Are Fossil Fuels the Problem? | Dr. Emily Fischer of Science Moms - video Dailymotion

MotorTrend

MotorTrend's Ed Loh & Jonny Lieberman chat with Dr. Emily Fischer of Science Moms to talk all about climate change

Transcript

00:00:00 Welcome to The Inevitable, a podcast by Motor Trend.

00:00:04 [MUSIC]

00:00:14 Hi there, and welcome to The Inevitable. This is the

00:00:19 vodcast that's brought to you by the all-electric Nissan

00:00:22 Aria, inspired by the future, designed for the now.

00:00:26 We're here to talk about the future of transportation,

00:00:29 the future of cars, where we're going, how we're going

00:00:31 to get there. I'm Johnny Lieberman. This is Ed Lowe.

00:00:34 Hello. Today, we have an amazing professor of

00:00:41 atmospheric science that we're going to talk to.

00:00:43 We're going to cover climate change. We're going to

00:00:45 cover atmospheric science. We're going to talk about

00:00:48 a wide range of topics, including wildfires, outdoor

00:00:52 air quality, indoor air quality.

00:00:54 Childhood asthma.

00:00:55 Childhood asthma.

00:00:57 And, most importantly, what we can do to combat all

00:01:00 of this. And it's sort of like really where we started,

00:01:04 which was our inevitable future, meaning the switch

00:01:08 to electrification.

00:01:09 Yes. Thank you.

00:01:10 But first, let's talk a little bit about...

00:01:14 We have a question of the week.

00:01:16 And it really kind of came out of a weird place,

00:01:18 to be honest. I was browsing Facebook, and I saw a

00:01:22 comment from somebody who was claiming that we were

00:01:29 on...

00:01:30 We're globalists.

00:01:31 We're globalists, essentially.

00:01:32 We're being paid by Bill Gates and George Soros to

00:01:34 take away your V8.

00:01:37 Yeah. Which I didn't really understand.

00:01:40 And, honestly, the guy threw the name of the head,

00:01:42 Klaus Schwab, the head of the World Economic, WEC,

00:01:46 Consortium of World Economic Reform, saying that

00:01:48 motor trend has this agenda. And I dug right down

00:01:51 into it.

00:01:52 And, to be honest, we had an article recently that

00:01:55 John just wanted to talk about.

00:01:57 Oh, talk about it.

00:01:58 It was about the Corvette Z06 and climate change.

00:02:00 It was written by our man Billy Rabock. He's awesome.

00:02:04 He works on our Buyer's Guide team. Great guy.

00:02:08 And he had some time in this Corvette Z06, and he

00:02:10 wanted to take it to Death Valley, and the roads were

00:02:12 closed because we had some flooding.

00:02:14 And it was a personal account, more of an op-ed

00:02:16 piece, really, about just how it's...

00:02:20 some of the thoughts and feelings he had about

00:02:22 driving a powerful American sports car, and dealing

00:02:26 with some of these issues.

00:02:28 The reality of climate change.

00:02:29 The reality of climate change.

00:02:30 So I think people were mostly incensed at the

00:02:34 headline of the article, which is funny to me

00:02:36 because I love it. I love it. I'll just read you

00:02:38 the headline. It says, "Corvette Z06 Road Trip Blues.

00:02:42 Climate Change and Cars We Love." And the subhead

00:02:45 is, "We love powerful, high-revving supercars,

00:02:47 but their impact on the environment is undeniable."

00:02:49 And apparently it sent people into a frothing

00:02:52 rage storm.

00:02:53 I got a lot of hate text messages.

00:02:56 Probably from people who, and this happens a lot,

00:02:58 just read the headline and were triggered.

00:03:00 Because if you read the actual article, it is

00:03:03 very balanced. It's a personal account, as I

00:03:06 mentioned. And actually, Billy talks to a

00:03:10 meteorologist, and the guy basically says, "Look,

00:03:13 I get what you're trying to say here, but you

00:03:15 really can't attribute one weather event, in this

00:03:17 case the closing of a national park you're trying

00:03:20 to visit, to climate change in general. But that

00:03:22 being said, climate change is real. All this stuff

00:03:25 is happening." And, you know, I don't know what

00:03:29 to tell people who get upset about our headlines.

00:03:32 We write them to be provocative and to get you

00:03:34 to read them and maybe get your brain moving in

00:03:36 that direction. So I'm sorry, random person on

00:03:39 the Internet who was triggered by this. We're

00:03:42 not going to stop. And in fact, we'll just end

00:03:44 the questioning right there. And let's just talk

00:03:46 about how this guest today that we're going to

00:03:49 have on is going to be very provocative if you're

00:03:52 of a certain mindset. You're not going to like

00:03:55 her messaging if you don't believe in climate

00:03:57 change. But...

00:03:58 But do you like your children?

00:04:00 Do you like your children? And do you hope for,

00:04:03 you know, a better future? Because if I could

00:04:06 just implore you, if you've even made it this far

00:04:08 into this podcast, which is all about the future

00:04:10 of mobility and ostensibly a cleaner, greener,

00:04:14 less carbon-intensive world, if you could just

00:04:18 put it on pause, open your mind, listen to an

00:04:23 expert, because she really is... She's also super

00:04:26 just great to hear because she has so much

00:04:29 experience in all aspects of the atmosphere and

00:04:33 science. And her take on it is very thoughtful.

00:04:38 It's also pretty hardcore. Like, she's very clear

00:04:40 about the messaging.

00:04:41 Yeah. Yeah. No, she doesn't pull punches at all.

00:04:43 Not pulling punches. And let's... So let's talk

00:04:45 about her because we need to really give her due.

00:04:48 This is Dr. Emily Fisher. She's a professor in

00:04:51 the Department of Atmospheric Science at

00:04:53 Colorado State University. She's won a medal,

00:04:57 the Massilwane Medal from the American Geophysical

00:05:01 Union. She has done a lot in atmospheric science,

00:05:09 meteorology, the study of wildfires. She's a mom,

00:05:14 and she's actually here on behalf of this

00:05:16 organization called Science Moms.

00:05:18 Yeah, Science Moms dot com.

00:05:20 Science Moms dot com, which is all about giving

00:05:24 mothers, giving parents the tools, information,

00:05:29 basically pep talks, and arming them with all the

00:05:33 science in easy-to-understand ways to talk

00:05:36 about climate change and how we can improve things.

00:05:40 And what you can really do to help with the

00:05:44 climate, with the atmosphere.

00:05:45 Yes. And just a little bit on Dr. Emily's

00:05:48 background, she got her Bachelor of Science in

00:05:52 Atmospheric Science at the University of British

00:05:54 Columbia in Vancouver, Master's of Science in

00:05:57 Earth Science at University of New Hampshire,

00:05:59 Durham, and she got her PhD in Atmospheric

00:06:02 Science at University of Washington in Seattle.

00:06:04 So our man Joel McHale, we'll love her because

00:06:07 he's a huge Washington UW fan.

00:06:10 That's fair.

00:06:11 And she is, she's kind of a badass, let's be

00:06:15 honest. I mean, she flies in planes over wildfires

00:06:19 to measure all the bad stuff that's coming out

00:06:22 of the smoke.

00:06:23 And now she's flying over cows.

00:06:25 Let's get to the interview.

00:06:27 Let's get to the interview. So yeah, without

00:06:29 further ado, Dr. Emily Fisher. So we'll just

00:06:32 get into it. So Dr. Emily Fisher, thank you so

00:06:35 much for coming all the way out from Fort

00:06:37 Collins to sit in this fancy studio in Beverly

00:06:42 Hills and talk about what you do, which is

00:06:46 atmospheric science. Is that correct? Did I get

00:06:49 any part of that wrong?

00:06:50 No, you got about 100% right. Would you like

00:06:53 me to tell you what atmospheric scientists do?

00:06:55 Yes. Let's start there.

00:06:57 Can we start with a spicier question?

00:06:59 Sure.

00:07:00 How doomed are we?

00:07:01 How doomed are we with respect to climate

00:07:03 change?

00:07:04 As humans. How doomed are humans?

00:07:05 Okay, fine. That one first and then we'll talk

00:07:07 about...

00:07:08 Then we'll talk about your day to day.

00:07:09 We need to rapidly transition away from fossil

00:07:12 fuels and we need to do that in the next 10 to

00:07:14 15 years.

00:07:15 So pretty doomed.

00:07:16 But what we're going to talk about today, right,

00:07:19 is that some of the technologies that we need

00:07:21 to deploy to do that are perfectly available and

00:07:25 can be done at scale.

00:07:26 We can talk about whichever way you're going

00:07:27 to lead us. I just... I told my son, who's about

00:07:31 to turn seven, that I'm interviewing a scientist

00:07:34 today and I said... And I tried to explain what

00:07:37 an atmospheric scientist does and I pulled out

00:07:40 a globe and I was showing him that... So he

00:07:42 actually has a question and I don't know the

00:07:44 answer.

00:07:45 Okay. We'll see if it's in my wheelhouse.

00:07:46 I told him that the equator spins faster than

00:07:49 like the poles spin.

00:07:50 This is a physics question.

00:07:52 Yeah, this is not really what I do.

00:07:53 Yeah. That's true, right?

00:07:55 Yes.

00:07:56 He was like, "There's no way."

00:07:57 Yes.

00:07:58 They spin at the same speed.

00:07:59 And what you do is you get a record player out

00:08:00 and you blow his mind because you put like a

00:08:03 dot or like an action figure in the center and

00:08:05 you're pulling at the edge and you're like,

00:08:07 "Look how fast that guy's going.

00:08:08 Look how fast that guy's going."

00:08:09 Got it.

00:08:10 So, but yes.

00:08:11 How old is your son?

00:08:12 He's about to turn seven.

00:08:13 Oh, nice.

00:08:14 And I have a three-year-old.

00:08:15 I have a three-year-old, yes.

00:08:16 Oh, nice.

00:08:17 Mine are nine and 12.

00:08:18 We just had birthday week last week, so that

00:08:20 was a lot.

00:08:21 Two birthdays.

00:08:22 Well, enjoy your vacation.

00:08:23 We're going to talk about your kid.

00:08:25 I'm going to ask you a question about your kids

00:08:27 that's related to wildfires later.

00:08:29 Okay.

00:08:30 So, let's go back to your opening salvo there on

00:08:33 how doomed we are.

00:08:36 And this is where we were joking about how we're

00:08:40 science-loving meatheads.

00:08:43 I feel like I've been, this is my ignorance,

00:08:46 we've been hearing a lot about how climate

00:08:48 change, A, is real, it's happening, but there's

00:08:51 like a doomsday clock on it and I feel like we've

00:08:53 already, are we past the point of no return?

00:08:57 Do we keep pushing the point of no return?

00:09:00 You know what I'm saying?

00:09:01 Like, where, since Al Gore or whatever famously

00:09:05 started really popularizing this, everyone just

00:09:07 seems like it's like, hey, what's 1.5, now we're

00:09:10 like 1.5 degrees warmer or something.

00:09:12 Like, where, how did, what's, can you help me?

00:09:15 Yeah, I mean, we're feeling the effects of

00:09:18 climate change now, right?

00:09:19 Okay.

00:09:20 But this is a, and this is a real thing.

00:09:22 And, you know, we're feeling the effects of

00:09:25 climate change in the West with fires, right?

00:09:27 That's a very clear example of, you know,

00:09:30 almost half of the burn area since 1980 has some

00:09:34 climate link to it, right?

00:09:36 So we're experiencing climate change now.

00:09:40 We are still at a point where we can make choices

00:09:44 to not get to the worst case scenario, right?

00:09:48 And so that's where we are.

00:09:49 We're at the point where if we make choices as a

00:09:52 society to move away from fossil fuels and

00:09:56 radically change the way we produce and consume

00:09:58 energy, then we will be able to avoid sort of the

00:10:01 worst case scenarios of climate change.

00:10:04 So we're not on track right now for the worst

00:10:08 case scenarios for the sort of absolute worst

00:10:14 case climate model.

00:10:15 We're kind of mid-range right now, mid-range.

00:10:18 Mid-range impacts.

00:10:19 Oh, how nice.

00:10:21 But we should do everything we can.

00:10:23 We should do everything we can to stabilize the

00:10:25 climate because you have children, I have children,

00:10:27 and they're feeling it now and it will only

00:10:30 accelerate if we don't do something about it.

00:10:32 What are some of those worst case scenarios?

00:10:34 Is it like the movies?

00:10:35 The massive sea level rise, right?

00:10:37 I mean, big cities.

00:10:38 Swallowed.

00:10:40 Swallowed, let's say, yes, swallowed by water, right?

00:10:44 Return cycles of the big wildfires, right?

00:10:47 The really bad wildfire seasons like 2018, 2020,

00:10:50 those kind of years coming back sort of on a five

00:10:54 to six-year return cycle.

00:10:55 We don't want that, right?

00:10:56 We don't want those bad years to be returning that

00:10:58 quickly.

00:10:59 And so, yeah, so those are things that we want to

00:11:03 avoid, the sort of extreme heat in the southwest,

00:11:06 right?

00:11:07 Those kinds of things, we don't want that to get

00:11:09 worse.

00:11:11 And so we can do that.

00:11:13 This is a solvable thing, right?

00:11:16 We caused the problem so we know the solution.

00:11:18 And that is the piece that I think, especially for

00:11:21 kids, right, to say this is a problem that we

00:11:23 understand well enough to solve is good.

00:11:27 So this is sort of a question, but, you know,

00:11:31 we're just living in this weird time where, you

00:11:33 know, somehow science has become -- there's a

00:11:37 polarizer, there's a way to like not believe in

00:11:39 science.

00:11:40 Demonized, politicized.

00:11:41 Yeah, everything.

00:11:42 But I remember, I'm old enough to remember, like

00:11:44 when the hole in the ozone layer was a thing and

00:11:47 scientists said, hey, if we ban some --

00:11:50 CFCs, yeah.

00:11:51 CFCs, chlorofluorohydrocarbons, it'll fix

00:11:54 it, and it fixed it.

00:11:56 I know.

00:11:57 Right?

00:11:58 Yeah.

00:11:59 This is what atmospheric scientists do.

00:12:00 We try to understand systems so that we can

00:12:01 predict things and so that we can -- you can solve

00:12:05 what you can predict, right?

00:12:06 So when you understand all the physics and

00:12:08 chemistry, and the ozone hole is the most

00:12:13 beautiful story -- I use it in class, right?

00:12:15 Of scientists figured it out, and then there

00:12:20 were international discussions, and then we

00:12:22 made a decision, and we're on our path to

00:12:26 solutions, right?

00:12:27 Somewhere between Costco stopped selling this

00:12:29 kind of glass cleaner, and then this one came out,

00:12:31 and it worked totally fine, and nobody cared.

00:12:33 And we move on.

00:12:34 And we move on.

00:12:35 Right.

00:12:36 Right.

00:12:37 And so, yeah, this is what I use in class as a

00:12:40 hopeful story.

00:12:41 So how did that change?

00:12:43 In other words, like, okay, hole in the ozone,

00:12:46 stop using hairspray and --

00:12:49 Refrigerants, really.

00:12:50 Change your refrigerants, don't have them

00:12:51 leaking.

00:12:52 Yes, in cars.

00:12:53 That was the big one.

00:12:54 In cars.

00:12:55 And we won't all die.

00:12:56 Okay, we do it, and it works.

00:12:57 And then now it's like, hey, it's too much

00:12:59 carbon dioxide.

00:13:00 Let's switch to, you know, a new way to drive

00:13:04 ourselves around that doesn't release, you know,

00:13:07 new carbon dioxide into the air, and there's

00:13:09 pushback.

00:13:10 Like, what -- in your opinion, what changed?

00:13:13 What happened?

00:13:14 I'm not sure that anything changed.

00:13:16 I mean, there --

00:13:17 Or what's different, I guess?

00:13:19 There are people who are heavily invested in

00:13:22 fossil fuels who have been stalling this game for

00:13:25 a long time, right?

00:13:26 Yes.

00:13:27 And that doesn't have anything to do with

00:13:29 scientists, right?

00:13:30 Right.

00:13:31 That's just -- we're working to explain to

00:13:33 scientists, we're working to explain how the

00:13:35 world works, and society needs to decide how

00:13:38 they want to shift in order to solve this

00:13:41 problem, right?

00:13:42 And everybody has different interests.

00:13:45 But that's not a -- in some ways, that's not a

00:13:47 science question.

00:13:48 That's a --

00:13:49 Right.

00:13:50 I guess what she's saying is that the --

00:13:51 A political question.

00:13:52 A political question.

00:13:53 -- the CFC lobby wasn't strong enough back

00:13:54 then.

00:13:55 There also were replacements, right?

00:13:57 Right.

00:13:58 And so -- but we're at that stage now with

00:14:00 electric fuels are a beautiful example, right?

00:14:02 We're at the stage now where there are very

00:14:05 clear replacements and we can shift with no

00:14:07 impact on our quality of life.

00:14:09 In fact, everything will improve, right?

00:14:11 We can talk more about this.

00:14:12 But the air quality improvements will be

00:14:14 unbelievable.

