Changing the World (Literally)

Summary

StarTalk Radio: Episode Summary - "Changing the World (Literally)"

Podcast Information:

• Title: StarTalk Radio
• Host: Neil deGrasse Tyson
• Episode: Changing the World (Literally)
• Release Date: April 18, 2025
• Description: In this special edition, astrophysicist Neil deGrasse Tyson delves into the controversial topic of geoengineering with climate scientist Daniele Vizioni and environmental sociologist Holly Jean Buck. Together, they explore the scientific, ethical, and societal implications of deliberately altering Earth's climate to combat global warming.

---

1. Introduction to Geoengineering

Neil deGrasse Tyson opens the discussion by drawing a parallel between geoengineering and a Bond villain's plot, highlighting the dramatic and potentially world-altering nature of climate intervention technologies.

• Neil (00:45): “All this talk of geoengineering sounds like the plot of a movie soon to be written.”
• Chuck (00:53): “And a Bond movie always comes with a Bond villain.”

Gary sets the stage by introducing the main topic: the annual Isaac Asimov Memorial Debate, focusing this year on the pros and cons of geoengineering as a solution to global warming.

---

2. Scientific Foundations of Geoengineering

Daniele Vizioni, an assistant professor in Earth and Atmospheric Sciences at Cornell, provides an in-depth explanation of geoengineering, specifically stratospheric aerosol injection.

• Daniele (03:06): “Climate intervention methods and what its impact would be on the climate, on ecosystems, and even on culture, societies. So, I mean, what a damn. That's a very high responsibility.”

The conversation delves into the historical context, referencing Benjamin Franklin's early recognition of volcanic eruptions affecting climate and the significant sulfate emissions from major volcanoes like Pinatubo in 1991.

• Daniele (05:11): “People have been discussing it for decades. I would say some people point to Edward Teller being the first one.”

Discussion on Aerosols:

• Daniele (07:00): “By aerosol, US climate scientists define just every kind of solid or liquid particle suspended in air, but very tiny.”
• Neil (08:13): “That's wild.”

The panel explains the mechanisms by which aerosols can reflect sunlight and cool the Earth, contrasting them with greenhouse gases that trap heat.

• Neil (09:10): “Once you put in something, especially in the tropical stratosphere, that's where there is the large scale, what we call the Brewer Dobson circulation.”

---

3. Stratospheric Aerosol Injection: Mechanisms and Implications

Daniele elaborates on why the stratosphere is targeted for aerosol injection—due to its stability and lack of precipitation, which allows aerosols to remain longer and spread globally.

• Daniele (16:02): “With just a smaller fraction, you would get the same amount of cooling, but far away from where people live and breathe.”

Neil and Gary discuss the potential lifespan of aerosols in the stratosphere and their ability to spread uniformly across latitudes, preventing localized climatic disruptions.

• Daniele (17:30): “So once you put something, especially in the tropical stratosphere... it takes a year, a year and a half before a parcel of air that originates... goes all the way, gets removed from the stratosphere.”

Environmental and Health Concerns:

• Daniele (19:30): “When ash interacts with the aircraft, it can gut up everything.”
• Gary (29:03): “So I would say it's the devil.”

The panel acknowledges the adverse effects aerosols can have, such as acid rain and air pollution, emphasizing that while sulfate aerosols are better understood, unintended consequences remain a significant concern.

---

4. Ethical and Societal Considerations

Holly Jean Buck, Associate Professor of Environment and Sustainability at SUNY Buffalo and Climate Justice Fellow at Harvard, introduces the sociological perspective on geoengineering.

• Holly (41:22): “We need to triple nuclear capacity. We have a goal about that.”

Key Points Discussed:

• Global Governance: Determining ownership and regulatory frameworks for the stratosphere remains unresolved, complicating international cooperation.
• Public Perception: Over half of the population rarely discusses climate change, hindering informed public discourse (Neil cites a Yale report at 51:18).
• Social Equity: Geoengineering efforts could disproportionately impact the Global South, who are more vulnerable to climate change yet less responsible for emissions.

Notable Quotes:

• Daniele (24:35): “Climate change is a whole other problem... it could help temperature from going up.”
• Holly (55:06): “We need to triple nuclear capacity... for providing habitat for a million reasons.”

---

5. Alternative Solutions to Geoengineering

The panel explores other climate mitigation strategies, comparing geoengineering with carbon dioxide removal methods such as:

• Carbon Capture and Storage (CCS): Involves injecting CO₂ into underground rock formations.
• Ocean Iron Fertilization: Enhancing plankton growth to absorb CO₂, though it poses ecological risks.

Holly emphasizes the importance of diverse approaches, advocating for nuclear energy expansion as a scalable and effective solution.

• Holly (52:38): “We need abundant, clean energy for people because a lot of people don't have access to energy.”

Gary's Analogy:

• Gary (31:54): “We have to proceed even if that’s such a small risk? Nature gave us examples... cosmic rays collide with molecules in our atmosphere.”

---

6. Challenges and Future Directions

Daniele addresses the logistical and geopolitical challenges of implementing stratospheric aerosol injection, including international agreements and potential sabotage.

• Daniele (26:12): “You would need to plan carefully, have contingency plans... because this is a worldwide thing.”

Holly discusses the necessity of involving more stakeholders in the conversation and combating misinformation propagated by fossil fuel industries.

• Holly (57:45): “You have to empower the listener to know the difference from a sociological perspective.”

Future Prospects:

• Daniele (34:37): “We're pretty close to having broader international assessments around the topic.”
• Holly (54:27): “Public thinking about this can and will shift. The question is one of timing.”

---

7. Conclusion and Reflections

The episode concludes with reflections on the complexity of geoengineering as a solution to climate change, balancing scientific potential with ethical, social, and geopolitical ramifications.

• Neil (60:20): “These are all the countries.”
• Daniele (61:20): “I love how you say that.”

Final Remarks:

• Gary (61:35): “Thank you, Chuck, for that. So, Holly, Chuck, Gary. Always a pleasure.”

Neil’s Closing Thought:

• Neil (61:36): “Keep looking up.”

---

Key Takeaways:

• Geoengineering, particularly stratospheric aerosol injection, presents a scientifically viable but ethically and socially complex method to mitigate global warming.
• Scientific Understanding: While the cooling effects of aerosols are understood, long-term and unintended consequences remain uncertain.
• Ethical Implications: Global governance, equitable impacts, and public perception are critical challenges.
• Alternative Solutions: Diversifying climate strategies, including renewable energy and carbon removal technologies, is essential.
• Future Research: Ongoing studies and international collaborations are necessary to assess the feasibility and safety of geoengineering.

Notable Quotes with Timestamps:

• Neil (00:45): “All this talk of geoengineering sounds like the plot of a movie soon to be written.”
• Daniele (07:00): “By aerosol, US climate scientists define just every kind of solid or liquid particle suspended in air, but very tiny.”
• Holly (41:22): “We need to triple nuclear capacity. We have a goal about that.”
• Neil (09:10): “Once you put in something, especially in the tropical stratosphere, that's where there is the large scale, what we call the Brewer Dobson circulation.”
• Daniele (24:35): “Climate change is a whole other problem... it could help temperature from going up.”

---

Conclusion: In "Changing the World (Literally)," StarTalk Radio navigates the intricate landscape of geoengineering, offering listeners a comprehensive understanding of its potential as a climate solution. Through expert insights and lively discussions, the episode underscores the necessity of balancing scientific innovation with ethical responsibility and global cooperation.

Transcript

[Neil DeGrasse Tyson]

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[Neil DeGrasse Tyson]

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[Daniele Vizioni]

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[Holly Jean Buck]

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[Holly Jean Buck]

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[Gary]

All this talk of geoengineering sounds like the plot of a movie soon to be written.

[Neil DeGrasse Tyson]

Yeah, a Bond movie.

[Gary]

A Bond, Bond movie.

[Neil DeGrasse Tyson]

Yes.

[Chuck]

And a Bond movie always comes with a Bond villain.

[Neil DeGrasse Tyson]

That's what I'm telling you. So the Bond villain is controlling. Exactly. Engineering.

