good morning John this is an IceCube
you've heard of that it's a little weird
that we got a little weird that we call
them cubes even when they're not even
close to being cube shaped put an ice
cube reads the temperature above 32
degrees Fahrenheit it becomes liquid
water
John it's around 70 degrees in this room
right now and the ice cube is still ice
so what's going on well put the ice cube
down for a little bit we'll cut back to
it now I would like to introduce you to
the scariest graph I have ever seen it
was published in a paper in 2016
actually by a friend of mine it's a
graph of sea level rise but it is not
the graph of sea level rise that we
usually see those tend to look like this
they show how much scientists expect the
sea level to have risen by a certain
point in the future and they invariably
show pretty bad news like a full meter
of sea level rise by 2100 would cost
around 14 trillion dollars a year for
comparison all of the student loans
outstanding in the US right now about
1.5 trillion dollars but these graphs
are showing you something called global
mean sea level or GM SL that's where the
sea level is going to be in 2100 and you
can see various scenarios that the IPCC
has put together in blue you've got RCP
2.6 that's like the best case scenario
where everyone works really hard
together very quickly to make sure that
the total increase in temperature of the
earth is no more than two degrees
Celsius in red you've got our CP 8.5
that's basically the scenario in which
we do nothing and spoiler we're closer
to that one than we are to our CP 2.6
but the scariest graph I've ever seen
bring it back now it's got a surprise
for us GM SL is the tiny little
insignificant blip on the bottom in gray
that's global mean sea level these big
things that's what they're calling SL RC
or sea level rise commitment this is not
a graph of where the sea level is going
to be it's a graph of what sea level
rise we will have like signed up for cuz
John my Ice Cube is still over here
being an ice cube it's been 70 degrees
in here the whole time but still ice sea
level doesn't automatically zip to
wherever it would be for any given
global temperature it takes time for ice
to melt it takes time for heat to move
around it takes like forever except not
forever if we follow our worst case
scenario to 2100
we will have that 1 meter sea level rise
but we will have signed up for 6 meters
of sea level rise even today with the
temperature increase that we've already
seen we in the long term have already
signed up for more than a meter of sea
level rise now admittedly this is like
long-term thinking and no model is
perfect if we paused co2 releases right
now it would be hundreds of years before
we saw that full sea level rise but we
would see it it would even see rise over
a metre if we started to decrease the
amount of co2 in the atmosphere there
isn't a scenario a long term that
doesn't lead to more than a metre of sea
level rise with current technologies but
John we are humans and we are very good
solving problems we are just not good at
solving problems that we aren't able to
recognize if we wait until 2100 when
we're really gonna start feeling the
actual like serious sting of climate
change we will have signed up for much
much worse than that
so John I'll just leave you with this
the ice is dripping but it's still ice
I'll see you on Tuesday John Congrats on
the launch of life's library you got
those first thousand people and now it
is open for folks to sign up I just did
it myself what a wonderful Valley and
second if you want to hear me ramble a
bunch about how I feel like I think a
little bit differently about climate
change than a lot of people and maybe a
little bit more of a nuance to take I
made a big long video over on Hanks
channel it has a little bit of optimism
in it
which you might need right now check out
life's library at last library book club
calm