00:14:15 Well, let's talk about that.

00:14:16 Hang on, hang on.

00:14:17 Go back.

00:14:18 I want to ask, just because we -- and again,

00:14:20 I'm not trying to play gotcha at all, but we --

00:14:22 Oh, it's fine.

00:14:23 This goes on our Motor Trends YouTube channel.

00:14:25 He's trying to play gotcha.

00:14:26 Go ahead.

00:14:27 And there's a lot of people who have, like,

00:14:29 no time and energy for this climate change theory.

00:14:33 Yeah, we got a guy whose personal slogan is

00:14:35 "gasoline forever," who we employ.

00:14:37 Good job, Ed.

00:14:38 Just kidding.

00:14:39 Just kidding.

00:14:40 But you know what I mean?

00:14:41 Does he have kids?

00:14:42 Yeah.

00:14:43 Yeah.

00:14:44 Boo.

00:14:45 Right?

00:14:46 That won't age well.

00:14:47 That opinion will not age well.

00:14:48 Let me just tell you right now.

00:14:49 I love this.

00:14:50 Shots fired.

00:14:51 Fryer, I know you're not listening, but if

00:14:54 you were --

00:14:55 If you are, here I am.

00:14:56 Not afraid.

00:14:57 People who say that the unmitigated goal for

00:15:01 you to suggest that humans, you know, have been

00:15:04 on the Earth long enough to influence, can do

00:15:08 anything, this is all cyclical, like, you know,

00:15:11 this cycle you're talking about of fires

00:15:14 returning, like, you go back in history --

00:15:16 Yes, Time Magazine published one story in

00:15:18 1977 that said "global cooling," and that

00:15:21 counters everything that all scientists know.

00:15:24 Any of these -- like, how do you respond to

00:15:27 critics who say, like, our time on this Earth

00:15:30 has not been that significant?

00:15:31 This is all hubris.

00:15:32 I think they're a very small number of poorly

00:15:36 informed people.

00:15:37 And I don't mean that in any -- most people

00:15:42 understand that climate change is real and can

00:15:45 feel it at this point.

00:15:46 And so I am not sure I want to sort of debate

00:15:53 that, right?

00:15:54 I sit every single day -- I sit every day in --

00:15:58 with people who are working on all aspects of

00:16:01 climate change, right?

00:16:02 They're working on how do we predict whether

00:16:04 there'll be more of these atmospheric rivers that

00:16:07 cause flooding.

00:16:08 We're spending time trying to figure out,

00:16:10 okay, what are the environmental conditions

00:16:13 that are going to lead to the worst fire

00:16:15 seasons, and how do we support the people who

00:16:18 need to be on the ground fighting them?

00:16:20 How do we understand where the smoke's going

00:16:22 to go?

00:16:23 So these are real things, right?

00:16:24 These are happening.

00:16:25 And at the very basic level, right, we understand

00:16:29 very well how greenhouse gases work, right?

00:16:32 You burn fossil fuels, you emit carbon dioxide,

00:16:35 as an example of one of our carbon pollutants,

00:16:38 right?

00:16:39 It builds up as a blanket.

00:16:40 The sun's energy cannot be freely released back

00:16:43 to space, as it would be without that there, and

00:16:47 we're heating up the planet.

00:16:49 And the average temperature has been rising.

00:16:51 And so I, a long time ago, I did some education

00:16:57 with a, this is a bit of a story, but with a CEO

00:17:01 of a very large company, and I brought him up

00:17:04 to our field site.

00:17:05 He was like, "I don't know if I believe in

00:17:06 climate change."

00:17:07 And I was like, "Do you believe in thermometers?"

00:17:08 Like, and I was like, so this is, I was like,

00:17:11 this is the thermometer.

00:17:12 Right.

00:17:13 This is us every single day reading it.

00:17:16 This is the physics of these gases.

00:17:19 And I was like, "You can decide that you don't

00:17:22 want to change our fossil fuel consumption.

00:17:25 That's okay, but that doesn't make this

00:17:27 thermometer not work.

00:17:28 That's a separate, it's a separate thing."

00:17:30 So, and he said, "Oh."

00:17:32 And I said, "Yeah, like, this is what we're doing.

00:17:35 We're measuring this, and we're trying to predict

00:17:37 it in time, and that's tricky because we don't

00:17:39 know exactly how much fossil fuels people are

00:17:41 going to burn in the future, right?

00:17:43 But we know very well how many, how much we've

00:17:45 burnt in the past, because we've paid for every,

00:17:47 we know we've paid for every drop, right?

00:17:48 So, so we, we actually really understand,

00:17:51 we really understand where fossil fuels come from.

00:17:54 We really understand how they impact mean

00:17:56 surface temperature pretty well.

00:17:58 And the pieces of climate science that are

00:18:00 uncertain is where, what is the lifetime of those

00:18:03 things once they get in the atmosphere?

00:18:04 So like, how's the land going to take them up?

00:18:06 How's the ocean going to take them up?

00:18:07 That's the forefront.

00:18:08 Not like, did we emit it and did it increase

00:18:11 temperature?

00:18:12 That's pretty, we understand that.

00:18:14 Yeah, we settled that.

00:18:15 Now it's like, okay, how's the ocean going to respond?

00:18:17 What land's going to take it up?

00:18:19 How, what's the timeline for these things?

00:18:21 That's the piece where there's the, we're working.

00:18:24 And it seems like the ocean's responding like

00:18:26 particularly poorly, right?

00:18:27 Yes, but I don't work on the ocean, but yeah.

00:18:29 Okay, but yeah.

00:18:30 So, but I mean, like that's the one that, I don't

00:18:33 know, like fires and floods bad, but like, you

00:18:37 know, if the ocean suddenly can't support life,

00:18:39 that seems, that seems.

00:18:40 We don't want that.

00:18:41 That's existential.

00:18:42 Yeah, existential, yeah.

00:18:43 We don't want that.

00:18:44 No, we don't want that.

00:18:45 So we, we just, you know, I think about it from a

00:18:48 place of like loving humanity and I think that

00:18:52 sort of crosses, right?

00:18:54 So, so I, I don't, I don't know, I don't need to

00:18:58 engage in a debate.

00:19:00 I love that by the way.

00:19:01 And you gave a, you gave a great answer.

00:19:03 In fact, I want to clip that and make sure we, we

00:19:05 blast it out everywhere because it is a very

00:19:07 thoughtful, a very empathetic, considered, and

00:19:11 also like no BS, I'm not even going to debate you

00:19:13 on this cause it's your, that's ridiculous, which

00:19:15 I love.

00:19:16 Yeah.

00:19:17 And you do also talk about this other question I

00:19:19 had, which I'm happy to talk about it now if you

00:19:21 are.

00:19:22 The, you know, the consensus, the widely

00:19:26 publicized consensus on climate change is that

00:19:28 like 97% of scientists who study this are in

00:19:32 agreement that it's real and it's happening.

00:19:35 And I went through all these sites last night

00:19:37 looking at this one, it's science skeptic and it

00:19:39 lists like the, I think there's seven or eight

00:19:41 major studies and it's like the percentage of

00:19:43 consensus on each one.

00:19:45 But I think it's 97%, 97% is kind of this, the

00:19:48 number that's been kind of talked about as far as

00:19:49 you know.

00:19:50 I mean, so this is the way I think about it.

00:19:52 I'm a professor at the largest graduate program

00:19:54 in atmospheric science in the country, right?

00:19:58 I don't know anyone who is not taking this

00:20:01 seriously, right?

00:20:03 I am the chair of the American Meteorological

00:20:06 Society, Atmospheric Chemistry Committee.

00:20:08 I'm a chair of the American Geophysical Union.

00:20:10 I don't know anyone who doesn't take it seriously.

00:20:13 So I don't think about the 97%, I just think in

00:20:16 every professional setting of which I'm in, we're

00:20:18 all like, we gotta work, we gotta work, we gotta

00:20:20 work, we gotta work.

00:20:21 I was gonna say, I've heard that it's actually

00:20:23 about 99.9% and the 0.1% are the people that are

00:20:26 paid very well for the scientific uncertainty

00:20:30 principle, which is like, well, that's your set

00:20:32 of facts.

00:20:33 My set of facts, thanks to Chevron, they say

00:20:36 something different.

00:20:37 Right.

00:20:38 Well, no, the point I was trying to get to was,

00:20:40 actually, what I was gonna ask you, but I think

00:20:42 you already answered it, was what's in that 3%?

00:20:44 And I think what the 3% that you were talking

00:20:46 about, what might have been like, not that you're

00:20:48 debating that it's not real at the core, it's these

00:20:51 other things that you don't know, that the, like,

00:20:54 the leading edge of it.

00:20:56 Yeah, but the leading edge is, when you are from

00:20:59 a scientific perspective, the leading edge is

00:21:02 exciting and urgent.

00:21:04 It's not a dismissal feel.

00:21:06 It's a, like, oh my gosh, we really have to figure

00:21:09 out this piece.

00:21:10 Okay.

00:21:11 In a sort of, the scientists that I'm, you know,

00:21:14 working with, nobody's saying, there's, it's not,

00:21:18 we're all like, okay, are we missing something?

00:21:20 We have to keep working.

00:21:21 Right, right.

00:21:22 It's so urgent that it's...

00:21:25 I think, you know, from the car person's point

00:21:28 of view, you know, we sadly are largely responsible

00:21:31 for what, and this is a Jamie Kittman term, but

00:21:34 the scientific uncertainty principle, and it was

00:21:36 standard oil, where they're like, it's a lot cheaper

00:21:39 just to put lead in gasoline than it is to refine it.

00:21:42 And so, you know, studies were starting to come out

00:21:45 in the '20s, like, this is really dangerous.

00:21:47 Everyone's got lead poisoning.

00:21:48 And then they had some clown scientist who would

00:21:50 get on stage and drink lead, who eventually died

00:21:52 of lead poisoning, but he had a pretty good

00:21:54 tolerance for it, and he'd run around the country

00:21:57 and say, no, it's great, and then the tobacco

00:21:59 companies took that up.

00:22:00 So lead wasn't even banned until, like, the late '60s.

00:22:03 And there's been all kinds of studies on what

00:22:05 that did to, you know, Americans and the rest

00:22:07 of the world.

00:22:08 And then the tobacco companies picked it up.

00:22:10 Nope, our scientists say it doesn't cause lung

00:22:12 cancer, and then they finally got forced, you know,

00:22:14 in the billion-dollar range to admit that actually

00:22:17 it does under oath.

00:22:18 But then the remnants of that is, like, you have

00:22:23 people saying, well, some scientists, who probably,

00:22:25 you know, aren't really scientists, slash, are on

00:22:28 the take, slash, aren't atmospheric scientists,

00:22:30 say, no, you know, it's cyclical or whatever the

00:22:34 nonsense, non-scientific rationale is.

00:22:37 And it's dangerous.

00:22:39 And we see this, I think, you know, with the

00:22:41 vaccine nonsense we went through, where, you know,

00:22:44 it's like, vaccines have saved more lives than

00:22:46 anything in human history.

00:22:48 And people are, like, en masse questioning it,

00:22:51 you know.

00:22:52 So it's just, we live in a weird time, and I think

00:22:54 that's where, you know.

00:22:56 But I think it's, you don't have to blame people

00:22:58 for driving cars, right?

00:23:00 People have to go places.

00:23:01 Absolutely.

00:23:02 Right?

00:23:03 Like, there's no, like, nobody, I think, needs to

00:23:05 feel this, like, oh, I have to feel this guilt, and

00:23:07 then I have to resist.

00:23:09 Right.

00:23:10 You got new information.

00:23:11 There's an awesome alternative.

00:23:13 Right.

00:23:14 Go upgrade.

00:23:15 Right.

00:23:16 Right?

00:23:17 Like, there's, I don't know, I agree there's a

00:23:19 lot of misinformation, right?

00:23:21 Yeah.

00:23:22 And that's what Science Moms is about, right, is

00:23:24 to sort of say, pump the brakes.

00:23:28 There's not that much you need to understand about

00:23:30 climate change.

00:23:31 One, fossil fuels are the problem.

00:23:34 Two, it's very solvable.

00:23:36 Three, it's urgent.

00:23:37 Four, you love your children.

00:23:39 Time is now.

00:23:40 Let's do this as a society.

00:23:42 Right?

00:23:43 Like, that's, and so that's part of our job as

00:23:46 Science Moms, is to be an approachable, an

00:23:49 approachable team of people to talk to about this

00:23:53 issue.

00:23:54 So let's talk about that, because you are, so

00:23:56 Science Moms is this group that you're affiliated

00:23:58 with, and it's how many moms?

00:24:00 Twelve now, I think.

00:24:01 Twelve.

00:24:02 And you guys are all over the country.

00:24:04 All over the U.S., yeah.

00:24:05 All over the U.S.

00:24:06 Yep.

00:24:07 At different places.

00:24:08 And all directly in the fields related to climate

00:24:11 change.

00:24:12 That's right, yeah.

00:24:13 We all work on different things.

00:24:14 For example, I'm an air quality person, right, and

00:24:16 so my work is very focused on air quality.

00:24:19 A lot of it links to climate change, right,

00:24:21 because I work on wildfires and the smoke, right,

00:24:25 and so there's a very direct climate link there.

00:24:27 But I work on all different aspects of atmospheric

00:24:29 chemistry.

00:24:30 And, you know, different colleagues work on

00:24:33 different pieces of the system, but we're all

00:24:37 scientists from either universities, national

00:24:39 labs, and all have kids, and all came to the

00:24:43 table, I mean, we just, this is sort of our

00:24:45 volunteer service.

00:24:46 Right.

00:24:47 We came to the table when we learned that

00:24:50 moms in particular, but parents in general, but

00:24:53 moms in particular were very worried about this,

00:24:56 have sort of climate anxiety, but were afraid

00:24:59 to talk about the issue, felt like they didn't

00:25:02 really have the knowledge and the words and

00:25:07 everything that they needed.

00:25:08 The tools.

00:25:09 The tools, right, to say, like, I'm worried about

00:25:11 this and I do want society to do something about

00:25:13 it because I do love my children, which is a very

00:25:15 basic starting point, right.

00:25:17 Yeah.

00:25:18 And a very common starting point.

00:25:20 And so we were, once we learned that, that's

00:25:23 sort of how we came together to say, okay, yeah,

00:25:25 no problem if we can just make ourselves slightly

00:25:27 more accessible to the world to answer questions

00:25:31 and give confidence.

00:25:32 So how do you, yeah, how do you equip moms or

00:25:35 parents with this information?

00:25:37 Do you have a podcast, videos?

00:25:38 Yeah, so Science Moms has a bunch of videos.

00:25:40 And so the videos are very short.

00:25:42 Many of them are funny.

00:25:43 Some of them make you cry.

00:25:44 It depends which they are.

00:25:45 They're on YouTube.

00:25:46 Right, yep, they're all on YouTube.

00:25:47 You can link through ScienceMoms.com.

00:25:49 And they, so there's one called The Line.

00:25:52 It's the bottom line.

00:25:53 It's basically what I just explained to you about

00:25:55 how carbon dioxide, how carbon pollution works, right.

00:25:58 So it's just sort of very fundamental climate

00:26:01 science, the 30-second climate science.

00:26:04 We have other ones.

00:26:05 The one that makes me cry, not the one with my

00:26:07 children that makes me cry, but the one, it goes

00:26:13 with a child from birth to college, right, and it

00:26:16 talks about where we'll be if we don't act on that

00:26:19 timeline.

00:26:20 And, you know, that came from one of us saying,

00:26:22 yeah, when you think, if you have a child now, you

00:26:25 have a young child now, you need to be maybe

00:26:27 thinking about their future.

00:26:29 But you also need to be working on this issue, on

00:26:32 this timeline, right.

00:26:33 Like the timeline of raising a child from three to

00:26:35 college or three to independence is the same

00:26:40 timeline on which we need to have very close net

00:26:44 zero emissions.

00:26:46 So those are the same timelines.

00:26:48 So as you think as a parent, that's what we're

00:26:50 doing right now as parents.

00:26:51 That's a fantastic observation because this

00:26:53 whole podcast started as, basically as a result of

00:26:57 a bunch of car companies putting out their carbon

00:27:01 neutrality goals.

00:27:03 And GM said 2035 carbon neutral, 2040 all EV.

00:27:09 Right.

00:27:10 You have a three-year-old.

00:27:11 It's a very close timeline, right.

00:27:13 Yeah.

00:27:14 Well, yes, because of my kids, I have him in an

00:27:16 educational, the 529 plan, the college savings plan.

00:27:19 And the maturity date is 2038.

00:27:21 2038.

00:27:22 Right.

00:27:23 So this is like right out of the window.

00:27:25 Same for my, you know, my, it's a little sooner

00:27:27 because I have a nine-year-old.

00:27:28 But, yeah, this is the same timeline.

00:27:30 And so that's what we're doing as parents right now.

00:27:33 If we fail, son, you'll be going to college with a

00:27:35 gas mask on.

00:27:36 Yeah.

00:27:37 Maybe, we may not be able to grow food.

00:27:39 Right.

00:27:40 We'll live in a cave.

