they had previously taken for granted yeah we had a problem even before Trump where we passed all this money in the US for climate and energy
• 52:00 - 52:30 projects and we couldn't get it spent fast enough because we didn't have enough people in the agencies to spend it to review it to even hear about the grants People on the ground didn't know And now people are realizing you need people to do this It's not just about investing in tech So the what I was going to say is it takes money It actually takes money to spend money It it takes money to educate people And how do you combat the other side which which
• 52:30 - 53:00 is dis disinformation fossil fuel companies through their so-called outlets and foundations right they spent $900 million that was tracked last year $900 million on disinformation So we got to come up against that you know So that I mean that's a serious thing But I and we got to like land this plane real quick But presumably if you ask them they wouldn't say it was disinformation They
• 53:00 - 53:30 would just say it's information So the what you really have to do is empower the listener to know the difference from a sociological perspective How do you do that yeah You don't go to people and say you're misinformed because then it's like you're saying "Well you're dumb You didn't know the right information." So that's my problem I've been an idiot Jesus You you you give them information that's grounded in science and you say they're
• 53:30 - 54:00 really hard tradeoffs Um but you have choices It's important that you don't make people feel like all of this stuff is going to take away their freedom That's what they're worried about Saying we do such a good job Start calling electricity Liberty Juice Liberty Juice Liberty Juice We need a focus group You want to save America what you got to do is get a car that runs on Liberty Juice All right this thought experiment Pretty good Chuck I think that's the answers
• 54:00 - 54:30 are out there Yeah Say we say we fall on a technology that is practical cost effective give or take and we do get ourselves to these pre-industrial zero levels Will we not think well it doesn't matter We can burn all the fossil fuels we want because we can control it now You okay with that that's a that's a big argument Yeah man Is that is that likely to happen for us because we've seen we've driven ourselves if we become good at it Yeah Then drill baby drill Who
• 54:30 - 55:00 cares i just think burning rocks is kind of archaic Like I just think we can do better I mean whatever I think we can come out with something that outco competes that and also economically then and then the economics drives it But do we not as as a species do that thing anyway where we tie our own shoelaces together or find a way to shoot oursel in the foot speak for yourself dude I was I was I was good Uh well I think the
• 55:00 - 55:30 danger that many people see is that once you have anything that's viable on a geoengineering scale which we're nowhere near by the way but once you do that fossil fuel companies will then use that as a cudgel to say we can keep burning fuel you know So a lot of people are like that's my concern Yeah a lot of people are like you foresee that presumably Yeah I wrote I wrote a book called Ending Fossil Fuels that was about the challenge of how you end
• 55:30 - 56:00 fossil fuels and the geopolitics of it are really tough because some countries really depend on this for their revenue and their legitimacy and I could see them saying well let's keep keep on going So countries like Venezuela or Qatar or Russia Yeah Yeah These are all the countries Yeah So it's a whole other thing We're saying stop burning fossil fuel and you'll bankrupt the country Yeah they built their whole economy on it Unless we're willing to make massive transfers of finance which we apparently
• 56:00 - 56:30 aren't Yeah Well then that becomes your problem as a sociologist I'll take all the problems You fix it A lot of work I love it Well Professor Buck thank you for being on Star Talk Yes Delighted to have you on the Azimov panel and that you you you guys kidnapped her for the for Star Talk Very good job here Thank you Thanks so much And uh just so you know how deeply I respect your profession My father is a sociologist and uh I I was actually
• 56:30 - 57:00 received a sociology award from Congress just they I think they appreciated how much I always tried to think about the impact of science on people and I was very moved by that and so I wish you well Thank you And maybe some luck We might need some too based on how stuff goes down Yeah with the human interaction function that's out there Yeah we're screwed Thank you Chuck for that
• 57:00 - 57:30 So Holly Chuck Gary pleasure Always good Always a pleasure This has been another edition of Star Talk special edition Geoengineering the good the bad the ugly Until next time you're the Grass Tyson Keep looking up