[Gary]

Coming up, we're gonna find out, is it Bond villain or is IT science on StarTalk. Welcome to StarTalk, your place in the universe where science and pop culture collide. StarTalk begins right now. This is StarTalk. Neil DeGrasse Tyson here, your personal astrophysicist. And this is special edition and we're gonna be talking about geoengineering. Gary, you cook this up. Yes, my co host, Gary here. How you doing, man?

[Chuck]

I'm good.

[Gary]

All right. You're looking in good shape.

[Chuck]

Breathing in as we've discussed.

[Gary]

Breathing in.

[Chuck]

It's the breathing out I'm not doing. Yes and no.

[Gary]

Welcome back as my co host.

[Neil DeGrasse Tyson]

Always a pleasure.

[Gary]

All right, so Gary, what did you say?

[Chuck]

All right, so the annual Isaac Asimov Memorial Debate takes place here in the Hayden Planetarium. And this year in 2025, it is geoengineering. The pros and the cons. Seen by many as controversial. It's an approach to solving global warming. But there are others see it as potential as very, very effective. There are a number of different options up for consideration, but with them come not just scientific issues, but ethical considerations as well. So pre debate, we kidnapped two of the panelists. Sorry. And we've dragged them, locked them in the office and we're gonna have our own debate. Cause we couldn't wait until this evening.

[Gary]

So did they come willingly? Help. Of course. He's still in a box. Who would he have here? Daniele Vizioni. Daniele, welcome to StarTalk.

[Daniele Vizioni]

Thank you, Neil, thank you for being here.

[Gary]

Let me get a little bit of your bio here. Assistant professor in the department of Earth and atmospheric science at Cornell. Thanks for coming downstate to join us here. Is it still snowing in Cornell? It snows there all the time.

[Daniele Vizioni]

Yes, it is. Yes, it does.

[Gary]

It is and it does.

[Daniele Vizioni]

Yeah.

[Gary]

Are we good? You're a climate scientist specializing in this cottage industry of people who care about stratospheric aerosols and their behavior, whether they misbehave or behave as you intend. That's your whole.

[Daniele Vizioni]

Let's find out.

[Gary]

And you also a specialist in what they're calling climate intervention methods and what its impact would be on the climate, on ecosystems, and even on culture, societies. So, I mean, what a damn. That's a very high responsibility.

[Daniele Vizioni]

Yeah, it is.

[Gary]

In other words, don't mess up.

[Daniele Vizioni]

Yeah.

[Gary]

If I were over that, a lot.

[Daniele Vizioni]

Of people lining up Gregory Lapel and.

[Gary]

Said, don't mess this up. So who had the idea that this is a thing that would work?

[Daniele Vizioni]

People have been discussing it for decades. I would say some people point to Edward Teller actually being the first one.

[Gary]

Discussing Teller of the H Bomb fame.

[Daniele Vizioni]

Yes, indeed.

[Gary]

Or infamy.

[Daniele Vizioni]

Right. People had discussion about could we fundamentally deliberately alter climate for a long time. Right. For as long as we understood what my weather machine.

[Neil DeGrasse Tyson]

I will one day rule the world.

[Daniele Vizioni]

Yeah. No, indeed. So it is, in a way, one could say nothing new, except then, as the problem of global warming, of climate change became more and more prominent, more and more scientists started thinking about this maybe a bit more deeply.

[Gary]

So it wasn't just a fringe idea.

[Daniele Vizioni]

It was a fringe idea in the sense that a lot of people.

[Gary]

No. Initially, but now no longer fringe.

[Daniele Vizioni]

Many would still consider it fringe or at least would like not to talk.

[Neil DeGrasse Tyson]

About it too much.

[Gary]

That's different. Okay, okay.

[Daniele Vizioni]

Fringe in that sense, I would say that the scientific basis is as well established as for most of climate science, but most of the issues being in sort of the ethical, societal dimension, bring this topic into a different light.

[Gary]

So as I understood from my bit of reading here, you had some prior awareness and understanding of this problem or this solution with volcanoes, because they pump all manner of nastiness.

[Neil DeGrasse Tyson]

Yeah, Nastiness into the atmosphere.

[Gary]

Nasty nastiness into the atmosphere. And you get to study that. That's nature doing it. And so what have you found from the history of volcanoes?

[Daniele Vizioni]

Yeah, so the interesting thing is that it was Benjamin Franklin, one of the first. Everybody loves Ben, and he was a great scientist, too. He was the first person to point out that potentially the weirdness in climate that people had seen in the early 19th century were due to the Tambora eruption volcano in indonesia exploding in 1815.

[Gary]

Okay, so he's around, of course, at that time. Just remind me, I think Indonesia also has Krakatoa. I mean, there's no shortage of volcanic.

[Daniele Vizioni]

There's plenty of volcanoes in the tropical band. Yes, yes. Close to the equator. And sometimes they just go off. They explode.

[Gary]

Yes. And you get to see which way the ejecta goes. Like it goes west to east. Right. Following prevailing air currents. So people get to study this. And he was clever enough to connect the dots between odd weather and an odd atmospheric phenomenon of volcano.

[Daniele Vizioni]

Yes.

[Gary]

Okay, so this is some of your foundational background for how you go forward from that.

[Daniele Vizioni]

Yes. In the 20th century, then, there were at least three different volcanic eruptions. Not as big as Tambora, but still big enough. The last one being Pinatubo in 1991.

[Gary]

And, you know, I was observing at a telescope, and when Pinatubo went off, it changed the optical properties of the atmosphere. We had to redo all of our data. Pissed me off.

[Chuck]

It's not all about you.

[Neil DeGrasse Tyson]

Not your favorite volcano, I assume, because.

[Gary]

I was at the telescope when this stuff came by.

[Neil DeGrasse Tyson]

Right.

[Gary]

Not when it went off, but it took a while to get off.

[Chuck]

Once again, scientists taking their cue from Mother Nature. I don't mean that sarcastically. It's a fact.

[Daniele Vizioni]

No, it's great. Yeah.

[Chuck]

So with putting it's sulfate aerosols, Tell.

[Gary]

Me, what is an aerosol?

[Daniele Vizioni]

Okay, so by aerosol, US climate scientists define just every kind of solid or liquid particle suspended in air, but very tiny.

[Gary]

So the suspended part that makes it an aerosol?

[Daniele Vizioni]

Yes, the suspended part, yes, yes.

[Gary]

Okay. The fact that it can be suspended at all makes it an aerosol no matter what it is.

[Neil DeGrasse Tyson]

Like SARS COV2.

[Daniele Vizioni]

You see, that's a very interesting thing. There were a lot of discussion about what constituted an aerosol when it came to the discussion around Covid. Because there were different definitions between what climate scientists consider an aerosol. These very tiny particles, sub micron scale, they float around for a long while.

[Gary]

The droplets is a millionth of a meter. So very small.

[Daniele Vizioni]

Very small. So gravity doesn't really do much. Turbulence actually keeps them afloat. And the very large droplets, like the one like spit, that medical practitioners consider aerosol Aerosol.

[Chuck]

Right.

[Daniele Vizioni]

So there was. This was a lot of the confusion at the beginning around airborne.

[Gary]

Two slightly different usages of the term. Same term, same term.

[Chuck]

To get to reducing mean temperatures here on Earth, what science do those aerosols have to.

[Gary]

By mean temperatures, you mean average Mean.

[Neil DeGrasse Tyson]

These are the temperatures that make fun of the lower temperatures. They're mean temperatures.

[Gary]

They're pissed off temperatures.

[Chuck]

There she go.

[Gary]

Okay. Yeah.

[Daniele Vizioni]

So the aerosols we think about, again, sub micron scale, that ends up being the same size of the wavelength of most of the visible light that we get. So they are at the specific size where they really interact a lot with incoming sunlight.

[Neil DeGrasse Tyson]

That's wild.

[Chuck]

So it's photochemical.

[Daniele Vizioni]

It's actual. More like geometrical physics.

[Gary]

No, it's a physical block.

[Daniele Vizioni]

There's also some chemistry, but mainly all of the aerosols that are around that size will reflect, will interact with solar radiation through MIE scattering, through various scattering processes and reflects.

