5 Ways We Distinguish Human-Induced vs Natural Climate Change | GEO GIRL 

Hey guys! I know this modern climate-related series of videos is not the most joyful and happy lol, but I promise this is the last sad video! The last couple will be positive outlooks and potential solutions which I am super excited to tell you guys about! Also, if you are new here, don't worry, the recent climate-related videos have just been because I am teaching a climate-related class this semester, but for the most part I post more so ancient Earth history videos about dinosaurs and other cool ancient life and geology, so stick around for more diverse geo-related videos! ;) And feel free to request a future video topic here in the comments! :)

I know this is perhaps less fun and definitely more controversial for you to cover. It’s super important though! We appreciate you!!

Howdy Doc, thanks for your video. I remember how non-believing I was when I first heard about anthropomorphic climate change since I was directly involved in fossil fuel exploration, I think that was in the early 80’s, but the evidence was hard to refute. It’s interesting to see that graph showing the more extreme deviation in the model between ‘Natural Factors Only’ and the observations at about when I was starting my career. The most detrimental effect on diversity of life is the rate of change, thanks for pointing that out. Love your work!

I've taken to saying that the increase in severe storms and droughts are the effects that industry spent years telling us wouldn't be as expensive to deal with as the costs of working to prevent them in the first place. So here we are.

Excellent! Climate change is the issue of our time and deserves our full attention. Thanks!

Thank you for this video, it’s good we have educational videos like this with so much misinformation on the internet these days. Geology and paleoclimtology is really fascinating to me and something I’ll study when I start college this year ❤🌎

Keep 'em coming, Doc! Don't let the turkeys get you down!

I've been subscribed to this channel for some time now and i guess i should comment on it more to please the algorythm gods. You have a good thing going here. The channel is great at teaching basic stuff about earth's past. No flashy lights, bells and whistles and clear comunication. I think you do a great job at teaching this kind of stuff. You seem the kind of person particularly good at teaching young people about this stuff and i think that's awesome. I hope you either become a scientist or a teacher. You seem to be particularly gifted at at least these two things. I think it's rather cringy every time you talk about anthropogenic climate change you almost have to apologize but i understand that in certain places in the world that that kind of conversation might be sensible to some people's feelings. Anyways, good luck and keep at it. Hugs from portugal.

Thanks prof! Don't worry about this difficult topic. Just tell us like it is. This is the first I've heard it explained from someone with your wisdom. Your earlier vids and enthusiasm for such geo-dorkdom was fun, and got me hooked on learning it. Maybe it was to prepare me to be more informed to receive the difficult truth of our impact on the world. The cotton field where I hunted fossils as a kid is now a field of oil wells. Oh well. I was never going to break that west Texas caliche with my kiddie tools anyway!

Something I've always wondered about: you can divide life into oxidizers (animals, fungus, bacteria, most microbes) that consume oxygen and exhale CO2, and reducers (plants, blue-green algae), that consume CO2 and exhale oxygen. Is there a relationship between the ratio of oxidizer biomass and reducer biomass and the ratio of CO2 to oxygen in the atmosphere? Is human manipulation of landscapes modifying the ratio between reducers and oxidizers?

Shooting the messenger because you don't like the message, is rather childish to be kind. As for your video, I thought I knew most of this pretty thoroughly, but you taught me a few new things, so thanks for that. Keep up the good work, and don't let the politically motivated get you down.

Your work is wonderful. Keep at it. Thank you so much.

Haters gonna hate. Don't stop 'cause of them. Another excellent video, Doctor.

Thank you Dr Phillips

Thank you DR GEO GIRL very interesting lecture

The county hauls away two container fulls of green waste every week from my house. I look at that and think, man my trees captured all that carbon. And now it's going somewhere to be released in some undisclosed manner.

Try to convince people atoms are 99.999999% empty space and we actually walk on an electromagnetic force field at the bottom of a gravity well. All facts 🤓

Thank you, professor.

The part about carbon isotopes was excellent. I heard this a few years ago, but this made it even more clear than what I'd read then. Also, the diagrams and numbers about carbon sent out vs. carbon absorbed, really good.

Wonderful work! Loved the info and agreed with it to. Did my own investigation years ago but RU-vid was barely beginning at that time lol!! 😊

Great presentation, sometimes the truth is hard for some to understand yet alone accept. You excel at presenting the data in an easy to understand manner with an excellent sense of humor.

