And...We're Back! The Greenhouse Effect
Dr. Jesse Reimink: [00:00:00]
Welcome to Planet Geo, the podcast where we talk about our amazing planet, how it works, and why it matters to you.
Kristoff, hi,
Chris Bolhuis: What, how you doing? Dr. Dr. E.
Dr. Jesse Reimink: it's, I think, I should transition to being called Professor Reimink by you, don't you think that's appropriate?
Chris Bolhuis: wait a minute, wait a minute. I would so much, if I was in your [00:00:30] situation, I would so much rather be called doctor than, no, actually I understand. Cause you know, we all know who the real doctor is in the Reimink household and it ain't you.
Dr. Jesse Reimink: That's true. That's true. Who was it? Was it Andrew said at our wedding, he said, will the real Dr. Roic please stand up? That was
Chris Bolhuis: yes,
Dr. Jesse Reimink: the best line
Chris Bolhuis: once in a while, Handy Andy can come up with a funny line. That was great.
Dr. Jesse Reimink: a good one. Such a good one. And I, you know what? It's very true. I mean, let's be
Chris Bolhuis: So I [00:01:00] understand you, now I know why you want to be called Professor Reimink. Yeah,
Dr. Jesse Reimink: To differentiate, between, you know, Dr. Rhyming. I had a funny, uh, sort of, I had an exchange with one of our neighbors who, I forget what happened, some, some minor, you know, kind of injury thing. And I just sent a text saying, Hey, you know, everything all right. Just remember, you know, we have an ER doc in our house.
If, if things come up, you can come over. And, uh, he's responded with, Oh yeah, we got such useful neighbors. I always forget you guys are so useful. And I was like, well, [00:01:30] well, well, one of us is useful. And then, uh, he
Chris Bolhuis: is your use?
Dr. Jesse Reimink: exactly. He responded with a good one. He said, well, you know, if I need like somebody to help geolocate something, I'm sure you could maybe help.
And I thought
Chris Bolhuis: don't think you
Dr. Jesse Reimink: and I was like, no, I think Google's got that really under control,
Chris Bolhuis: yeah, yeah. You're actually quite useless. You
Dr. Jesse Reimink: more useless than the average human, actually. Yep.
Chris Bolhuis: it, you, you're not very handy with anything.
Dr. Jesse Reimink: I'm a detriment.
Chris Bolhuis: you actually are, [00:02:00] I'm, I'm
Dr. Jesse Reimink: Hold on. Oh, well, okay. I,
Chris Bolhuis: realize this, you're not a very handy person,
Dr. Jesse Reimink: well, I don't know about not handy. I can do stuff. I
Chris Bolhuis: you know what you are good at, okay, you're good for sitting on my front porch, drinking a couple beers, and having fun, interesting, intellectual conversations, you're good for that, I'll
Dr. Jesse Reimink: that's my main contribution. Yeah, that's my main contribution. You know what, Chris,
Chris Bolhuis: than that, it's about it,
Dr. Jesse Reimink: you've got to come, uh, you've got to come to our house because, I've been doing some project stuff. It's not like handy, you know, fixing stuff, but I've [00:02:30] got some cool projects that I'll show you.
I've been
Chris Bolhuis: alright, I want an example though, what are you doing,
Dr. Jesse Reimink: well, we've got the rock sauce. I'm always making rock stuff, but
Chris Bolhuis: yeah, yeah, you're good at that, I will, I will say that, you are good at that,
Dr. Jesse Reimink: You guys see some of the ones we made recently. They're, they're fricking awesome. Some of the Uncapapa I cut some of that Uncapapa that we collected a decade or more, or way more than that ago.
and it is, this stuff, Chris, is just so beautiful. I've got a set of four bookends of the really pink and white and purple, like the really finely [00:03:00] laminated colorful stuff with all the
Chris Bolhuis: yeah,
Dr. Jesse Reimink: And I've got them oriented, like, vertically, and they're like a set of four that all match, and it's just beautiful.
Really cool stuff. So we gotta go back to the Black Hills and get more.
Chris Bolhuis: Absolutely, I don't know if I'll do that though. I don't want to brave the rattlesnakes like we did. Um,
Dr. Jesse Reimink: The pit of
Chris Bolhuis: a bit much. That was a bit much.
hey, so what else are you good at though?