[Gary]

Flex scattering. This MIE scattering. So that's a simple scattering where the wavelength of the light matches the particle and then it redirects it because it goes off. Yeah, but we have like Rayleigh scattering is a different kind of scatter that gives us the blue sky.

[Daniele Vizioni]

The blue sky.

[Gary]

That's pretty much a whole episode.

[Neil DeGrasse Tyson]

That's for light.

[Gary]

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

[Neil DeGrasse Tyson]

That was great.

[Gary]

Yeah, yeah.

[Neil DeGrasse Tyson]

By the way, that makes so much sense because what's you're talking about the radiation that's coming in and greenhouse gas is primarily carbon as trapped. Carbon dioxide. Sorry, is trapped because when the ground radiates heat, it's the atmosphere that's trapping a different wavelength.

[Gary]

Correct. Completely.

[Daniele Vizioni]

Right, yeah, yeah.

[Gary]

So infrared.

[Neil DeGrasse Tyson]

Infrareds, Right. So that's so wild, it literally becomes kind of a bounce board.

[Gary]

It's called science.

[Paige Desorbo]

Yeah.

[Daniele Vizioni]

It's so cool, isn't it? It's pretty cool.

[Chuck]

How about that?

[Gary]

I'm just saying.

[Neil DeGrasse Tyson]

Oh, my God.

[Gary]

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[Neil DeGrasse Tyson]

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[Gary]

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[Holly Jean Buck]

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[Eduardo]

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[Gary]

I'm Nicholas.

[Daniele Vizioni]

Costella and I'm a proud supporter of StarTalk on Patreon. This is StarTalk with Neil DeGrasse Tyson.

[Chuck]

So for this process to be successful to the level that we would all want it to be successful, how much aerosols do you have to put into the stratosphere? How long is it there? I mean, who gets to argue over where you put them? Does it matter? Then on seasonality and what have we.

[Neil DeGrasse Tyson]

Learned from volcanoes about where it goes?

[Daniele Vizioni]

Right?

[Gary]

And if I remember correctly, I think it was the late 80s where there was talk of nuclear winter, where a total nuclear exchange would burn forest, put, I guess, aerosols in the atmosphere, blocking sunlight, plunging all the earth into darkness and cold. So that would be a bad effect of it. But now you're trying to make it a good effect.

[Daniele Vizioni]

So let me all great questions, but they can all. And it can also all be connected, right? So aerosols, we already have aerosols all around us, right? Most of the pollution, the haze that you see in New York City, that's pollution. Those are aerosols, right?

[Neil DeGrasse Tyson]

But it makes for a lovely sunset.

[Daniele Vizioni]

Let's Korea makes a lovely sunset. It's super bad for your health. When you burn fossil fuels, you burn coal, you, you produce these aerosols. They're super bad for your health. And once they break even has never been worse.

[Gary]

But it's a beautiful sunset.

[Chuck]

Let me finish, Let me finish. I want to hear this. I need to.

[Gary]

I'm just trying to think.

[Daniele Vizioni]

So they come down and they come down. Mostly we burn them very close to where we live. They stay in the air, but they are below the clouds. So whenever, then there's rain, they just get washed away.

[Neil DeGrasse Tyson]

Washed away. Right.

[Daniele Vizioni]

So actually, currently we just to be.

[Gary]

Clear, a raindrop forms on these particles.

[Daniele Vizioni]

It takes it out. Not as much for sulfate. Sulfate is actually not as well, as good as a cloud nuclei, as other kind of particles, not all aerosol particles.

[Gary]

But when they say something, things rain out. They typically mean that the droplet formed on these particles.

[Daniele Vizioni]

No, it can also mean that the droplet, while falling, absorbs. Absorbs, Absorbs these tinier particles. That's called wet Deposition or washout of.

[Gary]

What's the real term?

[Daniele Vizioni]

Wet deposition. Washout.

[Gary]

Cool. I love that.

[Daniele Vizioni]

Washout.

[Gary]

I love that.

[Daniele Vizioni]

Yeah. So normally we emit, as humans, just as pollution, over 100 million tons of sulfur dioxide, which is the precursor of all sulfate aerosols per year. 100 million tons eats a lot. And most of that falls down close to where we live. Right?

[Chuck]

Yeah.

[Daniele Vizioni]

Acid rain. People who are alive in the 80s, not me, but people who are alive in the 80s, will remember acid rain. Never.

[Gary]

Because just so I get my chemistry. Remember my chemistry. Sulfur dioxide is not itself acid, but if you combine with a hydrogen, you get H2SO4, which is itself sulfuric acid.

[Daniele Vizioni]

Yes.

[Gary]

So that would be the acid rain.

[Daniele Vizioni]

So 2 gets oxidized by. Oh, the radical. Oh, which is present everywhere in the atmosphere. And these then eventually results another three reactions and results. So 3. And then H2SO4.

[Gary]

Gotcha.

[Daniele Vizioni]

And then this H2SO4, it's in vapor form, sulfuric acid, and then tends to nucleate into sulfuric acid particles.

[Gary]

Liquid aerosol acid rain.

[Daniele Vizioni]

Yep. Hence acid rain. So back in the 80s, the US was emitting way more sulfur than it is now. And so the Global emissions were 160 million, 150 million tons. Now we're getting. The US has been going down for a while. Europe as well, China and India have been going up, but in general, we're still around 100 million tons. These aerosol particles do have a cooling effect. We know this. The ipcc, the Intergovernmental Panel for Climate Change, has known these for a while. They do cover up a small fraction of the warming produced by the greenhouse gases.

[Gary]

What you're saying is our effort to clean up the air has taken these particles out and thereby has increased the effects of global warming. Unmasked.

[Daniele Vizioni]

It has. Unmasked.

[Gary]

Unmasked. Very good.

[Daniele Vizioni]

Yes, that's the word that normally it's used. It has unmasked part of the global warming that before was sort of hidden. And this is the other part of the observation. Right. You need. But to do this masking close to the surface, you need hundreds of millions of tons because these aerosols stay just a couple of days. Okay, so the idea behind something like stratospheric aerosol injection is what if you could put a tiny fraction of these aerosols, they would stay, though, for 100 times longer than they do at the surface before falling down. Right. Months up to a year, essentially. You would get more bangs for your bucks. Right. With just a smaller fraction, you would get the Same amount of cooling, but far away from where people leave and breathe. And you could get the same effect while not pushing.

[Gary]

So what makes the stratosphere special for how long something would last there? Is it because we're not making clouds there?

[Daniele Vizioni]

Right. So there's no clouds, there's no water vapor. The stratosphere is very dry, so there's no rain out. But also the troposphere, it's called troposphere because it's turbulent. Right. Because there are.

[Gary]

Troposphere is the lowest level, the lowest.

[Daniele Vizioni]

Level where we live, where airplanes are. Above the troposphere, there's a stratosphere that is called like that because it's very stratified, there's no turbulence, things move very slowly. So once you.

[Gary]

I never thought about that. Because if you have turbulence, it's turbulence up and down. And if you're up and down, turbulence, it's not stratified. So that's why I call it stratified. Yeah, very good indeed. Thank you.

[Daniele Vizioni]

And so once you put in something, what is it? Stratosphere.

[Gary]

I knew it would be a cool word. Yeah, stratosphere.

[Daniele Vizioni]

Well, that's where it comes from, right?

[Gary]

Yes, it's the original Latin. Yeah, yeah, Latin root.

[Daniele Vizioni]

So, yeah, once you put something, especially in the tropical stratosphere, that's where there is the large scale, what we call the Brewer Dobson circulation. It's essentially this large scale stratospheric circulation that pushes things up close to the tropics and then pushes them poleward. So eventually the air that is in the stratosphere goes back down, but close to the pole. And it takes a year, a year and a half before a parcel of air that originates or of any material that is in the stratosphere goes all the way, gets removed from the stratosphere.

[Gary]

Got it. And you get a good spreading of the effect.

