 I'd like to introduce Jeff Steyer, Frimes with Sawyer. Jeff is a retired water engineer with the US Geological Survey for 20 years. He was a member of the Climate Reality Leadership Corps. He has a climate reality project. And most importantly, he is a concerned citizen. He is here because he cares. And he wants to spread this information so it can, like ripples in a pond, go out there so more people can learn about this. Without further ado, I'll give you the floor. Thanks so much for joining us. Thanks, Molly. Thanks, Molly. Well, good evening. Thanks for coming out on its little bit of a grim evening. And I'm going to do my best to make it worthwhile. So can you hear me without the mic? OK, so as she said, I'm not an expert. I'm a retired water engineer, concerned citizen. And I'm also a fairly new grandfather. So that's Jack, who was born about a year and a half ago and Jack this fall. So I've got really two purposes tonight. One is that four days of training I took, the one thing they asked is just pay the information forward. So I'm going to pass it along. And then I want to learn from you. So when I finish up, I have a few questions. And so I want to learn from you. This is just a shot of Earth taking from the moon back in the Apollo program. And it's a beautiful shot. And it shows really how fragile Earth is. And it's just a beautiful shot. So tonight we're going to really do three things. One is talk about some things as far as do we need to change. Number two, can we change? And then the most important question is will we change? Just a touch of science here. So the Earth we receive solar radiation. And about 50% of it is served on the Earth's surface. A little bit more than 25% goes back out to space. And then you've got a little bit less than 25% that gets reflected in our atmosphere. And that's been going on for millions of years. We couldn't live on Earth if we didn't have. It's like a blanket. And what makes up this blanket is water vapor and also carbon dioxide. So we need to have that. But what we've done since World War II is put a lot more CO2 in that blanket. That blanket's gotten thicker. So in a lot of ways, we're using our atmosphere as a sewer. And the amount of heat energy we put in the atmosphere every day is equivalent to 600,000 atomic bombs. That's the amount of heat energy we're putting in. And I should say a lot of these slides I received, and we'll be doing some graphs, I received from that training. And any of the data I've got references for. So in other words, it's some of the words you get that. I can show you the reference and the science paper for it. So this is a fairly thin layer of atmosphere. It's a shot of the sun. So the carbon dioxide that we're putting up, where does it come from? Well, it comes from a lot of things. Industrial processes, coal plants, transportation, industry, transportation is about in the US about a third of what we put up in the atmosphere. But for the most part, the burning of fossil fuels has gone up since World War II. So if you take a look at the axis here, that's about Civil War. And you see this climbing since World War II. And that's the burning of fossil fuels. And when we say fossil fuel, we're talking oil, natural gas. So what makes up that is a little more than a third is coal, a little more than a third is crude oil, and a little less than a third is natural gas. So these next two graphs, I'm going to spend a little time on it. Because I think they're fairly important. We're going to, so just kind of think in your mind, remember this rise is basically since World War II. So we're going to go back in time. And this is 10,000 years ago. The last ice age ended about 11,000 years ago. People started coming in villages all about 6,000 years ago. And this is that rise of CO2 since World War II. And this axis is the carbon dioxide concentration in our air. And if you go back, you can see it goes up and down. And that's because there is a natural fluctuation of CO2 to our atmosphere. It goes up and down between about 260 and 280. Volcanoes erupt, carbon goes up. We have increased plants on Earth, plants use carbon dioxide. It goes down. It's a natural thing. But this is not natural. That's what's happened since World War II. We've gone from 280 up to 420. And we've done it very quickly. So the next graph, we're going to look at this area right here, where we go from about 280. This is carbon dioxide to about 410. And carbon dioxide is really easy to measure. It's as easy to measure as your body temperature. In other words, you can put a CO2 meter in your room and it's easy to measure. So we're going to look at this section right there for a moment. And this one is a little bit complicated, but hang with me. Remember that carbon dioxide went from about 270 to 410? That's this yellow line. So this rise here, this is the Civil War. This rise of CO2 is since World War II. But also on here is plotted average land temperature. That's this one. And you know, this is weather. Some years are cold. Some years are warm, cold, warm, cold. That's weather from year to year. But all the weather put together, that's climate. And you see how the weather rises up with the CO2. So does that make sense? So for me, I mean the Earth is complicated. But this principle of CO2 and water vapor up in the atmosphere is also part of this insulation. But we've put so much CO2 up there. And for me, the Earth's systems are complicated, but it's nice for me to think of, this is an experiment you can do at home. You take two plastic bottles, put one with air from this room, put another with CO2, put a temperature probe in each one and heat them up. You can do this in your kitchen. And you will see that the bottom of the CO2 heats up higher and quicker. So just a simple experiment just for the underlying principle. So what's the effect of this heating? Well, for the global surface temperatures between 1880 and now, if you just took the average global temperature, which years were colder? These years were colder. Which years were warmer? These years are warmer. So the pattern is fairly clear. So what's some of the outcomes when you've got warmer temperatures? Well, LA had a heat record there not too long ago. The Pacific Northwest last summer had records. And this is a graph of the hospitalizations during that heat wave last year. It's toughest on the poor, the elderly, young children, pre-existing conditions, mentally ill, ag workers. It's felt that if we keep going the way we are in another 27 years, we're not going to be able to do ag the way we do now, just be too hot. And it's around the globe. This is just a graphic showing where last year where temperature records were set. So a lot of this extra heat goes into the oceans. And if you do that same sort of thing with you take the average ocean temperature for the last 63 years or 60 years. Which years were colder? These were. Which years are warmer? Those were. Fairly clear pattern. If you heat up the oceans, one of the things you get are more powerful hurricanes. This was Ida last year. And when Ida, I'm going to go back to that one, a little too fast here, let's see if I can go back. The Gulf of Mexico was seven degrees warmer than normal when Ida hit. The warmer water makes for more powerful hurricanes. It went up to the east coast. And there were over 80 people killed. And I think we've all seen the hurricane pictures and the flooding. This