Excellent presentation: lucid and comprehensible. It takes a (research) geologist to explain the processes involved in climate change and put them into a sensible context. Bravo!

I'm here to read the RU-vid experts debate the PhD in Geology.

If the ratio of C-14 and C-12 in the atmosphere changes, won't this throw off carbon 14 dating in the future? From what I understand, C-14 dating compares the C-14/C-12 ratio in the object being dated to the equilibrium carbon in today's environment. But if that ratio is changing, then "equilibrium carbon" will be a different ratio. And as that gets absorbed in different organisms that die, then when those orgnisms are dated in the future, they should get a result based on the changed ratio that is different than what they would get dated today. I'm not sure if I'm explaining that clearly.

Liked, shared, and commented to feed the Al-Gore-Rhythm! Thank you again for taking the time to create and post this. 🍻

Very well done! I learned a lot!

Just discovered this channel. You are an excellent communicator of climate science. Really enjoying your programme.

Excellent video. Now I need to go back and watch your old videos. 😆

Thank you for sharing the information that is sometimes hard to digest for us humans, haha!! Information combating the misinformation is the only way to get through to more and more people so that we can truly make some significant and far-reaching changes that can lead us to a brighter and cleaner tomorrow/future! Thank you for all that you do in regards to this, truly, and of course I still love the ancient Earth and other fun videos that you always make!

I've heard where there are scenarios given a fixed amount of acreage where planting forests on those acres. It takes 100 years to reach break even. Solar panels on that same acreage can break even in a few years. Caveats abound of course.

Nice. Looking forward to more from you in this area.

Its funny you mention this being a sad video. I first fell in love with geology because it doesn't ask a lot of me emotionally. Happy Easter, if that is a thing for you and yours. The resurrection am most familiar with is called the Laramide Orogeny.

I used a very simple heuristic for this for myself. The organisms that could digest trees came quite a bit later than trees themselves, which means lots of unprocessed dead trees in the ground, containing lots of carbon from the atmosphere. This process coincided with the planet cooling. Now we found a way to release all that carbon back to the atmosphere, so it's warming, quite straightforward. That 130 or so million barrels a day plus I don't know how many tons of coal is not negligible.

Thanks Rachael. I expect the reptiles and plants will be the winners and we mammals the losers unless we can reach a level which will be optimal for all life. I wonder what that level would be?

Cool vod doc :)

Thank you for getting the data out!

Good trustworthy analysis, thanks.

I love Geo Girl! She makes totally awesome and helpful videos! 🥰

Brilliant, you are an inspiration.

Dunno about green house gases, but GG definitely makes me hotter! 😁

Great vid! 👏

The next time you discuss this can you include a comparison of industrial emissions CO2 to CO2 from vulcanism. I trust you to handle the numbers scientifically more than politically slanted sources. The argument I see is that volcanic activity in Iceland puts our more CO2 in a year than humans could dream of, but again, I am not sure if that data is being presented without funny statistics games. Thanks, Dr. GeoGirl.

J'apprécie ton courage docteur GEODIRL 👍

Great video, GG! 🥰👏😎

Great video!

Amazing video cheers!

Thanks!

It’s also worth noting that one reason we know that it’s greenhouse gases causing global warming and not the sun getting hotter is because of atmospheric temperature measurements above and below the troposphere. If the sun was getting hotter, the whole atmosphere would get hotter as well. However, what’s observed is that the outer atmosphere, where almost no greenhouse gases are, has gotten cooler over the decades, while the troposphere has gotten hotter. This means that any excess rebound heat that would’ve warmed the outer atmosphere is being trapped in the troposphere by the greenhouse gases we are emitting.

Is that 10 Gt emissions figure outdated? I was under the impression that human-emitted CO2 was in the 30-40 Gt range.

Good presentation. Keep up the good work. You can't fix stupid when in comes to haters. You rock. 😎👍

We need more climate science , thanks for this!

Rachel you always look beautiful in your videos but in this one you look more beautiful than ever!

Nice work as always GeoGirl, enjoyed watching!

As a chemist I agree with your overview of isotopic CO2, but the amount of C14 produced annually by cosmic rays is quite variable and can muddle any conclusions from atmospheric C14 measurements. It seems that the amount of anthropogenic CO2 is still estimated from projected emission of human versus natural sources.

