Podcaster: Fraser Cain & Dr. Pamela Gay
Title: Ep. 653: Climate Change: Looking at the Variables
Organization: Astronomy Cast
Link: http://www.astronomycast.com
Description
Climate change is on our minds these days, with increasing wildfires, droughts and floods. What are the variables that play into a planet’s changing climate, and what can this teach us about the search for habitable planets across the Milky Way?
Bio: Fraser Cain is the publisher of Universe Today and Dr. Pamela Gay is a Senior Scientist at Planetary Science Institute and a Director of CosmoQuest. They team up to do Astronomy Cast, a weekly facts-based journey through the cosmos
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Interesting podcast. I would think that trying to calculate the influence that humans have on the climate is still an unsettled science. I recently read an interesting book written by Dr. Steven Koonin a former undersecretary of energy under Mr. Obama’s administration. He was also hired by BP to research renewable energy sources. He has had a long and distinguished career in the field of energy and climate science. The book is well written and he actually put his researched data into graphs/charts which makes it easier for the non-science reader to understand. I think, as he pointed out, the media and politicians as well as some scientist have exaggerated the doom and gloom scenario of climate change. Weather is certainly not an exact science, but we are getting a better understand of it. In the future our weather reports will probably be more accurate than they are today. Climate/climate change, I feel, also fits into that category. When Mr. Gore was on Meet the Press 24 July 2022 and he stated that the record high temperatures sweeping the US is a direct result of climate change he was putting fear into the people watching because he was trying to promote the “Narrative”. Attributing any single weather event to climate change is a complicated business. The forest fires we have had over the last few years can be attributed to woodlot management or lack of. When I was out in Yellowstone National Park in 1986 I saw a lot of dead fall that was choking the forest floor. One of our guides commented that this place was an inferno waiting to ignite because of all the dead fall. Two years later it did ignite. We have a long way to go still when it comes to climate/climate change. Throwing money at it does not guarantee anything. If we rush in, as some would like, and get it wrong we could do more harm than we ever conceived of. The media and the politicians need to tone down the rhetoric and take a sensible approach to this problem instead of fearmonger. I think more people would come around to accepting that the earth is warming and has since the last ice age with a few periods of cooling. Dr. Koonin would be a good person to lead something like this. I enjoyed the podcast and look forward to another one on this important topic.