Dr. Jesse Reimink: Oh, we had a, um, so we had a big oak tree, well we had a maple tree and [00:03:30] an oak tree come down. you know, they were like leaning over the garage and this kind of stuff. So, unfortunately. Chris's stump service wasn't available at the time. So we had somebody else come in and cut them down. But I have a couple of the stumps And I've been making, side tables out of them. So like cut them into shapes and a couple of them, you know, they kind of split. So I've had to put some like dovetail ties in there. and I think they're turning out pretty well. At least my, my wife is impressed with them.
Chris Bolhuis: Do you use a chainsaw for that
Dr. Jesse Reimink: yeah, well, we talked about this with the batteries thing.
I got a, um, I got an electric chainsaw [00:04:00] that it doesn't power through. What's that?
Chris Bolhuis: Is it a 14 inch bar on that?
Dr. Jesse Reimink: Yeah, it's a. No 14 inch. It's one of the little, it's like a trim one. So it's a little underpowered for like the bigger cuts. It just takes a while to work its way through. But, uh, you know, it does the job and then I trim it up and then I got a router and sander and all that kind of stuff.
So
Chris Bolhuis: Surprisingly though, that chainsaw is, it's impressive, isn't it? It
Dr. Jesse Reimink: is, you know what, I mean, I, we had a big limb come down from one of the catalpa trees in our yard and I just [00:04:30] chopped that thing up really quickly, like super quick. And it, you know, it's all less than one or two inch, um, round thing.
Chris Bolhuis: did you say?
Dr. Jesse Reimink: Uh, it's a Catalpa. It's a C A T A L P A. it's like, you know those ones that grow the big bean stalks? Like the huge little beans? Um, they look like
Chris Bolhuis: of like, um, Trumpet vine grows
Dr. Jesse Reimink: uh, yeah, sort of similar to that. Similar to that. it's not. In the west, or the midwest part of Pennsylvania, it's in the eastern part where it kind of remains humid a lot [00:05:00] longer we have them, so we have a couple in our yard. they're really pretty trees, they hang onto their leaves a lot longer than normal trees around here, and they also, they're kind of, they look a little scraggly though.
And they have tree, their limbs fall off like a lot more frequently. I just don't think they're like, they're not like a big robust oak tree or something.
Chris Bolhuis: Okay, so it's kind of a softer wood then?
Dr. Jesse Reimink: yeah, for sure, for sure. Really kind of spongy. Anyway, wow, I mean, Well, so, I'm very handy, I'm very good at making stuff, uh,
Chris Bolhuis: don't know, our listeners still [00:05:30] don't have a clear understanding as to what you're actually good at. I think maybe we'll put, we can put a pin in. Oh, are you though?
Dr. Jesse Reimink: Explaining, Chris, I'm very good at explaining the greenhouse effect. How about
Chris Bolhuis: Okay. Well, that remains to be seen. We're. good segue, Jesse. That that's what our episode is all about today. We did this a long time ago, three, almost four years ago, Jesse, we cut this episode and we just want to do, we want another crack at it, [00:06:00] because we're a little bit better at podcasting now.
And, we also have another idea. So why don't you tell everybody about that?
Dr. Jesse Reimink: Yeah, so what we've basically done is recorded this episode and a bunch of other ones that are kind of in Earth's climate, the category of Earth's climate, five episodes, we're recording images that go along with them.
And then we've kind of put these together in an audio book that you can find with images on our app, on the Camp Geo app, and we're offering it for sale for a couple bucks there right now. So if you go there now, you can get this episode, which we've removed all the discussion of the [00:06:30] images because in the podcast forum.
We can't provide you with those images, but if you go to our Camp Geo app, you can see the images that, you know, really help, at least to our mind, really help convey these ideas across about this topic.
Chris Bolhuis: That's right. And also our discussions around the images too. that will not be a part of the podcast thing, it'll be a part of the Camp Geo, kind of umbrella,
Dr. Jesse Reimink: so go to our Camp Geo app and you can, you can get the images, you can get episodes kind of in order, in an order that makes sense and kind of a nice workflow around it. And it's a couple hours of [00:07:00] content with all the images, just like all the other stuff on our Camp Geo app has.
So that's where that is. Chris, you can go there, download that. But, like you said, we did this episode before. It was episode number three, I think, of Planet Geo, and we went back and re listened to it recently, and, uh, uh,
Chris Bolhuis: I,
Dr. Jesse Reimink: better. But no, I know Chris, I called you and I was like, so we made this plan like, Hey, we're going to go back and listen to the, you know, these handful of episodes.
You just see what we think. And I called you, I think a couple of [00:07:30] days later, I was like, so how far did you get? And you go, nah, I mean, I started it and then I had
Chris Bolhuis: yeah, I think I got like 90 seconds in and I'm like, I can't, I can't do it anymore.
