Young People Pose Big Questions for Scientists

I think we've got a shot at solving the CO2 problem. We understand the natural processes that lead to CO2 going up and CO2 going down. We know what the earth is going to do in response to all this fossil fuel burning, because it has done it many times before when volcanoes let off more CO2. As carbon dioxide builds up in the atmosphere, more of it is adsorbed into the ocean and is then carried by the circulation to the bottom where the acid in CO2 reacts with the base in the CaCO3 sediments to make a neutral salt of bicarbonate ion. However, that’s going to take tens of thousands of years to happen once we stop emitting CO2. We can think about ways to engineer that process in the same way we've engineered the burning of fossil fuels, which is the extraction of carbon out of rocks and putting them into the atmosphere. We can match that rate by reacting CO2 with limestone that we can mine. If we do this in ocean water so that we take a gas and solid, react them together, we would make slightly saltier water just like the planet is going to do.

I think one universal problem that we can solve with the work that I do is that we're all really concerned with what we need to be prepared for in the future, and how we can better plan and develop mitigation strategies. My work focuses on analyzing or evaluating climate models that are used to make those future projections. The overall goal of my research is to compare the models against real-life observations to get an idea of how well these models represent the world. We can work towards building better models in order to reduce uncertainty about what the future might be.

That’s a really interesting question because humans have been on the earth for a long time---modern humans for hundreds of thousands of years, and other hominid species for millions of years before that. What happened when humans spread from Africa, where they came from, to other parts of the globe? Here in North America, there were animals at that time that we don't have anymore, like wooly mammoths, giant sloths, saber-toothed tigers, armadillos the size of an elephant and other truly fantastic creatures. They were called the Pleistocene megafauna. They disappeared right about the time that humans arrived, 10 to 12 thousand years ago, and most scientists believe that humans were responsible for their extinction. In Australia, there were giant marsupials and birds that were much bigger than any ostrich or emu that we have today. It's fun to think about the megafauna. The whole ecosystem changed when the megafauna disappeared since these grazers and carnivores were no longer there to do their jobs . The newly arrived humans, especially with their ability to harness fire, also had an impact on the ecosystem. So to imagine what the Earth would be like without humans, we need to go back tens of thousands of years and picture the time when the Pleistocene Megafauna ruled. We certainly have a much larger footprint on the earth now than we did tens of thousands of years ago. But wherever humans have gone, we've changed the environment.

We absolutely can still save the environment. The first and most important step is to stop pumping so much CO₂ into the atmosphere by transitioning from fossil fuels to renewable energy and by becoming more efficient with our energy use. This is going to be very hard because powerful companies will do whatever it takes to make sure we don’t stop buying their fossil fuels. If we all step up to take the issue on, I think we could come out of the other side of the climate crisis having made society much better. So many of the solutions to climate change also have amazing collateral benefits to society. It’s a challenge, but it's also a real opportunity to improve everyone's lives.

My mother asked a similar question. "Can you give me ten points that I can give to friends that would help them not only understand the issue and believe the science, but motivate them to do something about it?" I'm still working on that list, because it's challenging. Conversations are the best way to allow people to ask questions and to address them in the most genuine and understandable way. Take advantage of opportunities to talk with others about what makes you passionate about climate change, about the concerns that you have. Outreach with kids is important because the more they understand, the more passionate they are, they're going to open a dialogue with their parents. Voting is obviously huge, but there are kids who want to help before they are old enough to vote. Art is a great form of communication. Gardening is an excellent way of engaging people with climate, the environment, remembering where food comes from. The more people feel a part of the planet, the more they care about what's going on. People have a lot of questions and there's a lot of misleading information out there. With something so big, it's hard to think that you have any impact on it. If there are more people around you who are passionate, it can become contagious. Suddenly, there are loads of rooftop gardens, and people using public transportation. Raising awareness and finding a way to engage people in a way that doesn't make them defensive, makes them feel like part of something, and that they have the power. I think those are all really big motivators.

