 I'm ready. Okay great well most of you probably recognize our media star here he's the person who he was here in Portland for how long before you abandoned us to go to his channel but then as soon as he got down there he realized what he was missing and he hightailed it back and he's back at WCSH and I had him come and speak at Colby with a bunch of students and he was such a hit that I thought he'd be a great speaker to have him come here and talk a little bit about how you talk about climate change. So with the more due here is Keith Persson. Alright thank you. So originally we were going to do something on how climate change impacts Maine but two factors one is we were selling house and renovating another and I don't have time to make another talk and two is I figure if you're here you're already on board so really what we need to do is talk about communicating with other people who aren't on board because I think one of the bigger problems we have right now is the echo chamber effect of social media and and how we conduct ourselves we just hear things we want to hear over and over again and so we know it's a problem we know it's impacting Maine and so to get into the nitty gritty of that it may be fascinating but probably doesn't really further the goal that much. So what we're going to do is going to be kind of interesting and it's going to depend on your eyesight. I just want to set this up a lot of this is just talking points so it's not like we're missing some great video of Todd gotten around a bull or anything like that but there is there is kind of a setup here that I want you to be able to see so we're going to pass. So I've subdivided all this into the players talking points and approaches and so the players is what I'm going to start with. These are the people that I've encountered and I've talked to Gulf of Maine Research Institute about this and people who teach climatology because they don't interact with the public that much. So it's this weird disconnect. Legal conservation voters I talked to them to because again they don't deal too much with people who are not on their side so to speak and so what are these people saying and who are they and how do they subdivide I think is really important. I probably talked to a couple of thousand climate change skeptic at least via Twitter via Facebook. I had a couple of videos that went outside of Maine you know on the internet viral wise and so those people pour in and so you talk to a lot of them. So you can subdivide them into a bunch of categories. Alarmed this is probably you guys. They're whole and on climate change they know it's a huge issue and it needs to be addressed immediately. You've got on board doesn't doubt the science occasionally cares about it. So I think there's a lot of well educated people that I'm friends with who are not going to argue climate change with you but it's just not high on the on their list. You know it's not it's not as immediate as some other things in their life and they'll do stuff to help but they're not going to advocate for it. It's just not it's just not high. Yeah that's true. I mean and we're going to talk a little bit about how people are in my backyard driven weather or climate and then skeptical truly believes the science is 50-50 and doesn't see how a man can have this much impact. This is this is who we really need to target because I have run into a good amount of them. I run into them live shots and Gardner and whatever they'll say just off the cuff to me yeah but you know wasn't isn't all cyclical and and I've been able to swing people reasonably at least who are in that camp who really just haven't done research on it and they believe that this is a 50-50 scientists are still fighting it out kind of debate and John Oliver does a great piece on climate change where he talks about part of the problem is when you do a TV show and you do a debate you put one person on one side you put one person on the other side. So no matter what the evidence is on this side it looks like it's a 50-50 proposition. So he did what's called a I think he called a statistically representative climate change debate and he put two people on one side of the table and 98 on the other side and let them just shout at them but but there is a perception in TV about that and we do we do interviews like this at Channel 6 where we always have to say it should we even be debating this topic are we giving it too much breath on the other side when we shouldn't be if it's if kind of a settled thing. So this is who we really need to target and then you've got Denier which is just straight out it doesn't matter what the evidence is does a lot of research of their own they will link and link and link on my pages all the stuff from none of which is is peer reviewed or legitimate but but they just bombard you with information and what's interesting about some of these guys and they're almost all men I'm sorry is that yeah there's a there's a demo here for sure and not to say that I haven't run into some women on this but it just seems like at least online it has been it has been men more so they will go through pretty great lengths to learn quite a bit about the atmosphere just to try to argue about this which is really I think is really interesting like we'll end up talking about you know how greenhouse gases work and what the half-life of methane is versus I mean they'll really they really want this to not be a thing and so they'll do a lot of their own digging to try to sound intelligent and unfortunately if you don't do this for a living you might lose that debate you know I mean I I've caught a few of them and just totally thermodynamically incorrect statements but is the average person gonna do that maybe not and so they're just gonna bowl them over so this person you're gonna have a hard time with this and then there's conspiracy theorists so for them it's not about climate change just everything is is an illusion so they're kind of like the flat earth yeah the whole thing right exactly so so this is a whole different group here and they they just think the whole thing is some sort of intergovernmental hoax and so again I'm not sure how much progress you're gonna have with that I'd still rather talk to this person than this person but but the skeptical the one who truly believes that we're 50-50 on this is really in my opinion the person that you can target and so these are the talking points that you will hear over and over again it's a cycle it's a sun volcano water vapor a variety of things co2 is too small to impact this one has been a pretty big problem because it doesn't feel right it doesn't feel right that it's such a small part of our atmosphere and it can have such a big impact and so there's a whole paper on on talking to people about climate change and how the feelings of the argument just seem they say well it's such a small percentage how is it possible for it to have this kind of effect so that that is something I've run into a lot the number one no question is it's a cycle it's been cold before it's been hot before doesn't matter that we're here so at its face I get that I get where they're coming from but it's also as I like to point out to people it's insulting to the thousands of scientists who have