[Daniele Vizioni]

Yes, that too. Because by latitude. Right, because the other thing is that both on a latitude, but even more importantly on a longitudinal way, as in once, if you put. And this is another one thing that makes stratospheric aerosol injection complex, from a political point of view, is that you can't put these aerosols on top of the US and they're not going to stay there, they're going to spread throughout definitely the whole latitudinal band. So China, which is in the same latitude as the US or Europe, these aerosols are going to in a week. So longitudinally the winds are very fast. And so in a week or two, there's a complete Spread. And we see that with volcanoes all the time. Small volcanic plumes spread in a couple of weeks throughout the whole volcano.

[Gary]

That's how I know, because I was in the Chilean Andes and the Pinatubo was east of us. That just came due west and all to mess me up.

[Chuck]

So when we had that explosion in Iceland, it brought civil aviation to the ground.

[Gary]

Test him to see if he can pronounce the name of that volcano. What was the name of that volcano in Iceland?

[Daniele Vizioni]

Everybody calls it a. I have a lot of volcanologists, they're just calling, you got the answer you deserved.

[Gary]

That's the answer I deserve. But that stopped air traffic in and out of Heathrow everywhere and everywhere in Europe.

[Daniele Vizioni]

Yeah, but that was not the sulfate.

[Chuck]

Because we have a potential issue because you said it's going to sit above this area of commercial air flight. Will it not descend?

[Daniele Vizioni]

So two things. So volcanoes explode all the time and when they explode, the main thing they do, the short term, larger effect is the ash.

[Neil DeGrasse Tyson]

Right, Right.

[Daniele Vizioni]

So that's the thing that is very dangerous for aviation because when ash interacts with the aircraft, it can guts up everything.

[Chuck]

Right.

[Daniele Vizioni]

It can glassify and so it can be a real danger. Some volcanoes.

[Gary]

Do you say glassify?

[Daniele Vizioni]

I think so, and I'm not sure whether that's an actual scientific term, but let's pretend it is.

[Gary]

I love that. So this is the ash getting heated in the engine, turning into glass. Glass. But wasn't it already heated in the volcano?

[Daniele Vizioni]

Right, but then it cools down pretty quickly and so the ash actually forms that way and then it can sort of undergo.

[Gary]

So the ash is pretty. Okay. So when people get buried in ash like they did in Pompeii. No, no, no, Pompeii was not ash. Ercolano was ash.

[Neil DeGrasse Tyson]

Okay.

[Gary]

Pompeii was a.

[Daniele Vizioni]

Well, just a magma.

[Neil DeGrasse Tyson]

Yeah, that was a magma flow.

[Gary]

It was actually a mud flow. Really?

[Neil DeGrasse Tyson]

Oh, that's right.

[Gary]

That's why everything was preserved. Preserved, right.

[Neil DeGrasse Tyson]

That's right, that's right. It was my.

[Gary]

Yeah, So I hadn't fully appreciated what the ash was and what it can be at its worst.

[Daniele Vizioni]

Yeah. So this ash is the first thing, the thing you actually see. You don't really see the sulfate. Right. But it's the thing that is dangerous over a 1, 2 days timescale a week. Right. Also because these ash is also very tiny and so you can breathe in, it's very dangerous and so on. And it's dangerous for aviation. Some volcanic corruptions also have what for climate scientists is A lot of sulfate. Not all volcanic eruptions also launch sulfate in the atmosphere. For instance, Hunga, Tonga, that happened in 2022 was a huge volcanic eruption. There was almost no sulfate. It was just water vapor pushed up from the ocean. But there was almost no sulfate. Hunga Tonga had something like 300,000 tons of sulfate. Pinatubo had 17 million tons of sulfate in a couple of hours.

[Neil DeGrasse Tyson]

And how much sulfate does Hakuna Matata have?

[Daniele Vizioni]

I would have go back and check my numbers. I don't know. Good question.

[Chuck]

So we're putting aerosols into the stratosphere and we've got the natural cycle of the wind systems. How do you discuss this with sovereign nations? And they say, well, I don't want that flying over my territory. Who then owns the territory above a particular country?

[Gary]

Do you have to find your counterpart in every country so that they can speak to their governments to come to an agreement on this?

[Daniele Vizioni]

That's definitely what we do. As scientists. Yes. I constantly talk and work with climate scientists from all over the world, for sure. For your question, though, I would say nobody knows who the stratosphere belongs to. The stratosphere of all places, is actually one of the least regulated airspace is in the troposphere. And so we know who's liable for things that happen in the troposphere. And then there's space and some other treaties regulating that. But nobody really had to regulate the stratosphere for a long time. The only treaty that exists is the Montreal Protocol for Substances that Affect Stratospheric Ozone, which protects us from damaging ultraviolet light.

[Gary]

That whole protocol was just for the ozone.

[Neil DeGrasse Tyson]

Just for the ozone.

[Daniele Vizioni]

It was just for the ozone. And a couple of years ago, there was an increase in one of these ozone depleting substances that was not predicted, was not expected. And it took countries a year to figure out from which country these depleting sustenance, this increasing depleting sustenance was coming from. But even then, the motorcycle, which country was it? Well, it was a country in Asia.

[Gary]

Okay, okay.

[Daniele Vizioni]

You see, interesting thing was that the agency, the US scientific agency that found out about where this product was coming from couldn't just point the finger and say, this is coming from you. Right. They could say, we think that this increase is coming from this region of the world. But there is no enforcement mechanism, even in the Monshor Protocol, that could say, oh, you have to stop. I mean, the country voluntarily agreed to stop. Right. So a lot of these international treaties don't really have enforcement mechanisms for the Montreal Protocol. It's all a matter of all countries agreeing that oddson is important and it should be protected.

[Gary]

I think more countries sign that than any other treaty ever.

[Daniele Vizioni]

It is the most successful climate and environmental protection treaty in the world. Yeah. Every country signed it because every country realized how important it was to have an ozone layer.

[Gary]

Yeah. So, Chuck, you missed it.

[Neil DeGrasse Tyson]

Yeah.

[Gary]

Okay. It was a cosmic phenomenon that affect mostly white people. And so they actively, they acted that.

[Daniele Vizioni]

Yeah, that is surprisingly correct. Yeah.

[Gary]

What does it take to motivate the powerful countries of the world?

[Daniele Vizioni]

Yeah, just say not get their tan. If their tan is at risk, you're.

[Neil DeGrasse Tyson]

Going to lose the beaches.

[Daniele Vizioni]

Yeah.

[Chuck]

So what could the stratospheric aerosols achieve in terms of temperature?

[Daniele Vizioni]

So, first of all, very clear, these aerosols cannot solve climate change. Climate change is a whole other problem. It comes from the greenhouse gases that we have in the Band aid, as we would say. It's a band aid, It's a stopgap. You can call it however you want. It's something, you know, some people dismissively say, well, it's like taking an aspirin. If you have cancer, it's not treating the underlying causes, but even if you have cancer, you have the right to a dignified life and not to suffer from other pains. Right. And so in a way, it's a band Aid in the sense that, yes, it could help temperature from going up. Right. It could prevent further warming and this way could reduce some of the risks that come from this warming that we know are going to come from this warming and that we're already observing are coming with the warming that we see now.

[Gary]

So a couple of questions, fast ones. Climate seems to me, even as an astrophysicist, to be an immensely complex problem to solve. Given all the variables, given the turbulence in an atmosphere, gas and different gas species, and the interaction of the atmosphere with the ocean and the land, all of this. So is AI helping you in any of this?

[Daniele Vizioni]

We are definitely exploring a lot of ways in which AI could help. Reading the huge amount of data that we already have, for instance, from satellite observation of things like plumes coming out of volcanoes. Nobody could look at all of them. Right. That's what AI is very good at. Pattern recognition.

[Gary]

Finding it.

[Daniele Vizioni]

Yeah, Finding stuff that humans would have a hard time with. So this is really an emerging field, but there's a lot of interesting thing that we are starting to do with AI.

[Gary]

Okay, so then here's a risk that I learned about, and I just want to know, is it authentic and is it the worst thing to worry about if the temperature starts rising and you say we need more aerosols. And so you got these two competing forces, you get to tamp it down. Then there's a terrorist attack on the people putting up the aerosols, then the aerosol falls out and now you have a catastrophic shock to the system because the greenhouse gaslit.

[Neil DeGrasse Tyson]

You were masking for so long, you.