is flooding in Florida. This is actually flooding up in Pennsylvania. I've got this one in actually climate in reality pass this one on. This is just an amusement park in New Jersey when there was a different hurricane, I think Sandy went through. Yeah, and Harvey dropped literally five feet of water on a section of Texas. Also, a lot of this flooding affects our petrochemical industry, the fossil fuel industry, and with toxic releases. And for whatever reasons, I think there are multiple. A lot of these areas are in lower income community areas that get pounded with this stuff. And it's overseas also, right? This is a mud slide from Hurricane Ella in Guatemala. So it's a global thing. It's just not the US. The climate, they affect hurricanes by warmer oceans lead to more intense hurricanes. And they intensify more quickly. And that warmer air has a capacity to hold more moisture so you can have heavier downpours. And then also, our sea levels have risen some. So the storm surges are stronger. And I didn't put the slides in about the jet stream. I just don't have time to cover all that stuff. This is a slide of, so these storms affect our infrastructure. I mean, I can't go into all of this, but this is a shot of, in Aida, it took five months for Louisiana to get its power back and drinking water. And this is some road destruction from flooding in Michigan. So as the temperature increases, the oceans evaporate. You heat up water and evaporates. They put more moisture in the sky. And this is a shot of, I'm starting to hear it in the news now where they talk about, or weather. They talk about atmospheric rivers. And basically, it's a term where you have really concentrated water. And here you can see, this is NOAA image. You can see it hitting Southern California, an atmospheric weather. And when you've got that kind of concentrated water, you get heavy downpours. This is a shot in Phoenix, shot in Texas. Dallas being hit in a big flood in Asheville. And it's also kind of amazing the amount of plastics that surfaced during these floods. Damage from a flood in Tennessee. And it's overseas. This is in Venice, a lot of flooding and flooding in, I mean, a Europe's experience, well, the globe is experiencing it. China is experiencing it. I mean, it's around the globe of this increased, intense precipitation. A little bit of a, so I had a temporary assignment when I was in the USGS during the flooding of the Red River, was to go out and measure. We had something called acoustic Doppler meter in a boat. So I and another guy, we were measuring the water going under and around this bridge, how many cubic feet per second or gallons per minute. And I was out in the area where all you could see was the tip of the top of a barn. And it was flooded that much, where all I could see was the top of a barn. This is a picture of the Red River under normal levels, Red River under flooding conditions. So it's tough on farmers, right? It does a number on them. This is a shot in Nebraska, 20 billion in damages. It's overseas too. This is India with just under 2,000 deaths due to this intense flooding. So tornadoes, scientists have a hard time to mathematically describe what's going on in a tornado. It's a pretty tight, the scale's not very big. Hurricanes, they can really do equations to. Tornadoes, they can't right now. But what they have been finding is just the connection to where warmer periods seem to bring clusters of tornadoes. But they can't do kind of the equations to explain why, if that makes sense. The same heat that takes it from the ocean, takes it from the land, of course. This is a, I think we're aware, the Western US has had droughts over the last year or two. In Lake Mead, which is behind Hoover Dam, has never been as low as it is now, since it was filled in the 1930s. This is a riverbed in Brazil. Brazil has had drought, see a cost of 3 billion in 2020. Europe's feeling it. They've got low groundwater levels because of the drought. And when you get those temperatures, you have more fires. And scientists have found that for every one degree, that Celsius in Fahrenheit would be 1.7, lightning strikes increase back. They call it a freakish time in California. They had 14,000 lightning strikes that caused 900 fires. And the fires are becoming hotter, longer, larger. California, if you took their six largest fires in their history, five of them occurred in 2020. And hang with me here for a little bit. I've been throwing out a lot of bad news, right? And I got a little bit more, but hang with me. Because we've got solutions, and we can change this. But hang with me for about another three, four minutes on the ugliness here. This slide was used in the training. The message was, can you get people gulfing with this fire in the background? We just can't get used to this as normal. This can't be the normal. We can't pass this stuff on to our next generation. And these fires are overseas also. So we've changed the hydrologic cycle. We've the amount of water that's evaporating in different locations. And I should say, these events, it varies around the globe. Some areas, and I've seen the science report that the scientists put out on these climate conferences every year, and they're getting pretty good with their modeling where they can say, this part of Central America is going to be affected this way. This part of Europe is going to be like this. This part of US is going to be this. The changes aren't all the same. Some areas are going to be hit with more rainfall than others. But we've changed the amount of things we evaporate. We've changed how the precipitation falls down. So we've affected the hydrologic cycle. And the Department of Defense has concluded that it's going to affect our food and water. It's going to affect diseases. And it's going to affect refugees. And this is a shot in Croatia in 2015. I was in Croatia in 2015. So these are Syrian refugees. And I was on a train that it didn't look like this. It looked like about a third of this. The local police were controlling it. But what I didn't understand was these are Syrian refugees. And I was thinking, I think we all know Syrians had all kinds of political stuff. But they've had real droughts there also. And so one of the reasons for the refugees are the droughts. I mean, they've lost 60% of their farms. 80% of the life's got had to be destroyed. So refugees, and closer to home, if we keep doing what we're doing, it's projected that we're going to have strong droughts down there in basically Nicaragua, El Salvador. And we've already got refugees coming up for other reasons. But if we keep doing what we're doing, those countries are going to have real drought conditions. And this is just that Honduras and Nicaragua are going to be one of the toughest countries. So a little bit more science. So Earth is kind of like a climate machine that where heat moves from the equator to the poles. And this movement of heat sets up these air currents and water currents. And if you heat the equator area up by one degree, the poles heat up three times that. So that's why we're seeing at the poles melt. And it's really uncertain what that's going to do to those current patterns. They just don't have a good handle. At what point are things going to change? You guys have heard of the term tipping points? So what's a tipping point? A tipping point is something that happens rapidly. You can think of water freezing. It doesn't freeze at 40 or 45. You hit 32 and it freezes. It's rapid. That's a tipping point. And there's these various tipping points having to do with Earth, whether it's permafrost or where things happen rapidly. This ocean conveyor belt, are these currents that are established? This is the surface, the warm surface one. That's the deeper. And they really don't have a handle. I was in the Coast Guard in Miami for three years. And the Gulf Stream, we counted on it because if people broke down or there were floating bales of marijuana, they were going that way. And if that changes, that would really change the temperatures of Europe and all, but they don't have a good handle when that's, at what point that will change. A little bit of ice melting. This is a shot of a glacier in Greenland. You can kind of see the tongue here in 1935. 