studied this for so many years like I'm so glad you thought of that they never thought of that you know anything like that they you've cracked the case that's it we're done so but that's that's really really big and so I have these these different graphs that I have just saved on my phone that that are always pointing out the rate of rise and obviously we've been through these cycles before but right now we should be cooling right so we're a solar minimum we've got no factors that should be driving us up like this and yet here we are so that's one of the best things and I like to let them walk into a trap if possible and what I mean by that is I'll say if it's not us what is it and then I wait for something sometimes they'll say volcanoes which is one of my favorites because that's a cooling a net cooling thing to the atmosphere so sometimes you have to let them talk about it and say okay well what do you think it is then and then you can you can sort of conversation online is is tough to begin with so in person these these do a lot better but and then there's just it's a hoax I mean if you get through all of this stuff I have backed many a person into a corner to where they just say all the data you just presented as fake and then I mean you just got a shrug of shoulders and you know I know put my baby to bed and call it a day I mean what are you gonna do it's there's if you can go down these these different talking points and and try to talk sense into someone but then they're just gonna go back to well the data itself the source of the data is corrupted I mean it's gonna be very difficult one of the biggest rises in denial groups I found is trying to pick apart the data from the from the United States ground observation and basically arguing that it had more to do with urbanization around these sensors than it does warming temperatures that's a really really common one now and of course it's been controlled for not to mention we've been mentioning we've been measuring it since 1978 by a satellite so it has not like we're just reading thermometers around but these are the kind of things that that you'll hear from a lot of different people so what can we do about it it depends on your personality the number one thing you can't do and this is very hard is you can't be condescending about it there is no argument you will ever win and you all know that I'm sure it by being condescending and I think that's a big problem and in a lot of so the death of the expert that's been happening over the past couple years it's I think it's about that I think it's about people talking to other people like like they're too dumb to understand it and you just lose someone right away they don't want to come over to your side if you make it seem like they're too dumb not to you know be here so to speak and so that's one of the hardest things to do but I think it's one of the most important things to do forget about climate change anything like that you're not going to win people over by looking down your nose at them I've heard some ridiculous statements that I but I I know to just to try to to try to win them over because just making fun of it or having this certain scoff isn't going to get you anywhere so I think that's a problem like I said it's the experts are being being beat down a lot of different areas I mean you look at doctors who are trying to tell people what to do with their kids and vaccinations and and they want to go on YouTube and find a different source and part of that is this just general like we know better you don't and and it's true but it but it annoys people and so it's led to this whole counter movement of I'll find my own sources and the internet has been a problem like that I mean I grew up with internet I was one of the first generations but it's expanded to the point now where anything you want to be true you just Google it and you find a source for it so you know if you find why climate change is a hoax you'll hit you'll get millions of hits and that's what makes it more dangerous now it can spread like that but you can't you've got to try to keep a level head when I put that water and not and not be condescending about it that's where the whole East Coast elite idea came from what doesn't work scary stuff in general your city will be under water soon we're past the point in our return even if that's true it certainly doesn't inspire any action then it's the you shrug your shoulders your house is on fire and the whole thing is going down you're not going to pour any water on it so and then weather becoming more extreme and the reason I point this out is NBC nightly news does it sometimes they all and it and it makes me my skin crawl a little as anytime this is severe weather event they link it right to climate change and and certainly there is research that that shows that precipitable water for example has increased in the atmosphere that makes sense as the globe has gotten warmer but careful because not every event we've ever had is linked to crime change I mean think about the hurricane in 1938 here in New England I mean if that if that happened now I'm sure the headline would be about that and so you'll never see me in front of the green screen say today was this because of climate change I think the broader the scope you keep it in and the more data-driven you keep it in the better and and try to link individual events to it I think is really dicey because then when you have that snap in the middle of December that's 25 degrees below zero for a couple of days you've opened the door for the conversation of if the globe is warming how why is this happening so I've always argued in big time spans from the late 1800s to now I don't want to talk about these little undulations I mean there was a time from 1998 to 2012 they call it the pause where we didn't warm a time now if you zoom the graph out we're still going up we had these up and downs and that's gonna happen and it could happen again so if we tie it to these little small-scale weather events all the time I think that's dangerous because you're gonna have a year without hurricanes or landfall and hurricanes and it's gonna make people point say see this isn't a problem I think that happened with Al Gore's movie years ago I think Al Gore meant well but probably was one of the worst things that ever happened to climate change because he was he is a political figure and so he was trying to do something good but that was if you think about the timeline that was the turning point and when it became this politically tribal left-right thing in 2008 John McCain ran on fixing global warming as a Republican presidential nominee you cannot imagine that now you know 11 years later and I think a lot of that came from it started with Al Gore's movie and then all of a sudden it just somehow became this this politically tribal issue so long story short stay away from those individual scary things I do think that sea level rise especially in Maine is something that we can talk to people about because they see it lobster men are really interesting because a lot of them they see it every day and they don't try to attribute it usually but they will say hey yeah you know the sea levels up here I'm catching fish they used to catch down across