Climate change from a scientist’s perspective

Dominique Barker: Hello and welcome to the launch of our Carbon series and we’re launching this on Earth Day, April 22nd, 2022. And just a bit of history on Earth Day. The first Earth Day was held in 1970. And it’s interesting, the date that they picked, April 22nd, was exactly between spring break and final exams for university students, and it was really to galvanize students and get them interested in environmental issues. And of course, in the 1970s, the issues that were current at that time, oil spills, polluting factories and power plants, raw sewage, toxic dumps, pesticides, freeways, loss of wilderness, all of these topics really been mostly eradicated. And that’s because of a lot of laws that came into play in the 1970s in both the US and Canada and globally. In the US, by the end of 1970, the first Earth Day had created the Environmental Protection Agency and had also the passage of different environmental laws, including National Environmental Education Act, the Occupational Safety and Health Act, and the Clean Air Act. So today on Earth Day, think about that as we have other challenges related to climate and the environment, encourage all of our young listeners, especially those under 34, where their voting rates are actually quite low. In Canada, they’re at 56% of those under 34 currently use the power of their vote. And that’s versus numbers in the 60 70% for those who are over 50, 60, 70 years old. So please be encouraged by the power of your vote in all of this. And Happy Earth Day and welcome to our series on carbon.

Dominique Barker: Welcome to The Sustainability Agenda, a podcast series focusing on the evolving complexities of the sustainability landscape with a view on addressing current issues in a concise format to help you navigate and take action. I’m your host, Dominique Barker. Please join me as we explore today’s most pressing matters with special guests that will give you some new perspective and help you make sense of what really matters.

John Smol: But one aspect is what was trapped in that permafrost is now being released. And this is what really worries a lot of scientists. It’s again, we might reach a tipping point where at a certain point and again, for us, it’s just adding to the greenhouse effect. So this is more greenhouse gases being added because the planet is warming.

Dominique Barker: We are very excited to welcome Dr. John Smol, distinguished university professor at Queen’s University, my alma mater. I found Dr. Smol through my good friend, Dr. Darlene Lim. She is a top Canadian scientist who works at NASA, and I’m very happy to call her one of my closest friends. I asked her to recommend someone in the US on climate and science and she responded, there was no need to go south for a name because in our own Canadian backyard there is none other than Dr. John Smol. He’s a world renowned and internationally decorated climate scientist who has been a leader and trailblazer in his field for over 40 years. And I shared with him that some of my roommates, this was the name in my household when I was at Queen’s because many of my friends were in his class. John studies how ecosystems change over long time frames in response to both natural and human induced environmental change, with a focus centred on Arctic and alpine ecosystems, which are especially sensitive to climatic and other forms of environmental change. So in today’s episode, we’re going to be discussing climate change really from a science perspective and its ecological impact with a focus on northern ecosystems and how it affects our audiences’ everyday lives. And what we’re really trying to achieve here is to help understand why solving climate change and why carbon markets are going to be extremely important and trying to personalize how this can impact our everyday lives. So good afternoon, John, and thank you for joining us today.

John Smol: Oh, my pleasure.

Dominique Barker: So let’s just start with some basics. What are greenhouse gases?

John Smol: Okay. Well, greenhouse gases are gases that are in our atmosphere, and the ones we often talk about are carbon dioxide or CO2 and often sometimes methane. Our planet is completely dependent on basically the sun’s energy. And when the sun’s energy passes through our atmosphere, it passes through fairly easily. I mean, it’s hit by clouds and other things, but then if it hits the earth, it’s radiated back out. And sometimes you feel that radiation, if you’re on a hot August day and you go near a street, a black street with asphalt, you feel your hand, you feel this heat coming off, and that’s long wave radiation. That would normally just return back to the atmosphere. But some of it is stopped by greenhouse gases. Greenhouse gases absorb this long wave radiation. And the big problem is that we have been adding these greenhouse gases to our atmosphere. And by adding the greenhouse gases to the atmosphere, less of that heat is leaving. Now, we do need greenhouse gases. The average temperature on the planet right now is about plus 15 degrees centigrade. If we had no greenhouse gases in our atmosphere, the temperature of the planet would be something like -18 degrees centigrade. So we’d be in a frozen planet. So some greenhouse gases are clearly important. The problem is, because of industrial activity, we’ve been increasing the concentration of greenhouse gases. And by doing that, we’ve been warming the planet as we hear about often in the media and elsewhere.