00:27:41 The problem might take care of itself.

00:27:42 I mean, the existential threat now is, son, you're

00:27:44 going to be going to school in an underground cave

00:27:46 while being, avoiding the AI robot dogs that will be

00:27:49 chasing you.

00:27:50 But, okay, terrible joke.

00:27:51 Separate issue.

00:27:52 Some dad jokes.

00:27:53 So, science moms is, how active, how often are you

00:28:02 guys like putting the word out?

00:28:05 So when we're asked.

00:28:07 And so, like, you asked me to come here.

00:28:09 Yeah, we did.

00:28:10 Right.

00:28:11 And so I, you know, apologize for my schedule.

00:28:14 No, no, no.

00:28:15 That it took me a while to get here.

00:28:17 It took me too.

00:28:18 Yeah.

00:28:19 But I try to say yes when I'm asked.

00:28:21 Right.

00:28:22 And that's as simple as it is.

00:28:23 And so that really depends on what's going on.

00:28:25 So for somebody like me, if it's an extreme wildfire

00:28:29 season, I might be asked a little bit more.

00:28:31 But sort of the beauty of science moms is that we've

00:28:33 got this sort of various expertise, right?

00:28:35 Some people are working on heat waves.

00:28:37 Some people are working on the ocean.

00:28:39 And so when we're asked what the questions are, we

00:28:41 make ourselves available to sort of explain what's

00:28:43 happening and contextualize that in sort of this

00:28:47 framework of climate.

00:28:49 Oh, fantastic.

00:28:50 So you had a really good example.

00:28:53 I'd like to ask you for another related to

00:28:56 atmospheric conditions.

00:28:59 I hope it's not too far.

00:29:01 I'm not, like, asking you something that's, like,

00:29:03 way out there.

00:29:04 But the pandemic, right?

00:29:05 Pandemic.

00:29:06 Yeah.

00:29:07 The pandemic locked everybody down.

00:29:08 We saw everybody working from home.

00:29:10 Traffic in this city was amazing.

00:29:12 Dolphins swimming around Venice.

00:29:14 Nobody going anywhere.

00:29:16 Are there any really easy to explain or elegant

00:29:20 examples you can give of just, like, a short-term,

00:29:23 hey, we took a bunch of cars off the road during

00:29:25 the pandemic.

00:29:26 I don't know if there's something happening in

00:29:28 China you can talk about.

00:29:29 I can talk about this.

00:29:30 I can talk about L.A.

00:29:31 Great.

00:29:32 Talk about L.A.

00:29:33 So I was not knowing that you were going to ask me

00:29:36 about this, but this is actually the example that I

00:29:39 pulled to help people visualize a transition to

00:29:43 electric vehicles, right?

00:29:44 So electric vehicles, you are losing your tailpipe

00:29:49 emissions, right?

00:29:50 They're gone.

00:29:51 And we essentially did this during the pandemic,

00:29:56 right?

00:29:57 And when we had the, you know, terrible lockdowns,

00:30:01 but that reduced automobile traffic significantly,

00:30:05 we could detect this from space, right?

00:30:08 So vehicles, for example, the pollutant that I study,

00:30:12 one of the pollutants that my lab studies is nitrogen

00:30:16 oxides, in the U.S., about 50% of the emissions of

00:30:21 those pollutants, that particular pollutant, come

00:30:24 from vehicles, right?

00:30:26 In L.A.

00:30:27 during the pandemic, you could see a 40% drop in

00:30:33 that pollutant for the months where, you know, I

00:30:36 mean, you can -- this is a big scale.

00:30:38 This is a massive.

00:30:39 And some of these air pollutants that come from

00:30:42 vehicles, right, they have -- they're not like

00:30:44 greenhouse gases, right?

00:30:45 Greenhouse gases have long lifetimes.

00:30:47 We're committing to that.

00:30:48 But some of these other pollutants, these gases,

00:30:50 have very short lifetimes.

00:30:51 Like, they're only around one or two days, right?

00:30:53 So if you stop having internal combustion engines

00:30:58 on the road, I'm not saying stop driving.

00:31:00 That's a different discussion, right?

00:31:02 But if you are switching to an electric vehicle, the

00:31:05 air quality improvements are going to be dramatic,

00:31:07 they're going to be fast, and they're going to be

00:31:09 detectable not only from a measuring of the chemistry

00:31:12 of the air, but from the health impacts, right?

00:31:15 The number of the respiratory impacts are

00:31:19 going to be beautiful.

00:31:20 Yeah.

00:31:21 I want to talk to you about that, because I -- and I

00:31:22 don't remember where I read it, but I read one time

00:31:24 that, like, if you live within 500 feet, I want to

00:31:28 say, of a freeway, like, the risk of heart disease

00:31:31 and lung cancer --

00:31:32 They're higher.

00:31:33 Because I think about this all the time, because my

00:31:34 kid's school is, like, on a freeway, essentially.

00:31:36 My kid's school is near a major road, too.

00:31:38 A 710 freeway in the one that goes down to the

00:31:40 harbor is the worst.

00:31:41 Oh, 710 is the worst freeway in the world.

00:31:42 And the rates of cancer on the -- I believe it's the

00:31:45 -- oh, boy -- the eastern side are higher than the

00:31:50 west, or I might have the inverted -- because of the

00:31:51 way the wind blows, and because this is -- the port

00:31:53 of Los Angeles is the largest, the most busiest

00:31:55 port in America, and it's all the semi-trucks going

00:31:58 back and forth, blowing diesel --

00:32:00 So there's -- so what you're saying, and I'm sure

00:32:03 everyone's already heard, but, like, there will be

00:32:04 significant health benefits to getting rid of tailpipe

00:32:07 emissions.

00:32:08 Oh, it'll be unbelievable.

00:32:09 Okay.

00:32:10 Yeah.

00:32:11 It is so inspiring, right?

00:32:15 Vehicles are -- if you just look at an air quality

00:32:18 perspective -- so let's separate climate and air

00:32:21 quality.

00:32:22 Those are two different issues.

00:32:23 Yes, yes.

00:32:24 It's hard for people to understand that.

00:32:25 It's hard for people to separate that.

00:32:26 But those are two --

00:32:27 Carbon versus NOx.

00:32:28 Carbon versus different air pollutants, right?

00:32:29 Right, right, right.

00:32:30 So electric vehicles are beautiful in the way that

00:32:34 they bring those two pieces together.

00:32:36 When you switch away from an internal combustion

00:32:38 engine into an electric vehicle, yes, good job from

00:32:42 -- climate change gives you a high five.

00:32:44 Awesome.

00:32:45 But what you're really doing is bringing all the air

00:32:47 quality benefits to your family and your community,

00:32:50 right?

00:32:51 And so it is the technology that allows you to make a

00:32:54 choice that's good for the world, and you benefit.

00:32:56 Your family benefits.

00:32:57 Right.

00:32:58 You benefit.

00:32:59 You're sitting in that pickup line.

00:33:00 Right.

00:33:01 All day long, just jam out to the radio.

00:33:03 No idling.

00:33:04 No problem.

00:33:05 There's no idling.

00:33:06 Nothing's happening.

00:33:07 That's nothing's idling.

00:33:08 You're good to go, right?

00:33:09 And so this city will feel the air quality

00:33:12 improvements.

00:33:13 You will see those mountains, right?

00:33:15 I think we're seeing it because it's got to be 10

00:33:17 percent of Southern California's cars are now

00:33:19 Teslas.

00:33:20 It's a huge number.

00:33:21 Yeah, with the highest adoption rate in the country.

00:33:23 When you say they could see the improvement from

00:33:25 space, was that like a visual?

00:33:27 The NO2 columns, so the number of NO2 molecules

00:33:31 that are sitting above an area.

00:33:33 Nitrous oxide?

00:33:34 Nitrogen dioxide.

00:33:35 Nitrogen dioxide.

00:33:36 Yeah.

00:33:37 So you can see that from space, and literally the

00:33:41 number of molecules over this table, this meter

00:33:44 squared, right, dropped by 40 percent.

00:33:47 That's wild.

00:33:48 And then has it come back?

00:33:49 Yeah, yeah.

00:33:50 It's come back as --

00:33:51 Of course.

00:33:52 Because the cars --

00:33:53 Yeah, because you bring the same number of cars

00:33:55 back on the road and it comes back up, that varies

00:33:57 day to day.

00:33:58 You can see a Wednesday versus a Sunday, for

00:34:00 example, in terms of the driving.

00:34:02 So every Sunday, compared to a Wednesday, we

00:34:04 actually also do a big experiment on the

00:34:06 atmosphere, and you can detect the air quality

00:34:08 improvement of not commuting on Sundays versus

00:34:10 Wednesdays in most cities.

00:34:12 Which satellite is looking at us right now?

00:34:14 No, seriously, is it from -- it's not from the ISS?

00:34:17 No, it's from OMI.

00:34:19 This is the instrument that -- ozone monitoring

00:34:22 instrument, and that comes over at 1:30 in the

00:34:25 afternoon.

00:34:26 It's a dedicated satellite?

00:34:27 No, it's an instrument on a satellite.

00:34:29 On a satellite, yeah.

00:34:30 And so, but, yeah, so these are -- and in addition

00:34:32 to measuring it on the ground, right, you can

00:34:34 detect this in the in-situ EPA monitors, but I'm

00:34:36 just saying it's at the scale.

00:34:38 It's at the scale that you -- you're not missing

00:34:40 it from space, right, the impact, the benefit of

00:34:43 on-air quality.

00:34:44 It's huge.

00:34:45 So there's a lot of hesitancy, we shall say,

00:34:48 in EV adoption, and what's been very trendy

00:34:52 narrative-wise recently is a lot of my car buddies

00:34:56 will say stuff like, "Well, I'm not going to do

00:34:58 an EV, but I'm going to do a plug-in hybrid."

00:35:00 And I'm like, "That's kind of okay, but you're

00:35:02 sort of --" in my opinion, I don't like them for

00:35:05 a lot of reasons.

00:35:06 One is I think you're getting the worst of both.

00:35:08 You're getting a bad gas engine and a weak EV.

00:35:10 But, you know, there's -- can you talk to us --

00:35:14 I don't know if you know about this, but like

00:35:16 what happens when the battery on a plug-in hybrid

00:35:19 runs down and the gas engine kicks on?

00:35:21 I've heard that --

00:35:22 I don't know.

00:35:23 Okay.

00:35:24 Because I'm not an engineer.

00:35:25 Okay.

00:35:26 But I have an opinion about this transition.

00:35:28 Yes, let's hear that.

00:35:29 So, sure, there's room for plug-in hybrids where

00:35:35 we might be slow to have the charging infrastructure,

00:35:39 right?

00:35:40 That might be a stepping stone where we don't

00:35:42 have the charging infrastructure.

00:35:44 Fine, right?

00:35:45 Fine.

00:35:46 Especially if we were to design them better so

00:35:48 that you're really maximizing the EV piece, right?

00:35:52 Yeah, because like a Jeep can go like 17 miles

00:35:55 before --

00:35:56 Yeah, that's kind of silly, right?

00:35:57 But like if you could get to 60, 70 miles --

00:36:00 And they're there, yeah.

00:36:01 Yeah, and then so that you don't have range

00:36:06 anxiety, right?

00:36:08 Like I think that's fine, right?

00:36:10 But that's the application.

00:36:12 The downside --

00:36:13 It's not the like --

00:36:14 That's the application.

00:36:15 Yeah.

00:36:16 But the solution, right, is to really up our

00:36:18 charging capacity everywhere.

00:36:20 Yeah, absolutely.

00:36:21 No, the downside is that when a big --

00:36:23 especially like in those Jeeps, like a big gas

00:36:25 engine suddenly kicks on at 80 miles an hour with

00:36:27 cold catalytic converters, the knocks that comes

00:36:29 out for two minutes is like way worse than just

00:36:32 running a gas car all day.

00:36:34 So you're from Colorado.

00:36:36 Yeah.

00:36:37 You're educated --

00:36:38 From Rhode Island.

00:36:39 From Rhode Island, really?

00:36:40 Rhode Island, sorry.

00:36:41 Educated all over the place.

00:36:43 Yeah, so much moving.

00:36:44 But do you have an opinion on how California is

00:36:48 doing -- we have this famous institution called

00:36:51 CARB.

00:36:52 Yeah.

00:36:53 Do you study them or have you looked at anything

00:36:56 they're producing?

00:36:57 Do you have any opinion on the approach and

00:37:00 related?

00:37:01 Because while he was talking about plug-in

00:37:03 hybrids and, you know, there's the hybrid thing

00:37:06 and we have some efficient smaller, you know,

00:37:09 internal combustion engines, the standards are

00:37:13 P, ZEV, right, partial zero emission vehicle.

00:37:17 There's ZEV, zero emission vehicle.

00:37:19 Do you care at all, like, from -- or to you, it's

00:37:23 just as long as nothing's come out of the tailpipe,

00:37:26 that's the goal?

00:37:27 Yeah, that's what we're going -- we're going for

00:37:29 not burning fossil fuels on the road, right?

00:37:32 Okay.

00:37:33 For powering the vehicles from the grid.

00:37:37 This is where we need to go and I think we --

00:37:41 however we go in that direction, as fast as we

00:37:44 can get there, that is the goal.

00:37:46 And so exactly how California is doing.

00:37:48 California is usually leading the way in terms

00:37:50 of air quality standards for vehicles, right?

00:37:52 Like, just -- so good job.

00:37:53 Because of CARB, yeah.

00:37:54 Because of CARB, right?

00:37:55 So good job.

00:37:56 Good job.

00:37:57 But exactly how that gets -- how we turn the

00:38:01 fleet over most efficiently, that's sort of

00:38:03 outside my world.

00:38:04 I would say --

00:38:05 Sure.

00:38:06 -- do it as fast and as efficiently and as

00:38:08 equitably as you can, right?

00:38:09 Okay.

00:38:10 Like, so that's how I would --

00:38:11 Equitable.

00:38:12 Good term.

00:38:13 Equitable.

00:38:14 Like, do it equitable, make it accessible, right?

00:38:15 Like, and move it.

00:38:16 So -- but in general, California has the highest

00:38:18 standards.

00:38:19 Not necessarily the best air quality, but you

00:38:21 have a lot of cars, right?

00:38:22 So --

00:38:23 Yeah.

00:38:24 A lot of people, a lot of cars.

00:38:25 A lot of people, a lot of cars, right?

00:38:26 Yeah.

00:38:27 You're your own country, really.

00:38:28 Really.

00:38:29 Yes.

00:38:30 Fifth largest --

00:38:31 It's just as I think about it, right?

00:38:32 Fourth.

00:38:33 I think we hit fourth.

00:38:34 But yeah.

00:38:35 So -- and so what's beautiful about electric

00:38:37 cars, too, right, if you think about it, is when

00:38:40 you -- if you were to go out and buy a new gas

00:38:44 powered car today, right, you're kind of locking

00:38:47 in.

00:38:48 You're like, I -- while I drive this car, I'm

00:38:50 always going to have these tailpipe emissions.

00:38:53 Because -- but when you drive an electric car,

00:38:56 even -- so you take it today and you charge it

00:38:59 in your house or you charge it at the pool or

00:39:02 wherever or the gym, you have to spend some time

00:39:04 at the gym, oh, sad for you to charge it.

00:39:07 You are -- you are powering it on today's

00:39:11 electric grid, right, which is a mixture of

00:39:13 sources, right?

00:39:14 Yes.

00:39:15 Thank you for bringing this up.

00:39:16 There's probably some coal, there's probably

00:39:17 some -- right?

00:39:18 Yes.

00:39:19 Yes.

00:39:20 Okay.

00:39:21 Not in California, but yes.

00:39:22 But yes, in general across the U.S.

00:39:23 Because you don't -- it's not just California

00:39:24 that listens to you guys, right?

00:39:25 18 percent of our energy in the U.S.

00:39:26 comes from coal.

00:39:27 Right.

00:39:28 Or in 1890s.

00:39:29 So there, you're still better.

00:39:30 You're still better off.

00:39:31 But over time --

00:39:32 Yes.

00:39:33 -- you have more renewables.

00:39:34 And you have that car for, let's say, 10 to 15

00:39:35 years, right?

00:39:36 Or somebody has that car for 10 to 15 years.

00:39:37 Right?

00:39:38 So the electric car, its emissions are

00:39:40 essentially going down in time as you keep the

00:39:43 same performance because it's tapped to this

00:39:46 grid that's also improving.

00:39:48 Right.

00:39:49 Right?

00:39:50 And so there's -- that's another really good

00:39:51 thing about, like, our brains are like, oh, but

00:39:54 it takes a little more carbon to make this car

00:39:56 and, like, it's a little bit more resource

00:39:58 intensive.

00:39:59 But that's not the right way to think about it.

00:40:00 The right way to think is, like, one, I'm taking

00:40:02 the air quality improvements home, and two, this

00:40:05 thing is just getting better over time.

00:40:07 Not only that, it doesn't have to take more

00:40:10 carbon to produce them.

00:40:11 It doesn't have to.

00:40:12 We have chosen -- we gave it up.