southern New England and I think that kind of stuff fishermen are a great resource for us in Maine lobster men to to use because they play to how manors they respect that they respect that whole trade and to have them say look I'm seeing it here it is happening I think is worth 15 graphs with a professor pointing to it and so whatever we can use them and I know that the League of Conservation voters was kind of on to this with some of their with some of their ideas and Union Concerned Scientists as well those kind of figures are really helpful farmers to they see it I've noticed that that northern Maine and the coast doesn't have that many climate skeptics it's actually more places where they might they work and they don't work outside but they also maybe didn't do a ton of research and that's what that's actually the most dangerous part of of Maine as far as the denialism goes is just a little bit inland where you're not working with the land you're not seeing it every day so that doesn't work it just makes people kind of cringe and it also means that if we have a year without big storms you got some explaining to do and then this is we talked about this a little bit if you can let people walk into it a little bit as far as the arguments here don't put words in their mouth you know here they'll say well it was the Sun well here's a graph of total solar irradiance it hasn't changed that's the kind of method I think works a little bit better because if you just give them that right off the bat they'll just pivot you know well here's the Sun well no actually I thought it was warming from beneath I've heard that a lot lately the core of the earth is releasing more heat now is the idea so a lot of problems with that but anyways you don't want to put those words in the mouth let them you know kind of go down that road themselves and you'll end up in a better spot future tense this is this is near and dear to my heart this is why I almost always talk data records how much we've warmed I don't do too much with the computer models that project our climate because they've actually done they've done alright within within you know what you'd expect but us weathermen have a bad rap and when you talk future like that immediately they'll say well if you have a hard time seven days out how could you possibly know what's gonna happen you know 30 years from now whatever of course you're predicting you're trying to predict different things and all that and and whether forecasting has come leaps and bounds but it doesn't matter it's still gonna happen we're still gonna get beat sometimes on these storms and so if we talk future all the time they equate it to my 10-day a 10-day forecast well so maybe it will happen maybe it won't you know and so that's why I'm always trying to look into the past tense of where we've been in stocks and sports it's unpredictable in people's mind the atmosphere it's it's too complex no but I'm very I'm very afraid to not afraid I'm very reluctant to talk about projections of temperatures you know I mean it's more like it is happening now it's a more solid I think it's a more solid ground to stand on than to talk about how much we might warm because although some of the members have done well and there are a couple of really bad ones that have overdone it and and trust me they found those so it's just one of those things I think and we could easily have you know another couple year pause on our way to you know plus four Celsius but but we don't know exactly how that's gonna play out and you can't change people's mind on even the weather forecasting I we did this thing Eric Fisher and I he's down in Boston is chief at BZ we tracked our forecast on rain snowcalls and then temperatures within the seven-day period and we found that our our calls were 71% right seven days out they I mean when Joe Kubo started they would have killed for that like it's it's rapidly advancing the two-day forecast is equivalent to the five-day forecast 15 years ago I mean the speed of which but it doesn't matter it's still weather and it's still in my backyard I got eight inches and you said it was gonna be 10 so so the future is just you know people think of it as being too predictable and unpredictable to to really talk about now I have gone on I've done several segments on climate change at an our station NBC and and and I have not had any problems with it but I'm always talking except I'm always talking in the the long term I did a whole segment on the real danger of climate change denial is really just the denial of of the scientific method you know when I look at this I think there are there's I think there are chances that that we get lucky environmentally before we ruin the whole earth with this I mean this there are a lot of there are a lot of oscillations that we might get lucky with that could cool us down but my problem with it really at its core is that all of this research has been done really since the 1950s or before that if you want to talk about the early look at it but and people are just saying no like that's not real and that is to me that's really the scary part of all of this because so much of what we've accomplished as people has been because of this method and this way of saying okay we're progressing along these lines and and to have people in this day and age look at this huge body of research and and it's a I think it's about 40 something percent of the country just says no it's not it's not happening and and if it is it's not us even though we've proven it's us so that to me is really what got me into this into this game now as far as what you're allowed to do I was saying earlier I haven't asked I just I've done it you don't see it a lot and I think part of that is not station policy but meteorologists themselves who don't want to be bombarded by people I mean I've had some really some really quite violent stuff thrown my way when I've gone out after climate change and it's not usually for Maine it's usually I mean the internet circulates the way it does and I you know I have a video like that that's a hundred thousand views on it well guess what you know so I think it's actually more that they just don't want to I want to say I was so MTW or no jim jim 13 I think did something on did did a climate change segment but it was mainly about what it means for Maine and the guys at GMRI Gulf of Maine Research Institute are great at that they convey like what what this is about but you're right I mean I'd say in general people aren't jumping into the fray and they're especially not jumping into the fray in places where they know it's not popular to do so you know I mean if I went down into in some parts of this country and started talking about this I might I might end up in the office I'm not sure I think every station has their own policy you know because at the end of the day unfortunately it's a business and so you know the truth is the most important thing but there is a point in which they're trying not to lose customers and I think a lot of meteorologists have the same problem they don't want to lose fans you know they don't want to lose people and I've you know I've probably lost a few going after this but I think most of it is is at this time right now is political tribalism I think