Dominique Barker: And so I think you’ve addressed why it’s a problem for our environment. So is it too late? How much time do we have before we have irreversible damage? And what can you tell us about that?

John Smol: Well, that’s a difficult question because we’ve already had damage. We’ve already had damage. And irreversible is a big word. So we already are seeing changes and we’re going to continue seeing changes. Part of the issue with greenhouse gases is many of them, like carbon dioxide, have what we say is a long half-life. They’re going to be in the atmosphere for a long time. They’re already baked in, if you like. We’ve already lost so much time talking about greenhouse gases and not doing anything about them. We already have a problem. So we’re already seeing effects. We’re already seeing, for example, increased flooding because one aspect of greenhouse warming is the sea levels are rising. Just to give you one of many, many examples. Sea levels rise because polar ice caps, this land based ice is starting to melt and that’s going in the ocean and the sea level is rising. Also warmer water expands, so sea level is rising. So if you’re in a coastal community, you’re much more susceptible to ocean flooding, as we’ve been seeing, and that’s going to continue on. So it depends how you define irreversible. That’s going to continue on for a fairly long period of time, even if we stopped emitting extra greenhouse gases. So already quite a bit of damage is happening. The extreme weather events, forest fires, none of these are completely dependent on greenhouse gas warming. But I use the analogy of we’ve loaded the dice, we’ve increased the likelihood of these events by warming our planet, and we’re pushing it towards much more high likelihood, for example, extreme weather events, droughts, forest fires and so forth.

Dominique Barker: And one of the things that I like to talk about on this podcast is how we’re already at plus 1.1 degrees versus pre-industrial age. And what we’re trying to solve for is only getting to plus 1.5 degrees. So we’ve locked in 1.5 degrees. And it’s a question of is it going to be catastrophic or just really bad? I don’t want to be too dreary on this podcast, but I would like to talk to a topic that’s I know near and dear to your heart and Dr. Lim’s as well, is the northern ecosystems like the Arctic? Why are they so sensitive?

John Smol: Yeah. Arctic are polar ecosystems and also high mountain ecosystems are especially sensitive to climate change. And these are things as Canadians at least we have to think about. About half our country is Arctic. It depends how you define Arctic and two thirds of our coastline is Arctic. Why are Arctic systems so sensitive? Well, it has to do with the word albedo. Albedo is a $20 word for brightness, let’s say, and much easier to wear to use. And in the standard form of the Arctic, the natural form of the Arctic is ice and snow. It’s white. It’s like a big mirror. I use the analogy if you go on a hot August day outside my house and say I have a white car and a black car in my driveway and I put my hand on both cars. Both cars will be hot, but the white car will be less hot. The dark car will be more hot. And that’s because the dark car is absorbing the heat and the white car is acting a bit like a mirror. The Arctic in its normal state is like that white car, that mirror. However, once we start warming the Arctic, it’s losing ice and snow and we hear about that all the time, it’s becoming more like the dark car, which means it heats up even more, which means that it loses even more snow and ice. And I don’t want to say snowball effect, but I mean, that’s the best word for it. And you get what we call a positive feedback system. And that’s why these types of systems are extremely sensitive to climate change. They change the fastest, and in some ways they’re warning signs to what’s going to happen farther south. Because what happens in the Arctic affects us all.

Dominique Barker: And there’s quite a bit of trapped methane emissions, I believe, in the Arctic as well. Is that right?