Dr. Jesse Reimink: yeah. We're like, Ooh. This is painful. This is painful. the thought here is like, we've also learned a lot. We've thought about this. we've come up with different analogies. We've used different analogies for this. So the point here of this episode is to talk about the greenhouse effect, really just like the basic fundamentals of the greenhouse effect, because it's really important.
It's simple. [00:08:00] It's actually quite simple. but we want to like hammer that part home before we start talking about it. Other stuff to deal
Chris Bolhuis: Yeah, we figured this was the best kickoff point for a small series on climate from a couple, uh, a couple aging geoscientists.
Dr. Jesse Reimink: Speak for yourself, Mr. Aging geoscientist, man, don't lump me in with you. Oh,
Chris Bolhuis: are. So how's that?
Dr. Jesse Reimink: so Chris, I know you love to talk about this. Speaking of old, uh, you love to talk about. The [00:08:30] history of this like, right. And I know I remember sitting in your class, you taught me the basics of this in class. And I remember listening to this and it's actually really an interesting and important point to make like the high level summary is, you know, we've understood a lot about the basics of the greenhouse effect for a long time.
So can you give us, the spiel that you give in class that I got, you know, 15 or
20 years ago in class talking
Chris Bolhuis: Absolutely. But I want to first say, that I think that that's an important piece of it because for some, it depends on maybe where you [00:09:00] live, this is a highly politicized topic that we're talking about. And for me to go into the backstory on it, the history of it, that really precedes, it predates any politics or any like controversy in this topic at all.
Dr. Jesse Reimink: I mean, it really predates drilling for oil. So, like, it predates burning most fossil fuels. I mean, okay,
Chris Bolhuis: Yes. You know, the basic science behind the greenhouse effect has been solved for a really long time. And so, to me, it's important to establish [00:09:30] that as, look, this is really credible and it's been credible for a long time. I mean, this is not a part of the... climate debate, if you will, if there is a debate, this is not a part of it, so that's why I do it,
So let's go back into this I mean we have to go back, you know, 200 years over 200 years ago actually to the early 1800s and they were able to Measure the heat trapping ability of carbon dioxide.
And to me, amazing that back 200 years ago with the lack of [00:10:00] technology and the lack of scientific knowledge that we had, they were doing this then, and that's pretty amazing. So it really started in the 1820s with a guy by the name of Joseph Foyer. He's a French scientist. And I think I pronounced that correctly.
Um,
Dr. Jesse Reimink: It wasn't as bad as
asphalt, let's put
It that way.
Chris Bolhuis: right, uh, yeah, no, I'm embarrassed about that, but he started to calculate Earth's heat budget, what comes in, what goes out, just looking at this balance [00:10:30] of our overall climate, that's how this whole thing kind of started, and he realized that Earth should be much colder than it is, You know that We have a way of letting the heat in from that comes from the sun, but it's not all of it is escaping, more of it should be escaping. And that's kind of what triggered this whole thought process about what's going on, what's in the atmosphere that's trapping this heat. It's letting it in and it's not letting it all back out.
Dr. Jesse Reimink: I mean, it's a really good point, Chris. So I want to just like talk through that really quickly because it's a [00:11:00] relatively simple calculation to do going back into the 1820s. Right. It's just say, Oh, look at the sun, measure how much like energy is coming in from the sun, the, area of the earth that is exposed, you know, one half of the earth.
So you need to know like the radius of the earth, et cetera. You can kind of calculate this in ballpark numbers. And we could do this for other planets as well. We can do this for exoplanets now to measure like how intense the star is and then what The size of the planet is that's orbiting it. We can get a rough estimation and a prediction of what the surface temperature should be.
and Earth's surface temperature, as you said, [00:11:30] is, is too hot. So why? Right. so I just want to talk to you how those calculations are kind of being done. It's a really important first
order fundamental
Chris Bolhuis: And what they found is that these, gases, and we're going to focus on carbon dioxide today in this episode, but there are gases that trap heat, kind of like a greenhouse does. And, that term was coined way back then, actually, which is, I think, a pretty interesting thing too, that the greenhouse effect, it's a similar process, right?
It's, it's a similar process as to why, You get in your car and you drive to, uh, the grocery store, let's say, [00:12:00] or you go somewhere and you park in a parking lot on a hot summer day, the window's up, come back into your car and it's much, much hotter, it heat in, but it doesn't let it all back out, it's not a perfect analogy, because a greenhouse and a car and the way these things work is they suppress convection, which obviously our atmosphere doesn't do, but the mechanism is the same in terms of letting the radiation through the window.