12:25 I would so much like for people to understand this point, especially those convinced that we can solve the problem by planting some trees. Once you realize this point, you really cannot avoid getting scared of the situation.

🎊 Congrats! 🎊

OK. but could our solutions to Human-Induced Climate Change create greater issues for Humanity and our Environment One in particular their now starting to mine our Oceans for minerals and materials to produce Electric Vehicles as well as other mining on land causing environmental damage.

When Sea water heats - what does it do to the Carbon dioxide dissolved in it ?

The CO2 in the atmosphere should/could be compared to "how big is a candle flame" : we can't see the actual flame boundary, and its the same with the CO2 band radiation 'surface' - it's that the emission surface has moved higher in the upper atmosphere, so we have more 'blankets' that trap the heat below that radiating layer.. See if the like the 'size of a candle flame' analogy (start with a cold candle and guess how big the flame will look)

Thanks. And absolutely no need to apologise for telling people the truth.... however uncomfortable. I absolutely hope that your upcoming " more positive" videos are justified. Personally I'm not so sure. For as long as I can remember I've been one of the more positive voices amongst my environmentalist friends. I've always argued that renewables, changed (reduced ) usage of fossil fuels and ( I have to admit more recently on my part ) even nuclear could help us, when combined with potentially new helpful technologies, overcome the threat which climate change poses. I now feel far less optimistic.Mainly because I see the major problem not as being our inability to find technological solutions in the future, but rather our unwillingness to implement those solutions which we already have available. Hopefully I am wrong , but the atmospheric ppms keep rising, and here in the UK for example, our government has just issued more licenses to find and exploit new oil/ gas fields. If already wealthy countries such as mine won't stop adding to the problem, how can we expect those who have far more reason than us to do so? I know, governments claim CCS will solve the issue, but so far at least , that is just talk. Meanwhile we continue to fail when it comes to simple solutions such as better insulation in our homes I hope that I am wrong . I hope that a younger generation than my own ( I'm 61) will not stand for the largely empty rhetoric which my own has listened to.I hope that I am mistaken.I fear that I may be right.

Thanks Anna! I hope to hear more about how Ukraine develops new drones.

Maybe take a look at methane being released from the (former) permafrost?

what was the global average temperature in celsius? (not the difference! The absolute value!) 1:36

Is it good logic to say we need to get down to producing 5 gigatonnes to hit equilibrium?

Many, including myself, are concerned with heat island effect contaminating temperature data. This is apparent if one compares rural temperatures vs temperatures observed within cities. Over the years many weather stations that were rural are now well within city limits so their temperature readings are no longer representative of regional remprratures. To me it looks like atmospheric CO2 lasts about 20 years as demonstrated by C14 declines following the cessation of atmospheric testing in the 1960s. Regards

Tx for an awesome & succinct explanation re humankind's role in the climate breakdown. It must be noted that climate change is both a symptom & a contributor to ecological degradation & biodiversity loss, i.e. they're connected. Climate change is - in essence - caused by - excess GHG emissions to the atmosphere via various human activities (mainly agriculture, energy production, transport, construction & buildings, human waste (including food waste), various industrial & manufacturing processes (such as steel, cement, amonia, paper milling etc) awa mining) - the destruction & degradation of ecological systems that remove GHGs from the atmosphere (ocean system changes, deforestation, mangrove removal, damage to seagrass meadows & kelp forests, drainage of peatlands, damage to soils etc). ALL human activities exist completely WITHIN the ecological system, NOT the other way around! It's estimated that around 75 - 80% of people will live in cities by 2050'ish. Cities need to become less parasitic on hinterlands and start becoming part of the solutions to sustainable living. 9 Planetary boundaries for a liveable planet have been identified, including the climate. We have surpassed 6 and are close to surpassing the other 3. Again, everything is connected. We need to consider all 9 planetary boundaries in addition to the climate. PS Sending you much love as an antidote to the hate

I am pretty sure we are in an ice age currently, and that even if humanity didn't exist, the trend would still lead towards a warming of the earth to levels that are apocalyptic for our current humanoid species based on current geography. Am I actually wrong to say that with or without humans, the end result is the same. The question is whether or not humanity is accelerating it?

Yeah. Talk with the authority you have earned.

The climate will change with or without us though, and there’s nothing we can do to halt that process. I’m just worried about the powers of authority using this as an excuse for overreach of control in peoples lives while massive corporate polluters are the main source of human emissions.

