In 1933, in the midst of the Great Depression and a devastating bank panic, Franklin Delano Roosevelt addressed the nation in his first “fireside chat”. In the radio broadcast, he used layman’s terms to explain the banking crisis and describe the actions he was taking to address it. That address succeeded in calming fears and building support for Roosevelt’s legislative agenda.
We are now faced with a crisis that, while less obvious than the Great Depression, is no even more serious and urgent: Climate change. While the science is clear, the public discourse is confused and confusing. A large swath of the public, hearing doubts expressed with such conviction, simply doesn’t know what to think, and instead focuses on issues that seem closer to home. This swath of the public needs to be addressed directly, in layman’s terms, explaining the science, the consequences, and the urgency of global warming.
On inauguration day, President Joe Biden asked the country to listen to him, and for a brief period of time, people will. But that period will be very short. Please speak to us now.
WHAT THIS MIGHT LOOK LIKE
The following sections are suggestive of topics that could be covered in one or more fireside-chat-like presentations on the climate crisis (with images and video). These sections are not meant to be prescriptive, only to give ideas. Just be aware that it isn’t enough to say, “Trust the scientists” — in his first fireside chat, FDR didn’t just say, “Trust the economists”, he explained in a few simple sentences what people needed to understand about how the banking system works.
A Few Suggested Topics and How They Might Be Explained
The basic science behind climate change is very easy to see in action. Place some dry ice (frozen carbon dioxide) in a jar in the sun next to a jar containing nothing but air. You will quickly find that the jar with carbon dioxide heats up significantly more than the one filled with air. Similarly, as we add carbon dioxide to the atmosphere by burning fossil fuels, the atmosphere is warming around us.
There Is No Other Explanation for our Current Warming
When they hear dire predictions, many people understandably wonder whether the warming we have experienced is really caused by humans. Those who question the role of humans have tried mightily to find other explanations for the warming we have experienced over the last two centuries, but without success. A prominent candidate for an explanation is increased heat output from the sun due to sunspots, which are known to slightly increase the temperature on Earth. Unfortunately for people making this argument, over the last thirty years, as warming has increased dramatically, sunspots have actually been at a low ebb. In fact, recently solar heat output has approached the lowest level since accurate record keeping began in 1750.
The Significance of Even a 1° C Increase in Temperature
When the average person hears that the temperature may rise by 1, 2, 3, or 4 degrees by the end of the century, that doesn’t seem like much. But what people need to understand is the difference between daily temperatures and the Earth’s global average temperature. The global average temperature is extremely stable. Since the last Ice Age, it has remained right around 57° F (14° C). Even in the depths of the Ice Age, the global average temperature was only about 5° C (9° F) colder then now.
A one-degree global change is significant because it takes a vast amount of heat to warm all the oceans, atmosphere, and land by that much. In the past, a one- to two-degree drop was all it took to plunge the Earth into the Little Ice Age. A five-degree drop was enough to bury a large part of North America under a towering mass of ice 20,000 years ago.
NASA Earth Observatory
It is vital for us to keep warming below 1.5° C. But a business as usual approach is predicted to result in a rise in temperature of around 3° C. The United Nations Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC)
The Consequences So Far
Climate change is already apparent: Wildfires in California, increased number and intensity of hurricanes, punishing drought in the American Southwest, 500-year floods occurring one year after another. Scientists used to say that it was impossible to attribute any one weather event to climate change, but that is no longer the case. With the evolution of attribution science, we can now quickly estimate how the increased likelihood of an extreme weather event, and the percentage of the intensity of any event that is due to global warming. For example, we can tell that Hurricane Harvey’s rainfall was as much as 38% greater than it would have been without climate change.
Aside from the loss of life due to extreme weather events, climate change is very expensive. According to Morgan Stanley, climate change-related disasters cost North America $415 Billion over the three years 2016-2018.
Why Time Is of the Essence
Global warming has been compared to a supertanker, which has a tremendous amount of inertia and takes a very long time to stop. Similarly, the climate has inertia, due to two primary causes:
- Because carbon dioxide lasts in the atmosphere for a very long time (300-1,000 years), even after we decrease emissions, it will take a long time for the concentration of greenhouse gases to diminish.
- So far, about 90% of the increased heat has been stored in the oceans. Due to that store of heat, even after we decrease emissions it will take centuries or millennia for the temperature to decrease.
Addressing Economic Issues
The White House is rightly taking action on climate change, including stopping the Keystone XL pipeline and preventing drilling in the Arctic National Refuge. It is appropriate, however, to address economic fears that actions like this can raise.
- What are the advantages to the economy in shifting to sustainable fuels?
- What assistance will be given to displaced workers?