I mean I can't you know and I've always said to people I don't I do I truly don't care how you vote that's not that's not anything to do with what I do but unfortunately a lot of what I get as far as climate skeptics it just tends to be that way and I think that's what it is right now I think even if there's no research being done and you happen to be you happen to lean that way politically you're just gonna you're just gonna say no to it it's just just one of those issues and that's why I spoke about Al Gore it's done I don't I don't have a political problem with him however I think he made it a side thing and to dig out of that he did he did so so it's interesting like I don't know what would have happened without him I can't say how that would have gone down but I know that we're one of the most divided countries in the world about it and so you know and even in places where they're spewing stuff in the atmosphere there's not as much denial about it they just don't care you know and so there's that but yeah I don't know there's no way to run it in tandem I just he's brought up to me a lot is all I can say like your Reverend Al Gore is that you know it's so it's this thing like he's he's this therefore you are this because you agree with him you know and I've actually never even seen inconvenient truth you know it's never been up my realm of things because at the time I was in college learning this stuff anyway so I didn't need to watch it but we're like in in the Twitter's world mind we're on the same team and and that's where I think it gets tough and airplanes so this is something that we just talked about the other day and this is thrown in people's face and I think fairly so there are a lot of people who are who are big on being green and they travel a lot and look I love traveling I think it's it's one of the the great things to do in life however going car less for a year saves roughly two tons or so of CO2 and a transit Atlantic flight here in back is about two tons of CO2 so then it's almost equivalent to skip one to Europe and back trip as it is to just walk to work every day and so I think that's something that there's a lot of people who are who are green and intention and they do these things like their house is super green and all that but maybe they're not living it all the way around and nobody's perfect but you know I walked to work for a couple years and thank God because you know how many times people said so I assume you walk to work every day and I said yeah I do and they're like it's like just perfect they walked into it now that I'm moving and I don't know I'm gonna have to think of something I have to bike or something but but so Al Gore and and even some of like Bernie Sanders they get ripped apart quite a bit at least in the circles I'm in because yes they're trying to help and they're trying to reach the masses but they're also flying around on a private jet and to ignore that is unfair you know and I understand it's modern travel and a again I've I've traveled but you know people people want to see they want you to see if you're this concerned about it then all these speeches should be teleconference so they should all be you know at Leonardo DiCaprio was another one big big advocate for climate change but I think it's good it gets into a different space but he has a private jet and a yacht and and you know I think that's hard for people to reconcile those two things so when you're when you're talking to people you have to let them save face you can't there's no argument or debate or negotiation that you can just drive someone in a corner and have that work out there's a book my dad made me read years ago called win-win negotiation I don't know if any of you have ever read it so my dad ran a company down Massachusetts and there's this book and I guess they used to give it to a lot of salesmen it I think it was maybe from the 60s or mid 60s the the whole premise of it though was that it was this you the point of it is for you to both think you won because that's how you get the deal done if someone goes in there and just tries to to to ran it down your throat nobody wants that everybody backs away from it so now we can't we can't give people the out of not believing in climate change but what you can do is is soften when you're talking about it for example I'll when someone says it's cyclical I'll say well most people don't realize this like you're not alone but and and then hit them with and how it really works or sometimes in rural areas when I've talked to Maynard's about it I go back on this line which is I'm not telling you specifically what to do about it but I'm telling you the science behind it is sound and process that and then maybe in a couple of years they'll come back and say all right well maybe I want to do something about it but I'm not going to get someone to believe in climate change ditch their F 350 in the same day it's just not going to happen so it has to be sequential so they feel like they are coming to it you are not telling them what to do I think that's really really big I mean I've got a friend who who is the F 350 super duty guy he builds coal power plants in Central America okay and and somehow we're friends it's amazing but what I've done is I've worked on him slowly about about what's really happening and I don't know if I can take credit for this or not but he recently quit his job and he's now going to be a realtor over here so I'm like I don't probably wasn't me but I worked on him slowly there's no way I could go into that friendship and be like what are you doing you know it just we wouldn't be friends and then I'd have no voice so I think giving people these incremental ideas it seems to help another thing is you talk about saving energy saving money let's make those the more we can make those go together the better like heat pumps are great right people getting them in droves it's not because they want to save the environment in general it's because it saves a ton of money and they work great so the more technology we have where it's not mutually exclusive all you got to drive this electric car but it only goes 150 miles you know that kind of stuff that as technology advances I think that helps us a lot because it's not a choice about the environment or the product you can get both in one I mean these heat pump guys they're booked out for five months again they're not all people who are like I want to stop using oil they want to save money you know and so the more technology that comes about like that that's win-win the better because now you're not making people yeah it's great if you want to sacrifice but most people are going to think in terms of their day-to-day life and if you can't make it better for them if you're just asking them just to sacrifice that's a harder sell but if you can say well you can get these save money and help the environment that's great you need concern scientists that did they did what's called dial testing you get is anyone familiar with that so they use it in TV basically they show you an ad a show or whatever and you've got a dial and the baseline is neutral and as soon as you see something you like you turn it up when you see something you don't like you turn it down and it just it gives you