Then [00:12:30] something happens to that. We're going to talk about that this episode. And then that, that re radiation is not allowed to pass back through. it's a different energy, it's a different wavelength, and it's trapped. And that's really how these gases work in our atmosphere also.
Dr. Jesse Reimink: So Chris. Really quickly, before we get into, you know, that trapping and reregulation, before we get too far down that path, cause we have a great image that kind of shows this, a GIF that kind of represents this thing, but before, let me just tidy up the history because again, you said measurement of these things was done again [00:13:00] in the 18.
Hundreds. Absolutely right. John Tyndall was one of them who, measured in the 1860s, the ability of CO2 specifically to trap heat and took a bunch of gases that we know are in the atmosphere and measured heat trapping ability. And the way that this calculation goes is say, the key point is that molecules absorb energy.
You can kind of think of the atoms being held together by springs and those springs are kind of bouncing back and forth. And, if they get hit by a photon, Any kind of particle or, or wave of energy, they can get excited [00:13:30] and then they re release energy. So they get excited, they vibrate quicker, but they vibrate in certain dimensions in certain ways that give off certain amounts of, a particular brand of energy, a particular flavor of energy, which is not always the same as the one they absorbed.
So. You can measure this, you can like irradiate or hit CO2 with a light source and then see what kind of energy gets re radiated out, what flavor, you can measure that spectroscopically, so they, kind of calibrated CO2 and oxygen and nitrogen and saw, oh wait, CO2 has the potential, if the system [00:14:00] works the way we think it does, like the greenhouse effect, CO2 has this particular heat
Chris Bolhuis: That's right. And you said, you know, John Tyndall, and then in the 1860s, he was the one that was able to actually quantify this. He was able to, put numbers on the ability of carbon dioxide and other gases also to trap heat. that blows me away. I, I. I have such a deep level of appreciation for that kind of work that was done under those circumstances.
It's just mind boggling. It's...[00:14:30]
Dr. Jesse Reimink: I mean, it's really physics work, Chris, right? Like this is physics. This is like fundamentally, you know, making these measurements in a lab, all the physicists working out structure of the atom and all this kind of stuff. it's a physics problem and this is now the physics of the earth and we as geoscientists sort of take it, take the physics and apply it to the earth, which, you know, is what we're going to do now.
And the fundamental process is, the analogy of your car. So light is coming in and it's passing through your window pane, your window screen, and that is earth's [00:15:00] atmosphere. Light passes through there and it has a particular flavor of energy that allows it to pass through. Then the light hits the earth or hits your car's dashboard and the molecules and the bonds in there absorb that energy, that light energy, and then they get excited and they re radiate it, but they re radiate it as a different wavelength of what's called infrared.
Radiation. It's, light energy, part of the, the energy spectrum and it gets re radiated, that stuff now does not completely pass [00:15:30] through the atmosphere or your car windshield. So now it goes up and hits your windshield and it can't pass through that. It hits those molecules and gets reflected, some of it at least, gets reflected back down, back into your car, or if we're talking about the earth, back in towards the surface of the earth.
And so we get all of the light transmitted down. Once it hits the earth, it gets re rated back up, but it's a different flavor. Some of that flavor gets reflected back down and kind of bounces back and forth. And it's ultimately trapped in your car, or if you're on the earth, [00:16:00] underneath of the atmospheric layer.
That's fundamentally what's, going on here is that visible light passes through. Longer wavelength infrared does not. it's that conversion that's really the key.
Chris Bolhuis: All right. So I want to take a crack then, Jesse, at just kind of explaining the science behind how the greenhouse effect works. And in order to do this, we really kind of need to just follow radiation coming from the sun. So we're going to focus on, because our sun emits all of it. It emits the entire electromagnetic spectrum, but we only need to focus on [00:16:30] visible light And infrared, to put it bluntly, infrared radiation.
Well, what happens, visible light and shorter wavelength infrared will pass right through our atmosphere, passes through these greenhouse gases. it's basically transparent to them. It's invisible to them. And so they pass right on through and then they get absorbed at the Well, much of it, anyway, gets absorbed at the Earth's surface.
Well, what happens then is, and this is a really important part of the process, is the Earth's surface gets warm. So some of that energy that comes in is transferred to the [00:17:00] Earth. It's just warming. But then some of that energy is re radiated, but it's re radiated differently, right? Because some of the energy is left behind in the surface of the Earth.