Thanks for the video , do you think it is possible to help absorbing CO2 by increasing Phytoplankton levels in the oceans, aren't they producing 70% of Oxygen and best absorbers? we cant really measured that can we? I mean how scientist can identify drop in their global populations ? Thnx From Oztralia!😃

From the thumbnail, I genuinely thought this was going to be about cremation and how to tell it is humans being turned to ash 😅

More “thumbs up” buttons should be added to videos like this one. One ain’t enough

Saying the only difference between the carbon isotopes is "just a couple of neutrons" is offensive to anyone who has any sensibilities regarding isospin, and I shudder to think of how practitioners of The Eight Fold Way have been traumatized by such callous disregard for the beautiful symmetries of semi-simple Lie algebras.

So, rubisCO preferentially fixes carbon-12 and that's how we can look at isotope ratios of atmospheric CO2 and know it's us?

I would like to know how nitrogen and oxygen are not getting more attention since nitrogen holds up to 1500 times more thermal energy?

4:58 - Given Carbon-14's half-life of 5,700 years there should be no meaningful quantities of it present in coal-deposits given the coal is tens of millions if not hundreds of millions of years old.

I don't qualify, but equality warrants an opinion. Our nature to care for creation puts sacrifice front and center. My concern is that those most likely to use your good work brought us the green revolution and and it's unadvertised results . Codifying a real crisis to avert one based on Earths inability to maintain an equilibrium will find resistance. I do agree that our nature to care and act is necessary to maintain ecosystems just differ on actions.

This is pretty much known and generally accepted by science for the last several decades. Key issue is how to fix it without starving billions and lowering standards in wealthy nations? Are you, or anyone you know, ready to reduce your energy use to the world median, not the average, the median?

Humans must be changing the Earth's geology. Amount can't be zero but can be positive or negative. Light in physics chemistry is an important subject. The error or Arrhanius made possible has been exposed for about 100 years. Can you describe this discrepancy? Also can you discuss China, India, Asia, Russia, and others important role in 2024. Do you realize the world is becoming aware of how the climate change is being funded by big oil? Are you looking for future funding as a researcher? Go with the flow we say!!

Decades have passed since this was a question.

No one would enjoy more than you on today's topic. Good to see smiley Geo Girl more so than in other videos! (Let's let her privacy alone.) Yes, "... It's a hoax (Trump 2024)" is ridiculous, & obviously wrong. Evidence is not limited to handful. Images of shrinking icecap would be iconic & the easiest to see what's going on. Further, a video like this provides plain facts & how to interpret them in an easily accessible way. "Man-made" may be the last stronghold for those who deny climate change, which is refuted convincingly & with ease (that's why chuckling, triumphantly!). Man-made or not, the current situation in which we are is a serious concern & is the moment to counter it urgently. This video is very helpful to understand better processes/mechanisms how human activities affect the environment. Mission accomplished. Not only emotional support, but also more logical approach would be obtained. Very practical & convincing on top of interesting as usual the video is presented. Grin!

13:00 - We need a lot more nuclear power despite what those Greenpeace luddites say.

Naturally created carbon dioxide is balanced out by processes that have removed it. The new carbon dioxide we are putting in has no such process to balance it out.

remember... the haters are individuals and almost definitely an extremely vocal minority. if they're climate deniers, they may even be paid grifters and/or bots -- at least, it may be healthier to just treat them as that regardless! since your channel does not go into politics, you should never feel obligated to respond to haters, or even think about them for more than a second. treat them as a really bad pepsi ad and just laugh it off!

😎

When I was a kid really only north east and spots of Cali, parts of uk and of course western Europe had destroyed itself but these places had only been out of steam age coal transitioned into nuclear. Rest of the world was still very much horse and buggy. Middle East was new borders new nations inventing penitentiary for the first time ever. China still had the forbidden city. South Korea was a swamp. Japan was industrialized, getting back its independence . So this all begs the question all other food and methane has been a standard a long time. But what would be the past 50 years that Is newly entered into the system at large? When do we start this base standard that we use to measure what happened over the past 40 years of actual globally activie and industrialized world because this short period of time really is all that tells us anything cause it's then only time everyone entered such lifestyles

ty, that made sense im a bit dense, that was undeniable, and a bit soul crushigb , i needed that slap, widh u could macro slap the rest if humanity with just fcata and data thats rock solid unkess ur literally on ostrich time

wait! limestone is inorganic?