this great line graph in correlation with the video so when they see me they turn it way down everyone knows nobody likes me so they did this with a couple of ads and it was about efficiency of your your home about getting your home insulated and they ran these two ads and the first one was like it's great save me so much money and efficiency me gives me rebates blah blah and people like so they divide them by political groups because they felt like that was a good idea so they had independent a Democratic Republican so everybody's going up they like it they like it and it just kind of stays that way it's positive 75% positive they did the same ad and in it she says and it's also great because I'm helping out with climate change when she says that word the the red line goes almost to zero the point of that was in that case did you need did it even help you to mention it or should you just get people to insulate their houses save energy and everybody's good yes no it's kind of what you did specs so the blue line for for the Democratic self-identifying didn't change it just stayed positive the independent dipped a little but it was really the red line that just went this was last year this yeah so it's very recent I thought that was really enlightening just to see trigger words and of course ironically it was changed from global warming to climate change because they found climate global warming was too political well what we're learning is it doesn't matter what we call it so we probably should just stick with one now but that was kind of a microcosm of my approach of it is let's get people to do the environmentally friendly thing but it's not always going to be a case of your motives being the same as their motives and I think that's okay I toss the idea out in front of a panel one time that got me some interesting looks of is it possible we should spend more time back on the pollution argument because I don't know anybody who likes pollution pollution like talking about let's because all these coal I mean natural gas is cleaner but it's not clean you know that that's kind of a that's kind of a farce that the natural gas is clean it's better but it's not the idea of like maybe we should spend more time on this the fossil fuels are polluting and this is a problem and nobody wants that for the kids and blah blah blah and then along the way we're lowering emissions and ultimately winning the war instead of the battle I don't know that they didn't go for it but it was just a thought I had of like what are we trying to do we're trying to reduce emissions and save the planet does it matter if we get to say we're right or should we just do it the way that works and I think pollution a lot of even climate change deniers will say to me look you know I'm not a fan of fossil fuels they pollute and they're bad but and so it kind of even that baseline works with most people who are climate change deniers the idea that yeah we probably shouldn't be relying upon this for a number of reasons in the future so I almost wonder if like there's a pivot ahead here at some point we have to say doesn't feel like it feels like we're just going in the opposite directions but the come-together move might be nobody wants our kids breathing this it's it's just obviously bad in general and we're gonna run out of it so maybe we should fix this problem but right I mean I lived in Atlanta for a while and you get an ozone day down there and it was you know you could see it you'd fly into the airport and just see it sitting right well I actually think that's the best skill you can have right now with this or really a lot of things is is letting people be upset and not matching that energy even if you don't convince them you'll convince them that you're a decent person so what I find is that online is a lot of different than in person especially for me because in person people some people kind of know me so I very rarely have gotten people who have come up to me and argue climate change to my face like it's it's you know and and so this is a tactic I tried for a while and then I realized it was too adversarial so I dropped it is sometimes I get these people online and they'd be throwing all these links at me I said why don't you come into the studio and we'll we'll debate climate change no Google we'll just sit down and no one would show up of course what I was trying to say to them was do you really know anything about this or do you just looking things up but but it was too adversarial and so I think what you're the best thing you can do it's hard to make other some people care about other people right and so somebody brought up gun control that is a good example I mean do you think anybody likes watching on TV seeing kids I mean most people at some point of kids and they should be able to feel what that feels like but doesn't always work that way and so I think they either have to be impacted by the natural disaster themselves or I think the better thing is if you can weather their anger it does typically bring it down if it doesn't after 20 minutes then you're probably never gonna get there you know no I mean I think we're in the same page like I said it's in its incremental I don't think like I think all this all of this is a negotiation whether or not we like it we know we're right but it doesn't change the it doesn't change how we have to get there and so just shoving it down people's and I have some concerns about how it's stream it's getting on every side on each side you know because I think it's the more the more one-side shouts about the world's gonna end in a couple of years the more the other side says this a bunch and so we just we're not coming we're getting there and so everybody's trying to win outright and I just I think that there's no question of course that that we are the cause of this warming but if we keep pushing in polar stratified directions how are we gonna resolve it how are we gonna get there luckily other countries are doing it and we're still doing it our emissions are down quite a bit now per capita we're terrible and that's and that's something I've talked to people often I'll meet guys in construction or something we'll say yeah but like look what China's doing I said yeah but they also have way more people than us so but per capita I think we're second in the world and I forget who's number one I don't know if it's depends so Pew Research has done a few of these and I think it's gone actually kind of gone in the wrong direction recently but what's interesting is it's stratified within political beliefs beyond what you would think so younger more conservative people believe it at a much higher rate than older conservative people so it's actually in general dragging that party upward but there was not much debate about it even not no no debate wasn't as much stratification about it even in the 2007 2008 range that's I wasn't I never gave these talks before because it didn't need to everybody was not everybody it's just kind of an accepted thing hey we got to fix this and and then somewhere along the lines it became this very divisive thing and that's when I decided to jump into the the ring is to try to bring it down but yeah I mean I think most people who the first step is getting them to believe