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Channel / Source:
TEDx Talks
Published: 2016-08-02
Source: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IqEhkzQeoCc
so the other day I was walking my dog and a neighbor comes up any looks really upset and he says to me I'm worried about climate change see I've heard the ice sheets remoting so quickly that within a couple of decades they're going to be gone and while his dog rascal and my dog Benny take turns run around the yard snippets stuff in lifting their legs
he looks me straight the face and he says is it too late are we all going to die now I'm used to fielding questions like this for my job I mean literally every day NASA's global climate change website and our social media pages get lots and lots of comments and questions and it goes something along the lines of I'm really confused about the solutions to climate
change or I'm worried about the next climate catastrophe or how much more time do people have left on this planet now instead of force feeding you what I think what I'd rather do is like these here balloons on fire and then we can look at the science together so this is a balloon filled with air and you can probably predict what happens when I put the
fire to it pops but what happens if I put this fire onto a balloon filled with water now you may be wondering if I'm gonna stand here with this stupid lighter in the stupid balloon for the rest my talk but I took the liberty of performing the same science demo just a few days ago with a much bigger flam so some I have to tell you
first that I like watching magic impact I love watching magic but I've exactly zero skill or talent in performing magic this is absolutely not magic this is science and what's happening here is that the heat from the fire is being absorbed by the water in this balloon just like that heat from that fire is absorbing the water on that heat in that balloon is absorbing the
heat from that fire and that's because you may think that water is this boring stupid stuff that's around you all the time you're really familiar with that but water is very unusual very weird and various special stuff and has this property called heat capacity and water has a very extremely high heat capacity and while this balloon that you see right here the one that I popped
and the one in that photo are actually from the same bag from a regular party store the difference here obviously is this is a much smaller flame and that's a much bigger flame and you can see here the flames even bigger but the water is the same and the reason why this is important is because we've been burning fossil fuels and a fossil fuel is coal
oil and natural gas and by burning these fossil fuels we've added carbon dioxide and other heat trapping gases to earth atmosphere so the surface temperature has increased but what you may not know is up to ninety percent of the heat from global warming is being absorbed by earth's oceans just like the heat from the spire is being absorbed by the balloon and so much heat is
absorbed by the balloon that it pulls it away from the latex and that's why the balloon doesn't pop so what's happened is that warmer water is expanding and added to the water that's flowing into the ocean from the melting ice sheets in the melting glaciers what we have is sea level rise additionally my generation your generation everybody that's a live on planet earth right now and
many many future generations are going to have to cope with the consequences of today's climate change even after we've moved away from burning fossil fuels and transition to renewable energy because the heat is being stored in our ocean just like the heat is being absorbed and stored in this balloon and what that means is that we're going to have to face climate change for many many
hundreds of years no I'm not telling you this to scare you but to empower you so that we can make a difference you and I together because denying the science of climate change or avoiding facing the consequences of climate change are feeling so freaked out and so helpless those are not solution what do you think might happen if instead of seeing climate changes this burden that
we've got a drag along this heavy weight that we've got a bear what would happen if instead we thought about climate change as this amazing challenge because challenges exciting and challenges inspiring challenge makes us grow without struggle without challenge without discomfort nobody would ever improve and nothing would ever ever get better there's something special something unique that happens when you try to do something that seems
impossible and that's very different from trying to do something that you already know that you can do can you imagine if US NASA people just sat around going that's too hard Everytime some chai Norma's obstacle happens course we don't let me just walk you through kind of a handful of steps that it takes going from conception to getting a fleet of earth orbiting satellites into space
so it starts by designing a scientific instrument and that can take something on the order of a decade and then oftentimes the scientific instruments are tested on modified NASA aircraft and among us are a modified NASA aircraft is basically just an airplane with a bunch of holes in it so that the scientific instruments conflict stick out and then what happens the seats are removed or many
of them and the instruments are put inside the plane and then you get all kinds of things like %HESITATION racks of computers and hoping to cables and then the scientists and engineers get in that plan they fly around testing answer now while that's going on you have software engineers starting to write code and oftentimes the code has to be written for hardware that doesn't even exist
yet and that sounds about as complicated as you might think it out then the spacecraft is assembled in a clean room folded up tucked into a nose cone that's put on top of a rocket that's launched into space and achieves orbit piece of cake right so right now what we have is twenty handmade one of a kind unique scientific experimental instruments dedicated exclusively studying the earth's