80 years later, you can see how it's receded. And this is the ice mass as recorded by NASA in the last 20 years. So a shot of a glacier up in Bolivia. And I have that in here because some years back, I was in a small mountain village in Peru. And the farmers there, subsistence farmers, they depended on the summer melt to irrigate their crops. And then prior to climate change, the glacier would come back. Well, the glacier, when I was there, was just about gone. And they really didn't have a solution for watering their crop. They didn't have a, let's put up irrigation pipes. They didn't have that option. They depended on, I have two shots of this is, I was on a buoy tender ice breaker up in Sturgeon Bay for two years. And we're coming back from winter ice breaking. And I have this shot. And this is pancake ice out in the bay. And ice at the poles, wildlife depends on it. Ecology depends on it. But it's just plain beautiful under a lot of conditions. So one more ice shot. So this is a North Pole in 1984. So 32 years later, just look at how the area has shrunk. And this is, I don't know if we have a graphic of it. Yeah, so this is the area of the Arctic sea ice in kilometers, in million kilometers. And this is back 1,500 years. Here's about the last 40 right there. So what's next here? So when you've got some ice melting, seas are going to rise. And if you take a look at the projected cities around the world, according to their assets, which one's got the most to lose? A couple are in the US here, Miami, New York, Newark. And New York right now, a big chunk of their assets are now lying in flood zones. And the World Health Organization has said climate change is a health threat. Pope Francis has said on a number of occasions that the gravest effects of the things we're doing in the environment are suffered by the poorest folks. He said that a number of times. Kitabati is a South Pacific nation that, with the rising of the seas, they've had to buy land to house some of their folks. This is just a shot of an island in Louisiana that a chunk has been lost due to sea level rise. So I'm not going to talk about all of this, but climate change affects our food supply. We talked to some about drought, fires, floods. It also affects our health. And I'm not going to talk about all this, except I'm going to spend a little bit on air pollution. And this is a medical research journal, a British one, who, again, say, changing the climate, it's a health threat. This is a shot of the deaths attributed to air pollution. There's about 9 million a year around the earth. And air particulate is just what it sounds like, small particles in the air that show spatially where it is. And this is that it makes sense that air particulate is toughest on hearts and brains of folks in cities and children. This is a shot of a coal plant in Pennsylvania. And coal, there's kind of three things with coal. One is coal will take carbon that's in the ground, coal, and it ends up in the air when it burns it. That's one thing. Even with scrubbers, coal plants still put particulate up in the air. Then the third thing is the mercury that's in the coal gets released to the atmosphere. So you've got those three things. They take carbon that's in the ground, put it in the air, they release mercury that was in it, and you've got the small air particles. So mercury has tripled in the oceans. I've got a colleague from the USGS. He spent a PhD guy, spent 30-some years researching mercury in oceans, rivers, and lakes. And coal was the culprit. And I think we know women of childbearing and kids, you've got to watch the fish eat a little bit because of mercury. So enough of the grim stuff. But the cost of carbon is fairly high. And I think it's a cost that is too high to pass on to the next generation. And for me, a lot of this stuff is complicated. But it helps me to think about this simple experiment you can do in your kitchen about the insulation effect of putting too much carbon in that blanket. We've got to have carbon up there. We've had it for millions of years. We need that blanket to a certain extent. But we have thickened that blanket way too much. So if we have to change, we do. The question is, can we change? And here's the great news. We've got the solutions at hand. We can do it. We've got the science. We've got the technology. We just need to have the will. I mean, one of the surprises was this. It used to be felt up until two years ago that, let's say tomorrow, we were able to keep our atmosphere at, like 420 now, right now. It was felt for the next 30 years, things would get worse. That's a pretty grim picture. That's changed. And it's changed in the last two years. Mainly, they've discovered that the oceans can, sequesters, can pull in carbon a lot more than they thought they could. And also, our tree capacity is greater. So if tomorrow, we don't have to reduce the carbon in the atmosphere, but if we can just keep it at 420, in three to five years, we'll have improvement. And how are we going to do this? Well, wind is one way. It was felt in 2000 that we would increase by 30 gigawatts. Well, we beat that capacity by a factor of 24 10 years later. And the price of wind has really come down in the US. The capacity has gone way up. Germany, a couple of years ago, is producing over half their energy from wind and solar. I think in Manitowoc, I grew up in Manitowoc, and I think they are making the columns for some of these wind turbines, I think so. And wind could supply the worldwide electricity 40 times over. Now, the wind doesn't always blow, right? And you've got to get the electricity from the windy spot to the non-windy spot, so it's not totally simple. How else? Well, solar. I mean, back in 2000, it was thought that solar would grow by one gig. The reality was it grew by 17 times that, and 20 years later it was exceeded by 132 times. I mean, solar has really come down in cost. You can see 1976 to now how it's come down. We've really increased the capacity of solar in this country. This is a shot in Australia. One in five houses have got solar now in Australia. The Vatican is going to be the first country, Vatican small, though, first country that's going to be net zero with CO2. And if you took all of the world's energy, not just electricity, but all the energy the world needs for a year, that hits the Earth every hour. So we got a lot of solar. But again, solar doesn't shine all the time. So you need to store it. And this is a graph of our storage capacity. So that's, for the last 10 years, how much storage, storing