And so it's a lower energy that gets re radiated back off. Into the atmosphere and that lower energy is longer wavelength infrared these different photons And and that's a an important piece because those longer wavelength infrared, which is essentially heat That longer [00:17:30] wavelength cannot pass through these greenhouse gases in a way that the short wavelength could or in a way that visible light Can and so those molecules they just kind of absorb it, you know They soak it up and then they re radiate it in a completely random direction So it might be radiated back
Dr. Jesse Reimink: And some of that, Chris, is, you know, some of it gets re radiated back down to Earth, and then it's just bouncing back and forth between the atmosphere and Earth's surface. And it's effectively trapped, in, heh, the habitable part of Earth, and keeping it nice and warm and cozy [00:18:00] here.
So Chris, let me just, again, I want to just come back to that car analogy. Cause it's a really good one, right? You know, the light's coming through the windshield, passing through almost all of it, visible light passing through, hitting the car dashboard.
It's exciting the molecules, they get re radiated. Some of that is re radiated as infrared radiation that can't pass through the windshield, or at least not all of it can. And it kind of gets reflected back and trapped there as heat energy. let's focus on what is the windshield and like what controls this thing. Cause there's some, some sort of big knobs that we can turn here, Chris. So [00:18:30] I think for the rest of this, this podcast, we're going to talk about basically some examples.
We're going to focus on the, you know, the big dog CO2 with some of the other ones that are kind of in the news, let's say, are sort of the newsworthy versions. And that's kind of where we're going to wrap up. Is that fair?
Chris Bolhuis: Yeah. I think that's fair. I think it's important to know, why we're going to focus on CO2 because it is something that I think a lot of people know. CO2 is not the best at absorbing infrared radiation. It's not the big dog. So why is it the center of every discussion, right? If it's [00:19:00] not the big dog in terms of, of absorbing and trapping heat, there are other gases that do a better job.
Ozone does a better job. Methane does
Dr. Jesse Reimink: I mean, hey, Chris, ozone is a really great one. I mean, ozone the important thing is that all of these things absorb and are transparent to different parts of the EM spectrum of that spectrum of like radiation of which light and infrared are part of it. ozone is great at absorbing like the x rays and really is good at preventing, skin cancer, right?
And because Exactly. So it's [00:19:30] very, you know, ozone is particularly good at absorbing those ones. CO2 is particularly good at absorbing other ones, right? So each of these has their own particular flavor that they like to absorb and they like to be transparent to.
Chris Bolhuis: that is a really good point that, and we've able to like really, really hone in on this, what kind of energy is very readily absorbed by different kinds of gases. And that's really what, we're talking about with this.
Dr. Jesse Reimink: So let me just finish that up, Chris, because it, you can imagine where this gets really complicated. Like, this is a [00:20:00] complicated recipe or equation to calculate, right, because we need to know all the gases, where they are in the Earth's atmosphere, what concentrations, we need to know what kind of light is coming in, what kind of radiation is coming in.
like, predicting this, it gets complicated, but we know it really well. and at a simple level, there's a few of them that we're going to focus on.
Chris Bolhuis: right on. So Jesse, should we transition then into kind of an example of a positive feedback loop maybe with the Earth's albedo?
Dr. Jesse Reimink: Yeah. Oh, that's a good point, Chris. I think we probably should [00:20:30] before we talk about the specific gases. Uh, yeah, that's a good idea. Let, let's hit that point first.
Chris Bolhuis: Okay, well first of all let's define what albedo is. We refer to it all the time as like the, it's a funny
Dr. Jesse Reimink: let me interrupt you. This is the, my, one of my favorite words in geoscience is albedo. I love this word. I think it's so funny.
Chris Bolhuis: I don't know why it is, but it is funny, and I just don't really understand why. But anyway, basically The albedo effect is the reflectivity of the surface of the earth, for instance, [00:21:00] certain colors absorb heat better, they absorb visible light, they absorb infrared radiation better, like dark, if you imagine walking on a, freshly paved asphalt road.
Dr. Jesse Reimink: Hey, nicely done! Nicely done! Hey, old dog, new trick! Look at that! Look at that!
Chris Bolhuis: it gets super, super, super hot, right? But then the painted line, the white line on the side of the road, if you walk on that, it is a noticeable difference in its temperature. It's much, [00:21:30] much cooler because it has a higher albedo. Instead of absorbing the radiation, it reflects it. And that's what albedo is.
Dr. Jesse Reimink: and Chris, this is really important when we think about the Earth, because we compare land, which is broadly kind of dark colored, and oceans, which are broadly kind of dark colored. We compare those two things to ice, ice caps, which are... not dark colored. They're white.