00:40:14 And we talked, you know, with -- was it A123?

00:40:17 We gave up our lead in battery technology to

00:40:20 China, who just happens to burn coal to make

00:40:22 batteries.

00:40:23 But if we make batteries with green energy, then

00:40:25 it takes less carbon.

00:40:26 Yes.

00:40:27 Yes.

00:40:28 There's choices.

00:40:29 Right?

00:40:30 We don't have to be that way.

00:40:31 But they can't wrap their heads around that.

00:40:33 The fact that, like, the grid is getting green.

00:40:35 The grid is getting green, and so the cars are

00:40:37 going to get greener with time.

00:40:39 Right.

00:40:40 Exactly.

00:40:41 Even the same car that you buy today over time

00:40:43 gets greener.

00:40:44 And this is -- yes, I love that point, especially

00:40:46 because it's -- for those who don't even want to

00:40:48 debate the climate change portion of it --

00:40:50 They're not listening.

00:40:51 Well, to me, the most exciting part about EVs is

00:40:54 the fact that it's the potential, the upside.

00:40:57 This is essentially unexplored territory.

00:41:00 We spent 100-plus years on internal combustion.

00:41:03 Hey, the technology is awesome.

00:41:05 Like, the internal combustion engines have

00:41:07 never been more efficient, higher horsepower, all

00:41:10 that stuff.

00:41:11 And clean.

00:41:12 And clean.

00:41:13 Yeah, good job.

00:41:14 Great.

00:41:15 We've made huge improvements, and you've

00:41:17 noticed that from an air quality perspective.

00:41:19 Right.

00:41:20 Right.

00:41:21 That improvement, Clean Air Act Forward, is also

00:41:23 detectable.

00:41:24 Oh, sure, sure.

00:41:25 Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.

00:41:26 And now there's a whole other category that could

00:41:28 be developed on EVs, which is to get -- you know,

00:41:29 a lot of people are up in arms about where the

00:41:31 batteries are coming from and where the minerals

00:41:33 or whatever is in there.

00:41:34 Great, you know?

00:41:35 We're now digging all over the country looking

00:41:37 for lithium.

00:41:38 Look, I always bring this up.

00:41:39 Like, you know, World War II ends, and the CIA or

00:41:42 whoever, State Department, says to General Leslie

00:41:45 Groves, who built the atom bomb, like, "How long

00:41:48 before Russia gets a bomb?"

00:41:50 And his response was, "20 years, because there's

00:41:52 not enough uranium on Earth."

00:41:54 Because no one was looking for uranium, because

00:41:56 it was a useless thing.

00:41:57 But, like, we just found, you know, enough lithium

00:42:00 in the Salton Sea to give every American, like,

00:42:03 1.12 EVs.

00:42:05 Right.

00:42:06 And Wyoming just found enough rare earth metals,

00:42:08 which, by the way, for a lot of batteries --

00:42:10 batteries don't even have rare earth elements in

00:42:12 them, circuit boards do.

00:42:13 But anyways, we found enough for, like, eternity.

00:42:15 You know, like, 2.3 billion cubic --

00:42:17 Nevada's got a ton of lithium.

00:42:18 Yeah, yeah, yeah.

00:42:19 So --

00:42:20 That's kind of the point.

00:42:21 The upside is unmeasured yet with the technology.

00:42:23 Yeah, exactly.

00:42:24 While we have Dr. Emily here, let's get --

00:42:28 let's go even deeper.

00:42:30 Actually, I'm dying to know, because you've been

00:42:32 talking about it.

00:42:33 What do you drive?

00:42:34 So what does a good doctor drive?

00:42:36 She's like, "I bicycle everywhere else."

00:42:38 I do, like, cycling.

00:42:39 Okay.

00:42:40 But I also have two children who do a lot of

00:42:42 things, right?

00:42:43 And so, yes, I drive a car.

00:42:45 I have a Kia Niro.

00:42:46 Okay.

00:42:47 That's our electric --

00:42:48 Hydrogen?

00:42:49 Oh, the electric.

00:42:50 The electric.

00:42:51 Yeah, yeah.

00:42:52 We also have a hybrid.

00:42:53 We have both.

00:42:54 We will switch that hybrid out as soon as we can

00:42:57 get -- we tried already to get the electric hybrid,

00:43:01 the Sorento, and we --

00:43:02 Okay.

00:43:03 We, like -- our other car died, and we -- but as

00:43:05 soon as we can switch that one out, we will.

00:43:07 We know a person, James Bell.

00:43:08 We know a person.

00:43:09 Yes, we know a person.

00:43:10 So -- so -- but, yeah, that -- we have a Kia Niro.

00:43:13 It's awesome.

00:43:14 I also have an electric bike.

00:43:16 I mean, transportation is, like, every day you

00:43:18 make a choice how you're going to go somewhere

00:43:20 depending on where you're going, right?

00:43:21 So I think that flexibility is -- is important.

00:43:23 What's charging, like, in Fort Collins?

00:43:25 Do you have a home charger?

00:43:26 I do, but I have an old house, so it was really

00:43:28 hard to get the home charger in.

00:43:29 So I actually had to upgrade the power from the

00:43:31 street.

00:43:32 It was a whole thing also during the pandemic.

00:43:33 So -- but now I have a charger under my -- I have,

00:43:35 like, a 1950s little house, and I have a carport.

00:43:37 So now I have a charger outside under the carport.

00:43:39 And, I mean, that's awesome, right?

00:43:42 You just plug it in.

00:43:43 Chargers at the university?

00:43:44 Yeah, there's chargers at the university.

00:43:46 Not at my campus, though, but I live so close.

00:43:49 It doesn't really matter.

00:43:51 So before -- when we -- when we made the change,

00:43:54 right, and I ended up with this car.

00:43:56 I love it, but I literally -- this is -- I literally

00:43:58 looked at my husband, and I was like, "We're not

00:44:00 putting another tank of gas in this Subaru a year

00:44:03 out."

00:44:04 Right.

00:44:05 I was like, "That's the timeline for getting an

00:44:06 electric car because this thing is like a money pit."

00:44:09 And so that's how we ended up, and it's been

00:44:11 awesome, right?

00:44:12 Like, I love this -- this new car, but -- but we

00:44:15 just -- it was literally like that.

00:44:16 That's how we made the decision.

00:44:17 And then we didn't have a plan to put the charger

00:44:19 in, and it took a while to do all the stuff.

00:44:22 So we charged at the pool for a while and at the

00:44:24 grocery store, and, you know, like I would -- you

00:44:26 kind of just know in your area where you go, and

00:44:28 you just -- you totally adapt really quickly to

00:44:30 where you put it.

00:44:31 So was it frustrating to be using the -- was it

00:44:33 Electrify America or EVgo, or do you remember what

00:44:35 ChargePoint -- what -- what --

00:44:36 ChargePoint is what we were using.

00:44:38 Oh, sorry.

00:44:39 Yeah.

00:44:40 Terrible?

00:44:41 Not so terrible.

00:44:42 I don't know.

00:44:43 I mean, it's like sometimes the app works,

00:44:46 sometimes you can tell what's going on.

00:44:48 I mean, this is the thing, right?

00:44:49 We need to do much better at charge infrastructure.

00:44:52 I just had this experience.

00:44:53 We went -- we went out to CES, and I drove a Lucid

00:44:55 out to Vegas, and, you know, the Lucid on its

00:44:59 system routed me to this EVgo thing in Baker,

00:45:02 California, and I got there, and I said to my -- I

00:45:06 said out loud to myself, I'm going to go, "When

00:45:08 they make a museum of electric cars, this will be

00:45:11 there as how rotten EV infrastructure was in

00:45:14 2023."

00:45:15 This was like early January '24, and then I went

00:45:17 across the street, and there was a new Electrify

00:45:19 America station with 12 working chargers.

00:45:22 The EVgo was like in a gross parking lot, no

00:45:25 bathrooms, no lighting.

00:45:27 Yeah.

00:45:28 What are we doing?

00:45:29 There was 250 kilowatt things, both occupied.

00:45:32 There was 350 watts.

00:45:33 Three didn't work.

00:45:34 I plugged into one.

00:45:35 Error messages, and -- but it's changing so fast.

00:45:39 So fast.

00:45:40 And, you know, where this Electrify America

00:45:43 installation is in Baker, you know, first of all,

00:45:46 there was a convenience store, I mean, it was a

00:45:48 gas station, but it had bathrooms and a sandwich

00:45:50 shop, whatever.

00:45:51 There was 44 Tesla chargers on Sunday when I

00:45:54 drove out.

00:45:55 When I went back, there was 88, and that was, like,

00:45:57 in a few days.

00:45:58 They still had the plastic on them, you know what

00:46:00 I mean?

00:46:01 Like, it's just happening like that.

00:46:03 So it was kind of a hopeful -- it was like,

00:46:05 okay, this is good.

00:46:06 And I found another EA that, like, worked, which

00:46:08 was amazing.

00:46:09 So it is all changing, but it's -- people hear the

00:46:12 horror stories and react to them.

00:46:14 Now, but like you said, equitable, it's great that

00:46:17 you could get a home charger.

00:46:18 I got a home charger.

00:46:20 Lots of people, including Sean, who's our producer

00:46:23 right now listening to us, like, he's got a Tesla --

00:46:25 he's got an apartment where he can't get a home

00:46:27 charger.

00:46:28 So what -- does the government need to step in?

00:46:31 Cities?

00:46:32 How do we make sure that everybody has access to

00:46:35 dumb, meaning you charge overnight, chargers?

00:46:38 Like, how does that happen?

00:46:40 And should that be a real priority?

00:46:41 It has to be a priority.

00:46:42 It has to be a priority.

00:46:43 And, you know, just in my -- I have -- my brother

00:46:46 lives in town, and I told him I was coming out here

00:46:48 and he's like, what are you talking about?

00:46:50 And I was like, electric vehicles, he's like, they're

00:46:52 too expensive.

00:46:53 Everything's too expensive.

00:46:54 And I was like, you know, like, in my own family,

00:46:56 things are too hard and expensive.

00:46:58 Yes.

00:46:59 Right?

00:47:00 And so I appreciate that.

00:47:01 And the way I --

00:47:02 But you have a Kia Niro.

00:47:03 I mean, that's not an expensive vehicle.

00:47:05 Yeah, but, right?

00:47:06 Like, so I'm --

00:47:07 And it's expensive in the Niro line.

00:47:09 It's expensive.

00:47:10 In the Niro line, but there's still a $7,500 tax

00:47:12 credit.

00:47:13 Sure.

00:47:14 Yeah.

00:47:15 Yeah, right?

00:47:16 And so -- and the way I responded to my brother,

00:47:18 Sam, was I was like, yeah, we need to make it as a

00:47:21 society so that this is affordable for you.

00:47:24 Right.

00:47:25 And when you make a change, that's the choice you

00:47:27 make for both performance and economics and ethics

00:47:31 and all the things, right?

00:47:33 And to do that as a society level, to sort of

00:47:36 facilitate these personal choices, there needs to be

00:47:40 charging everywhere.

00:47:41 That's a massive ramp up that needs to happen.

00:47:43 And I agree with you.

00:47:44 It is happening.

00:47:45 Right?

00:47:46 But three years ago, it was, we need to tighten it

00:47:49 up.

00:47:50 Let's go.

00:47:51 Like, it needs to go faster everywhere.

00:47:53 Because there should -- we can't have this --

00:47:55 Because I know so many people that live in

00:47:57 apartments or condos or something where it's like

00:47:59 the building won't let -- like, I have a friend.

00:48:01 That's silly.

00:48:02 He's got -- I don't even know how many cars he has.

00:48:04 Six, I think, at his apartment.

00:48:05 And he wants to get an EV just to like, you

00:48:07 know, daily driver type thing.

00:48:09 And he lives in a luxury high rise and they

00:48:11 won't let him -- they won't even let him

00:48:13 trickle charge.

00:48:14 They're insane.

00:48:15 But they won't let him put in a charger.

00:48:17 And I'm like, this is nuts.

00:48:18 It's dumb.

00:48:19 It should be illegal.

00:48:20 Yeah.

00:48:21 For a lot of reasons.

00:48:22 But yeah, so like, have you heard -- because I

00:48:24 haven't.

00:48:25 But have you heard of any cities that are going

00:48:27 to say, like, you know, if -- like, just like

00:48:29 you have to have a heater if you're going to

00:48:31 rent somebody an apartment, you have to --

00:48:33 No.

00:48:34 That's not -- that's --

00:48:35 But that should happen.

00:48:36 It should happen.

00:48:37 It should happen.

00:48:38 But I don't -- that's, you know, not really my --

00:48:40 Not in my wheelhouse.

00:48:41 Not in my wheelhouse.

00:48:42 Thank you.

00:48:43 But it could be, though.

00:48:44 I mean, huge, huge benefits for the climate if --

00:48:46 Huge benefits, yeah.

00:48:47 And to facilitate.

00:48:48 So we all have to do whatever level of

00:48:50 government or, you know, sphere of influence,

00:48:52 let's say, that we're in, we need to facilitate

00:48:54 the changeover, right?

00:48:55 And so this charging infrastructure is one of

00:48:57 the things that needs to happen.

00:48:59 Let's -- let's -- let's -- let's -- let's

00:49:01 go back to her wheelhouse, which was the opening

00:49:03 question before you diverted, which is, what

00:49:05 else -- what else do you do as a --

00:49:08 Atmospheric scientist.

00:49:09 Atmospheric scientist.

00:49:10 What's your day-to-day like?

00:49:12 My day-to-day, I have a team of about 10,

00:49:15 mostly PhD students, and we work on all sorts

00:49:19 of problems.

00:49:20 So my wheelhouse is -- is atmospheric chemistry,

00:49:24 and things that my team works on are --

00:49:27 wildfires, where the smoke goes, what that means

00:49:31 for human health, emissions from large animal

00:49:35 feeding operations is a new thing we're working on.

00:49:37 Oh, nice.

00:49:38 I work on emissions from oil and gas extraction

00:49:41 and what that means for local air quality, both

00:49:44 air toxics and ozone formation.

00:49:46 So like here, you have an ozone problem in the

00:49:48 L.A. area, right?

00:49:49 So that's sort of my -- my zone.

00:49:52 I work on -- I work on -- I work on -- I work on

00:49:56 -- some of my team works on the way pollution

00:50:00 moves.

00:50:01 So like how long does it take for something to

00:50:03 get from, for example, China to the West Coast?

00:50:07 That's something that I've previously worked on.

00:50:09 Do you do the soot from China, like that lands

00:50:11 on the ice, on the snow?

00:50:12 No.

00:50:13 No, that's not me, but my -- I have a -- one of

00:50:15 my graduate students now is looking at actually

00:50:19 when you have NOx emissions from vehicles, they

00:50:21 transform into some other compounds.

00:50:22 Those compounds are what can cross the Pacific,

00:50:25 and so we're looking at how did that change during

00:50:27 the pandemic.

00:50:28 So just very specific aspects of how the

00:50:30 atmosphere moves pollutants, and it's under

00:50:32 this large umbrella of the atmosphere's ability to

00:50:35 clean itself.

00:50:36 So what's going in and how quickly can we -- how

00:50:39 quickly does the atmosphere take it out?

00:50:41 That's sort of my realm.

00:50:42 Sweet.

00:50:43 Do we have four more hours to talk about all this

00:50:44 stuff?

00:50:45 Hang on.

00:50:46 I was giggling because you sent me an article the

00:50:47 other day that oil extraction is going electric.

00:50:51 So instead of using like diesel machinery to --

00:50:54 It was a Wall Street Journal article.

00:50:56 I don't know if you caught it.

00:50:57 I didn't read it.

00:50:58 Yeah, but it was just -- it was like the irony of

00:51:00 like --

00:51:01 Tail wagging the dog.

00:51:02 So let's talk about that.

00:51:03 So because -- I didn't know this.

00:51:05 I did some research, but I didn't realize -- I'm

00:51:08 really curious.

00:51:09 I want to talk about wildfires, so we'll spend

00:51:11 a little time on that, but I would love to hear

00:51:13 about the large animal feeding operations.

00:51:16 I've heard, right, like we're worried about carbon

00:51:20 in the -- carbon dioxide in the atmosphere, but

00:51:23 methane is also a huge problem, and that comes

00:51:25 from these feedlot -- it's basically cows we're

00:51:31 talking about, right?

00:51:32 Or it's also pigs.

00:51:33 Yep.

00:51:34 My team has only worked on cattle and dairies.

00:51:37 So -- and actually, I ended up working on this,

00:51:40 not the way -- my path here is a very science path.

00:51:44 So in 2018, I led a very large study to focus on

00:51:50 wildfire emissions in the western U.S., and we flew

00:51:52 on the NSF NCAR C-130, and one of the pollutants

00:51:56 that comes out of -- one of the constituents in

00:51:59 smoke is ammonia.

00:52:00 And so at that time, there was no airborne

00:52:03 technique that could be used to measure that, and

00:52:06 so my team had to work on it.

00:52:08 And so once we had that working, and we were able

00:52:11 to do it in pretty challenging conditions,

00:52:13 flying in a wildfire smoke flume -- it's really

00:52:15 bumpy up in those plains.

