Earth - The Operator’s Manual - Professor Richard Alley Part 1

Jesse Reimink: Welcome to planet geo the podcast where we talk about our amazing planet, how it works and why it matters to you.

 What you're about to hear is part one of our interview with professor Richard alley. Richard alley is a member of my department here in Penn state university. He's a senior member in our department. He's an extremely prolific researcher educator, And a very famous professor at Penn state. He's in the national academy of sciences. He is the Evan P university professor. He has won Penn state's top teaching award. And as you will hear in this interview, those are all very well deserved. So this is part one where we're talking about science communication, really with professor Richard alley tune in next week to part two, where we will get into some really interesting aspects of glaciers and dive deeper into Richard's research topics.

you can support us by visiting our website, go to planet geo us. And you will find a page there where you can help support planet geo, you can find all sorts of other information about who we are, what we're doing here and past episodes. So visit our website, planet geo cast.com or find us on all the social medias at planet geo cast or send us an email planet geo cast, gmail.com. We hope you enjoy part one of our interview with professor Richard alley. Enjoy.

 Okay. So we're gonna shift gears here a little bit and talk about, um, Media I guess in communicating science, cuz as I said before in the intro, you're an amazing teacher award winning in all venues at Penn state. But you've also been in the, the media space a little bit too. You have an IMDB page, which I don't know if I know of another geoscientist who has an IMDB page. And so you've done a lot of stuff and I think I kind of wanna know what's your favorite? Which one are you most proud of? I don't know if those are the same question or not, but you've communicated science in your science to a lot of different people, including the Senate and vice presidents. I don't know. What are you most proud of in this space?

Professor Richard Alley: Yeah, I, I don't know. I mean, , it has been very fun. It has been, been a, a wonderful opportunity for me. And I've learned so much. , I probably learned the most going to Greenland for a long weekend, with 10% of the Senate. And I, I tell this story over and over and over again, that when they closed the door on the plane and we headed for Greenland, those 10 senators were among the most interesting and interested people I've met. They are, they know a lot. They know how the world works. They want fairly well focused answers. And I might natter on a little too much, but, but they were just wonderful people. But when the door opened, they're sort of on script. If the press is there and partially, I think that's because there's no one is so smart that they can in real time Adlib anything in a way that they are confident that their words won't be misused. because if you say a million words as a Senator and 10 of them are wrong, those 10 will be on the television, uh, every 20 minutes until the election. So this is a very hard thing to do. And then there's the, I have to think politics. I have to think what my side is saying or what I've said in the past. So they tend to, quit being really smart, really interested people, looking for solutions and they become people who are back on script. And I think it's completely understandable, but

Jesse Reimink: yeah. I mean, that's, that's actually, I find that kind of heartening actually. Um, cuz I've never known anybody in politics or really met anybody in politics, but I find that heartening that actually behind closed doors, there is solution finding and you know, intelligent nuance stuff happening, cuz it's not just what you see on Twitter, right? Like it's not just what somebody's

saying on Twitter. That is actually their thoughts being projected onto Twitter.

Professor Richard Alley: Right.

Jesse Reimink: yeah, I find that in

heartening, I guess. Yeah.

Professor Richard Alley: So that was my, my best education. I think my, my most fun was doing the, PBS mini series.

So

I

Jesse Reimink: the earth, the operators

manual is that,

Professor Richard Alley: operator's manual. Yes.

Jesse Reimink: give us the, the, how, give us the backstory behind that and, and the pitch, I guess, or sort of a short summary and where to find it, where people can find it too.

Professor Richard Alley: So, so backstory, I worked a little bit with a fellow named Jeff ha styles, uh, and married to earn Kuo. Uh, Jeff did the original cosmos with Carl Sagan. He is a remarkable that there as a pair, those two are just a remarkable team. We were doing something else and he said, why don't we do a, a big project and write a book and we'll get some funding and we'll do a big project. And we worked very heavily on this being solutions oriented as well as problems oriented. So if we, we, humans don't deal with climate. We face big problems. If we do deal with climate, we have these huge, wonderful opportunities to just do great things. And there's a lot of. Climate problems. And I talk through them and how we know and all of this, but the solution space in that just blows me away. And they, they found some really great people to talk to. So, the section on the Texas ranchers who saved the ranch and they saved the town and they saved the high school because they put in wind energy and you put 5% of the ranch into roads and, and towers. And what have you. And 95% of the ranch is ranch, but the, the wind pays better than the ranch does. And they call it mailbox money. Cuz you go out to the mailbox and you get money out of it. We talked to Marines, in the Afghan and Iraq wars. Half or more of the casualties were on fuel convoys, convoys, carrying fuel and water. A Marine base knows how to protect themselves. They're good at it. But if you have to drive fuel across a country where people can plant improvised, explosive devices, it becomes very, very dangerous. So every time you install renewable energy in the forward base, you saved lives.