the science is sound and then I think everything else follows relatively naturally but you can't make it financially it's appreciating for people and I think that's the thing it's like everybody's got their own life and their own backyard and if you make it too hard for them to do the right thing it doesn't always happen and so those are those borderline people the 5050 people like I said they'll put the heat pumps in but don't make it cost more money and that's kind of and luckily our technology is is advancing relatively quickly that's the other thing I wanted to talk about briefly is I mentioned the world's gonna end in X number of years and as I said I have no I have no interest in how people vote I do have a problem with some of these headlines that come out on both sides of politicians that don't put it in context or don't and they're just ammunition you know the idea that the 12-year thing that that was so widely spread that the world's gonna end in 12 years if we don't fix this of course what the point was trying to be made was this is the last possible tipping point most likely for us to fix this but that's not what came out and that's not what was sound you know the sound bite and so you know my my Twitter in the days and weeks following that was people saying also the world's gonna end in 12 years I'll check back with you in 12 years you know and and so these are the sound bites that are so so dangerous on both sides a guy going into Congress look it's a snowball there's no climate change you know like it it's not it's not one-sided it's not one-sided it's there are people speaking out of turn on the left and the right who don't know what they're talking about and I think that's very very dangerous like you might have the right intention but to put it out of context let let the scientists do the science policies very important but you've got to be careful because those kind of soundbites live forever like Al Gore's he had some famous one about New York City that didn't play out and that lives on on the internet because he was wrong at the time no the scientists did not believe that was the consensus it doesn't matter though that's where it is and so you know mark my words if Twitter still exists in 12 years people will say I thought the world was gonna end in 12 years so but you know like I said both sides need to just watch their sound bites you know because that's all that comes out it doesn't matter if you talk for an hour and they get that one that that out of context doesn't make any sense you know it's it's it hurts the whole cause just have one more point and then any questions you have oh small-dose science so this is something I learned in meteorology to my first job meteorology I would get up on TV it's Brolin to Vermont and I'm talking about deformation zones which is where air stretches in a storm and my news director comes down and goes don't ever say that on TV again like if you can't explain that in 30 seconds do not say it and so that's kind of true with some of this science too if you can't nugget it down you're gonna lose people and sources are important especially online and this is crazy but true it's best if the sources are not even from the United States British Canadian it makes people try to link somebody who is a climate change denier to something from CNN it's not gonna work out it doesn't matter it's not gonna happen so you've got to have these sources that are that are outside the realm of what they believe to be biased media often I just link them directly to the paper and I'm sure nobody has ever read a paper that I've linked but at least it it goes right to the source but yeah if you try to use you know CNN NBC any of them any of the major ones they're just gonna they're not even gonna look at it they're just gonna say well that's from whatever I like I actually like NASA a little bit for a number of reasons one of which is if you're politically tribal about it you can point out that currently the administration is on your side and look it's still on their website it's still and they do pretty good you know half to one page dives on it there's also a site called skeptical science that's really good that's actually a good site to learn he's got these top ten denier myths he just clicked through him and he's got three levels it's basic intermediate and in-depth and so you can learn as much about it as you'd like to skeptical science it's a it's really good because like I said he's seen it all and he just kind of lays out the different rebuttal points for each one of those but yeah the source is really important I've seen that a lot and our job I mean you know Pat and in these other ankles to tell you they've never seen quite a time quite like this as far as people just outright saying whatever you're saying is not true luckily at the local level we've kept trust research wise at a much higher level you know when they've done when they do studies on this local news is far beyond cable and network as far as trust level I think it's partially personalities and and people they've known for a while so we have an opportunity to change sometimes because I don't think people look at channel six the same way they look at nightly news or what we're seeing and or whatever because these are people they've seen Pat's been there forever Cindy's been there forever are they suddenly just making stuff up you know and I think we can leverage that and use that positively but yeah sources are always whenever I can I find one from Fox News if I can I will find one from from that's for what they they feel is the most credible source there are there are actually occasions where they'll do a story on it and it's kind of inadvertent almost it's about the catastrophe that was from climate changer and you can use that and that's really one of the best sources to use if possible but I just that's where we are people will stonewall sources that they think are biased yeah so NPR is great again when they when they do this polling a certain percentage of the country feels NPR is left biased and so linking foot is they believe it is left biased and so they're there they're one of those sources that is one they're one of my favorites they're like one of the few news websites because I usually know what's going on just from being there but one of the few websites I will go to that in 538 statistical analysis one of my favorites too but but to the group we're trying to reach it is still seen as as a left-leaning organization and so it's great for my purposes I don't typically link out from them because people kind of jump on that yeah yeah so well I think so I get this a lot whether it's one of the few times you can have fun on the entire newscast and this is what happens and so the same thing happens I like to ski and if we get a storm and I'm excited about it emails well I have to show my driveway I'm in machias okay I understand that but like we're also people and so sometimes our own interests do get in there I think as long as you're equal opportunity about it like I don't think you have any business being a weather person up here and only loving the heat and hitting the winter you know I mean like that's gonna be a long year I take each I take each season in it in stride here