00:52:16 Oh, sure, yeah.

00:52:17 Yeah, you can't see.

00:52:18 It's all things.

00:52:19 So it's hot.

00:52:20 So anyway, it's dirty.

00:52:22 So we developed that technique on my team, and

00:52:28 so then the next application for that is

00:52:31 agriculture.

00:52:32 And so once we had sort of an airborne technique,

00:52:35 we're able to contribute that to the study of

00:52:38 emissions from agricultural facilities.

00:52:41 Like flying over feedlots?

00:52:43 Yeah, so like the last two summers, my team had a

00:52:46 King Air.

00:52:47 The University of Wyoming has a King Air.

00:52:48 We shoved all the instrumentation in it.

00:52:51 King Air's an airplane.

00:52:52 King Air is a small aircraft.

00:52:54 I think it's a six-seater, technically, but we pull

00:52:57 all the seats out when we work on aircraft.

00:52:59 And then there's like one seat, and you're just

00:53:01 jammed in.

00:53:02 Dual-prop.

00:53:03 Yeah.

00:53:04 Dual-prop, okay.

00:53:05 Yeah, and so what we were figuring out is actually

00:53:11 how to sample these facilities.

00:53:12 So like how do you fly?

00:53:13 Don't scare the animals, right?

00:53:15 So how do you fly?

00:53:16 How do you not scare the animals, and how do you

00:53:18 follow those plumes downwind so we can understand

00:53:20 how much ammonia and methane's coming out?

00:53:22 Must smell amazing.

00:53:23 Yeah, it's not great.

00:53:24 I mean, I'm not great on aircraft.

00:53:25 I get really sick to my stomach.

00:53:26 I like walk off with bags of vomit.

00:53:28 So it's just not great.

00:53:29 But anyway, my students do amazing work.

00:53:31 Wait, are they on commercial flights or just on

00:53:33 the Air King?

00:53:34 On research flights.

00:53:36 Research flights.

00:53:37 And in the back of Lyfts and Ubers, I'm like, "Oh."

00:53:40 Oh, wow.

00:53:41 Thank you so much for coming again.

00:53:43 Yeah, wow.

00:53:44 But anyway, it's totally fine.

00:53:46 But yeah, so we got there that way to figure out

00:53:49 how do we sample these facilities with aircraft.

00:53:52 And it's cow burps, not farts.

00:53:55 That's actually the thing that's more interesting.

00:53:57 And so yeah, we were focused on the ammonia, right?

00:54:00 But we co-measured methane.

00:54:02 And so there's one team that's working on the –

00:54:04 this isn't published yet – but working on the

00:54:06 methane fluxes from agriculture and one team

00:54:09 that's working on the ammonia fluxes.

00:54:11 And it's helpful to do the things together because

00:54:16 you can then – and we also measured ethane so we

00:54:18 can separate it from the methane coming from the

00:54:21 oil and gas wells.

00:54:22 Wow.

00:54:23 Got it.

00:54:24 Okay.

00:54:25 So yeah, so this is how I ended up there.

00:54:27 I didn't end it up there because I wanted to do that.

00:54:29 I ended up there because I developed a tool.

00:54:31 It's very science, right?

00:54:32 You develop a tool and then you – oh, this team

00:54:34 needs it.

00:54:35 Right.

00:54:36 Right.

00:54:37 So that's how science works.

00:54:38 So in terms of – how should the layperson understand

00:54:42 like the contribution from cattle and dairy versus

00:54:48 transportation?

00:54:49 Like is the methane, ammonia issue bigger, smaller?

00:54:54 We're trying to partition how much methane right

00:54:57 now is from agriculture.

00:54:59 It is a source.

00:55:00 It is a large source, the exact amount.

00:55:03 We are trying to figure that out.

00:55:04 That's what the study is looking at.

00:55:05 Yeah, that's what we're working on.

00:55:06 Got it.

00:55:07 So it depends on the area that you're in, right?

00:55:12 So in Colorado, yes, there's large animal feeding

00:55:16 operations and yes, they are a large source of

00:55:18 methane.

00:55:19 Dairies are also a large – when I say large

00:55:21 animals, dairies are included in that.

00:55:23 Yeah, right.

00:55:24 So yeah, anything that you can do to consume less

00:55:29 of that is probably good for your health and should

00:55:31 be good for the environment.

00:55:32 Okay.

00:55:33 So that is a personal choice that you can take.

00:55:37 So let me ask you this.

00:55:39 So like if you could – if you had a magic wand

00:55:42 and like tomorrow you can get rid of like internal

00:55:46 combustion vehicles or like big ships that burn

00:55:50 bunker oil, like what's – and I know it's a silly

00:55:54 question because it's not going to happen, but

00:55:56 like what's doing the most damage?

00:55:58 Is it a dairy farm?

00:55:59 Is it shipping oil across the ocean?

00:56:01 I would get rid of internal combustion engines.

00:56:03 I think it's because we can do it, right?

00:56:05 We can do it with really a very – it's a happy

00:56:11 transition, right?

00:56:12 It's to something that performs better and is

00:56:18 really no lifestyle crimp.

00:56:21 Well, that's a great point and a lot of people

00:56:23 don't get this, but like when you go from like a

00:56:26 1.6 liter inline four cylinder turbo to an

00:56:30 electric motor, the performance is better.

00:56:33 You actually get a better –

00:56:35 Yeah, I think the problem is because Colorado has

00:56:37 some cold places.

00:56:38 The people who are going to rail at hearing that

00:56:40 are the ones who say, "Well, these EVs, they suck

00:56:43 in cold weather," which is true.

00:56:44 Do they?

00:56:45 I mean I go skiing every weekend.

00:56:47 Like I mean this – I cross 10,000 foot passes

00:56:51 twice every weekend.

00:56:52 So I'm sort of like, "Yay!"

00:56:54 It's not that.

00:56:55 It's that if you – so you leave your car plugged

00:56:57 in when it gets cold.

00:56:58 Yeah.

00:56:59 If you don't do that, then you have a frozen

00:57:01 battery and so the energy needed to heat up the

00:57:03 battery –

00:57:04 A fair amount of the range gets eaten up just

00:57:05 heating the vehicle.

00:57:06 Correct.

00:57:07 Eats half the battery.

00:57:08 So again, that's why we need more places to leave

00:57:09 these things plugged in.

00:57:10 Sure.

00:57:11 So it's back to infrastructure.

00:57:12 Okay.

00:57:13 But so internal – okay, that's interesting.

00:57:16 And the other thing I heard and correct me if I'm

00:57:19 wrong, but you know, because I always hear that

00:57:21 like, "Well, the big ships that are shipping

00:57:23 stuff," but like we are shipping oil and gas

00:57:26 around the ocean.

00:57:27 So if the demand for oil drops, then there's less

00:57:31 boats and the problem sort of takes care of itself

00:57:34 maybe by getting rid of internal – not getting

00:57:36 rid of, but you know what I mean, transitioning

00:57:38 away from internal combustion.

00:57:39 Yeah.

00:57:40 The way I think about it is electric vehicles –

00:57:43 so we have to do all the things for climate

00:57:45 change, right?

00:57:46 We have to transition away from using fossil fuels

00:57:49 to do everything we're doing with them right now,

00:57:53 right?

00:57:54 So if you think about U.S.

00:57:57 carbon pollution emissions at like make a big

00:57:59 pie chart, right, about a third of that is

00:58:03 transportation and within that pie about 60 percent

00:58:07 is personal vehicles.

00:58:09 Wow.

00:58:10 Roughly, right?

00:58:11 And so this is a great example of us.

00:58:13 We have the technology.

00:58:15 Just do it.

00:58:16 Right.

00:58:17 Right?

00:58:18 There are other places in that pie chart that

00:58:19 might be more difficult, right?

00:58:21 What are the other two-thirds?

00:58:22 Well, one-third is power generation.

00:58:26 Again, we have technology.

00:58:29 Do it, right?

00:58:31 And accelerate and continue research and all the

00:58:33 things, right?

00:58:34 Keep doing all the things.

00:58:35 But those are two sectors where the technology

00:58:38 exists.

00:58:39 It's just the deployment that needs to occur,

00:58:41 right?

00:58:42 It's the sort of will and all the logistics

00:58:44 around doing that, right?

00:58:45 This has to be done in a way that's fair.

00:58:48 But, I mean, we have the technology there.

00:58:51 So when you think about our carbon pollution

00:58:55 emissions, our greenhouse gas emissions, and you

00:58:57 think about that pie, for two of the sectors, we

00:58:59 have the technology, right?

00:59:01 And then if you think, you know, the rest of the

00:59:03 game, right, there's industrial uses and things

00:59:05 like that, right?

00:59:06 And maybe there's a little more research that needs

00:59:08 to happen there and research on how you would

00:59:12 decarbonize those areas.

00:59:15 But, yeah, for transportation, like, we have

00:59:19 the technology.

00:59:20 We have the technology.

00:59:21 We have the technology.

00:59:22 We have the technology.

00:59:23 We have the technology.

00:59:24 And we have the technology.

00:59:25 So, yeah, I mean, I think we're going to talk

00:59:27 about it on this podcast.

00:59:28 Let's do it.

00:59:29 Yeah.

00:59:30 Well, let me ask you this.

00:59:31 As an atmospheric scientist, where do you fall

00:59:33 on atomic energy?

00:59:34 I don't have really strong opinions about it

00:59:36 because I don't really know that much about it.

00:59:38 Okay.

00:59:39 Fair.

00:59:40 I mean, it --

00:59:41 Because it is green in terms of there's no

00:59:43 emissions whatsoever.

00:59:44 Right.

00:59:45 Right.

00:59:46 Is it politically viable?

00:59:47 Yeah.

00:59:48 That's a question to ask, right?

00:59:49 Because, you know, things have to also be

00:59:51 politically viable.

00:59:52 Yeah.

00:59:53 And so I don't know if it is everywhere.

00:59:55 Yeah.

00:59:56 I love that your take is that EVs are a

00:59:58 politically viable win because we've heard --

01:00:00 actually, the CEO of Ford told us the other day,

01:00:03 he's like, "It sucks that EVs have been

01:00:05 politicized."

01:00:06 Yeah.

01:00:07 And it has come down to it's a little bit

01:00:09 red state/blue state about, "Oh, you know,

01:00:11 gasoline forever."

01:00:12 Yeah.

01:00:13 "You'll take my V8, you know, from --"

01:00:15 "Out of my cold, dead hands."

01:00:16 "Out of my cold, dead hands," kind of scenario,

01:00:18 right?

01:00:19 Yeah.

01:00:20 And it's kind of silly, right?

01:00:21 It is sad, right?

01:00:22 Because -- I mean, I think trucks are an

01:00:24 interesting example, though, right?

01:00:26 Yeah, you're surrounded by them.

01:00:27 The biggest trucks, right, that is hard, I

01:00:29 think, as far as I understand it, to have

01:00:31 batteries that large and make them cost

01:00:33 competitive, right?

01:00:34 Right.

01:00:35 That's my understanding, but you guys would

01:00:37 know.

01:00:38 No, that's true.

01:00:39 But like a smaller truck that, like,

01:00:41 performed really well and hit the $50,000

01:00:43 mark?

01:00:44 Excuse me, man, this is America.

01:00:46 I mean, look, what it comes down to is, you

01:00:49 know, if you really do tow a lot, because

01:00:52 there's literally no infrastructure, and, you

01:00:55 know, if you put a heavy trailer on the back

01:00:58 of any vehicle, gas, diesel, electric, it

01:01:00 doesn't matter, the range is cut in half.

01:01:02 So that's very inconvenient for EVs, because

01:01:04 they take a while to charge, and there's no

01:01:06 pull-through chargers.

01:01:07 On a diesel truck, which unloaded has a range

01:01:10 of, like, you know, 700 miles, you cut it

01:01:12 down to 350 miles, well, that's a big day.

01:01:14 On a Rivian, which has, you know, a 300-mile

01:01:17 range, you cut that to 150, then you have to

01:01:19 charge.

01:01:20 So it does become hard.

01:01:21 But just for, like, driving around town, a

01:01:23 battery-powered truck is just as good as a

01:01:25 gasoline-powered truck.

01:01:26 It's just as good.

01:01:27 Well, let me ask, because you opened the

01:01:28 door on diesel, and I really hate that I'm

01:01:30 asking this question, because as -- I may

01:01:32 come off as, like, this EV guy, I do own a

01:01:35 diesel Land Cruiser.

01:01:37 How -- just how bad -- like, on the scale of,

01:01:39 like, awful --

01:01:40 Especially his, like, not --

01:01:42 What are, like, the worst --

01:01:44 --compliant '80s diesel --

01:01:45 What are the -- from an atmospheric

01:01:47 scientific perspective --

01:01:48 -- from childhood asthma.

01:01:49 What is -- I actually have asthma.

01:01:51 What is the -- what are the worst internal

01:01:53 combustion vehicles?

01:01:54 Are they diesels?

01:01:55 Well, can I tell you a personal story so that

01:01:57 you feel less guilty?

01:01:58 Okay.

01:01:59 So I --

01:02:00 Did you make him feel guilty?

01:02:01 When I moved to Colorado, we bought a

01:02:04 diesel wagon, a VW wagon.

01:02:07 Ha-ha.

01:02:08 Diesel-gated.

01:02:09 Yes.

01:02:10 So I study NOx and what happens to that

01:02:14 pollutant in the environment, right?

01:02:16 And so when diesel-gate occurred, my graduate

01:02:19 students, they put, you know, like, rolling

01:02:22 coal, the -- when you have, like, a truck and

01:02:25 the big plume, they -- these graduate students

01:02:27 were so funny.

01:02:28 I dearly miss having them in the office every

01:02:30 day.

01:02:31 They put that on my door with a face of me

01:02:33 inside the truck, and so anyway, I got rid of

01:02:36 that.

01:02:37 They roasted you for --

01:02:38 It's hard for that.

01:02:39 So --

01:02:40 Let me -- this is fantastic.

01:02:41 So wait, hang on.

01:02:42 So diesel is like -- is diesel the worst?

01:02:44 Diesel -- I don't -- we need to move away from

01:02:47 fossil fuels, and diesel is a problem, right?

01:02:49 Diesel is -- it has higher particulate

01:02:52 emissions, I think.

01:02:53 Yeah, right.

01:02:54 And so it's not -- it's not great, right?

01:02:57 It's also something that we should transition

01:03:00 away from.

01:03:01 Okay, great.

01:03:02 So I'm going to take that as a relief.

01:03:03 That's just the net.

01:03:04 It's not worse than --

01:03:05 I mean --

01:03:06 No, it is worse than --

01:03:07 It's not worse.

01:03:08 There are parts of it that are worse.

01:03:09 Maybe it's slightly more efficient from a --

01:03:10 I mean, lung cancer and heart disease.

01:03:11 But like, from a climate perspective, but the

01:03:13 air quality benefits are not good.

01:03:14 Diesel, 20% more efficient than gas.

01:03:15 Yeah, great, but your air quality is not as good,

01:03:17 right?

01:03:18 But you're giving your son, you know, asthma.

01:03:20 So I would just say, move forward.

01:03:22 Okay, all right.

01:03:23 How did you feel as a Volkswagen owner when

01:03:26 diesel gate broke?

01:03:27 I was so irritated.

01:03:29 How bad was it?

01:03:30 I just -- I just gave the car back.

01:03:33 Wow.

01:03:34 And I bought -- at the time, like that day, I

01:03:36 just got a minivan.

01:03:38 I also, like, was -- had a second kid and, like,

01:03:40 so I -- and now the minivan's gone, right?

01:03:42 Like, but I was just like, we're done here.

01:03:44 We're done here because this is ridiculous.

01:03:46 Yeah, because it's -- I mean, that -- yeah, we

01:03:48 stopped talking about diesel gate, but like, I

01:03:50 mean, you remember, we used to do emissions

01:03:52 testing at Motor Trend --

01:03:54 Oh, yeah, we did.

01:03:55 Emissions analytics.

01:03:56 Yes.

01:03:57 And we had this guy, Sam, and I remember, like,

01:03:59 10 months before diesel gate, he's like, man,

01:04:01 some of these, they do this really funny thing

01:04:04 when I'm running at the EPA cycle.

01:04:06 I don't know what it is.

01:04:08 And I'm like, yeah, that's funny.

01:04:10 We should run our methodology.

01:04:11 We did this whole thing.

01:04:12 It's for, like, 10 years.

01:04:13 We did a real MPG system.

01:04:15 Yeah, and we just captured tailpipe emissions

01:04:17 and analyzed them.

01:04:18 We had this crazy device put on the back of

01:04:20 the -- this UK outfit that helped us with this.

01:04:22 Yeah.

01:04:23 And actually, nobody ever cared.

01:04:24 Nobody cared, but it was --

01:04:25 We started at the peak in, like, 2008 when gas

01:04:28 prices started to shoot up, and we thought, oh,

01:04:30 everyone's going to be really interested in fuel

01:04:32 economy, and then the prices came right down.

01:04:34 Nobody cared.

01:04:35 But we weren't measuring NOx.