So if we, if we think about how this works, the ice sheets are going to reflect a lot of that [00:22:00] light. what that means, reflect that light means that there's no conversion. We're not converting to long wavelength IR.
So we're not really doing the greenhouse effect, or at least we're decreasing the amount of greenhouse effect that's happening. because it's not, the light is not being absorbed and re radiated. It's kind of just being reflected off. Now, this is a feedback loop and a really important one, Chris. And so the loop is...
Kind of simple, I think. If you grow the ice sheets, you reflect more light. But why is that a feedback? Like, how does that get into a loop?
Chris Bolhuis: yeah, it's a, [00:22:30] it's a loop. It's a positive feedback loop because if you drop temperatures, ice sheets grow and expand that increases the albedo, which further feeds into cooler temperatures.
So it's a positive feedback loop.
Dr. Jesse Reimink: yeah, because more ice means less greenhouse effect, which means cooler. Which means more ice, which means less greenhouse effect, which means cooler. Etc, etc, etc. And that's how we can get into things like Snowball Earth events, that have happened in Earth history.
Chris Bolhuis: you're right, because that incoming radiation gets [00:23:00] reflected instead of absorbed, then it is transparent on its way out. It's transparent to these greenhouse gases because the radiation didn't get changed. It didn't get absorbed where some of it gets left behind and some of it gets re radiated and then trapped.
That doesn't happen with reflection. The radiation is unchanged.
Dr. Jesse Reimink: Chris, the analogy here is when you put those little panels, those silvery panels, these were really popular in the 90s, I think a little bit in the early 2000s, the panels in your [00:23:30] windshield.
Chris Bolhuis: with people that backpack. I see him all the
Dr. Jesse Reimink: Oh, yeah. Okay. So you put a little reflective surface in your car underneath your windshield over your dashboard, and That's what this is doing.
It's reflecting the light out so that there's no conversion. It's just reflecting that wavelength. The same exact wavelength that came in is reflected right back out. There's no conversion going on. Just what happens when you put a mirror right there. So that's what's going on. and that's a really important like positive feedback.
control. And this is why we worry about the ice caps as a part of, well, [00:24:00] we worry about the ice caps for two reasons as a part of climate change. One is they're changing the albedo. Two is that's a lot of water to dump into the oceans that can drive sea level rise. So there's two reasons. the main one is that this is a feedback loop and it can work in either direction.
It can increase and get the climate cooler, or it can increase and drive the climate warmer in the way that we're worried about right now.
Chris Bolhuis: Well, Jesse, it's a good time now to switch into talking about why is CO2? The big dog. Why is carbon dioxide on [00:24:30] everybody's mind? It's not the most potent greenhouse gas out there.
In fact, it's not even really close. I mean, water, water is so much more potent as a greenhouse gas than carbon dioxide. Methane. is so much more potent and, you know, nitrous oxide is maybe the biggest of the big dogs. like a powerhouse at absorbing, and trapping infrared radiation. It really comes down to the chemistry of burning fossil fuels.
I mean, every single thing that we do. [00:25:00] We are burning fossil fuels, whether it's coal for electricity, natural gas for electricity and home heat, propane, and then, the different kinds of fuel for transportation, whether that be diesel, jet, or just your, regular gasoline for your car.
Dr. Jesse Reimink: Chris, I just want to touch on one other thing, that CO2, I think people get a little hung up on the fact that it's very low concentration, so right now, you know, we're at 420 parts per million or something like that, so what does that mean? [00:25:30] 420 Out of a million molecules in the atmosphere will be CO2.
So only 400 out of a million, the rest of them will be nitrogen and oxygen and all the other gases that are in the atmosphere. the analogy that I like, Chris, for this is I'm at Penn state. We have big football stadiums with big football games. The analogy I like is that football stadium holds about 115, 000 people.
if all of those people were a molecule in the atmosphere, there would only be 50 people in that crowd that are CO2. Out of a hundred in some thousand, so [00:26:00] not very many, and it would be hard if you were a CO2 molecule, it'd be hard to find your other people if you weren't sitting right next to them.
So it's a very small amount, but very impactful. it's a little counterintuitive that, that such a small concentration gas can be so impactful.
Chris Bolhuis: And you don't have to go back very far. If you go back a hundred, maybe 130 years, carbon dioxide levels were at 280 ish parts per million now, within a very short period of time, because a hundred years is not a [00:26:30] long time now we're at 420 parts per million. And there's no sign right now of easing that trend. it's that classic hockey stick.