[Gary]

Were masking for so long, then it's instantly you have a catastrophic exposure to greenhouse warming. How much do you think about contingencies here?

[Daniele Vizioni]

That's a great question. And I would say it is something to worry about, except I would say it would not be instantaneous if you stopped putting. Since these aerosols stay for so long, if you stop putting them for a day, a week, a month, nothing really changes because the arse will stay on for a long time. Now, if you stop for a year or two years, that's where you unmask all the worm. Right? So this is your.

[Gary]

That gives you some time. You have a question to find the.

[Neil DeGrasse Tyson]

Terror and kick their ass and rebuild.

[Gary]

And rebuild.

[Daniele Vizioni]

But of course you would have. I think this is a very valid concern when it comes to stratospheric carousel, but it's also one that points out to the fact that essentially you would need to plan carefully, have contingency plans, and you could not rely on just one actor doing this. Right. Because this is a worldwide thing. Could someone go up and put something. Sure, maybe they could before they were stopped. But that's not how you would achieve anything. To achieve anything, you would need a carefully planned thing with contingency plans for what happens if we need to stop. For instance, I've done research on what would happen if a volcanic eruption happened while you're doing this. What would you do? And, well, it turns out that then you would ramp down or maybe shift where you're putting the aerosols to try to.

[Gary]

This is true geoengineering. You understand your planet and you interact in a way to your benefit.

[Daniele Vizioni]

Yeah. The key difference is really in the word deliberate. When we say what does geoengineering mean? And a lot of people ask me, well, haven't we been geoengineering the planet already with all the greenhouse gases? Maybe, in a way. But the point of geoengineering, we say deliberate because this would be the first time we consciously decide to globally affect climate to our benefit. Engineering. Yeah, yeah, yeah.

[Neil DeGrasse Tyson]

Now, what about unintended consequences? Because you do something here, something else has to happen over there. So what do you anticipate or what have you seen?

[Gary]

That's way too polite. How can this go horribly wrong?

[Neil DeGrasse Tyson]

There you go.

[Daniele Vizioni]

That is a perfectly fair question.

[Gary]

Because there's the things you look that you know could go wrong and then there are the things you don't know could go wrong for something as catastrophic as Earth's atmosphere. Where does your confidence come from?

[Daniele Vizioni]

Our confidence comes from a lot of different observations. The main one being we do have an upper bound for how wrong things can go. And that's again Pinatubo. If a volcano can dump 17 or 20 million tons of sulfate all at.

[Gary]

Once into the stratosphere.

[Daniele Vizioni]

Into the stratosphere. And things happened after that. Right. Temperatures cooled, there were changes in atmospheric chemistry and so on. But fundamentally that's really as catastrophic as it can get. And we've been able to understand what happened there. Right on top of all of that, all of these sulfate came down. Yes, but there is so much more. When we talk about sulfate, the reason we do that is because we understand the environmental impacts. They're not good for sure, but we understand them. Now you could be thinking of what if we try to engineer a perfect compound to put in the stratosphere instead of sulfate, something that works better, that is not as toxic. You could do that. People are thinking about that, that's legit. But in that case, that's not something that we understand how it interacts with the environment long term, while sulfate is something we understand very well.

[Gary]

So I would say it's the devil. You know, it's the devil.

[Daniele Vizioni]

We, we understand the upper bound of.

[Neil DeGrasse Tyson]

How wrong you have experience with it, you've seen it happen before.

[Gary]

And just to be clear, when the rain comes out, you acidify. You can acidify regions that could be harmful to wildlife or plant life.

[Daniele Vizioni]

So again, in these, as opposed to when we do it through pollution, these aerosols would mix very well. And most of that actually would fall. Most of the aerosols then would fall over the oceans where really sulfate is not something that affects ocean acidification that much because that's mostly carbon driven. Again, that's a clear trade off. You would increase pollution by a little bit. Right. 10% more than now in many locations. You would spread it evenly, but it would still come down. And does that affect. Yes, that's one of the, again, that's one of the things we definitely are looking into and should be looking into more actually quantifying and understanding these trade offs. All the things that could, and it could very well be that there Are other things that could go wrong that we don't know yet, or maybe we haven't thought about. Which is why I always welcome other climate scientists starting to look into this field. Because if suddenly we found a roadblock, something we hadn't thought about, nobody had thought about in the last 30 years, that would make this. No, look, we really can't do this. This is too dangerous for this reason. Okay. At least we know. Right. The point of doing research is that then at least we. We can say, nope, we've thought about this. Here's the reason why we can't do that.

[Gary]

So I have an analogy from physics where in the Large Hadron Collider, where they're creating energies where there was some risk that you might create a black hole. A small risk. There's a small black hole that would then consume the Earth as it moved through. And so why do you proceed even if that's such a small risk? Because that's a small risk. But it's catastrophic to the planet. And it turns out nature gave us examples. They're cosmic rays that come from deep space, like the center of the galaxy, at extremely high energies, higher energy than anything we're making inside the accelerator. And they collide with molecules in our atmosphere. And it's not making black hole.

[Neil DeGrasse Tyson]

It's not making a black hole.

[Gary]

And we've been here for 5 billion years, so.

[Neil DeGrasse Tyson]

So that's the cosmic Pinatubu or Pinatuba. Punatuba. That's the cosmic peanut butter.

[Gary]

We have nature to calibrate our expectations. Yeah.

[Chuck]

Where are we with the simulations and therefore then testing? Because we can sit here and have a talking shop for decades. It sounds like we have, because I'm part of the team now, obviously.

[Neil DeGrasse Tyson]

Right.

[Chuck]

But surely this testing goes on. But there must be something pushing back for this not to be the case, because this sounds too good to be true to. Even if it's a band aid. I think we'll take the band aid right now.

[Daniele Vizioni]

Yeah, I think that's part of the issue. Right. And I would say I work a lot with social scientists as well when it comes to this topic. And one time I was talking to one of my colleagues and he really asked me the same question, like, well, then this sounds good. Why aren't we doing it? And we kind of set out to think about these from a societal perspective. Right.

[Gary]

As any good scientist should. Do you want to look at all angles, even angles, opposite where you're trying to go with it?

[Daniele Vizioni]

Yeah. And it is clear that there are a Lot of worries. Right. When you talk to people about it, they're like, wow, this sounds crazy. And that's a perfectly good reaction. Now the question is, and when do people stop having that reaction? Will it ever happen, and what is it gonna take? Some people suggest that once people are going to experience more and more the effects of climate change, that's going to change their mind.

[Neil DeGrasse Tyson]

Desperation is what you're doing.

[Daniele Vizioni]

I do not think we should make plans out of desperation.

[Gary]

Okay.

[Daniele Vizioni]

On the other hand, people are saying, well, will there be a point in which we are secure enough into our assessments that this will convince most people? Right. I think that's kind of the angle that I try to work with. As in, I think that the main ways in which we're going to have meaningful discussions about this and move forward and maybe start even outdoor testing, is once we've put the whole scientific community in a way behind assessing robustly, what do we know and understand about something like stratospheric carousel injection? So at this point, there's just, yeah, honestly, a handful of scientists compared to the whole climate science endeavor. But the amount of people that are looking into this is getting bigger and bigger. And so I think we're pretty close to having broader international assessments around the topic. Which means that because eventually, when I maybe talk to policymakers or to people in other countries, they don't want to know the results of my study or of my climate model run. They want to know what's the agreement. Right. So that's kind of why it's so important to talk about this from an international perspective.

[Gary]

The results of any one land, you.

[Neil DeGrasse Tyson]

Need a geopolitical, scientific consensus. Consensus.

[Daniele Vizioni]

Imagine if they'd thought about that with something like the ipcc, the Intergovernmental Challenge.

[Neil DeGrasse Tyson]

That's really what you need.

[Daniele Vizioni]

Indeed. Yeah.

[Neil DeGrasse Tyson]

And once you have that, you might be in a better position.

[Chuck]

But then you get 10 people in a discussion, you end up with 12 opinions. Of course, always the case. But trying to get nations to sit around the table and. Well, it's not bothering me or you're not putting that over my sky.