01:04:37 Like, we just -- but he would notice -- we were

01:04:39 literally just measuring fuel economy, but he

01:04:41 noticed that the engines were going to this weird

01:04:43 cycle when the steering wheels were straight and

01:04:45 at, like, the speed limit, they would do something

01:04:47 different.

01:04:48 Shameful.

01:04:49 Shameful.

01:04:50 And I remember he was telling me about it.

01:04:51 I was like, okay.

01:04:52 And then we also had John German, who's the

01:04:54 scientist at University of, I think, Tennessee,

01:04:57 who discovered cracked diesel gate wide open.

01:04:59 He used to be a Honda engineer.

01:05:01 We had him in the office, and there was a moment

01:05:04 where, like, Mazda and Honda were going to do

01:05:06 small clean diesels, and then they suddenly weren't.

01:05:09 And we asked him, we said, what happened to the

01:05:10 Honda clean diesel?

01:05:11 And he's like, you know, we can't figure it out.

01:05:13 We're like, well, how does Volkswagen do it?

01:05:15 And he was like, yeah, we really can't figure that

01:05:17 out either.

01:05:18 And then he left, and he was the guy who cracked it

01:05:20 open.

01:05:21 But, like, it was kind of -- like, people suspected

01:05:23 it.

01:05:24 To that point, are you -- I know -- and we'll go

01:05:27 to wildfires in two questions.

01:05:29 But are you -- do you study particulate --

01:05:32 Mostly from wildfire smoke.

01:05:35 Okay.

01:05:36 Not really from urban sources.

01:05:37 So my -- more of my wheelhouse, I work with a

01:05:40 number of collaborators at CSU.

01:05:42 We try to figure out when there's smoke in the

01:05:45 atmosphere.

01:05:46 Is it at the ground?

01:05:47 So because right when wildfires inject plumes,

01:05:49 sometimes they're not at the ground impacting surface

01:05:52 air quality.

01:05:53 So we try to figure out, okay, what -- is it at

01:05:56 the ground?

01:05:57 How much is there?

01:05:58 When was it there?

01:05:59 What else is there in addition to the fine

01:06:01 particulate matter?

01:06:02 So, for example, when wildfire smoke comes to

01:06:04 town, you have all sorts of other things.

01:06:06 It's a big mixture of pollutants.

01:06:08 So there's hazardous air pollutants.

01:06:10 There's nitrogen-containing compounds.

01:06:12 There's all sorts of stuff.

01:06:13 Carbon monoxide.

01:06:14 Right.

01:06:15 So how much is there?

01:06:16 What's in it?

01:06:17 And when did it leave?

01:06:18 So that an epidemiologist, for example, can say,

01:06:20 okay, the smoke came Wednesday, wasn't here the

01:06:22 next Wednesday.

01:06:23 What's the difference in the health outcome?

01:06:25 So we can start to quantify the impacts of

01:06:27 smoke on asthma, for example, asthma

01:06:29 hospitalizations, in addition to things like

01:06:31 mortality, but in sort of all its health impacts.

01:06:33 So I -- and my team has -- sort of deploys low-cost

01:06:35 sensors for particulate matter for -- in places

01:06:37 where there's not a lot of monitors.

01:06:39 So a great example is, like, we just finished work in

01:06:41 Florida and in Kansas, both around different kinds of

01:06:43 agricultural burning.

01:06:44 And so what are the impacts of that?

01:06:46 And so we're trying to figure out, okay, what's

01:06:48 the impact of that?

01:06:49 And so we're trying to figure out, okay, what's

01:06:51 the impact of that?

01:06:52 And so we're trying to figure out, okay, what's

01:06:54 the impact of that?

01:06:55 And so we're trying to figure out, okay, what's

01:06:57 the impact of that?

01:06:58 And so we're trying to figure out, okay, what's

01:07:00 the impact of that?

01:07:01 And so we're trying to figure out, okay, what's

01:07:03 the impact of that?

01:07:04 And so we're trying to figure out, okay, what's

01:07:06 the impact of that?

01:07:07 And so we're trying to figure out, okay, what's

01:07:09 the impact of that?

01:07:10 And so we're trying to figure out, okay, what's

01:07:12 the impact of that?

01:07:13 And so we're trying to figure out, okay, what's

01:07:15 the impact of that?

01:07:16 And so we're trying to figure out, okay, what's

01:07:18 the impact of that?

01:07:19 And so we're trying to figure out, okay, what's

01:07:21 the impact of that?

01:07:22 And so we're trying to figure out, okay, what's

01:07:24 the impact of that?

01:07:25 And so we're trying to figure out, okay, what's

01:07:27 the impact of that?

01:07:28 And so we're trying to figure out, okay, what's

01:07:30 the impact of that?

01:07:31 And so we're trying to figure out, okay, what's

01:07:33 the impact of that?

01:07:34 And so we're trying to figure out, okay, what's

01:07:36 the impact of that?

01:07:37 And so we're trying to figure out, okay, what's

01:07:39 the impact of that?

01:07:40 And so we're trying to figure out, okay, what's

01:07:42 the impact of that?

01:07:43 And so we're trying to figure out, okay, what's

01:07:45 the impact of that?

01:07:46 And so we're trying to figure out, okay, what's

01:07:48 the impact of that?

01:07:49 And so we're trying to figure out, okay, what's

01:07:51 the impact of that?

01:07:52 And so we're trying to figure out, okay, what's

01:07:54 the impact of that?

01:07:55 And so we're trying to figure out, okay, what's

01:07:57 the impact of that?

01:07:58 And so we're trying to figure out, okay, what's

01:08:00 the impact of that?

01:08:01 And so we're trying to figure out, okay, what's

01:08:03 the impact of that?

01:08:04 And so we're trying to figure out, okay, what's

01:08:06 the impact of that?

01:08:07 And so we're trying to figure out, okay, what's

01:08:09 the impact of that?

01:08:10 And so we're trying to figure out, okay, what's

01:08:12 the impact of that?

01:08:13 And so we're trying to figure out, okay, what's

01:08:15 the impact of that?

01:08:16 And so we're trying to figure out, okay, what's

01:08:18 the impact of that?

01:08:19 And so we're trying to figure out, okay, what's

01:08:21 the impact of that?

01:08:22 And so we're trying to figure out, okay, what's

01:08:24 the impact of that?

01:08:25 And so we're trying to figure out, okay, what's

01:08:27 the impact of that?

01:08:28 And so we're trying to figure out, okay, what's

01:08:30 the impact of that?

01:08:31 And so we're trying to figure out, okay, what's

01:08:33 the impact of that?

01:08:34 And so we're trying to figure out, okay, what's

01:08:36 the impact of that?

01:08:37 And so we're trying to figure out, okay, what's

01:08:39 the impact of that?

01:08:40 And so we're trying to figure out, okay, what's

01:08:42 the impact of that?

01:08:43 And so we're trying to figure out, okay, what's

01:08:45 the impact of that?

01:08:46 And so we're trying to figure out, okay, what's

01:08:48 the impact of that?

01:08:49 And so we're trying to figure out, okay, what's

01:08:51 the impact of that?

01:08:52 And so we're trying to figure out, okay, what's

01:08:54 the impact of that?

01:08:55 And so we're trying to figure out, okay, what's

01:08:57 the impact of that?

01:08:58 And so we're trying to figure out, okay, what's

01:09:00 the impact of that?

01:09:01 And so we're trying to figure out, okay, what's

01:09:03 the impact of that?

01:09:04 And so we're trying to figure out, okay, what's

01:09:06 the impact of that?

01:09:07 And so we're trying to figure out, okay, what's

01:09:09 the impact of that?

01:09:10 And so we're trying to figure out, okay, what's

01:09:12 the impact of that?

01:09:13 And so we're trying to figure out, okay, what's

01:09:15 the impact of that?

01:09:16 And so we're trying to figure out, okay, what's

01:09:18 the impact of that?

01:09:19 And so we're trying to figure out, okay, what's

01:09:21 the impact of that?

01:09:22 And so we're trying to figure out, okay, what's

01:09:24 the impact of that?

01:09:25 And so we're trying to figure out, okay, what's

01:09:27 the impact of that?

01:09:28 And so we're trying to figure out, okay, what's

01:09:30 the impact of that?

01:09:31 And so we're trying to figure out, okay, what's

01:09:33 the impact of that?

01:09:34 And so we're trying to figure out, okay, what's

01:09:36 the impact of that?

01:09:37 And so we're trying to figure out, okay, what's

01:09:39 the impact of that?

01:09:40 And so we're trying to figure out, okay, what's

01:09:42 the impact of that?

01:09:43 And so we're trying to figure out, okay, what's

01:09:45 the impact of that?

01:09:46 And so we're trying to figure out, okay, what's

01:09:48 the impact of that?

01:09:49 And so we're trying to figure out, okay, what's

01:09:51 the impact of that?

01:09:52 And so we're trying to figure out, okay, what's

01:09:54 the impact of that?

01:09:55 And so we're trying to figure out, okay, what's

01:09:57 the impact of that?

01:09:58 And so we're trying to figure out, okay, what's

01:10:00 the impact of that?

01:10:01 And so we're trying to figure out, okay, what's

01:10:03 the impact of that?

01:10:04 And so we're trying to figure out, okay, what's

01:10:06 the impact of that?

01:10:07 And so we're trying to figure out, okay, what's

01:10:09 the impact of that?

01:10:10 And so we're trying to figure out, okay, what's

01:10:12 the impact of that?

01:10:13 And so we're trying to figure out, okay, what's

01:10:15 the impact of that?

01:10:16 And so we're trying to figure out, okay, what's

01:10:18 the impact of that?

01:10:19 And so we're trying to figure out, okay, what's

01:10:21 the impact of that?

01:10:22 And so we're trying to figure out, okay, what's

01:10:24 the impact of that?

01:10:25 And so we're trying to figure out, okay, what's

01:10:27 the impact of that?

01:10:28 And so we're trying to figure out, okay, what's

01:10:30 the impact of that?

01:10:31 And so we're trying to figure out, okay, what's

01:10:33 the impact of that?

01:10:34 And so we're trying to figure out, okay, what's

01:10:36 the impact of that?

01:10:37 And so we're trying to figure out, okay, what's

01:10:39 the impact of that?

01:10:40 And so we're trying to figure out, okay, what's

01:10:42 the impact of that?

01:10:43 And so we're trying to figure out, okay, what's

01:10:45 the impact of that?

01:10:46 And so we're trying to figure out, okay, what's

01:10:48 the impact of that?

01:10:49 And so we're trying to figure out, okay, what's

01:10:51 the impact of that?

01:10:52 And so we're trying to figure out, okay, what's

01:10:54 the impact of that?

01:10:55 And so we're trying to figure out, okay, what's

01:10:57 the impact of that?

01:10:58 And so we're trying to figure out, okay, what's

01:11:00 the impact of that?

01:11:01 And so we're trying to figure out, okay, what's

01:11:03 the impact of that?

01:11:04 And so we're trying to figure out, okay, what's

01:11:06 the impact of that?

01:11:07 And so we're trying to figure out, okay, what's

01:11:09 the impact of that?

01:11:10 And so we're trying to figure out, okay, what's

01:11:12 the impact of that?

01:11:13 And so we're trying to figure out, okay, what's

01:11:15 the impact of that?

01:11:16 And so we're trying to figure out, okay, what's

01:11:18 the impact of that?

01:11:19 And so we're trying to figure out, okay, what's

01:11:21 the impact of that?

01:11:22 And so we're trying to figure out, okay, what's

01:11:24 the impact of that?

01:11:25 And so we're trying to figure out, okay, what's

01:11:27 the impact of that?

01:11:28 And so we're trying to figure out, okay, what's

01:11:30 the impact of that?

01:11:31 And so we're trying to figure out, okay, what's

01:11:33 the impact of that?

01:11:34 And so we're trying to figure out, okay, what's

01:11:36 the impact of that?

01:11:37 And so we're trying to figure out, okay, what's

01:11:39 the impact of that?

01:11:40 And so we're trying to figure out, okay, what's

01:11:42 the impact of that?

01:11:43 And so we're trying to figure out, okay, what's

01:11:45 the impact of that?

01:11:46 And so we're trying to figure out, okay, what's

01:11:48 the impact of that?

01:11:49 And so we're trying to figure out, okay, what's

01:11:51 the impact of that?

01:11:52 And so we're trying to figure out, okay, what's

01:11:54 the impact of that?

01:11:55 And so we're trying to figure out, okay, what's

01:11:57 the impact of that?

01:11:58 And so we're trying to figure out, okay, what's

01:12:00 the impact of that?

01:12:01 And so we're trying to figure out, okay, what's

01:12:03 the impact of that?

01:12:04 And so we're trying to figure out, okay, what's

01:12:06 the impact of that?

01:12:07 And so we're trying to figure out, okay, what's

01:12:09 the impact of that?

01:12:10 And so we're trying to figure out, okay, what's

01:12:12 the impact of that?

01:12:13 And so we're trying to figure out, okay, what's

01:12:15 the impact of that?

01:12:16 And so we're trying to figure out, okay, what's

01:12:18 the impact of that?

01:12:19 And so we're trying to figure out, okay, what's

01:12:21 the impact of that?

01:12:22 And so we're trying to figure out, okay, what's

01:12:24 the impact of that?

01:12:25 And so we're trying to figure out, okay, what's

01:12:27 the impact of that?

01:12:28 And so we're trying to figure out, okay, what's

01:12:30 the impact of that?

01:12:31 And so we're trying to figure out, okay, what's

01:12:33 the impact of that?

01:12:34 And so we're trying to figure out, okay, what's

01:12:36 the impact of that?

01:12:37 And so we're trying to figure out, okay, what's

01:12:39 the impact of that?

01:12:40 And so we're trying to figure out, okay, what's

01:12:42 the impact of that?

01:12:43 And so we're trying to figure out, okay, what's

01:12:45 the impact of that?

01:12:46 And so we're trying to figure out, okay, what's

01:12:48 the impact of that?

01:12:49 And so we're trying to figure out, okay, what's

01:12:51 the impact of that?

01:12:52 And so we're trying to figure out, okay, what's

01:12:54 the impact of that?

01:12:55 And so we're trying to figure out, okay, what's

01:12:57 the impact of that?

01:12:58 And so we're trying to figure out, okay, what's

01:13:00 the impact of that?

01:13:01 And so we're trying to figure out, okay, what's

01:13:03 the impact of that?

01:13:04 And so we're trying to figure out, okay, what's

01:13:06 the impact of that?

01:13:07 And so we're trying to figure out, okay, what's

01:13:09 the impact of that?

01:13:10 And so we're trying to figure out, okay, what's

01:13:12 the impact of that?

01:13:13 And so we're trying to figure out, okay, what's

01:13:15 the impact of that?

01:13:16 And so we're trying to figure out, okay, what's

01:13:18 the impact of that?

01:13:19 And so we're trying to figure out, okay, what's

01:13:21 the impact of that?

01:13:22 And so we're trying to figure out, okay, what's

01:13:24 the impact of that?

01:13:25 And so we're trying to figure out, okay, what's

01:13:27 the impact of that?

01:13:28 And so we're trying to figure out, okay, what's

01:13:30 the impact of that?

01:13:31 And so we're trying to figure out, okay, what's

01:13:33 the impact of that?

01:13:34 And so we're trying to figure out, okay, what's

01:13:36 the impact of that?

01:13:37 And so we're trying to figure out, okay, what's

01:13:39 the impact of that?

01:13:40 And so we're trying to figure out, okay, what's

01:13:42 the impact of that?

01:13:43 And so we're trying to figure out, okay, what's

01:13:45 the impact of that?

01:13:46 And so we're trying to figure out, okay, what's

01:13:48 the impact of that?

01:13:49 And so we're trying to figure out, okay, what's

01:13:51 the impact of that?

01:13:52 And so we're trying to figure out, okay, what's

01:13:54 the impact of that?

01:13:55 And so we're trying to figure out, okay, what's

01:13:57 the impact of that?

01:13:58 And so we're trying to figure out, okay, what's

01:14:00 the impact of that?

01:14:01 And so we're trying to figure out, okay, what's

01:14:03 the impact of that?

01:14:04 And so we're trying to figure out, okay, what's

01:14:06 the impact of that?

01:14:07 And so we're trying to figure out, okay, what's

01:14:09 the impact of that?

01:14:10 And so we're trying to figure out, okay, what's

01:14:12 the impact of that?

01:14:13 And so we're trying to figure out, okay, what's

01:14:15 the impact of that?

01:14:16 And so we're trying to figure out, okay, what's

01:14:18 the impact of that?

01:14:19 And so we're trying to figure out, okay, what's

01:14:21 the impact of that?

01:14:22 And so we're trying to figure out, okay, what's

01:14:24 the impact of that?

01:14:25 And so we're trying to figure out, okay, what's

01:14:27 the impact of that?

01:14:28 And so we're trying to figure out, okay, what's

01:14:30 the impact of that?

01:14:31 And so we're trying to figure out, okay, what's

01:14:33 the impact of that?

01:14:34 And so we're trying to figure out, okay, what's

01:14:36 the impact of that?