Jesse Reimink: Hm.

Professor Richard Alley: And it's that simple. I mean, it really is. And so the, the solution space was what was, was really fun there. And we just had a ball doing, that and they came up with just some wonderful thing. I got to go bunchy jumping. Right. so. Which was, was cool. And we're, we're filming in caves and then floating out of the cave in, in inner tubes. And it was, we had a, had a lot of fun doing very interesting things with that. It is now available. If you look for my name and earth, the operators manual on YouTube, they're all up there. So

Jesse Reimink: I mean, that is very, very cool. How does one, so, you know, in the, the vein of you are, career aspirational for me, how do you get this gig? I mean, that's what I'm after. Like how do you, what do I gotta do to do this part two or something?

Professor Richard Alley: I, I wish I knew, but mine was very fortunate because it was, I had gotten just. You know, appearances that I got asked to be part of this polar za that, Jeff styles was doing. And then he said, well, let's do this. we sort of hit it off. And so he said, let's do this. But you know, we've had other things that we've gotten to do here. I help teach a large. Course called geology, the national parks. And for that one, when we decided to put it together and put it online, the way we did it, we got a little support from our college, the college of earth and mineral sciences at Penn state. And we got a cause class and the center for advanced undergraduate studies and experiences. And we recruited a dozen advanced students and we got, our local PBS affiliate w PSU sent over really good people who Tom kit and others who taught them how film. And then we took 'em to the bottom of the grand canyon and they filmed what they were seeing. And we went to Mesa, Verde and arches and capital reef, and then they filmed and the students made little film clips as part of their. Experience. And then we wrapped a course around those. WPSU won a regional Emmy for the film showing what the students were doing at the parks. So, so, you know, there are, there are ways

Chris Bolhuis: Well, yeah, Jesse, I can answer this question too. Okay. You have to be a very dynamic speaker. You have to like be a topnotch researcher. You have to be extremely smart and personable. So you have no shot, jesse. You know, this is just not gonna

Jesse Reimink: There's no, way

Professor Richard Alley: no. no. no. Jesse, you guys would be great on the field, you know, and the truth is you too would be great, you know, get a camera and head off or the head off for the black Hills

Jesse Reimink: got Chris here. We can't have cameras around. I mean,

So Chris, Chris, I can tell, you're ready to

go. Chris. I.

can see you, the veins coming outta your forehead. You're itching to go right now. Yeah. Go

Chris Bolhuis: Well, so I wanna go back to a question real quick, Richard, that when you took 10 senators to Greenland, was that a committee? Did it span political parties? What did that look like? Just real quick.

Professor Richard Alley: Yeah, was, it was bipartisan you can probably find some record of it. In, in the senatorial records. It was called Coell boxer, C O D E L Kotel. And then, um, Senator boxer from California was the chair. We had Senator Mike Kolsky, uh, Senator co um, Senator Klobuchar, um, senators, a very, very Senator white house. From Rhode Island, who's married to a Marine biologist. Who's very, very good. Um, it was a bipartisan. It was just absolutely fascinating. And, we're we're flying this, this is true. If you go up, we were flying along the front of the, the Calvin cliff of Jacob Sovan, glacier. And this thing is what you can see sitting above the water is, the equivalent of a 30 story high building. So, you know, it's a hundred meters, so 330 feet what's below is, you know, nine times that, so it's a really big cliff. And when you fly along there in the helicopter, there are cracks that are 10 stories high in the front of this thing. And occasionally it breaks off. And when it breaks off and makes an earthquake that we can hear in the Dyke building. And it depends state because it's a, a magnitude five plus earthquake. and the pilot, actually, this is, this is true. The pilot says, how close do you want me to get? And I this 10 story cracks. If you

Chris Bolhuis: Yes, snuggle up nice and tight to

Professor Richard Alley: right. I said, these are senators. You better move it out a little, but, boy, did I wanna tell him to move it

Jesse Reimink: yeah. Yeah, no.

Chris Bolhuis: that's right.

Jesse Reimink: Oh man. Rich is like fly right up. One of those things and all

the

Chris Bolhuis: yeah, just

Jesse Reimink: no, no, no,

Chris Bolhuis: SI right up onto that. That's awesome.

Jesse Reimink: Hey, that's a wrap for this week. Join us next week for part two, with professor Richard, Allie, as always, you can follow us on all the social medias we are at planet geo cast. Send us an email planet, geo cast, gmail.com. You can visit our website, planet geo cast.com and there you can support us. There's a support us tab there, and you can learn about us and what we do and see past episodes as usual share planet geo with somebody you think might enjoy.

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