Dr. Jesse Reimink: that's the key, the hockey stick. And we're, Changing by a lot. So, we're going up only 200 parts per million, but that's a hundred percent increase. That's like a lot, or it's not quite a hundred percent increase at this point, but it's a big increase, right? We're going up by 75%. That's a big relative increase. And given how much, how good of a greenhouse gas CO2 [00:27:00] is, it's certainly not the best, but it's a very good one given how important it is. As a greenhouse gas, that increase drives a lot of greenhouse effect, basically. So,
Chris Bolhuis: But real quick, Jesse, I want to just, explain just a little bit about the chemistry of burning these fossil fuels, right? The big three. Natural gas, coal, and gasoline. all have carbon as their basis, and natural gas and gasoline have hydrocarbons, carbon and hydrogen as a part of their makeup, right?
Well, when you burn these [00:27:30] in the presence of oxygen, the bonds break and rearrange, and what comes out, byproducts of burning these fossil fuels, is carbon dioxide. and H2O. And, water is not, even though it's very, very potent as a greenhouse gas, it's not a huge concern in this discussion because the water cycle doesn't keep that water that was created in the atmosphere for long periods of time.
It may only stay in the air for, you know, a few days at most before changes and [00:28:00] comes around in this cycle, right? But carbon dioxide is going to stay in the atmosphere for 100 to 200 to 200 years. It's really not the same discussion.
Dr. Jesse Reimink: And that's a great lead in Chris, Really, we should talk about the other greenhouse gases because they come up and they are important and some of them are really important to consider because we don't really know the end members, but carbon CO2 remains the, kind of the most important one.
So let's finish up this episode by talking about some other greenhouse gases. And we're going to talk about things like methane or methane, depending on how you pronounce it, Chris.[00:28:30]
Chris Bolhuis: say methane, please,
Dr. Jesse Reimink: Okay, we got to talk about nitrous oxide, you know, water vapor, and we already kind of discussed ozone a little bit as well.
But methane it's a really potent greenhouse gas, meaning the greenhouse effect, you know, per molecule, it traps more energy than CO2, 28 times the energy of CO2. And we do have a decent amount of methane emissions, and we don't really necessarily have a great measurement of how much methane we're emitting.
That's kind of one of the problems around [00:29:00] methane.
Chris Bolhuis: Yeah. But the other issue with methane is that it doesn't have that residency time in the atmosphere, like carbon dioxide. It doesn't stay in the air nearly so long. And so it is a concern. are, there are concerns of another positive feedback, right, where we have tons of, of methane stored in frozen sediment and Arctic lakes and the ocean floor and so on.
So if warm, right, if warming takes place, this methane right now is trapped. [00:29:30] It's in ice. It can't go anywhere, so if warming happens. This permafrost melts and then methane is released into the atmosphere and it's much more potent. So again, you have this positive potential feedback loop going on with methane.
Dr. Jesse Reimink: Absolutely. And you know, another driver, another source of methane, is livestock. It's basically farts and burps from cattle is really what's going on here. And probably a decent amount from the Bolhuis household too. Uh, but, but basically, [00:30:00] I think if we looked at methane emissions coming out of that place, it'd be, it'd be substantial. The amount of chili that gets eaten in the Bolhuis household.
Chris Bolhuis: That is a true statement right there. I don't know man. Today might be a chilly day actually. And, uh, do our listeners know how good I am at making chili?
Dr. Jesse Reimink: No, but please, please tell everybody how good it. No, it's true. It's it's true He is award winning award [00:30:30] winning chili cook. I think wasn't it you got you you and Jenny Were not invited to come to one of the chili cook off things because you kept winning. Was that the situation?
Chris Bolhuis: we got to the point when we would show up, we were treated very rudely by the other competitors. And so we have not gone to any competitions in. Years since pre COVID, we haven't done any chili competitions, but we would always win. I mean, and we've made actually a fair amount of money. I mean, we're, we're well into the thousands of dollars [00:31:00] in terms of what
Dr. Jesse Reimink: amazing.
Chris Bolhuis: cookoffs.
Dr. Jesse Reimink: Yeah, you should
Chris Bolhuis: So
Dr. Jesse Reimink: and sell it
Chris Bolhuis: no, no, it's
Dr. Jesse Reimink: methane emitter.
Chris Bolhuis: Hey, it's just one of the other things I'm really good at Jesse. And it's a long list and you know, we're still working
Dr. Jesse Reimink: It's, it's. It's really, it's a substantial list. I mean, we don't just, there's so many things. It's unbelievable. Um, so back to methane, um, methane, another, you know, big, actually unknown and kind of worrying source of methane is actually old hydrocarbon [00:31:30] wells or wells in the ground that have been abandoned.