John Smol: That’s true. I mean, that’s just one of the there’s so many aspects of climate warming. It’s a really wicked problem. But one aspect is, for example, a fair amount of methane, that CH4, which is a very strong greenhouse gas. A lot of these gases are trapped in what we call permafrost, which is technically permanently frozen ground or used to be permanently frozen. With warming, this is just one of the examples. With warming, permafrost is less permanent, starting to thaw. That has all sorts of other issues, including people’s buildings that if your house is built on permafrost that’s thawing your foundation, you’re falling apart. Bridges are falling down, streets are buckling. But one aspect is what was trapped in that permafrost is now being released. And this is what really worries a lot of scientists. It’s again, we might reach a tipping point where at a certain point and again, for us, it’s just adding to the greenhouse effect. So this is more greenhouse gases being added because the planet is warming. These are these positive feedbacks and tipping points that scientists talk about.

Dominique Barker: Okay, great. Let’s make it a little personal for some of our listeners who may have in Canada, a big part of our summers is having a place, a cottage somewhere near, a second home or renting a cottage in the summer. Let’s make it personal to talk about how climate change could impact Lake Country.

John Smol: It affects all of us. And that’s a good example. And my specialty is lakes, so I worry about these things quite a bit. One of the most common symptoms we see with climate warming is less ice cover and two ways of looking at that. That makes it a shorter winter or what I refer to as a longer summer. Our summers are getting longer and Canadians say, great, you know, if you live in a northern environment, longer summer, more time at the cottage, which is true. But what I say under the waterline, a lot of things are happening. If you look at lakes, let’s just look at lakes, for example. A lot of things are happening. With the longer summer, just one just one symptom of this is that the summer has gotten longer. And one aspect of this is the growing season for algae has gotten longer. Algae are the photosynthetic organisms in lakes. They’re photosynthetic, they need light. If you have lots of ice cover, they’re growing very slowly or not at all. If you make the summer longer, you typically have more algae. And of course, some algae you want in your lake because it’s the food source for the other organisms of the lake, but too much algae people don’t want. We have algal blooms. It’s like this greening of lakes. Now one aspect you need nutrients for lakes and we got a decent handle on keeping nutrients low in lakes. But now what we think is happening with the longer summer, certain types of algae are much more competitive, they’re much more abundant. And this is especially true of blue green algae, the ones that people worry about. They have different types of toxins. They form those surface scums. You don’t want to go swimming in a lake with lots of blue green algae. And it looks like because of this longer summer, they love the heat. They love what we call well stratified conditions. Without the ice cover in the longer summer, the waters get calmer in the surface waters and that’s perfect for them. So what we see now is blue green algal blooms happening much more frequently later in the summer. And we think this is also just one of the hundreds of things we look at that are affected by greenhouse warming.

Dominique Barker: That’s fascinating. So I’ve got some, remembering some of my courses myself at Queens and on lakes turning over and itrophication?

John Smol: Eutrophication, right? (laughs)

Dominique Barker: (laughs) Sorry. I pulled that out of nowhere.

John Smol: With the longer summer, we’ve delayed that fall mixing event. And that’s exactly the perfect conditions for blue green algae.

Dominique Barker: Interesting. So then let’s continue on in this vein in terms of effects on recreation, I mean, we did just end the Winter Olympics. So what are some of the effects that we could see on recreation just to make this real for everybody?

John Smol: Well, there’s many effects on recreation. Let’s just say winter recreation. We just entered the Winter Olympics. People need snow to ski. The Winter Olympics were a good example where I think almost all or almost all the snow, not all, but almost all the snow had to be made by artificial means. The only place you’re going to soon be able to ski in large parts of the world is places that have artificial snow making. And this has also economic consequences as snow resorts are closing down. Also, not just in Canada, North America, in the Alps, we hear about these resorts and they simply are no longer financially feasible to try and maintain the snow cover in a warming planet. Bring it back to a sort of a very Canadian example, hockey. Now, I know a lot of young people who learn hockey, they learn on artificial rinks, but a lot don’t. And I mean, you can use a good example of the great one, Wayne Gretzky. And the story goes how his father in Brantford always used to make a skating rink in his backyard, and that’s how he learnt how to skate and play hockey. And that’s true for a lot of children and especially in rural areas where you don’t have artificial rinks. Well, once you start losing the ability to do that in your backyard or on the local pond, you’re not going to learn how to skate. You’re not going to play hockey, you’re not going to do any of these other things. And again, these also have financial considerations. Ice fishing is maybe another example. In some areas, ice fishing is a major recreational activity and an economic activity. It’s different estimates, but I think in Lake Winnipeg, just the ice fishing industry alone is worth something like $200 million a year if you consider the tourism and so on and so forth. So this has also very significant local impacts for fun or recreation, but also economics. So there’s a big price to pay with global warming.