01:14:37 And so we're trying to figure out, okay, what's

01:14:39 the impact of that?

01:14:40 And so we're trying to figure out, okay, what's

01:14:42 the impact of that?

01:14:43 And so we're trying to figure out, okay, what's

01:14:45 the impact of that?

01:14:46 And so we're trying to figure out, okay, what's

01:14:48 the impact of that?

01:14:49 And so we're trying to figure out, okay, what's

01:14:51 the impact of that?

01:14:52 And so we're trying to figure out, okay, what's

01:14:54 the impact of that?

01:14:55 And so we're trying to figure out, okay, what's

01:14:57 the impact of that?

01:14:58 And so we're trying to figure out, okay, what's

01:15:00 the impact of that?

01:15:01 And so we're trying to figure out, okay, what's

01:15:03 the impact of that?

01:15:04 And so we're trying to figure out, okay, what's

01:15:06 the impact of that?

01:15:07 And so we're trying to figure out, okay, what's

01:15:09 the impact of that?

01:15:10 And so we're trying to figure out, okay, what's

01:15:12 the impact of that?

01:15:13 And so we're trying to figure out, okay, what's

01:15:15 the impact of that?

01:15:16 And so we're trying to figure out, okay, what's

01:15:18 the impact of that?

01:15:19 And so we're trying to figure out, okay, what's

01:15:21 the impact of that?

01:15:22 And so we're trying to figure out, okay, what's

01:15:24 the impact of that?

01:15:25 And so we're trying to figure out, okay, what's

01:15:27 the impact of that?

01:15:28 And so we're trying to figure out, okay, what's

01:15:30 the impact of that?

01:15:31 And so we're trying to figure out, okay, what's

01:15:33 the impact of that?

01:15:34 And so we're trying to figure out, okay, what's

01:15:36 the impact of that?

01:15:37 And so we're trying to figure out, okay, what's

01:15:39 the impact of that?

01:15:40 And so we're trying to figure out, okay, what's

01:15:42 the impact of that?

01:15:43 And so we're trying to figure out, okay, what's

01:15:45 the impact of that?

01:15:46 And so we're trying to figure out, okay, what's

01:15:48 the impact of that?

01:15:49 And so we're trying to figure out, okay, what's

01:15:51 the impact of that?

01:15:52 And so we're trying to figure out, okay, what's

01:15:54 the impact of that?

01:15:55 And so we're trying to figure out, okay, what's

01:15:57 the impact of that?

01:15:58 And so we're trying to figure out, okay, what's

01:16:00 the impact of that?

01:16:01 And so we're trying to figure out, okay, what's

01:16:03 the impact of that?

01:16:04 And so we're trying to figure out, okay, what's

01:16:06 the impact of that?

01:16:07 And so we're trying to figure out, okay, what's

01:16:09 the impact of that?

01:16:10 And so we're trying to figure out, okay, what's

01:16:12 the impact of that?

01:16:13 And so we're trying to figure out, okay, what's

01:16:15 the impact of that?

01:16:16 And so we're trying to figure out, okay, what's

01:16:18 the impact of that?

01:16:19 And so we're trying to figure out, okay, what's

01:16:21 the impact of that?

01:16:22 And so we're trying to figure out, okay, what's

01:16:24 the impact of that?

01:16:25 And so we're trying to figure out, okay, what's

01:16:27 the impact of that?

01:16:28 And so we're trying to figure out, okay, what's

01:16:30 the impact of that?

01:16:31 And so we're trying to figure out, okay, what's

01:16:33 the impact of that?

01:16:34 And so we're trying to figure out, okay, what's

01:16:36 the impact of that?

01:16:37 And so we're trying to figure out, okay, what's

01:16:39 the impact of that?

01:16:40 And so we're trying to figure out, okay, what's

01:16:42 the impact of that?

01:16:43 And so we're trying to figure out, okay, what's

01:16:45 the impact of that?

01:16:46 And so we're trying to figure out, okay, what's

01:16:48 the impact of that?

01:16:49 And so we're trying to figure out, okay, what's

01:16:51 the impact of that?

01:16:52 And so we're trying to figure out, okay, what's

01:16:54 the impact of that?

01:16:55 And so we're trying to figure out, okay, what's

01:16:57 the impact of that?

01:16:58 And so we're trying to figure out, okay, what's

01:17:00 the impact of that?

01:17:01 And so we're trying to figure out, okay, what's

01:17:03 the impact of that?

01:17:04 And so we're trying to figure out, okay, what's

01:17:06 the impact of that?

01:17:07 And so we're trying to figure out, okay, what's

01:17:09 the impact of that?

01:17:10 And so we're trying to figure out, okay, what's

01:17:12 the impact of that?

01:17:13 And so we're trying to figure out, okay, what's

01:17:15 the impact of that?

01:17:16 And so we're trying to figure out, okay, what's

01:17:18 the impact of that?

01:17:19 And so we're trying to figure out, okay, what's

01:17:21 the impact of that?

01:17:22 And so there are probably filters on that air

01:17:26 conditioning.

01:17:27 So where outside air is filtered.

01:17:28 Yeah, outside air is filtered.

01:17:30 So there are portable units.

01:17:32 Where this becomes a problem, that costs money.

01:17:34 It costs money to run this AC.

01:17:36 It costs money to buy an air filter.

01:17:39 And so if you are -- if those costs are competing

01:17:44 with other needs in your family, or you don't have

01:17:48 access to something that can cool, you have to

01:17:50 open your windows, right?

01:17:51 And it's really hard to filter your air and create

01:17:53 a clean air space.

01:17:54 So in those cases, what's the solution?

01:17:56 Can schools become clean air spaces for kids?

01:17:58 How do we keep people breathing the cleanest air

01:18:03 possible when there's something like a wildfire?

01:18:05 >> What about --

01:18:06 >> Real quick, if you have a Tesla with biohazard

01:18:09 defense, or Mercedes EQS.

01:18:11 >> I guess.

01:18:12 >> You just said your car, right?

01:18:13 >> It works.

01:18:14 >> Well, but what about --

01:18:15 >> Not everybody has the one.

01:18:16 >> I'm just saying, if you're listening, you

01:18:18 bought an EQS.

01:18:19 >> Good work.

01:18:20 >> There was -- I think New York Times did it.

01:18:22 They recommended you can build one of these --

01:18:24 you take like a very affordable -- it's like a

01:18:26 less than $20 box fan.

01:18:27 >> Oh, yeah.

01:18:28 >> And then you get these HEPA -- you build like a

01:18:31 HEPA cube.

01:18:32 >> Yep.

01:18:33 >> And then you -- but one side is the box fan,

01:18:35 and it's pulling air through all these filters.

01:18:38 >> Yeah.

01:18:39 And that's -- that works.

01:18:40 Those are well tested, and they do work.

01:18:43 If your windows are still open, you are not going

01:18:46 to be able to filter the whole atmosphere, right?

01:18:48 So you'd have to close your windows and do it

01:18:50 inside.

01:18:51 >> Sure, sure.

01:18:52 >> I'm not knocking them.

01:18:53 This is a great, cheap solution, but they're big,

01:18:55 right?

01:18:56 You have a box fan and then four of those massive

01:18:58 HEPA filters, right?

01:18:59 It's big as that chair right there.

01:19:01 >> Right.

01:19:02 >> Right?

01:19:03 And so that's another hard piece of that, but yes,

01:19:05 that is a great solution.

01:19:06 >> Okay.

01:19:07 >> And those do work, and they're well tested, and

01:19:09 if anybody's listening and wants to build one, you

01:19:11 can find plans online.

01:19:12 I could email it to you guys.

01:19:13 But, yeah, there's very clear ways to build them

01:19:15 that do best.

01:19:16 And you can even do it with one.

01:19:17 You don't even have to make the whole box.

01:19:19 You could just put the filter straight on the box

01:19:21 fan.

01:19:22 >> Right.

01:19:23 >> And you'd have an improvement.

01:19:24 You'd have a detectable improvement.

01:19:26 >> I want to stay in indoor air quality because --

01:19:28 >> That's not really what we're talking about.

01:19:30 >> I know, but I'm just dying because you're -- I

01:19:32 like to cook at home, and I put a pretty fancy gas

01:19:35 range in the house.

01:19:36 And then, like, what, 18 months ago or something,

01:19:39 this big thing came out, like, oh, your gas range

01:19:42 inside your house is giving all your kids asthma.

01:19:45 >> Yeah.

01:19:46 Did you -- have you ever cooked with induction?

01:19:48 >> I have cooked with induction.

01:19:49 >> I switched mine to induction.

01:19:51 I also had a gas range.

01:19:52 I love to cook.

01:19:53 I love to eat so much.

01:19:54 Like, maybe next time I come, we can have dinner.

01:19:56 But, like --

01:19:57 >> Yes.

01:19:58 >> But I -- but, like, I switched.

01:19:59 I switched to induction.

01:20:00 And cooking with induction is awesome.

01:20:01 You just have to --

01:20:02 >> Change all your parts.

01:20:03 >> Not really.

01:20:04 I mean, the cast iron still works.

01:20:05 All your good stuff still works, right?

01:20:06 >> Yeah.

01:20:07 >> So just the stuff that you have been carting

01:20:09 around since grad school, Brian, did not work that

01:20:11 well.

01:20:12 >> That's fine, yeah.

01:20:13 >> So, okay.

01:20:14 So -- but, anyway, I just made the switch.

01:20:17 >> But it's true.

01:20:18 So it's true, like, the burning of --

01:20:20 >> Oh, yeah, because you're burning something

01:20:21 inside your house.

01:20:22 And so it's better to have induction.

01:20:23 It's also your -- it's your path to reduce fossil

01:20:27 fuel use is the same thing, analogous --

01:20:30 >> Yeah.

01:20:31 >> Analogous to what I said about the cars, right?

01:20:33 When you burn it in your house, you're committing

01:20:35 to burning in your house.

01:20:36 When you go to induction, you're then powering by

01:20:38 a grid, which is improving over time, right?

01:20:40 And so I think also just straight-up cooking,

01:20:43 induction is awesome.

01:20:44 I have children.

01:20:45 You want to boil water?

01:20:46 Done.

01:20:47 Mac and cheese?

01:20:48 Done.

01:20:49 >> Yeah.

01:20:50 >> It's so fast.

01:20:51 >> It is so fast.

01:20:52 >> Ever since I read that article, I mean, I always

01:20:53 turn on the hood fan now just because it's --

01:20:55 there's some mitigating getting the NOx out of

01:20:58 the house.

01:20:59 But you're right about the -- you know, you're

01:21:01 releasing carbon by burning something.

01:21:03 >> Yeah, and we just need to stop burning in

01:21:07 general.

01:21:08 This is sort of the key takeaway.

01:21:09 >> How about an induction walk, if you can

01:21:10 believe it?

01:21:11 >> Oh, whoa, I've never heard of that.

01:21:12 >> I've never heard of that.

01:21:13 >> I've never heard of that.

01:21:14 >> I've never heard of that.

01:21:15 >> I've never heard of that.

01:21:16 >> I've never heard of that.

01:21:17 >> I've never heard of that.

01:21:18 >> I've never heard of that.

01:21:19 >> I've never heard of that.

01:21:20 >> I've never heard of that.

01:21:21 >> I've never heard of that.

01:21:22 >> I've never heard of that.

01:21:23 >> I've never heard of that.

01:21:24 >> I've never heard of that.

01:21:25 >> I've never heard of that.

01:21:26 >> I've never heard of that.

01:21:27 >> I've never heard of that.

01:21:28 >> I've never heard of that.

01:21:29 >> I've never heard of that.

01:21:30 >> I've never heard of that.

01:21:31 >> I've never heard of that.

01:21:32 >> I've never heard of that.

01:21:33 >> I've never heard of that.

01:21:34 >> So, what's the carbon capture?

01:21:35 So, they're taking, you know, energy and liquefying it into hydrogen and then there's a way to

01:21:42 turn that into methanol and then there's a methanol to gasoline thing.

01:21:47 And if you do that all with green energy, you've basically captured existing carbon.

01:21:52 So, you're just kind of re-releasing what's already there.

01:21:54 You're not taking new carbon out of the ground.

01:21:57 >> Seems like something we could research but does not seem ready to go at scale, is

01:22:02 it?

01:22:03 >> Oh, they're scaling it.

01:22:04 They have a huge--

01:22:05 >> It's very expensive.

01:22:06 >> Well, it's expensive until it isn't.

01:22:09 But the idea is what they're going to do is they're going to-- you're not going to like

01:22:12 go to a gas station and get a full tank of that.

01:22:15 But they can take this stuff--

01:22:17 >> You would blend it.

01:22:18 >> Yeah, you blend it into like whatever Chevron's selling.

01:22:21 And so, it knocks new carbon down by 20%.

01:22:25 >> And the thesis is that it helps with the 1.5 billion cars that are already on the road

01:22:29 that are already burning something.

01:22:30 So, if you can burn something that is theoretically carbon neutral--

01:22:32 >> Neutral or--

01:22:33 >> Great.

01:22:34 But, yeah, I agree.

01:22:35 >> Great.

01:22:36 But it's part of a large transition, right?

01:22:37 >> Yeah.

01:22:38 >> If that's part of a transition away from the internal combustion engine, as fast as

01:22:42 we can do that.

01:22:43 >> It is.

01:22:44 >> Again.

01:22:45 >> I mean, that's-- Porsche said that they're basically going-- the 911-- so, this is a

01:22:50 whole other thing.

01:22:51 But like, you know, for sports cars, pure sports cars and racing, like, EVs don't really

01:22:57 work great there.

01:22:58 They may never work great there.

01:23:00 It might be something else.

01:23:01 But they want to get to like, you know, most of their cars are electric, where a very small,

01:23:05 not driven very frequently number, like, you know, 50,000 that they build a year out of

01:23:12 like, you know, a million are gas and the rest are electric.

01:23:17 >> If we're 90% electric in 10 years, I'll be psyched.

01:23:20 However, we want to get there.

01:23:21 >> Yeah.

01:23:22 Great.

01:23:23 >> Like, I mean, like, that's--

01:23:24 >> Yeah.

01:23:25 >> That's where we have--

01:23:26 >> No, no.

01:23:27 I think for most people, most applications, EVs make more sense.

01:23:29 There is this thing like, you know, if you're into like V12 hypercars, which I'm very much

01:23:33 into, EVs, they don't-- they kind of do because I drove that Batista, 1900 horsepower.

01:23:39 I think it was awesome.

01:23:40 So, electric.

01:23:41 It was very cool.

01:23:42 But yeah.

01:23:43 So, 90%.

01:23:44 Okay.

01:23:45 Good.

01:23:46 >> I feel like we're getting close to the end here.

01:23:49 But I am curious.

01:23:50 I just want to kind of bring it home.

01:23:54 Your work with Science Moms, you're about messaging, simplifying the messaging to parents,

01:24:02 mostly mothers, trying to get them to give them the toolkit.

01:24:06 You're out on-- you're publicly available on YouTube.

01:24:10 How do you-- do you have a problem breaking through?

01:24:13 Is the audience there for you or do you-- do you get a lot-- do you-- I mean, I'm going

01:24:17 to go look at your comments.

01:24:18 Do you have people who are, you know, rolling hand grenades, like, "Oh, this isn't real,"

01:24:22 or no?

01:24:23 >> No, because moms love their kids, period.

01:24:26 Right?

01:24:27 Like, and so--

01:24:28 >> So do dads.

01:24:29 But yeah.

01:24:30 >> Yeah, yeah.

01:24:31 But right.

01:24:32 Science Moms, right?

01:24:33 I believe that you love your children.

01:24:34 >> Yes.

01:24:35 >> So-- but no, because I'm coming at this from a place of, like, I love my kids.

01:24:39 You love your kids.

01:24:40 We share that.

01:24:41 That's it.

01:24:42 Right?

01:24:43 >> I think this is great because, you know, women are responsible to over 50% of car buying

01:24:48 decisions in the US are made by women.

01:24:50 So they have-- actually have much more power to influence the automobile industry.

01:24:54 No, no, not-- they've had this for a long time.

01:24:57 Women make the decision.

01:24:59 So they have more power than they're aware of.

01:25:01 And you know, it's so-- so I think what you're doing is fantastic.

01:25:05 >> Thank you.

01:25:06 >> Yeah.

01:25:07 >> I mean, when a mom's going to make a decision for her family to switch something, right?

01:25:12 Stove dies or you decide that induction's awesome, right?

01:25:17 Switch.

01:25:18 Swap to something that does not create carbon pollution.

01:25:21 Swap to an electric vehicle.

01:25:22 Swap to an induction stove.

01:25:25 Swap to something more efficient.

01:25:27 Swap, right?

01:25:28 Also, moms need the confidence and parents need the confidence to just talk about the

01:25:32 issue.

01:25:33 You two are confident talkers, right?

01:25:34 You have a podcast.

01:25:35 >> Right.

01:25:36 >> But like not everybody is a confident talker about the issue.

01:25:38 And the more we raise the issue, the more it becomes something that society can say,

01:25:42 "Yeah, that's an issue.