because it is what it is and if you don't love them all it can you know I mean look at look at this this man I mean this is like you know this is not nobody writes it's not a postcard time from from Maine right now you know I do understand we're saying I just think it's one of the few moments where they can have fun in the newscast and so to be serious through the whole thing you know I think it'd be tough on our ratings to you know it's an entertainment wise I think you can and I think I've proven that in that I've sometimes kept track of things like if I put a climate change video on Facebook I look to see the next day how many people did I lose how many people left the page because they don't want to hear this and surprisingly it's it's very minimal and sometimes it goes the other way because people say well good good he went after this so I think there is an opportunity and local news the problem is it's not going to be something that stations dictate most likely because that's just not been the way that they've ever covered stories where they say you have to talk more about this or that so it's got to be individual and so that's why I went and talked to these 500 kids who are about to graduate is meteorologists because they're like the next line that I want to go out there and start and and do what I'm doing now if they end up you know in Alabama the first job doing weekends they might have a hard time doing this some of it has to do with your brand too you know when I came back I had enough people who liked me that I could get away get away with it in a way and I wouldn't and nobody would come to me and say you should probably stop doing this or or you know people are upset about this because we get some like I said we get with people threaten to sue our station over a climate change thing I did you know crazy but but they stood by me I think one because they have the right values but two because they felt like I was enough of an entity in this market that they could they could stand by me and say you know but that next line of TV meteorologists I think is important because they can help on any given day it might be the only scientists people watch of any kind you know so it's unfortunately falling on our shoulders even though it's really not totally what we do you know we have atmospheric science degree is not climatology we're second in line for understanding this but but we're more visible like there's a guy Andrew Pershing down at Gulf of Maine Research Institute is great he knows so much but people see him it doesn't matter you know he puts out these reports these PDFs and then all right you know it's a press release I've had him on a few times he's really good but if I don't get him on TV nobody sees it you know and so it's really about communicating that way so meteorologists I think are really important and there's a whole group that started called them climate matters that all they do is make graphics about climate change individuals by individualized by market to send to TV meteorologists because they realize disseminating it this way might be a good way to get people to turn so I don't usually use their graphs but sometimes they'll give me a good idea to do a segment on you know just because I like to have my own stuff I don't like to use other people's data and all that but I think it's a good frontline for sure I don't think we can if we change it I don't think it's gonna matter in fact people who are skeptics will point out that it changed because they think because it didn't warm fast enough so I've heard that so many times you had to change it from global warming to climate change because it wasn't warming anymore so I actually think it was a mistake to change it but nobody asked me so it is what it is now I think we're better off just staying with climate change and riding that out I like a little bit better because that is the problem yes there are a lot of things that come off of that but I liked it because it it was our original premise and it is happening I would have kept driving that direction but again the research they did said this is too politically tribal of a word so we need to change this phrase and then they changed it and it became you know it is what it is you can call whatever you want it's you can call a Tesla at f350 you know carpenters aren't gonna buy it all of a sudden and so I think we're trying to change the name isn't gonna happen isn't gonna change anything people who are skeptics almost always call it global warming 90% 90% of the time they'll come at me say well global warming was supposed to do this or if climate change saying climate change is almost like saying I accept it so they'll usually say global warming I know it's gonna I know what the conversation is gonna be like if they start like that I guess is the best way to put it no but if I did I'd know I'm in good shape you know and so I've started doing some like else club talks and Rotary Club where I well but it's not about climate change but then it becomes about climate change because I think that's like we started this conversation about echo chambers and so if I talked to a bunch of people on board I can help but really I need to get people who aren't on board so I'll go and do a talk we'll talk about main weather for 20 minutes and then I'll bet guess what climate change didn't tell you about this and it's good because I'll get 50 60 people in a room and I just I'll kind of scan and by the reactions I can tell 30 of them are not on but I think that's good I think they wouldn't have come to a change but I talked by me about climate change so if I can get them there to talk about local weather and then shift gears it's a bit of a bait and switch but I do talk about the weather as well I think that works really well and they've invited me back it's all like don't ever come back here again you know it's just you know it tends to it's become my new Todd calls it the Trojan horse you know approach where it would come in and we talked about and then we you know shift over but it gives it's new people it's people who are not already on your side it's less comfortable but I think it's more impactful probably you know in the short term yes so methane is is more powerful of a greenhouse gas than co2 but it does not stay in atmosphere nearly as long and so it's important if you want to drop it quickly methane would be a good way to do it but co2 is the bigger threat because it's accumulating in the atmosphere and so there's a movie called cow spiercy it's about how beef is the real problem and it's interesting because it's it's half correct the agriculture all the support necessary to raise cattle is the is the problem there you're taking out so many trees and these carbon sinks the methane that comes out of a cow is actually part of the natural cycle of carbon to begin with so that cow got that from grass and if they hadn't eaten it and then farted out they would the grass or the plant would eventually die and release that anyways so that's actually I thought that was interesting it's a two-hour documentary and I'm like but you missed the carbon cycle however the footprint of beef is huge because of the other factors that are necessary to raise cattle so that's that's interesting you'll see some