[Neil DeGrasse Tyson]

Oh, yeah, they're not in my backyard.

[Chuck]

So how far are we from making something like this implemented?

[Daniele Vizioni]

I would have absolutely no way to predict that, I would say, and be honest. But I think we can, for instance, look at climate change. Right. And say, honestly, the first assessment report from the IPCC was in 1994, was in the early 90s, and we've advanced greatly. But fundamentally, conclusions haven't really changed from 1994. Which is we add greenhouse gases. That's bad, that increases warming and that's going to make things worse.

[Neil DeGrasse Tyson]

True.

[Daniele Vizioni]

And there have been, I want to take in this case the optimistic view of saying, you know, there have been many advances when it comes to climate change mitigation and policy. Have there been enough? Definitely not. But there have been. There have been the Paris Agreement. Now, is the United States of America out of the Paris Agreement? Yes, it is. Will they stay for long? I don't know. But you know, solar and wind are kind of unstoppable. There's a lot of.

[Gary]

You're the rate they're going now.

[Neil DeGrasse Tyson]

Yeah.

[Daniele Vizioni]

Europe is very much into renewable. China is even more than Europe.

[Gary]

And the United States, in spite of their carbon footprint growing in some sectors, still making great advances.

[Daniele Vizioni]

Yes, they are, because they understand, they.

[Neil DeGrasse Tyson]

See it as an economic issue. They don't even care right now. They look at it as this is a necessity for our economy, unlike unfortunately, the supposed greatest economy in the world.

[Daniele Vizioni]

So. So in this sense, I guess as a scientist, I'm not going to be the one making the decision about whether to do this or not. I shouldn't be. It should be no sign. You know, me and Sir Neil as well, we've met enough scientists. We shouldn't be the one making this kind of decisions. Come on.

[Neil DeGrasse Tyson]

Well, you should if you can laugh maniacally while you're doing it.

[Daniele Vizioni]

Oh, yeah.

[Neil DeGrasse Tyson]

That's how it gets done.

[Gary]

Yeah.

[Neil DeGrasse Tyson]

That's what you do it.

[Daniele Vizioni]

But we can provide. I still think that overall the strongest merit of science is providing the information that can let people make the good decisions. Will they make good decisions all the time? No, because we're humans and we don't. But that's not a good reason why not to provide the information that could allow people to make these decisions.

[Gary]

So let me land this plane by saying every stratospheric plane, let me say every disaster movie begins with people in charge, ignoring the advice of scientists. Just saying, I hear you.

[Neil DeGrasse Tyson]

That's it.

[Gary]

Daniele Vizione Glad.

[Daniele Vizioni]

I love how you say that.

[Gary]

Oh, I love thinking about how to say it. Thanks for joining us here.

[Daniele Vizioni]

Thank you.

[Gary]

Oh my gosh. We loved your expertise and put it in the mix and stir it up and see what comes out the other side as these years progress. We don't know where the valuation will land.

[Neil DeGrasse Tyson]

Oh, we know.

[Daniele Vizioni]

Stop.

[Neil DeGrasse Tyson]

Come on, guys. It's America in 2025.

[Gary]

We America use America.

[Paige Desorbo]

Right?

[Neil DeGrasse Tyson]

Right now America.

[Gary]

So again, thank you for joining us.

[Daniele Vizioni]

Thank you.

[Gary]

So next up we're going to get the point of view from a sociologist who thinks about the impact of all these measures on the human condition, not only domestically but around the world. Coming right up.

[Holly Jean Buck]

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[Gary]

So our next guest is Holly June Buck, Associate professor of Environment and Sustainability at the University of Buffalo. That's SUNY Buffalo. Yeah. So ain't that something? When I was growing up, no one would have imagined a department with this title. Environment and Sustainability.

[Neil DeGrasse Tyson]

And that's why we're in this mess that we are in right now. Because nobody envisioned needing this.

[Gary]

Needing this.

[Neil DeGrasse Tyson]

Yeah.

[Gary]

I also have her Downs Radcliffe Salata Climate Justice Fellow at Harvard.

[Chuck]

That sounds like superheroes.

[Gary]

That sounds bad.

[Neil DeGrasse Tyson]

It really does. Right?

[Gary]

Cape and everything. And interdisciplinary environmental social scientist and with special attention to how people engage with emergent climate control technologies. That's the thing. That's like a whole sociological thing.

[Neil DeGrasse Tyson]

It has to be.

[Gary]

It's got to be. Why not? And my favorite title of them all. Author of a book from 2019 after Geoengineering, Climate Tragedy Repair and Restoration.

[Neil DeGrasse Tyson]

Wow Sounds very much like the movie.

[Gary]

The Day after or what's that other movie? Snowpiercer.

[Neil DeGrasse Tyson]

Snowpiercer.

[Gary]

That was after. Yeah, that. That's where climate people messed up.

[Neil DeGrasse Tyson]

Yeah, Exactly.

[Gary]

Welcome to StarTalk, Holly.

[Paige Desorbo]

Thanks so much. It's great to be here.

[Gary]

Do we call you Holly Jean or just Holly? Either one's great, either one's good. Holly Jean's kind of Holly Jean.

[Neil DeGrasse Tyson]

Holly Jean sounds like a country western star. You know, Hali Jean, Hallie Jean.

[Gary]

So we've just come off of a conversation looking at the pros and cons of aerosol injections into the atmosphere. Could you just give us some options on how to achieve the same effect that are banding about today?

[Paige Desorbo]

The same effect as solar geoengineering?

[Gary]

Yeah, I mean it's got a noble goal to sort of protect Earth from our own misdeeds regarding climate. And so if we don't do that, what are you gonna offer us? Did I direct that question to you?

[Neil DeGrasse Tyson]

Oh, I'm sorry. Cause I had an answer.

[Paige Desorbo]

Well, there's plan A. Shall we go over plan A?

[Chuck]

Please, yes.

[Paige Desorbo]

So a whole bunch of countries, including the US up until a minute ago, but states as well, New York State, have signed onto these net zero targets. So ideas that it's net zero carbon dioxide or greenhouse gas in general. Yeah, I mean they're a little bit different targets, but yeah, the main idea is you don't put out more than you can remove and that needs to happen by mid century, which is actually yesterday, really soon.

[Neil DeGrasse Tyson]

Yeah, it could have happened yesterday and.

[Gary]

It needs to happen yesterday.

[Neil DeGrasse Tyson]

Yeah, and we still got some issues if it were happening yesterday, but go ahead.

[Paige Desorbo]

So basically remaking our whole energy system, our built environment, it's a big transformation. That's why people are talking about geoengineering.

[Gary]

All right, so I get that. And this aerosol in the atmosphere solutions sounds so Bond villain.

[Neil DeGrasse Tyson]

It does sound sexy, doesn't it?

[Gary]

It sounds like this should be in a movie. But why not just take the carbon dioxide out of the atmosphere? They don't have to worry about any of this.

[Neil DeGrasse Tyson]

Well, you sound like my mother. You know what you need? You need a sitcom. Why don't you have a sitcom? In other words? Yeah, that's. Go ahead.

[Paige Desorbo]

We do need to do some of that, but there's a limit in how much we can do. I mean think about all the effort it took to take it out of the ground, right? All the pipes, all the refining, all the distribution, all of that infrastructure we're talking about building that Basically all over again to put it back underground. So.

[Chuck]

And there are limited places where you can actually store CO2.

[Neil DeGrasse Tyson]

Yeah.

[Gary]

Interesting sort of macro way to see that.

[Neil DeGrasse Tyson]

That is. Yeah, that's a really interesting way to look at it because you never really consider how much infrastructure is involved in just oil extraction and then refinery, just that, let alone everything else involved to get it to you where you know, everything.

[Gary]

I don't have to bury it, do I? For example, the White Cliffs of Dover. That's limestone cliffs and that's a repository of carbon from our environment. And they're not buried. But not that we're making that, but I'm just saying that didn't involve a pipe to put it back into the ground.

[Paige Desorbo]

Yeah. So people talk about closed system and open system carbon removal. So in a closed system you would have an injection well, you'd be injecting that into rock formations deep underground. You more or less know where it is. But what you're just talking about is more of an open system approach. Putting it into the ocean, putting it into fields where you can make rocks weather faster. That's a bit trickier because it's harder to measure what's going on.