Dominique Barker: And so not just ice fishing. Would you say that fishing in summertime would also be impacted?

John Smol: Yes, of course. So, for example, a lot of people have prized trout. Trout is a really prized, what we call an iconic species in my business, has high value because that’s a fish that people like to go after. Well, trout live in deep water. They like cool, deep, well oxygenated water. With climate warming, that habitat is being squeezed out. It’s being squeezed out by the warming. And also warmer waters hold less oxygen. They need lots of oxygen. So there’s just one more example. You could be losing some of these iconic species in some of our lakes. And, of course, it’s affecting everything else. And there’s all the ripple effect of the whole food web changes. So it’s a very complicated issue and it does have all sorts of ripple effects going throughout the whole ecosystem.

Dominique Barker: Do you care to tell our audience, maybe give them a tip on how they could lower their own carbon footprint?

John Smol: Well, I think maybe more collectively, I say, what can individuals do? Because I get asked that a lot and people feel helpless. I’m only one of billions of people on this planet, but that’s what caused the problem. I know billions of us not doing the best we can and we can do a lot of things. The first one is obviously our own actions, sort of more directly to your question. We can all lower our carbon footprint, we can lower our carbon footprint by transportation and heating of our houses or cooling. Or maybe don’t have the thermostat so high in winter and maybe you don’t need the air conditioning every day, and so on and so forth. There’s all sorts of actions we can do to lower our carbon footprint, but there are other things we can do. We have the power of our wallet, how we spend our money, and we can start being much more careful how we spend our money and buy products or buy services that have low carbon footprints and realize that might cost a bit more. But there’s a big cost coming of not dealing with this problem. People keep telling me how much is it going to cost to fix this? It’s the wrong question. It’s how much is it going to cost not to fix it. That’s the question. And the third one, in a democracy like Canada, we have our vote and we can start telling politicians that we really care about this problem. My experience with politicians, once they start hearing what voters want, they’re going to start listening. And I think we haven’t done a very effective job of that. It’s not seen as a high enough priority. And I think once that happens, we’re going to start seeing even more clear action. If you make pollution free, industries are going to pollute. I learnt that I cut my teeth on acid rain. We learnt that then, now some decades ago, but we learnt that then. If you make pollution free, people will pollute. And there are ways to curbing these pollution issues.

Dominique Barker: That is terrific advice. I’m really happy to hear that. It’s a message I hope that especially our under 34s. I don’t know if you’re aware, Dr. Smol, but only 56% of those under 34 vote and, you know, versus 79% for those are 70 and above. And this is the generation that is most acutely going to be impacted by this. So get out there and vote and you’re in front of students all the time. And I try to give that same message. So thank you for that.

John Smol: It’s definitely an important message. We live in a democracy. We should use our vote.

Dominique Barker: Yeah. Dr. Smol, thank you so much for your time today, and thank you for explaining very clearly in non-jargon terms how this could impact all of us individually, and particularly putting a bit of a Canadian lens on it. And we really thank you for the setup. This is a part of a series, so we are starting with this climate element to carbon and we will be speaking about carbon markets next and we will have an example with Carbon Cure in terms of carbon reduction strategies. Thank you very much, Dr. Smol, for all of your work in this industry.

John Smol: Well, thank you very much. Happy to be here.

Dominique Barker: Please join us next time as we tackle some of sustainability’s biggest questions providing different perspectives to help you move forward. I’m your host, Dominique Barker, and this is The Sustainability Agenda.

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