of these documentaries are funny because they're like they have the right intentions but you wish they had asked a few more people along the way you know because I watched it and I thought it was really good and the message is still correct which is if we can reduce our impact or amount of meat we will take down co2 but methane yeah I mean it's a short-term solution but co2 is the problem because we can't get it out of the atmosphere and we and I've always said like we know how to warm the atmosphere up again if we need to but we don't really know how to cool it down yet and that's you know we they're experimenting a little bit with what some people think has been going on for years the chemtrails I'm not sure if you've heard so but they I mean they've started thinking about well can we can we go and put aerosols into the atmosphere and reflect the light back but I don't know that these are games we want to be playing I think that the atmosphere is too complex to be messing around with this stuff but they're looking for backup plans because we're not sure if we're gonna fix it in time it's not looking great 1816 year without summer we just talked about actually because it's yeah and it's bright I didn't know that that's interesting 1816 yeah 1816 they had eight days with below freezing lows in June in Maine it was a volcano in Indonesia don't call me on this because of the tea no it wasn't Krakatoa it was it was like Tam Tambo or something yeah yeah and it so yep it had is it had a ton of ejected a ton of particulate some of it settled but the rest of it was carried into more poleward regions and and the global temperature dropped 0.7 degrees Celsius in one year that which is crazy if you think about what we're talking about for this the span with with climate change a little bit but it it's more of it it's more of cooling simply by not allowing the sun in that's the main thing that's why I said there's a chance we'll get bailed out by Mother Nature like that's not really how we want to do it because there's problems with agriculture and whatnot but if you had a massive eruption you know two years in a row you could lose a degree Celsius on the global temperature of course if it didn't sit up there long enough it would just go back to where it was before because you're not getting rid of the CO2 yeah there's some things we'll never recover but I think the best way to talk to most people about it though is is a cost-benefit analysis of like we've got all these cities along the coastline okay so avenge I think we can survive I think we're a pretty smart species I think we could survive a plus four plus five world you know by adapting with technology however we built our infrastructure already and a lot of it is along the coastline especially in this country so what let's think about this is it caught is it better to bite the bullet a little bit now with increased energy costs in some cases for cleaner or do we want to move these cities you know or do we want to prop them up or do we want to rebuild stuff and and and that's something I don't think gets enough attention is let's talk to people about dollars and cents you know doesn't like that's how the military thinks about it if they famously have climate change in their papers in administration that is not a fan of climate change but they're trying to protect the bottom line they're saying okay Norfolk Virginia we got a plan because this this water is going to be here so when it comes down to money all of a sudden everybody's a believer so I think that that I've talked to climate central about this let's get some graphics about what it's going to cost to move you know prop up these cities build walls see walls in Boston New York City all these places that were backfilled or what does it cost for us to just stop doing this because that usually works money usually works you know people being displaced I mean again unfortunately you're asking people to care about other people and I think it's like that's that's something you either have or you don't have and if you don't have it it doesn't matter what what you I guess I'm a realist when it comes to that like tell people why it makes more sense to do it this way and then you don't even have to win them over on the argument you just have to say it's going to cost us $58 billion to build the Chesapeake Bay this way or we can cut carbon emissions and subsidize solar and it'll cost us $20 billion okay you know ever then everybody wins but I don't know nobody's really gone after that that's well I mean everybody likes to save money right but certainly that's been a core value of conservative is let's let's try to save money let's you know so if we can do that then yeah I don't drive enough to do podcast yet don't forget I'm gonna have to start biking now so yeah I've not seen it I asked the director of climate central about that have you seen any analysis or another analysis I asked for was number of doctors who believe that smoking doesn't cause cancer because they're out there so they're there they're a qualified scientist who a climate deniers and they and I can name a lot of them by name because they keep getting linked at me by deniers and I always say well there's gonna be five or ten people who are qualified and something who are just wrong and there are doctors out there who gonna who gonna tell you that smoking doesn't cause cancer but you probably think that it does so so that's another graphic I'd love to see like 99 point whatever percent of doctors you know believe this but there are some here that don't who do what side do you want to what side do you want to be on in this argument you know people just don't think it through I mean I watched one of those real estate shows and was showing this new development in Miami you like oh I'm here so you know climate change is not gonna be a problem for you the water can't reach you I'm like well sure but you're not gonna be able to leave your house waterfront is a problem we did we did a story about flood insurance how it's nationally subsidized and I met with the director of FEMA in Maine and she was basically saying when the government got into it it's because we assumed eventually people would stop building in places that they get knocked down by water we were wrong and so some of these have been built famously 10 15 times over and over again and and ultimately it is subsidized by the government because no private insurance will take on that risk and of course my argument is stop yeah make them take on the risk for any cost right exactly yeah I don't want people there are people who have inherited ocean house that don't have a lot of money I mean or long rivers that flood you're right so rebuild them somewhere else or make them private insurance will get into the game for the right price there is no asset they won't ensure for the right price but if it's prohibitively expensive maybe people will rethink it and not to say you shouldn't be able to live along the water but there are smart ones that are already there some that are already there might get washed away eventually okay versus building right there when you know what's happening you know like Whole Foods down here is an example of that where hey like spoiler alert that floods all the time