electricity capacity. I'm going to blow this graph up this way into the future. And this is what's projected. This was back what we just looked at. I mean, that's what's projected around the globe in storage capacity. This is a graphic that used to be a natural gas plant in California. It's now the largest electricity storage, battery storage project in the world. One nearly as big in Texas. And I should say this is, I don't have a slide for this, but I just read this. The guy's name is Straubel. He's from Wisconsin. So I don't know if his relatives are the Green Bay, Austin Straubel, or I don't know. But he was tight with Elon Musk when they started Tesla. I don't know how many years ago Straubel split off from Tesla. So the guy has made some money. And he's putting his effort now, and I say this because he's a Wisconsin guy, into developing much better batteries in storage. So anyway, Wisconsin success. This is a graph of our energy. This is how much comes from coal. So you can kind of see coal kind of peaked there at 2008, something like that. And this is the amount from renewables. So right now in the US, we get about as much energy from renewables as we do coal. When I took this training, a couple of things really surprised me. And this was one of them. I had no idea this was a situation. If you take a look at this, this is the cost to get energy from coal. It's pretty constant the last 11, 12 years. Natural gas has gotten a little cheaper. And I'm going to say this about natural gas. You hear people say natural gas is the clean energy. Well, it's true in that natural gas doesn't put that particulate up in the air like coal does. But natural gas is still taking carbon that's been underground for a long time and bringing it up to the atmosphere. So you don't have the particulate, but it's still doing carbon. This is nuclear. It's gotten a little more expensive for a number of reasons. And I think one is, I grew up in Manitowoc. And the nuclear plants, the waste is still on site. They don't have a solution for the waste. This is the cost of wind. And now look at the cost of solar. So right now, if you were a CEO of a power plant, an energy company, it's just cheaper. If you need to increase by 50%, it's just cheaper for you to do it with wind or solar than it is coal or natural gas. And I had no idea that was the case. So that is just in our system, that is just going to move things along. Let me go back here. I wanted to show this. So this is what, we got 11 years and you can see solar coming down. I just want to back it up back to the 70s just to show you how dramatic the cost has come down. So that last graph was right in this little area here. You can see how solar has really shot down in cost. So just a couple of quotes. This is a public service company. The CEO has said it's really surprise. The surprise was how dramatic renewables and storage has beat natural gas. The CEO of this energy company said there's not a coal plant in the country that's economic today. But the coal miners didn't bring this on. So they need to be considered in it. So we need to make a transition that allows them to be retrained and all. But the jobs are going to be so much safer. I mean, if there was a massy coal mine disaster, it took 29 to 30 people back 12 years ago. So getting fossil fuel out of the ground is not that safe of an operation. And this is an oil spill during IEDA. I have that in there to remind me to mention the Deepwater Horizon that occurred back 12 years ago where it exploded. And we took 11 deaths. And my son was in the Coast Guard then and did two months temporary assignment cleaning up that spill, which was the huge mess. He had said, I mean, there was three million barrels that were spilled. So fossil fuels aren't fantastic for our planet either. And right now in the US, there's five time many jobs in solar as coal mining. And overseas also. I mean, China is putting in more solar than any country. They're still burning coal in countries we can't shut down our economies like that. But they are the largest growing for solar. A lot of jobs around the globe. And here's another thing I hadn't thought of before is the renewables can be kind of a social justice tool in that you've had countries around the world that haven't been stable enough. They haven't had enough stability of utility. So they haven't had power. Well, it's not very difficult. It doesn't take much infrastructure to bring power in with a solar panel. This is a shot of portable panels in South Africa. So areas that haven't had power before are going to have power now. So a lot of companies are going renewable. This is a graphic of global companies. A lot of auto manufacturers are going to electric vehicles. General Motors, they're going to make their last gas and diesel vehicle 13, 12 years from now. Volvo, in seven years, they're going to be electric. Tesla is working on the trucks. So globally, electric. And then batteries are getting a lot better. Electric vehicles are shot up. Countries around the world have made phase out commitments. We'll see if they meet it or not, but where they're going to phase out combustible engines. Another thing I hadn't thought about before I took the training was the agricultural revolution where we went from being hunter-gatherers to growing crops. I mean, that took over 500 years, the first one, from the 8th to the 13th century. And it took a long time. The industrial, that took 80 years. That was from 1760 to 1840, so 80 years. The digital, I think most of us in all fast computers have taken us on, the digital really happened. And there's a feeling that the sustainable economy, the renewable economy, can happen very quickly. So can we change? Yeah. And the most important question is, will we change? Because we can do it. We've got the technology. It's a matter of do we want to do it. And for me, this graphic really hit home, just how it's cheaper. In our free enterprise system, the renewables are cheaper. So will we change? And we rejoined the Paris Accord. We've got city governments around the country that are committed to going renewable. And we have some that have achieved net zero operations. And I think in August this year with the Inflation Reduction Act, that has a lot of climate stuff in it. But we need to do this fairly quickly. And have we ever done anything this quick? And if you look at AT&T back in 1980, they were trying to figure out how many cell phone users are we going to have. And they thought, OK, in 20 years, we'll have just under a million. Well, they missed it by a factor of 120 million. They were off by that much. And right now, we have 100 times more than that yet. We've got 10 billion. So they weren't just wrong. They were really wrong. And you have to ask, why were they so wrong? And let's go around an old cell phone. They were that wrong because the cost dropped sharply of phones. The quality improved dramatically. And here's the big one. Low-income nations with no telephone lines, they didn't have the stable governments to have a utility to put the lines up. They didn't need that stuff to get cell phones. So this is what the amount of cell phones look like from 1990 to the 30 years. That's developed countries, mobile phones. And this is the undeveloped world. It blows it away. And this is it. The undeveloped countries didn't need that stuff. And it's felt that the clean economy can be similar. You