I went into undergrad thinking I wanted to do some kind of environmental or earth science, and also maybe a double major in International Studies. I took my first Chem 101 course at Northwestern, which is a really challenging school, and flunked out of it. And I thought “oh, no, this is maybe not the right path for me.” So, I did political science. I graduated around the time that the Obama campaign was getting started. I worked with his campaign in 2008, and then joined his administration as a legislative liaison between NASA scientists and engineers and Congress. I answered Congress's questions about NASA’s work, how NASA spent taxpayer money, and shared scientists’¬ stories. That was really cool work, and I enjoyed it a lot. But, I didn’t want to only tell other scientists' stories. I still wanted to do my own research. I decided to go back to school and get my PhD. I didn't have all the prerequisites because I didn't study science in undergrad. While I was at NASA, I attended night classes in physics, calculus and chemistry. I got an A when I did it again. So, if you asked me how many years did I do? I don't know --- four years of undergrad, three or so years while I worked, taking other supplementary courses. Now, in my fifth year, I'm finishing my PhD. I don't regret any decision that I made. I only regret having the feeling that because I had challenges early on in science that it wasn't for me. I'm interested in a career that’s at the intersection of science and society and applying my interest in policy making to climate change. I can use my research experience and understanding of data interpretation and analysis to connect with decisions that people make at a community-based level as well as federally and globally.

I didn't know any scientists, so I had no idea what being a scientist was like. I knew I liked math, so when I went to UCLA, I majored in math. Then I took this one really cool class called “Rock Whispering”. The professor, who was also in paleoclimate, took me under her wing and was like, "You should join my lab." I started doing research, and absolutely fell in love with it. I’m so grateful for her because she opened my eyes to this vast science that I had no idea about. In high school, it's like basic physics, chemistry, biology. But, this geology thing is crazy, so absolutely fascinating. I also do ice dancing. At the last nationals, my skating partner and I got a job offer from Disney on Ice as Simba and Nala. So, I always have that as a back-up. It’s all about timing doing both my PhD and ice skating, especially because so all my other competitors do ice skating full time. I do it two hours in the morning at 6:00 am, and then at 8:00 am, I go straight to lab. Between my PhD and whatever I do afterwards, I'm going to probably do a year of Disney on Ice.

One challenging part of being a scientist is achieving a balance between work and personal life because there are so many demands on your time. If you want to be a good citizen, you're always being asked to do community service, reviews, promotions, and planning activities. Finding the funding to keep your lab going is a constant struggle that takes time. You also have the regular responsibilities of teaching and student mentoring. There are bureaucratic tasks that take time that you don't want to do, but you have to do. My top challenge in my career, as a senior scientist, is balancing what I want to do to help the community versus what I want to do to spend time with my family.

The most challenging part is studying the unknown. A lot of times there's not a recipe for what to do. It's really trial and error. There are times in my career where it seems like I've done everything wrong to figure out the one way to do it right. You don't often have a guidepost or directions that you can follow. You often have to do a zigzag route to get to the final answer. You’ve got to try something to keep moving forward. You just make the best decision. And, sometimes it's not even the answer you expected. it's a totally different answer. This is often a part of the scientific process... trial and error, serendipity, and so on. This is something I'd like to see better emphasized in schools and to the public.

It’s sort of two questions. I would say that there would be a way. And, I would say that we don't know all the ways now. But people, such as the Comer students, are likely to be part of the solution in the future. Right now, we know of some engineering solutions for global climate warming. Some of them may be perceived as too expensive now. But as the problem worsens, they will become more appealing. One of them is carbon capture and storage. Another idea is to deliberately add sulfate to the atmosphere to increase the reflection and cooling. Wally Broecker was thinking about this at the end of his life. Of course, engineering solutions can come with their own unintended consequences, but there are some possibilities towards the goal of reversing climate change. There are definitely things that can be done towards the goal of reducing pollution and mitigating against pollution. I'd say that CFCs, the refrigerants, are a really successful example of people internationally taking charge. These were a problem for ozone layer. We’ve actually reduced the use of CFCs to almost nothing, and we’ve improved the situation with the ozone layer. The same thing is true about the Cuyahoga River. It used to be that fires burned on the surface. And now it's a beautiful river where you can fish. It requires a change of attitude, and it requires resources. Climate is harder because it's big and it's global. But it's not so different than the CFC problem and the ozone hole. When nations all came together and recognized, "We’ve got to do something about this." I think it's a matter of convincing people that there really is a serious problem. The fact that there are international accords means that there is a growing recognition that we have a big problem.