Shield up, prepare for incoming bots!

Didn't we pollute literally everything else beyond recognition? The place is a mess.

Climate change is super intersting to me. I by default agree with being way more responsible with the planet and working towards removing our negative impacts (including carbon, sulfur and nitrogen production) That being said, the science communication on this issue of global warming has been terrible and has been since the beginning. Even as a child I saw the basic errors in logic, even if i couldnt make a judgement on the isssue given all the research i hadnt seen nor was able to interpret. Since its critical we do good on this, have some criticism. 1. That temperature graph is useless for thr timing claim by itself. Someone looking at this would notice the graph decressing quite often during some of the largest booms of industrialization in history. The timing is an incredibly weak argument by itself. All it does is paint us as a suspect. 2. This one isnt really true as worded, but im being technical. Basically, it doesnt match exactly, not even all that closely. This is because of the earth system itself. You may have heard of the nitrogen cycle and the water cycle, but there are (as you mention) processes for everything on the earth. Nothing put in the atmosphere stays there forever. That being said, you can probably trace an increase in emissions that follows our industrialization. 3. I see why you like it! This is an expansion of the previous one. As far as im aware, there are quite a few confounding variable to isotopic analysis. One factor is burning plants, which bias towards C13 a bit. Another is nuclear testing, which dramatically increaser C14 in the atmosphere. Volcanos again have their own signature, and all of these traces have mixed together, diffused into the atmosphere. To make conclusions, you have to trend the data in the exact same manner as with the previous argument. In the end, isotopes are no stronger an argument than general emmissions tracking. They estsblish a trend to be built upon. 4. A great confounding variable to keep track of for our analysis of the data :D excellent job on this one! 5. Interesting how both models do fine at predicting behaviors until the 60s, and notice how even with "human factors" accounted for, both models fail to account for all observations. This points to both how recent any anthropogenic effects have become apparent and to the difficulty of modeling the earth. This argument isnt very strong, especially given it wasnt explained what "human factors" were accounted for, and how they were isolsted from the rest of the earth system. Second question: this brings up how im being a bit unfair analyzing this video without accountint for your others. Though i think analyzing videos independently is helpful. Anyway, last thing. The carbon cycle is going to be in a stable equilibrium regardless of what we do. The earth just has that capacity. You could be a tad bit clearer that you are referring to a thermodynamic equilibrium. This is still a bit of a misconception as heat transfer works through superposition, i.e. each factor adds or subtracts to the total effect cumulatively. There are five major ways heat transfers out of the atmosphere, radiation, ablation, phase change, absorbtion and chemical reaction. All of these have multiple factors that influence how much heat leaves the atmosphere. Its fun to discuss that. Anyway, your vid wasnt very convincing on its own, but served as a broad overview of things to investigate for the already convinced and curious, which i think was your goal. Bye. Oh, i wonder how toxic the replies will be to this comment lol

👍🙂

Am I the first to call you beautiful? 😮 You are smart and beautiful. 😮😮😮

Well like the old saying goes: The stoneage didn't end because we ran out of stone, although I'm sure the stone masons of their time were not the biggest supporters of new technologies. We'll figure it out one way or another.

Please explain to me how soot released by a nuclear war can cause nuclear winter but CO2 from soot has the opposite effect

G A Z A Vs swamp gas

Have you already covered the Million Year problem with Earth Glacial cycle. I would like to hear your take on this. What made the cycle move from 30-40k years to 100k years? What caused it? Why did the new cycle stabilize?

We need more nuclear, hydro and solar power. However solar requires massive storage capabilities due to the when power is generated and when power is desired. We need power for our standard of living. No one wants to go back to the middle ages.

Does it matter what is causing it. Do you think we can just not have our biological needs. If the only solution is rolling back the clock 200 years we are doomed to suffer whatever is coming. We will find ways to solve it allowing people to prosper because the 8 billion and growing on this planet are not going to starve and give up our progress because some of us think it would be nice if we did.

I have a simple solution to counteract excessive CO2 emissions, trees. Developing countries want money from developed countries because of CO2, OK we give them money but only if they reforest deforested areas with native trees and stop population growth, which has caused deforestation. Furthermore, reforesting laws can be imposed in the developed countries.