I mean, here in Pennsylvania, we have, I mean, the first oil well ever drilled was in Pennsylvania. And so we have Huge amounts of like what are called legacy oil wells, which are basically abandoned holes in the ground. Some of these leak all sorts of random stuff into the groundwater. and they also can emit methane.
So methane can kind of be gurgling up through these things. And it's really hard to measure. So we don't have a great handle on like how much methane is actually being emitted by human activities versus sort of [00:32:00] normal biologic
Chris Bolhuis: have a question for you then, kind of related to this thing, these flare stacks that you see in oil fields and so on and get natural gas fields. Right. do they do that? Do they burn the methane coming out of these flare stacks to convert it into CO2 instead of just releasing the methane into the atmosphere?
Is
Dr. Jesse Reimink: Yeah, I think that's, that's sort of most of it. Uh, you know, you see these at, um... landfills. There we go. That are, uh, you know, venting the, the sort of methane that's being emitted by the, the decomposition. So yeah, they'll, they'll be venting [00:32:30] those.
and sort of just burning them off is kind of what they do. I mean, the bigger ones where they have more of it, they'll trap it. 'cause you can sell it, right. Methane you can sell. and so the, they will do that as well. But methane is definitely sort of one to, to pay attention to.
Chris Bolhuis: And then the last one, Jesse, is nitrous oxide that I think is an important one because this is a staggering ability. to trap heat that gets reradiated back by the earth. It's 265 times more potent than carbon dioxide.
So pound for pound, it's a, it's a beast. [00:33:00] And, nitrous oxide, um, I, I don't know, we've all probably experienced this before when we go to the dentist, right? With nitrous and the, the, gas.
I don't know. I don't do well with that. I'm just going to tell you. Do not. I say,
I say things that are really not appropriate. but this is. This is something that, um, has become a bit of a rising concern also because of our agricultural, changes that we've implemented. And [00:33:30] so, it's produced by agriculture, and it has a much longer residency time than methane does. It'll stay in the air for, you know, 120 years.
so it's on the order of carbon dioxide in terms of that, but it has a much, much lower concentration. And so it's not as big of a concern, I guess, as carbon dioxide. And again, coming back to the fossil fuels and the burning of those fossil fuels, that's what puts CO2 on everybody's mind.
Dr. Jesse Reimink: and I think, Chris, the [00:34:00] other aspect of this, and we've touched on this as well, is the cycling part. So, CO2, the reason CO2, just as kind of a summary here, the reason we focus on CO2 is because we know the carbon cycle on Earth, and it's takes a long time for that drive up in CO2 to then turn in naturally to a downward trend in CO2.
So there is a cycle, and that's what we're going to talk about in the next sort of couple chapters here of this book is the different carbon cycles and how they [00:34:30] work. it's a really fundamental property of earth and humans are kind of getting in the way of this fundamental process and we're disturbing it.
that's the key, is both the fact that we're producing CO2, and we're producing methane, we're producing nitrous oxide, but also the fact that CO2 has this longer term cycle to it, and it just will take a long time for Earth to sort of re regulate the carbon that's being put into the atmosphere.
So, that's a lot of the reason why we focus on CO2, I think. Um,
Chris Bolhuis: Yeah. You nailed [00:35:00] it. Well, Jesse, I think that's a good kickoff point for this series on climate. just kind of explaining the background on the greenhouse. So I
Dr. Jesse Reimink: And I think we did a bit better job than we did three and a half years ago or almost four years ago now. I mean, we have gotten better. There's probably still some room for improvement, but we've gotten better. That's for sure.
Chris Bolhuis: Yeah. Right
Dr. Jesse Reimink: Hey, that's a wrap for this episode. As always, you can find information about us at our website, planetgeocast.
com. Head there. You can [00:35:30] subscribe, like, support us. You can support us. Let me double click on that. there's a donate link right there that you can support us with. You can also head over to our Camp Geo app. You can just search in your app store for Camp Geo. There you can download all of our content.
You can learn Camp Geo, basically audio discussions like this with images for all the basics of geoscience. And we have our Yellowstone and Grand Canyon books for sale there as well, as well as the climate book, which is kind of a extra content related to this podcast and a few others kind of put together with some images in it.
[00:36:00] So head over there, send us an email at planetgeocast at gmail. com for any questions you have.
Chris Bolhuis: Cheers.