don't need the big infrastructure for the solar panels. That low initial cost can, for outside the US, can really bring an energy economy to areas that haven't had it before. This is a shot of power in a village here in South Africa. A lot of these slides were provided by the training. This one I just put together a while back. Time magazine has said that this last year was a year which governments, organizations, people came together and they said electric car makers, they're rolling. Offshore wind is really common in Europe and China. Here in the US, we're starting to get rolling. Iceland is actually pulling carbon out of the atmosphere and putting it back underground. The battery breakthroughs are coming. There's some amazing research in batteries. Scientists are understanding more and more the processes, kind of linking between where carbon moves, how it generates heat. And the bottom one, coal is being moved out. So people around the world are young people, especially are asking for a safer, cleaner future in the US and overseas. I've got some solar on the house. If somebody wants to talk about it afterwards, I'd be happy to show it. So here's my ask of you is that use your voice. In other words, talk about this stuff. Talk about it. It's not always easy to talk about it. But talk about it with your family, your neighbors, your friends. Just talk about it. Learn what they're thinking. And then when you go to the poll, use your vote. In other words, I'm not telling you to vote Republican or Democrat or Libertarian, and especially in the primaries. You may have a couple of candidates and consider what they think about carbon going up in the atmosphere. So just consider it when you vote. And then in your own choices, we all can't put solar panels on our roof. We all can't buy an electric car. But if your car doesn't need to be idling, don't idle it. Or if you can put some insulation on your hot water pipes, our kid's world depends on it. So a shot, again, of Earth going back. This is my wife Amy's in the crowd. Age, stick your hand up there. This is our three adult children. And one reason I'm doing this is for their generation. This is Beth got married a couple of years ago. That's her husband Mason. That's Jack there. So I mean, I think it's extremely important for that generation, the next one. But I've got really two questions of you. One is, after seeing this and what you know coming into here, if you don't feel that we've done something to our atmosphere and that the climate has been changed, I would like to know what you need to see. In other words, do you need to see the ocean's rise two or three feet? Do you need to see the temperature here in Sheboygan be 115 for three weeks in May? What is it that you would need to see? And when I finish up here, if you're comfortable in the group telling me or meet me alone or there's my email, just really what it is that would cause you to realize that we've done something. And then also, if you know of any groups that would like, would be interested in this type of information, I'm happy to speak to three people, 30 people, whatever. And I can even do it on Zoom. But three people, that's fine. So yeah, so if you know of any other groups. And with that, that's about what I have. Thank you. If you have any questions, that'd be great. Or afterwards, I'll be around here too. So yes, sir? I have a question. It looks like increasing capacity for batteries is good. Yes. It's getting there. But what about when the batteries are dead? Right. What happens to them? Right. How will that affect them? Right. All right, so I'm not an expert. But I have heard, I'm on calls with Climate Reality. And the batteries have got, I asked that question about a month ago. And the answer I got is they've got recycling plans for the batteries, how they're going to recycle. Exactly, I'm not sure. But also, and don't write this down. So I don't know if you want to turn the camera off or there or not. But the battery research is amazing. Like right now, you read about lithium being in the batteries now. But I read an article that they're looking at all types of material for batteries downline, even the silicon that comes out of sand. So the battery research is really cranking away as far as the recycling, how they're going to recycle. I don't know. But it certainly is going to be an issue, right? So yeah. Yes. Like there's not enough minerals for ours. Yeah. And the minerals, they're probably talking about the batteries, right, lithium, I think. Yeah, again, I can't answer that. I mean, if you want, I will jot your name down and I'll find out the answer. But I'm expecting it was lithium. Lithium is mined in certain areas of the world. But again, there are about six future options for batteries that I remember from reading with this article. So anyway, I think the batteries are really going to be changing. So yes, ma'am. I have a question on that tabletop experiment. Yes. What do you use for the carbon? Yeah, yeah. So it would be, well, no. So in the one bottle, you just have air from the room. The other, you would have to use carbon dioxide. So I have to think about the best way to get carbon dioxide. You know, we could breathe into it a lot because we breathe out carbon dioxide. But you could probably, if you're serious about doing it in your kitchen, I'll meet with you afterwards. I'll find a source where you can get carbon dioxide. It's dirt cheap. It's what we breathe out. We breathe out carbon dioxide. It's just breathing. Well, but you need to get it pretty concentrated of just your breath in there, right? It needs to be carbon dioxide. So meet me afterwards. I'll get your email or a contact. I'll find you a cheap, efficient way to get, if you want to do an experiment, carbon dioxide in that bottle. The answer would be sodium bicarbonate and some acid. Got a chemist back there with us. You don't think you have oxygen out of the air, nor put enough carbon dioxide in there to make a difference unless you're going to breathe totally into that bottle for about three weeks. By then, the color of your skin changes. So that would be an answer for that. Yeah, yeah. Sodium dioxide. It's carbon dioxide, but. Baking soda. Oh, great. What are your tips? And acid. Yeah, so stick lemon juice or vinegar or something like that. Yes, thank you. But I use that slide because for me, I mean, the Earth's processes are complicated, right? But just the simple principle that if you put more and more carbon dioxide up there, it's like an insulation blanket. You can verify that principle with that simple experiment that CO2 carbon dioxide is like a blanket effect. So yes, sir? There are so many pieces to this thing that are not part of this presentation. And they easily can convey the wrong message. And I don't know how you can come up with enough time to present the full picture of it. But this can be used as a story to tell what things you should do, but not necessarily, whether they're practical or could be achieved in the matter of, say, 100 human years or could even make a difference. So if I understand you, I'm going to repeat the question. That are you saying that the solutions that are presented in here aren't achievable? Or I'm missing your, I'm not sure I got your point. Well, some of that applies to each of different pieces. Whether it's the same. But the scales, for instance, the scales of some of the graphs are