As we’ve said before, there’s really no debate whether or not climate change is real. Despite the scientific consensus, however, some people still aren’t quite convinced that the planet is getting hotter. “If global warming is real,” a climate-skeptic might wonder, “why was I huddled under blankets until March?”
Well, if you watch this video from National Geographic, astrophysicist and Cosmos host Neil deGrasse Tyson elegantly shuts down that argument in two minutes.
With the help of an enthusiastic dog, he illustrates that weather and climate change are measured in completely ways.
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“Here’s the difference between weather and climate,” Tyson says as he and his furry friend walk along the beach. “Weather is what the atmosphere does in the short term, day to day. Climate is the long-term average of the weather over a number of years.” He points out that dog’s restless wandering represents the daily fluctuation of weather, while he, walking in a steady forward pace, is the long-term trend of climate.
“Weather is hard to predict, like my friend here,” he says about the wandering pup. “But climate is predictable. Climate has changed many times in the long history of the Earth — but always in response to a global force.” By the way, that “force” is the increase in carbon dioxide from our burning of fossil fuels.
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We explained in a previous post that as we continue driving our cars and burning fuel at factories and power plants, CO2 gets released into the atmosphere as “blocks” like in the game of Tetris (also known as the greenhouse effect). And just like the video game, if we can’t clear up these CO2 blocks, they’ll just build up faster and faster until it’s game over.
It’s a bit doomsday, but it’s the hard truth. But we suppose climate-skeptics don’t need to worry about the future of the planet in its fight against climate change. After all, as Tyson said, the earth will survive — only we won’t.
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Tag: extreme weather
These Miniature Gardens Prevent Flooding, Pollution and Look Pretty, Too
Anyone who’s living in a part of the country that’s been slammed by a torrent of rain recently (ahem, Florida) will appreciate this. There’s a new green buzzword that, as climate change forecasts much more severe weather to come, we need to add to our vocabulary: Bioswales.
In New York City, a coastal metropolis that still has images of Hurricane Sandy flooding its streets on its mind, thousands of these bioswales are popping up across the city. The most interesting part? New Yorkers probably won’t even notice them because they just look like any other curbside garden.
So what are these things exactly? Like a giant sponge, bioswales are designed to sop up rainwater or sewer runoff that floods and pollutes the city’s waterways. The water that’s soaked up from the soil in the bioswale is stored into the earth below and nourishes the plants on top. As Fast Company reports, the bioswales in New York are about five-feet deep and can suck up as much as 2,000 gallons of water.
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But not only are the plants and trees sitting on top of the bioswales literally turning the city streets greener (hello, increase in property values!), but the bioswales themselves are saving the Big Apple a whole lot of money. Bioswale installation, which is part of the city’s $10 billion green infrastructure overhaul of its wastewater system, is much cheaper than putting in new piping systems into the concrete.
“The savings are in the billions because we’re deferring building massive treatment tunnels,” Margot Walker, the director of green infrastructure partnerships at the Department of Environmental Protection, told Fast Company.
For concrete jungles like New York City that do not have a lot of top soil to soak up rainwater, these bioswales are a smart additional defense system for extreme weather patterns to come.
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