[Chuck]

How are we transporting this? Because you've got certain industries that produce an awful lot of CO2 and then they don't have somewhere right on their doorstep to squirrel this away. I'll call it that. So how are we. I mean, pipes are one. Are we transporting it in any other way?

[Paige Desorbo]

Barges, rail trucks?

[Neil DeGrasse Tyson]

The same as oil. Like it's exactly the same.

[Gary]

The two trucks go opposite directions on the highway.

[Neil DeGrasse Tyson]

They give each other a tube.

[Chuck]

That was Mike. That was my soft point.

[Neil DeGrasse Tyson]

That's funny.

[Chuck]

So if we're spending how many billions on carbon catcher plants? Right. And I just say to myself, just, are we actually.

[Gary]

Is that a real thing?

[Paige Desorbo]

We spent a few billions trying to start them. We'll see if they can finish.

[Gary]

It's still a nascent.

[Paige Desorbo]

Yeah, very much nascent.

[Gary]

Okay.

[Chuck]

Are they better than trees? Capturing sea. Good to see.

[Neil DeGrasse Tyson]

Oh, that's a very good question.

[Gary]

I love that.

[Paige Desorbo]

Yeah. I mean trees are great for a whole bunch of reasons.

[Daniele Vizioni]

Yes.

[Paige Desorbo]

The thing with these land based approaches, we need more of them for providing habitat for a million reasons. But we can't expect nature to do all the work here of what we took out of the ground.

[Neil DeGrasse Tyson]

Yes, right.

[Paige Desorbo]

We have limited land for trees, unfortunately, because we want that land for growing food.

[Neil DeGrasse Tyson]

So basically we should stop eating. That's really heating and heating are. So the answer here. Stop eating and Heating, heating and heating. Let it go.

[Gary]

So I get many of the land solutions to this, but how about ocean solutions other than CO2 just getting absorbed into the water? Surely there are creatures out there that would value some uptake in CO2.

[Paige Desorbo]

If you're talking about the whale concept, that one might not scale to the levels we need it to, but if you're talking about plankton on the other hand, that seems more promising. These are really early stages of research.

[Chuck]

Though, but the theory seems really positive.

[Gary]

So you, how does it work? What's the procedure?

[Paige Desorbo]

Basically, the concept of ocean iron fertilization would be to add nutrients to the ocean to create a big plankton bloom. The plankton falls down to the bottom of the ocean.

[Gary]

What do plankton blooms have anything to do with CO2 or these, the photosynthetic plankton?

[Paige Desorbo]

Yeah, yeah.

[Gary]

Oh, like a tree.

[Neil DeGrasse Tyson]

Yeah.

[Gary]

Like to do what a plant would do.

[Paige Desorbo]

Yeah, exactly.

[Gary]

Oh, okay.

[Chuck]

The light bulb went on.

[Gary]

Yeah. Thank you. Thank you. So it's an LED light bulb.

[Chuck]

I would expect nothing.

[Gary]

Thank you. So you're growing plankton in the presence of the CO2? No, differently. How? You would grow trees in the presence of CO2, except oceans are huge. So what happens when the plankton die and then they fall to the bottom? Then what?

[Paige Desorbo]

I mean, ideally that CO2 would stay at the bottom. But this is the issue with this category of approaches is that the science is really early and the science is expensive. Right. Because you need ocean chartered vehicles going out there doing experiments and we just haven't really begun that process yet.

[Gary]

It's not a laboratory experiment.

[Chuck]

But the potential for this sink and die of the phytoplankton is capturing massive amounts of CO2. But surely that has some toxicity in the ecosystem.

[Gary]

Yeah.

[Paige Desorbo]

What does it do with oxygen?

[Neil DeGrasse Tyson]

Right, Exactly.

[Paige Desorbo]

There's little creatures down there that's they do matter. I care about them.

[Neil DeGrasse Tyson]

What was the little microscopic creature that was here that put all the oxygen in the air?

[Gary]

Oh, yeah, cyanobacteria.

[Neil DeGrasse Tyson]

Cyanobacteria, yeah. So there are consequences that happen when you do this kind of stuff.

[Gary]

Yeah, but they would absorb CO2 and release oxygen. So what's so bad about that?

[Paige Desorbo]

I mean, for ocean life, what do.

[Gary]

You have up against oxygen? What kind of a person are you?

[Paige Desorbo]

Remember, I'm a sociologist.

[Gary]

Okay. No, we get it.

[Chuck]

It's this lack of joined up thinking that's got us in this situation in the first place. So surely we've got to look at the effect of every living thing in any environment. We go into. But the problem is we need to explore, we need to research further. And it doesn't look as if there's a desire or possibly the finances to do it. Or am I wrong?

[Paige Desorbo]

It's just short of what's needed to really get into some of these questions.

[Gary]

All right, so if you're not a sociologist of plankton, you'd be a sociologist of people. So how do the effects of all these efforts land differently around the world, either economically or geographically?

[Neil DeGrasse Tyson]

Well, the rest of the world is ripping us off. That's the first thing. And it's time for us to make sure that we have dominance. The kind of dominance that comes from. Drill, baby, drill.

[Gary]

Thank you, Chuck.

[Paige Desorbo]

Chew on the nose. There's a couple of issues here. One is that unless people grasp the climate change, the energy transition, the situation we're in, talking to them about these ideas is probably not going to land very well. Because if you don't know why we would try it in the first place.

[Gary]

But there are countries who have nowhere near the resources to participate in this. So they would be passive observers, possibly even victims of our efforts or our folly.

[Neil DeGrasse Tyson]

And oddly enough, those countries are far more amenable to the solutions that we need to enact in order to solve this problem. You would think that from what you said, that they would be the ones who would be most skeptical. They're not. We're the fricking problem.

[Gary]

Was that right? Okay.

[Paige Desorbo]

Yeah. We actually do have some research that colleagues of mine have done in several different countries trying to learn about people's perceptions. And they did find more support for countries in the global south, countries that are facing a lot of climate impacts right now. But I would caution that with. Most people haven't heard anything about any of these approaches. So what somebody hears in a survey or initially is going to be shaped by what people say about it. Other messengers, their friends and family, once they start to discuss it with other people, which is.

[Neil DeGrasse Tyson]

I think it was this year's Yale report that still is somewhere around upwards. 53% of people say they rarely or never talk about climate change with friends or family.

[Gary]

That's this year's. Not even a thing.

[Neil DeGrasse Tyson]

So it's. We're just not even discussing it at all.

[Gary]

We're.

[Neil DeGrasse Tyson]

We're la la la right now.

[Chuck]

This little group here are outliers.

[Gary]

Wait, wait, so how do we then think about the social consequences or ethical issues of this down the line? How do you handle that?

[Paige Desorbo]

I mean, I think the first step is just to involve more people in the conversation.

[Gary]

Okay.

[Paige Desorbo]

And that can be done a lot of ways.

[Gary]

It hardly ever happens.

[Paige Desorbo]

Yeah.

[Gary]

You need agencies or organizations that'll do that.

[Paige Desorbo]

Yeah. You need actually dedicated staff to work on it. It's a big challenge.

[Chuck]

So who's the most important voices that need to be heard in regards of this?

[Gary]

Her voice. No, lean into the microphone. My voice.

[Neil DeGrasse Tyson]

But do it asmr.

[Gary]

It's my voice. Yes. Holly Jean is speaking.

[Chuck]

Is it the powerful, rich Western nations or is it the global South? Is it African nations? Is that there are demographic or group.

[Paige Desorbo]

Well, everybody has a stake. And everybody needs to do something with climate and energy. Right. Nobody can sit by.

[Neil DeGrasse Tyson]

Yeah. Nobody's getting out of this one.

[Gary]

No. So of all the options that you've seen, what horse would you bet on as the most effective but also most humane?

[Paige Desorbo]

If I may, I think we need to triple nuclear capacity. We have a goal about that. Or if we did, I hope we keep doing that. We need abundant, clean energy for people because a lot of people don't have access to energy.