not there. How many BTUs of energy do humans produce by fossil fuels versus how many BTUs of energy can be produced from solar or wind? Those numbers are, like, gigantically disparate. So the way the graph actually showed it almost looked like, yeah, we can replace one with the other. Oh, no, you're not even denting it. You're just barely making a. Well, if I'm understanding, I'm hearing you say, like, the potential of those two. But if you want, I can, when I'm done here, I will, because I've got the reference for each of these slides, is the graph that you're talking about, the one that shows over time how much energy was produced by coal, and it was coming down. And then the, I can go back if you want. I'll come on to that one. The reason those are coming together is because we're cutting back on the use of coal. So it's going down. Because we're just turning it off. Yes. So the other one will eventually cross it automatically. So it doesn't mean that the efficiency of it or the quantity of it is there necessarily. It's just that we have made a change, and we're forcing that to happen. So that's not really one that gives you an identification that this is, say, a practical alternative. Yeah, I think it was, but the thing is that's not what's represented there. Let me just find that one real quick again. Because you're right, the coal is coming down, but we are seeing the rapid, we are seeing the increase of the wind and solar also. So it wasn't a straight slope. It was an upcoming slope. And anyway, so I think, yeah. But here's another example, and these solar cells on the ground here are representation. Some slides later, there was one on a batch of rough hot. Yeah, right. The implication is, one of those powers everything that family needs, that's not. No, no, no, no, that's not. It powers everything that family can do, because that's what they have. That's not something like you could pop one of those on your rooftop and be able to turn off your grid, because you're not even close. Yeah, no, no. If I communicated that in no way, what I was attempting to communicate with these is these folks haven't had cheap, easy power, in a lot of cases, in their life. And this will bring some power there. But yeah, and if someone wants to know about the solar, I can talk in detail in my own house. I've got 22 panels on the roof, done it about a year and a half ago. It's producing a little bit more than the electricity I use, meaning I've got an electric car, electric car, electric floor heat, electric oven, electric water heater. I still have a natural gas furnace, so it's not heating that. But you're right, I've got 22 panels on my house to do that. You're not going to produce it like that, so you're exactly right. Yes, sir? Yeah, I think it's going to have to be a component of reduction of use as well as. Yeah. So you have to find ways to reduce our use as well. Right. I think one of the things that I felt was a lot of these solutions are very meta. They're very outside of our individual needs to do. And so one of the things that I mean, I can think about is something I've been doing for the last eight years is growing a lot of my own food indoors. I mean, I live in an apartment. I don't own a home or land yet. But I just use LED lights. And I grow all of my salad greens, microgreens, tomatoes, strawberries, green beans. I can grow pretty much anything and everything on these LED lights that use very little electricity. And so I actually, I plan on trying to get that out there, teaching other people how to do the same things. That's great. You reminded me. Did everybody hear what he was saying? OK. You're exactly right. And I saw a presentation about four months ago where food waste is a huge. If we could cut down on food waste, on our common sense, food waste and agricultural ways of doing agriculture can be huge, too. I didn't have time to go into that. But an interesting point of the presentation I saw is we really need to make changes rapidly. And it's going to take a while to bring solar up. And it's going to take a while to bring offshore wind up. It's going to take a while to bring that up. But what we can do rapidly is, and the way this guy put it was, he said like our construction and our insulation guys and women are going to be the front line. Because there are things we can do right now rapidly. Again, we can't bring solar up that fast. We can't bring wind up. But we can do other things rapidly. And he kind of presented that the construction guys are really going to be like the point of the spear of this. Because we can do much better with building efficiency. So I think he used that term that the construction folks are going to be the point of the spear. Because they can get us moving quickly. Provided it's cost effective. Right. And all of this is being driven by finance and money. Well, your cost per units that you're looking at for any of this is all dependent on the economics behind it. Yeah. And I listened to a presentation from a finance person. And you're exactly right. And I don't have expertise there. But the impression I had was that the finance folks can make this move along. But I don't have it. There's some large and small, large investors, two companies like Kohler, for example. I'm going to have you speak a little bit louder that way. We're going to net zero efforts. Why? Because they want to be green citizens? No. That's not the motivation. It's money profits. So by building these into their systems, reducing their energy usage, anybody here. But your house is going to cost you if you're able to pay more for. And pay the price for it. Or if you're going to put in these infrastructures to save yourself money in the long haul, comes out economics. So bringing down the cost per unit is important. It's probably going to be one thing that makes the change possible. Yes, sir. You had a graph on there with cost to convert renewables, coal, and other things. Yes, yep, exactly. How does that fit? Say that again? Why not oil? Oil. How does that fit? That isn't anywhere in the world. You're right. It was a graphic that I think I mentioned to you guys when I took the training. It was a total eye-opener for me. It is this one. And you're right. Oil is not on there. And I can't answer that. That's the big part of that question. I understand. Tell me if I'm right or not. I understand our government does huge subsidies right now. It is, and what do they have to renew? Yeah, well, the subsidy thing. So the solar panels I put on, Amy and I put on the house, right? I got the solar panels. I'm going to reinforce you. I got 23. OK, 23. All right. How long have you had them? I got them for six years now. OK. I got them for 14 years. So I had, with that, 26% tax credit. So there was. Right. But, you know, and I have read, and I've just dug into it a little bit, about the subsidies that oil companies are getting. Not just in the US, but around the world. And some of those come from drilling subsidies, transporting oil subsidies. You know, I don't know if. So I don't know the details of. But I've just read that they receive a lot of subsidies. But I. I don't want to see this graph without subsidies. Come on, with the subsidies now. Yeah, right. OK, yeah. This, by the way, is electric energy. Not like motor fuel or anything else. This is a graph. That's right. For producing electric energy. Yep. Electric energy. Is fuel oil going