climate an earth science and you would think that once all these get into orbit would be smooth sailing right the truth is that each one of them is sending down dreams upon dreams of data everyday and all of that data needs to be validated it ground stations not just once but over and over and over again because the world absolutely must have accurate science data especially
about climate change and what this means is that somebody somewhere sometime is trouble shooting something just about all day everyday and the thing is we kind of like it we think it's cool and that's because we understand that scientific experimentation involved struggle and we also under and understand the grid and determination will get you everywhere and I tell you when somebody who works at NASA uses
the term everywhere we literally man everywhere so a few years ago a group of third graders came to visit NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena California where I work and they're being really well behaved so I decided to rile them up because field trips are suppose to be fun as well as educational so I was all like goodnight Justin Bieber and they're all like and then
I said you don't want to be scientists when you grow up dead so finally this look in the front row he comes forward me says I'm not smart enough to be assigned and so I pumped myself up real big it's going to take on the person who made him feel bad about himself and I said who told you that and he said I thought it in
now remember these kids are so I looked at the class and I said how many of you thought in your orders class raise their now I understand be honest with I have not doubt about my election will ability are passivity I have always felt like I didn't belong in the when I was in third grade simply our class in this it maybe you could be the
first female astronaut I remember very specifically thinking no I couldn't not me and I say disconnected from science all the way through high school and on into college and even to day at my job I often feel like a misfit and like I don't belong I feel more comfortable with artists and athletes than I do with people who have a PhD maybe it's some stereotype that
I bought into that I don't even understand or a preconceived notion about how science person is supposed to behave maybe if I have an idea in my head that I'm supposed to be sitting nicely at my desk when what I really would want to be doing is this but that day I told those third graders the same thing that I have learned to tell my inner
third grade self and I hope it's the same thing that you decide to tell your inner third grade self today and that gets all of us heaven all of us have a natural born scientists curious about the way the world works all of us have an inner science spark that could be ignited into a glorious flame and all of us need to stay connected to the
conversations that are happening around climate change even when it's hard even when we feel like running even when we feel hopeless a specially when we feel hopeless it wasn't until I was in my junior year in college when I first became connected to science I was taken oceanography class and we started studying sea slugs yeah sea slugs the sea slug change my life so I was
an avid scuba diver at the time and I never noticed them until we learned about them in class and then all of a sudden I start to see them everywhere and it wasn't like the had just came there just for me they've been there the whole time and I'd been swimming so quickly I'd never noticed them and it may be wonder what else would I start
to notice of only I slow down long enough to pay attention they seem small and vulnerable and delicate and I identified with that and what the sea slug taught me was to value something to make something so important to me to make something that I cared about so much that it was more important than my struggle in my challenge in my discomfort so as individuals and
as a society and as a global society in order to move away from fossil fuel so that we can lower our carbon footprint mitigate the climate change that's already happening and as individuals and as a society and as a global society if we're going to adapt to the climate change that's already set in motion that as individuals and as a society and as a global society
we could find things about our environment about the natural world about this planet that are so important to us that we care more about them than we care about our struggles and our challenges and our discomfort at the entrance to NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory where I work as a sign and it says dare mighty things and I walk past those three words multiple times a day
because they're also in the office building where I work and the way I see it that sign is talking directly to me I dare you it says I dare you not to try something easy not to try something that I already know I can do but that sign is daring me to run toward something hard now I dare you decide to stay with science go home
and write your own water balloon on fire and if your kid by an adult help via error cities do things I want you to know about that one ends and this is the most important happens I just told you to do this experiment how what I meant is that this experiment not that one so I'm wearing a lot of fire protective gear here and what you
don't see is just self frame that people with fire and yes is it was exciting and yes it was but more importantly inside those flames is a water balloon that did not talk even though I held it there until my arm was tired and took about half an hour and I buy and what I want you to remember is that climate change is serious that water
in that balloon zorb the I'm that fire in the same way that right now our ocean is absorbing the heat from global warming so looks like the world on fire not by burning fossil fuels but with a burning desire to understand the world around us what would happen if we ran toward the challenge of climate change with confidence strength and courage perhaps our story could be
a shared story about not giving up perhaps our story could be a shared story about moving forward so when your neighbor comes up to you and they look up sat and they say I'm worried about climate change and the ice sheets melting and they ask you you think it's too late I hope you decide to look them straight in the face and I hope you decide
