A Climate Scientist's View on Climate Change

0:00 forty years ago I was getting a 0:02 bachelor's degree in geology 0:05 second-generation geologist I thought I 0:07 was going to go off and be a mining 0:08 geologist like my dad and instead I got 0:14 recruited a grad school where they were 0:16 starting to study and really define the 0:19 whole field of paleo climatology which 0:21 is a study of ancient climates and that 0:23 was really exciting for me because it 0:25 allowed me to meld geology in 0:26 geosciences or science with history 0:29 which was one of my another one of my 0:31 love's and trying to understand earth 0:33 history from the perspective of how 0:34 climates have changed over decades 0:37 centuries all the way to multiple 0:39 millennia and that was pretty exciting 0:44 for me and it wasn't long after getting 0:46 my PhD I landed in a laboratory at NASA 0:52 and where everyone was talking about 0:55 climate change and I know a lot about 0:58 climate change because I knew about how 0:59 climates changed naturally but I hadn't 1:03 really gotten a full feeling for how our 1:06 emissions of greenhouse gases are 1:09 altering the planetary climate today and 1:12 back then this would be in the 80s you 1:16 know it was just really becoming crystal 1:18 clear that we were changing the Earth's 1:20 climate but it wasn't really crystal 1:23 clear yet how fast that would be nor how 1:26 large the impacts would be fast forward 1:28 to now in the 21st century it's really 1:32 clear the Arctic is warming much faster 1:33 than we thought 1:34 ice sheets are destabilizing faster than 1:37 we thought 1:37 a lot of the natural world is responding 1:40 more quickly we're getting more intense 1:43 precipitation and so our careers have 1:46 changed from just studying the problem 1:48 and trying to understand that to trying 1:51 to think more about what it means for 1:53 the future and what the solutions are 1:55 going to be for the future there are a 1:57 lot of my colleagues I've worked with on 1:59 trying to figure out well how do we 2:01 reduce the greenhouse gas emissions that 2:03 are causing it that's of course if 2:05 you're a doctor you want to get at the 2:07 cause but at the same time we're going 2:09 to have the symptoms of climate change 2:10 for years to come even if 2:13 successful and stopping it and so we 2:16 have to learn how to adapt to those 2:18 changes the different world that we have 2:20 now and make it one that is more 2:22 sustainable for the future so not only 2:25 will we do well in our livelihoods and 2:28 our with our families and quality of 2:31 life but future generations will be able 2:33 to enjoy that same quality it's a tough 2:36 job and I think it's really exciting as 2:38 a climate scientist to have lived 2:40 through this period but it's also quite 2:42 daunting to realize how huge this 2:45 problem is and how urgent it is to solve 2:48 it