to produce electric energy, or is that only for cars? Well, I think the power companies need to put on. Need to put on extra facilities during peaking hours. So, and I think they typically use natural gas for that. I don't know if they use oil for that. But I will throw one kind of unique thing out with, you know, when a utility needs to, during those peak hours, they need to pull extra power on. So they'll use a natural gas plant. A number of states do this. And, you know, we were able to get electric car. Went up out in California in a couple other states. When the power company needs extra energy, they've got an agreement with the electric car owner, say me, that they can pull energy out of my car, take it down to, say, a half level, and they'll put it back later. And I can have it programmed so that, and I'll get paid a little bit, so that they're using the cars to help this peak power. You know, a number of states do that. But I think it's called car to grid was the actual program. You know, peak-shaving and peak-shaving. That's why if you have generators, for example, I worked at Kohler for 30 years and showed that I need generators. So part of that is generators in places and hospitals and within industries everywhere. And they'll use peak-shaving on those generators, whether they're on diesel or natural gas. So this fellow is talking about the use of generators to knock off the peaks of their power demands. So, yes, ma'am? I think that there's a big piece that's being missed in our carbon emissions. And I learned about it in a movie called Kiss the Ground. It's on Netflix. And in addition, I belong to the pesticide action network. They say about 30% of our carbon emissions are coming from big agriculture. And now I just read that it's more like 50%. And what has happened since World War II is we are coating our earth with pesticides and synthetic fertilizer. Both of them are made of the oil. They gas off into the atmosphere, they poison our water, and they kill our soil. And no one is talking about that piece of the puzzle. And so there are many people who say the easiest thing to do, like the gentleman that left, who's starting to grow their own food, spring out farms. All organic is now opening with their winter shares. But on top of it, to think, when you eat, clean food, healthier for your body, and saves our planet's carbon emissions, supports our local farms, but our organic is the way to go. And think about it. All of those other farms, and that's in the movie, are supported by our farm bill and the subsidies. And instead of looking at that as welfare because they couldn't survive without it, and it's all been brought to us by the big companies that created plants that can be sprayed without dying with pesticides. And that contamination wasn't on our planet before World War II. So that's a big, huge part of what people aren't talking about. It's being ignored. And to have that be part of your presentation, I think we'll be doing it. Yeah, and the thing, I take it you're Joanne. You're welcome. Thank you. So, you're beyond my expertise a little bit with the pesticides. However, I've got a great group to put you in touch with. They are really active with, I can only put so much in this. A lot of times, I only have 30 minutes, right? So I can't do the egg thing. And maybe I touched on it earlier, that agriculture can be a huge player in the carbon picture. I mean, if you would have cover crops so that you've got plants year-round that are pulling CO2 out of the air, if you keep the soil structured, the health of the soil. I mean, Climate Reality does some training on that. I've got some slides, but I just can't put it all in. But afterwards, I'll put you in touch with, I think, a group. They're working on the next egg bill as to how we can maybe improve it, you know? Yes, sir? When I look at what you talked about hurricanes, tornadoes, and storms like that, they are much more devastating than they were even 20 years ago. But my question is, we probably still would have had those storms, but they just do more damage. Who would have done things right since, let's say, 1950, and got ourselves to where we are, Lord Green? We're not using the pesticides. We're doing all those things. What kind of economic effect would that have had of the damage that we would have had for all these kinds of storms? And who then can say, I'm responsible for that? Because business doesn't think they're responsible. Tax payers don't only be responsible. Well, I don't know if did you hear this gentleman, what he was talking about? So to answer your first question about, would the number of hurricanes, the number, be the same, I can't answer that. I can spec, I shouldn't even speculate. I can't answer. My guess is they would be very similar. But you know, they have, and scientists are very good at physically modeling hurricanes. So it's the intensity of the hurricanes and the amount of precipitation that they're dropping that's changed. You talk about who's going to be responsible. And I'm not sure that's a conversation we want to get into here tonight, but I will throw this out. I think in, and I don't know if you want the camera on for this one. I think the science is rapidly, especially if you look at reviewed papers. I mean, I've published reviewed papers not in climate, but I've done numerous water in professional journals. And the big thing, when you hear people about who do you listen to, who counts, and you hear something called white papers, those aren't reviewed. The big benefit to a science paper that's been reviewed is this. I write a paper on transport of PCBs in the Fox River. And you're going to put it in a science journal. It's got to be peer reviewed. And that peer review will make sure that I have addressed all the past research. In other words, in a peer reviewed paper, you have to address past research and say why yours is different or how it builds on it. If you ignore it, the reviewers aren't going to accept it. So peer reviewed research builds on past science. If you just write a paper and put it in a newspaper that hasn't been reviewed, it doesn't have to do that. I can write a paper and I don't have to build on past research. I don't have to acknowledge past things. So when you hear people say reviewed papers, that's a huge thing. As far as who should fix it, that's a question. This is just in my mind. I think the science is rapidly becoming not political. And then you can measure CO2. But the solutions will be. Why are we supposed to? The solutions will be they're going to be political. And that's not going to be easy. But the science, I think, not for everybody, but for the majority of folks, I think, the science and the climate is not. They don't agree on everything, but science evolves. But that we've done something, that's not becoming political that much anymore. But the solutions will be. I mean, that's going to be a dogfight, Sonya. Yes? One thing that's not political and doesn't require a lot of effort is just eating one plant-based meal a day. And that's what we've been doing. And it says you can save 200,000 gallons of water a year and the pollution equivalent to 3,000 miles driven in your car. By eating one plant? Yes. Well, and there are, I know real knowledge about this, but I know they're looking at the meat substitutes, the proteins that are being grown. And yes, sir, I know you've had your hand up back