[Gary]

And this might turn the tables on the anti nuclear movement that had been so strong over the decades.

[Paige Desorbo]

I hope so. We've seen public sentiment on that shift pretty quickly, actually.

[Chuck]

So that's the show we had with Katharine Huff on the small modular reactors.

[Gary]

Right. Because the nuclear reactors can be scaled and they can be built anywhere you need them. Right.

[Chuck]

I don't think they're at the point where they can commercially put them in. Although we've had nuclear reactors in submarines.

[Gary]

Oh, yeah.

[Chuck]

For some time. So there must be some way to scale it and make it.

[Gary]

Oh, yeah.

[Chuck]

Practical.

[Gary]

Oh, yeah. Completely. Completely. Plus, there's not as much spoken of how dependent France has been on nuclear power for decades. And it's not even a thing.

[Neil DeGrasse Tyson]

Right.

[Gary]

They'll protest anything at any time of day except smoking.

[Chuck]

I'll give you a true example about France's nuclear program. I have to say nuclear, please stop.

[Gary]

Giving France cancer every time. Every time you're imitating a French person.

[Chuck]

They put a nuclear power plant on the northwest coast of France, closer to London than it was to Paris. That's how much the French love the bricks. Okay, so is there going to be a mistake that we make in our attempts to do the right thing? What are we most likely gonna get wrong?

[Paige Desorbo]

I mean, you can see a lot of problems considering that we're dismantling our capacity to even monitor what's going on in terms of, you know, attacks on science and government. So, yeah, there's tons of risks. Although people who are concerned I share their concern.

[Gary]

Okay, give us something positive here, please. Tell us, tell us, what are you hopeful for?

[Paige Desorbo]

Well, I think that public thinking about this can and will shift. The question is one of timing. That's why we're talking about geoengineering.

[Gary]

Yeah, but you would know better than others what would help make that shift. What kind of forces need to be in play to change an attitude or perspective?

[Neil DeGrasse Tyson]

Has there been something in history that you're familiar with where a public sea change of opinion has happened for the better? Because that's kind of the shift that we need to have for this, at least here in America.

[Paige Desorbo]

Some of the examples people point to are the civil rights movement, gay marriage, these social things. I think it's a little bit trickier when you're talking about reconfiguring the built environment. But the mindset has to go open first.

[Chuck]

How about we get ahead of the story? There seems to be a fair bit of misinformation regarding climate, global warming or disinformation. That's exactly it.

[Gary]

Yeah.

[Chuck]

So there's this disinformation. How about we get ahead of that narrative and start to put out real solid, strong and take that 53% and make it much, much bigger.

[Paige Desorbo]

I mean, you asked me about technologies and I said nuclear. But we have to also shift the framing into investing in social infrastructure, investing in people. And I think that because we have an administration that's backing away from that, that's crashing our social infrastructure, people are going to recognize the value in the relationships, the agencies functioning government, and will build that capacity to. When we do have the political will to build these new technologies, we'll have the social will that matches it.

[Gary]

Not to put words in your mouth, but are you saying that the dismantling of these social structures, these social institutions may awaken people to their need in ways that they had previously taken for granted.

[Paige Desorbo]

Yeah, we had a problem even before Trump where we passed all this money in the US for climate and energy projects and we couldn't get it spent fast enough because we didn't have enough people in the agencies to spend it, to review it, to even hear about the grants. People on the ground didn't know. And now people are realizing you need people to do this. It's not just about investing in tech.

[Neil DeGrasse Tyson]

So what I was going to say is it takes money. It actually takes money to spend money. It takes money to educate people. And how do you combat the other side, which is disinformation? Fossil fuel companies through their so called outlets and foundations. Right. They spent $900 million, that was tracked last year, $900 million on disinformation. So we got to come up against that, you know, so that, I mean that's a serious thing.

[Gary]

But I. And we got to like land this plane real quick. But presumably if you ask them, they wouldn't say it was disinformation, they would just say it's information. So what you really have to do is empower the listener to know the difference from a sociological perspective. How do you do that?

[Paige Desorbo]

Yeah, you don't go to people and say you're misinformed because then it's like you're saying, well, you're dumb, you didn't know the right information.

[Neil DeGrasse Tyson]

So that's my problem. I've been an idiot. Jesus.

[Paige Desorbo]

You, you give them information that's grounded in science and you say they're really hard trade offs, but you have choices. It's important that you don't make people feel like all of this stuff is going to take away their freedom. That's what they're worried about saying.

[Neil DeGrasse Tyson]

We do such a good job calling electricity Liberty Juice.

[Gary]

Liberty Juice.

[Neil DeGrasse Tyson]

Liberty Juice.

[Chuck]

We need a focus group for Want to save America.

[Neil DeGrasse Tyson]

What you gotta do is get a car that runs on Liberty Juice.

[Chuck]

All right, this thought experiment, that's pretty good, Chuck.

[Neil DeGrasse Tyson]

The answers are out there, Peter.

[Chuck]

Say we fall on a technology that is practical, cost effective, give or take, and we do get ourselves to these pre industrial zero levels, will we not think? Well, it doesn't matter. We can burn all the fossil fuels we want because we can control it.

[Gary]

Now you're okay with that?

[Neil DeGrasse Tyson]

That's, that's a big argument. Yeah, man, yeah, yeah.

[Chuck]

Is that, is that likely to happen for us? Because we've seen, we've driven ourselves.

[Gary]

If we become good at it. Yeah. Then drill baby, drill. Who cares?

[Paige Desorbo]

I just think burning rocks is kind of archaic. Like I just think we can do better. I mean, whatever. I think we can come out with something that out competes that.

[Gary]

And also you run economically then. And then the economics drives it.

[Chuck]

But do we not as a species, do we do that thing anyway where we tie our own shoelaces together or find a way to shoot ourself in the foot.

[Gary]

Speak for yourself, dude.

[Chuck]

I was.

[Neil DeGrasse Tyson]

I was. That was good. Well, I think the danger that many people see is that once you have anything that's viable on a geoengineering scale, which we're nowhere near, by the way, but once you do that, fossil fuel companies will then use that as a cudgel to say we can keep burning fuel, you know, So a lot of.

[Chuck]

People are like, that's my concern.

[Gary]

Yeah. A lot of people are like, you foresee that, presumably.

[Paige Desorbo]

Yeah. I wrote a book called Ending Fossil Fuels that was about the challenge of how you end fossil fuels. And the geopolitics of it are really tough because some countries really depend on this for their revenue and their legitimacy. And I could see them saying, well, let's keep on going.

[Gary]

So countries like Venezuela or Qatar or Russia.

[Neil DeGrasse Tyson]

Yeah, yeah, These are all the countries.

[Gary]

Yes. It's a whole other thing. He would say, stop burning fossil fuel and you'll bankrupt the country. They built their whole economy on it.

[Paige Desorbo]

Unless we're willing to make massive transfers of finance, which we apparently aren't.

[Gary]

Well, then that becomes your problem as a sociologist.

[Paige Desorbo]

I'll take all the problems, you fix it. A lot of work.

[Gary]

I love it. Well, Professor Buck, thank you for being on StarTalk. Delighted to have you on the Asimov panel and that you guys kidnapped her for the startalk. Very good job here. Thank you.

[Paige Desorbo]

Thanks so much.

[Gary]

And just so you know how deeply I respect your profession. My father's a sociologist and I actually received a sociology award from Congress. Just I think they appreciated how much I always tried to think about the impact of science on people. And I was very moved by that. And so I wish you well.

[Paige Desorbo]

Thank you.

[Gary]

And maybe some luck based on how stuff goes down with the human interaction function that's out there.

[Neil DeGrasse Tyson]

Yeah, we're screwed.

[Gary]

Thank you, Chuck, for that. So, Holly, Chuck, Gary.

[Chuck]

Pleasure.

[Gary]

Always. Good.

[Neil DeGrasse Tyson]

Always a pleasure.

[Gary]

Thank you, sir. This has been another edition of StarTalk Special Edition Geoengineering. The good, the Bad, the ugly. Until next time, Neil Degrasse Tyson. Keep looking up.

[Holly Jean Buck]

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[Eduardo]

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