01:25:43 Everybody's talking about it.

01:25:45 Let's make the choices."

01:25:46 And you don't have to know exactly.

01:25:47 I don't know the answer to everything you asked me here, right?

01:25:50 Like I--

01:25:51 >> Yeah, you've been great about it.

01:25:52 >> I don't know, outside my wheelhouse.

01:25:53 >> Yeah, no, you're--

01:25:54 >> Like, sorry.

01:25:55 But I think moms and parents do know enough to be more vocal than their being, right?

01:26:01 They can say, "I want the city of Los Angeles to have a plan to transition out internal

01:26:07 combustion engines."

01:26:08 It's not that mom's responsibility to figure out every way that occurs, right?

01:26:13 But that they can say, "I want a plan for better air in Los Angeles for my kids.

01:26:17 I want a plan for climate change at a national scale.

01:26:20 I want a plan for climate change in this city," right?

01:26:23 They don't have to know every way and every technical piece of how it's going to go.

01:26:28 There are people who can help with that, but they can say, "This is the priority for my

01:26:32 family," right?

01:26:33 And so I don't know.

01:26:35 We haven't--because I think I'm coming at it from a place of like, "You love your kids.

01:26:39 I love my kids.

01:26:41 I know that you want what's best for your kids.

01:26:43 What's best for your kids is a stable climate, period."

01:26:45 >> Yeah.

01:26:46 >> No matter your political--no matter how we get there.

01:26:50 Right?

01:26:51 But for your children, a stable climate is what's best for them, right?

01:26:55 We don't want more fires.

01:26:56 We don't want more floods.

01:26:57 We don't want more hurricanes.

01:26:58 We don't want more--we don't want rising sea level.

01:27:00 >> And famine is the one--

01:27:01 >> We don't want famine.

01:27:02 We do not want political instability that is going to come from this.

01:27:06 That's not good for your kids.

01:27:07 You just want to--you just want your kids to have stability, right?

01:27:11 >> What I really like about your approach on this is--and consistently through this

01:27:15 whole podcast--is that you're, of course, it's science-backed.

01:27:18 It's very thoughtful.

01:27:19 It's well-considered.

01:27:20 But you also have this air of positivity around it.

01:27:22 Because I did read, like literally yesterday, an article about how some millennials who

01:27:28 are concerned about climate change are just not having kids.

01:27:32 And they've taken such a dark view on this.

01:27:35 Do you have any advice?

01:27:39 I mean, we're all parents.

01:27:40 I'm like, you know, having my son was like the best thing that's ever happened to me.

01:27:44 I'm just saying, that is such a dark interpretation of the future.

01:27:48 >> It is, but real quick, not to side with that, I mean, choosing sides, but like I sit

01:27:52 there and I'm like, well, you know, you bring a life into the world, it's a big responsibility.

01:27:55 And it's like, what am I, you know, like, I'm going to cook, you know, pasta, like,

01:27:59 oh, am I giving him lung cans?

01:28:01 You know what I mean?

01:28:02 It's like there is--I get where they're coming from.

01:28:04 I emphasize, I guess.

01:28:05 >> Yeah.

01:28:06 But there's nothing that connects you more to the future of this planet than having a

01:28:09 human that you need to shepherd through, right?

01:28:12 And so you probably care more about the future because you have those kids, right?

01:28:19 Like I have to do something about climate change because I have these children and I

01:28:23 love them, right?

01:28:25 So there's--you can think about it that way.

01:28:27 There's nothing that ties you more to the future than having kids.

01:28:31 Everybody should make their own choice.

01:28:32 There's nothing I am more against than people telling women what they're allowed and not

01:28:38 allowed to do, right?

01:28:39 >> Sure.

01:28:40 Yeah, yeah, yeah.

01:28:41 >> Right?

01:28:42 So I think we should make that choice and work for the future that we want, right?

01:28:49 Like make whatever choice you want.

01:28:51 But I think you've committed to having children and many of your listeners have and therefore

01:28:57 you want to be committed to the best thing for them.

01:28:59 >> If you go through the thought exercise, though, Johnny, like, you know, I've been

01:29:03 very clear.

01:29:04 Motor trend, we have in a--it's not like we're agenda free, right?

01:29:07 It's motor trend.

01:29:08 It's not pedestrian trend.

01:29:09 It's not bicycle trend.

01:29:10 We are pro car.

01:29:11 >> Yeah, yeah.

01:29:12 >> We are pro personal vehicle ownership.

01:29:14 And there is a topic we didn't talk about, which is, you know, better public transportation,

01:29:20 you know, increasing the efficiency of people getting around, period, meaning reducing car

01:29:26 ownership, more buses, more trains, hopefully all those clean--look at his face.

01:29:31 >> It's a yes and, right?

01:29:32 Like you can be pro electric vehicle and pro public transportation.

01:29:36 It would have been nice if I could have popped on a train from the airport and not stood

01:29:39 in the line in the dark waiting for a lift.

01:29:42 That would have been awesome last night, right?

01:29:44 >> Welcome to LAX.

01:29:45 >> As a single woman, right, like at 10 p.m., I'm like, I'd love a nice clean train to just

01:29:50 pop me over, right?

01:29:51 >> It's happening.

01:29:52 >> Right?

01:29:53 Right?

01:29:54 But like, and when I want to go somewhere that I'm happy to drive a car.

01:29:58 So I just feel like--

01:29:59 >> As long as it's a choice.

01:30:00 Just don't put me on--I hate buses.

01:30:01 Just don't put me on a bus.

01:30:02 >> So do I because I get sick to my stomach, right?

01:30:04 So--

01:30:05 >> Oh, right.

01:30:06 Yeah, yeah.

01:30:07 >> So as a transportation, we have to move people without carbon pollution.

01:30:13 That's it.

01:30:14 How we do it, figure it out, right?

01:30:15 But like--

01:30:16 >> That's great.

01:30:17 >> But there's room for all the things.

01:30:18 It's not a--I mean, I have an e-bike.

01:30:20 It's like driving a little mini motorcycle except you can really not going to get that

01:30:24 hurt, right?

01:30:25 Like it's--

01:30:26 >> Oh, you can get real hurtful.

01:30:27 >> I have a friend who was killed on a bicycle so we don't have to go there.

01:30:30 But I'm just saying it's fun, right?

01:30:32 And so all the things.

01:30:33 >> Right.

01:30:34 >> All the things.

01:30:35 >> Okay.

01:30:36 So I'm glad I remembered to ask you this and I apologize because I did--we--it's not an

01:30:40 animation.

01:30:41 >> We jump around on this one.

01:30:42 >> I can tell.

01:30:43 >> So this literally is an article I read yesterday.

01:30:46 I sent you the link.

01:30:47 I don't know if you opened it.

01:30:48 >> Yeah.

01:30:49 >> But it's about--

01:30:50 >> Oh, I read it.

01:30:51 It was cool.

01:30:52 >> Some--

01:30:53 >> Weird stuff scientists are doing.

01:30:54 >> Some scientists believe that we are past this--we are--to aggressively combat climate

01:30:58 change, we need to be more aggressive and they're doing crazy things like--

01:31:03 >> Shooting particles into the upper atmosphere.

01:31:05 >> SRMs.

01:31:06 >> To reflect light.

01:31:07 >> There are people in my department who are studying the efficacy and potential for climate

01:31:14 interventions.

01:31:15 >> Yes.

01:31:16 >> Yes.

01:31:17 >> So they're adding--was it alkaline solutions to the ocean?

01:31:19 >> Yeah, basically giving the ocean a big tum.

01:31:21 >> To try and get rid of acidity.

01:31:22 >> To lower the acidity.

01:31:23 But the big one I wanted to ask you about was firing these reflective particles into

01:31:27 the upper atmosphere.

01:31:28 >> 60,000 feet up is Israeli company.

01:31:29 >> Into the stratosphere.

01:31:30 >> Yeah.

01:31:31 >> Yeah.

01:31:32 I mean, this isn't what I work on but yes, to reflect more of the sun's light.

01:31:34 >> Yeah.

01:31:35 >> Is this--are these viable pathways?

01:31:36 >> I think it--probably just easier to cut fossil fuel consumption.

01:31:40 But--right?

01:31:41 Because--because who's going to do that and--I mean, I'm not going to take a stand on climate

01:31:46 intervention.

01:31:47 If we do not, I think the way you should think about it is these things are being studied

01:31:52 seriously because we're not acting fast enough on the things that we can do right now.

01:31:57 And so, do they need to be studied?

01:32:01 Seriously because we don't want to get to the worst case scenario, right?

01:32:07 Everyday people should be focused on transitioning away from fossil fuels.

01:32:12 All the governments should be focused on transitioning society away from fossil fuels.

01:32:17 We should not view those as a backup plan.

01:32:21 We will still need to do all the things.

01:32:23 >> That should be a primary plan.

01:32:24 >> We have a primary plan but we do need to understand what the impact of doing something

01:32:33 like that might be and how viable it is.

01:32:35 One, in case somebody decides to do it, right?

01:32:37 By somebody, some country acts to decide to do it, right?

01:32:40 And there's all sorts of craziness around that.

01:32:42 >> Yeah, China's trying to--like weather control, right?

01:32:43 It's going to be--

01:32:44 >> Well, they're doing it apparently.

01:32:45 Like this is--they're tumsing the ocean in--yeah.

01:32:48 >> But yeah, so that's sort of, you know, I don't work on--I don't work on climate intervention

01:32:51 but yes, people are in my department working on climate intervention to understand what

01:32:56 our options are.

01:32:57 Also, like how do we make more clouds over the oceans maybe, right?

01:32:59 Like how do we reflect more of the sun's light to give us--buy us a little bit of time while

01:33:03 we figure out how to transition away from fossil fuels.

01:33:05 >> Couldn't we say that, you know, once we do reverse the warming trend, like the ice

01:33:09 caps will get larger and they're natural reflectors, right?

01:33:12 That was--that's--

01:33:13 >> Yes, we have lots of natural reflectors.

01:33:14 Ice is a great reflector.

01:33:15 >> OK.

01:33:16 So, yeah.

01:33:17 >> Clouds are a great reflector.

01:33:19 >> What are the ethical concerns about climate intervention?

01:33:24 Just that we don't know what we might be--what Pandora's box we're opening, like side effects?

01:33:29 >> Yeah, we need side effects.

01:33:30 Who decides?

01:33:31 >> Right.

01:33:32 >> Because--who decides?

01:33:33 Because the atmosphere is complex, right?

01:33:35 If you put something one place, it's going to have some effect.

01:33:39 There will be differential impacts.

01:33:40 >> Butterfly effects?

01:33:41 >> There will be just differential impacts, right?

01:33:42 >> Well, that was--

01:33:43 >> Some people will benefit more.

01:33:44 Some people might not benefit.

01:33:45 Some people it might get a little warmer.

01:33:47 Some people it might get a little colder.

01:33:48 And so, right, maybe it changes the patterns of rain.

01:33:51 Like there's--this is a big deal, right?

01:33:53 If it's always rain somewhere or you change the cloudiness or you change--like--

01:33:56 >> That was the--

01:33:57 >> So this is a changing--society has developed in--over a long time.

01:34:02 And so you need to understand what you're doing.

01:34:04 >> That was one of the funny parts of the article was that--I think it was an Israeli

01:34:07 company that's shooting whatever 60,000 feet up.

01:34:10 But they wouldn't say what they're shooting.

01:34:11 It was like proprietary.

01:34:13 And so you assume it's benign.

01:34:15 But yeah.

01:34:16 >> But yeah, so I would say like this is not a plan A. This is a--this is a--we need to

01:34:23 understand this because we need to be able to--earth scientists and climate scientists

01:34:27 are going to predictability, right?

01:34:29 The idea is to predict what the world's going to do so that we can prepare and protect people,

01:34:36 right?

01:34:37 So--

01:34:38 >> Are we really able--this is mind-blowing to me.

01:34:40 >> Seems expensive to me.

01:34:41 >> It does.

01:34:42 I read a lot of science fiction and this is--falls under like--it's called terraforming.

01:34:46 It's like, "Oh, we're going to put some big--" It's--a lot of movies are based on--we land

01:34:50 on a future planet and we try to create an atmosphere or something crazy like that.

01:34:54 But we really have the technology like--

01:34:57 >> Have somebody who works on climate intervention on your show.

01:34:59 >> You got somebody?

01:35:00 >> Yeah.

01:35:01 Have Jim in my department.

01:35:02 >> Jim.

01:35:03 >> Jim.

01:35:04 >> Hi, Jim.

01:35:05 >> Coming to Beverly Hills.

01:35:06 >> I mean, have someone who works on this.

01:35:07 This is not my realm, right?

01:35:08 >> Right.

01:35:09 We'd love to.

01:35:10 >> But from a climate--

01:35:11 >> It's just new to us.

01:35:12 We didn't know it was a thing until yesterday.

01:35:13 >> Yeah.

01:35:14 From a climate perspective, this is not plan A.

01:35:15 >> Right.

01:35:16 >> This is not--this is required.

01:35:17 >> It's like having the ability to deflect an asteroid like it's something we should

01:35:20 probably have in our back pocket just in case.

01:35:22 >> But focus on fossil fuels.

01:35:24 >> OK.

01:35:25 >> Focus on what we know how to do.

01:35:27 >> We're Hollywood adjacent, so sorry.

01:35:28 We're for you.

01:35:29 >> We're terrible.

01:35:30 >> We're focused.

01:35:31 >> Inevitable.

01:35:32 >> Science--

01:35:33 >> Big EV, you know what I mean?

01:35:34 We're here for that.

01:35:35 Yeah.

01:35:36 >> Did we miss anything?

01:35:37 >> Yes.

01:35:38 What--or hydrogen or anything like that.

01:35:39 >> Did we miss anything that we should have--we should have talked about?

01:35:40 Is there any--here's a chance to plug science--is it sciencemoms.com?

01:35:43 >> Sciencemoms.com.

01:35:44 Yeah.

01:35:45 >> Sciencemoms.com.

01:35:46 >> YouTube.com/sciencemoms, is that it?

01:35:47 >> Just go from sciencemoms.com and you'll click to all the--you'll click to all the

01:35:51 videos.

01:35:52 >> OK.

01:35:53 >> Things that are there, myths and facts about climate change, right?

01:35:56 The common--common myths are, let's say, debunked.

01:35:59 I don't know--love that term, but those are there.

01:36:02 So like we have a whole list of them.

01:36:04 People say this, no, this is actually how it works.

01:36:06 >> Right.

01:36:07 >> Right.

01:36:08 So we have that.

01:36:09 We have videos that are--that are not only how it works but then here are some solutions

01:36:14 that you can take as a parent, right?

01:36:15 All the way from this is how to speak up, which is the easiest thing that everybody

01:36:19 can do, even if you're a little bit shy.

01:36:21 We have different ways of doing it, right?

01:36:23 But how to speak up effectively, how to--what and how to swap because there are some misconceptions

01:36:29 on what the solutions are to climate change, right?

01:36:30 So some people are like, "But I recycle," right?

01:36:32 And you're like, "No, but this is a fossil fuel issue.

01:36:34 This is where these things come from.

01:36:36 These are the things to do."

01:36:39 And yeah, and how to sort of share your concern about climate change in a way that's from

01:36:46 a place of love, not polarizing and science-based, right?

01:36:49 Which is--which is what I think parents want to do.

01:36:52 >> Awesome.

01:36:53 >> Well.

01:36:54 >> Yeah.

01:36:55 >> Great.

01:36:56 >> This was amazing.

01:36:57 >> Yeah, this was really fun.

01:36:58 >> Thank you so much, Dr. Emily Fisher, for coming all the way from Colorado and spending

01:37:02 time with us and talking all about what you do as an associate professor in the Department

01:37:07 of Atmospheric Science.

01:37:08 >> Yeah, and what we can do.

01:37:09 >> And a science month.

01:37:10 >> Which is--it's nice--it's nice to hear, you know, you're switching to an electrified

01:37:17 future is the best thing from an atmospheric point of view.

01:37:20 >> Was not all theoretical.

01:37:21 There was a lot of practical advice from you.

01:37:23 So thank you so much for coming.

01:37:25 >> Thanks for having me.

01:37:26 It's been fun.

01:37:27 [ Music ]

01:37:27 >> The

01:37:50 inevitable vodcast brought to you by the all-electric Nissan Ariya.

01:37:55 And by the future designed for the now.

01:37:57 [ Silence ]

01:37:58 [ Silence ]

01:37:59 [ Silence ]

01:38:00 [ Silence ]

01:38:01 [ Silence ]

01:38:02 [ Silence ]

01:38:03 [ Silence ]

01:38:04 [ Silence ]

01:38:05 [ Silence ]

01:38:06 [ Silence ]

01:38:07 [ Silence ]

01:38:08 [ Silence ]

01:38:09 [ Silence ]

01:38:10 [ Silence ]

01:38:11 [ Silence ]

01:38:12 [ Silence ]

01:38:13 [ Silence ]

01:38:13 [BLANK_AUDIO]

Are Fossil Fuels the Problem? | Dr. Emily Fischer of Science Moms

Category

Transcript

Recommended