there. Yeah. Just one comment on this slide. The word electric should be in front of the word energy because it would help you clarify that. Yeah. And then another slide that I think belongs here is one of the human population, the planet population, during those same years. You'll find that it mimics a good deal of the slopes of those things. That's a good point. The appeal of the energy increase, the energy usage increase on the planet is because there's more people. Yeah. So your point is it. The ultimate solution there is, of course, a very sad and unpopular one, and that is in order to halt the change in the carbon oxidase so far is to exterminate half the population of the planet. And that is a political. Yeah, for sure. But it is almost inescapable because nobody's going to make that choice. So in that choice, then how do you tell people that they should go back to living perhaps as you're 19? Right. Well, I'm going to repeat, you're saying the graph where you see the rise of fossil fuel usage there after World War II, and that's a very good point. If you did it per capita, it wouldn't look like that, right? So that's a good point. In a capita, we used more. Right. Well, I know, but it wouldn't look that dramatic. However, the atmosphere doesn't care, right? And where I'm going to disagree with you is that the only solution we have is to get rid of half the people on Earth. That's not true. Not the only one, but it's the only one. It's one. But you know, sir, when we finish up here, if you could give me your email address, I just saw a presentation from a researcher out in California that touches on some amazing things. I tried to check his background, but I would give you the link to that, because you might be interested in it, you know? But anyway, that's a good point. That graph, a good chunk of that is due to population growth. I don't know. Yeah, so that's a good point. Yes, my question is, before that, I lived on the third red horse farm. And we used manure for our fertilizer. Oh, yeah, absolutely. Instead of, you know, and we had lush pastures. People would come that grew mushrooms, that would come to our farm for truckloads of our manure. And we gave it away to them. I don't know why we should have charged them. And by the way, the other thing you can do is if you don't like what your politicians are doing in the words of Willie Nelson, you can vote him out. I have phone numbers for every one of my local state and capital. And I let them know what I think. Well, I mentioned. That matters to them. That's true. And if you remember the three things I asked you, just talk about it. Family, friends, learn. Think about it when you vote, because I gave this presentation to a business community. And a guy came up to me afterwards, and he said, you're telling me to vote Democratic. And he said, it's all political. And you're telling me to vote Democratic. And I don't think on my feet sometimes as fast as I should. And I said, well, the science is not political. And I'm not telling you to vote for any party. But what I should have said to him, what I wished, is OK, he was saying I was telling him to vote Democratic. And I wasn't. If you're a staunch Republican, you never vote anything but Republican, or staunch libertarian, or a staunch folder party. At the primaries, you're going to have some choices. So at the primary, if there's a person that talks about some of the stuff we're putting in the air, and you don't think about it. So yeah. Well, thank you. Yeah, OK. So have you been traveling mostly in Wisconsin? So this is about the 12th. I took that climate reality training. You get like 800 slides. It was four-day training. And from that, I pulled out some of these I added some of my own. And initially, this is about the 13th time I spoke. And I did it around Madison to libraries and business community. But I'm sincere when I say. So in Dane County, you're kind of preaching to the choir. So I'm trying to get out to rural Wisconsin because I sincerely want to know the answer to. There's two reasons I'm doing this. One is because I think it's so important for the next generation. And number two, I really am curious about the question I asked you guys that after hearing this and what you know, what is it that would cause you to recognize we put the stuff in the air and we need to do something. But what do you need to know? That's what I'm you know. So the answer, I mean, I can't even remember what you asked me anymore. I've given it 12 times. Is it the state of Wisconsin? Oh, yeah, I know. It's pretty much been Dane County. I gave it once at Two Rivers. Brilliant. It was a bad night. And I had one person. The weather was really bad. But it doesn't matter. I mean, like I said, I'll talk to three people or 30 or whatever. Is there anything that you've seen within anybody's local government, within the state that you think is really jumping on the opportunities to use? Yeah, you know, I. Big wins that you've seen anywhere that you can try? Yeah. You know, I just do this in my very small part of my part time. So the answer is no. I don't know. Yes, sir. I wanted to say one more thing about population. And that is the growth of the planet's population has necessitated the improvement in the technology for farming to grow food. Because you now have to feed them. Because there is more people. They now live on what used to be a farm. I live on what was a farm when I was a child. And it's an entire neighborhood. So there's a lot less farmland available. Yet it has to feed many more people. So the farming technology stuff is a necessity to feed the people. Otherwise, you go back to my previous solution. Yeah, yeah. And so you have no choice. Yeah. Well, farming does, I'll differ with your word. You have no choice. And again, I really hope that you'll look me up after because, and I don't have expertise in this. But again, I listened to this fellow speak. And I looked in his background a little bit to see who is this guy. But part of what he talked about was we're not going to be eating nearly as much meat 15 years from ago as we are now. And whether you buy into all this or not. But so there's going to be some changes in meat and in dairy. And so if, and he describes in there how the land use changes will be. And again, this is, anyway. So I'm not entirely sure that's the only path. I'll just throw that out. Well, there's regenerative agriculture. There's other ways to do it. I mean, permaculture, regenerative agriculture are always to still feed people, but keep their soil and bio-diversity within the soil. It also helps a heck of a lot more water. Yes. What is regenerative? Regenerative agriculture. You know where the Peter Ceeley's farm and going talk to him, he's there all the time. He's got 37 acres, he feeds 1,200 families with his shares. He sends food down to the outposts of the American Club, the Stephanos. And he's right outside of Plymouth. It works for any kind of regenerative agriculture. I mean, really, it's a very exciting. I'm going to cut this off just a little bit, because I think they close the library at 8.00, is that correct? But I guess two things. I wanted to have enough time that if there are some folks, and I hope there are a couple, that will come up. And I would get your email to give a couple of things out. But thanks again for, I mean tonight was kind of an ugly night out there. And thanks for coming, man.