This is a great question for me because I teach our Intro to Geology class, which is also known as “Rocks for Jocks”. There are three different types of rocks that exist on earth. They form in very different ways. They're all really important, and they all tell us about earth’s history and how the earth was formed and how environments have changed. I'll start with igneous rocks. Those are rocks that form from a melt. When we heat rocks up to very high temperatures, like almost 1,000 degrees C, rocks melt. They form things called magma and lava. These usually occur in earth's crust or are formed by different processes in earth's crust. Then they come closer to earth's surface and start to cool. You can think of the magma or lava like a soup of different ions. And those ions, as the magma and lava cool, join together and form minerals that make up rocks. Commonly, igneous rocks are brought to earth's surface. When rocks are at surface, they can be broken down by weather, by gravity, by ice, by all different kinds of processes that break big rocks down to little bits and pieces of rocks. If you can either transport or remove those rocks from the original earth's crust and solidify them together, you can make another rock called a sedimentary rock. Some sedimentary rocks are a little funky. They can precipitate out of water, or other solutions. These rocks are really cool because they tell us about the rocks that existed before, and where they came from. They tell us about the mechanisms by which they were broken down and transported and about the environments in which they were deposited. We can tell things like was there oxygen on the earth when they were deposited? Were there animals or plants living on the earth? In a lot of cases, sedimentary rocks are the rocks that host fossils. They're also the rocks that host oil and gas, and most of the mineral resources that we like to mine and use. The last type of rocks is metamorphic rocks. These are rocks that form by putting other preexisting rocks under heat and pressure. This can happen when a big mountain belt is formed, or when two continents or an ocean and a continent smash together. Rocks start to get buried. When rocks are brought deeper into earth's crust, they undergo an increase in temperature and pressure which fundamentally changes the rock. They can grow new, pretty minerals that are red and blue and purple and brown. They can also get a texture that looks like they've been smashed. Metamorphic rocks can tell us about mountain building because they reveal the pressures and temperatures that they've been under. We can look at those rocks and say, "How big were these mountains in the past?" Where I’m from in New England, the Appalachian Mountains are pretty small now. Based on the rocks and the minerals that occur right below where my house is, we can tell that those mountains used to be something like 15,000, 16,000 feet high. And, that’s the origin and cycle of rocks on the planet.

The Amazon Rainforest is an amazing place with incredible biodiversity, and it is disheartening to think of what its loss would mean for the planet. One thing we don’t have to worry about, however, is the supply of oxygen. Most of the oxygen in the world today actually comes from the ocean. There are billions of microscopic plants in the ocean, called algae, that photosynthesize and produce oxygen, and the oxygen concentrations in our atmosphere are much more sensitive to changes in these algae than land plants. In fact, if all the land plants disappeared, the amount of oxygen in the atmosphere would only decrease by 1%.

There's not a simple answer to that. If you think about changing temperature of our planet, then the answer would be that the effects would be worse in the city. Warming is happening everywhere, but land warms faster than the ocean. And on land, cities warm faster than the countryside. That's in part because most of the countryside reflects more light than asphalt or other dark substances that are concentrated in cities. Things like forests tend to cool the surface of the earth a little bit. The warming of our planet is most accentuated on land and in cities. The flipside though is that it depends where that city is. The changing climate is not just about temperature, it's about rain patterns and the changing of length of the seasons. If a city is inland, it's going to be less influenced than coastal areas by sea level. Changing rain patterns may have devastating effects by flooding some of our interior areas near the great rivers of America. Climate change will influence every area. The answer to this question depends on whether you're focusing more on the temperature aspect or some other relevant aspect of climate change. The big three controls on our climate are: the amount of sunlight we get, how much bounces off the earth, and the greenhouse effect.