All right, welcome in everyone.
We're being joined by South
Carolina's weatherman.
Jim Gandy retired from the business
on TV years ago, but still very
active in talking about our climate.
In fact, Jim started climate
matters here at WLTX back in 2010,
and it has skyrocketed.
It's being used all across the country.
We're going to talk about that in a moment.
But first, how have you been?
I've been great, I mean even even with
the virus causing havoc around the world.
So far I haven't gotten it and and it's
not because I haven't been exposed to it.
I have, but so far I've I've been very
fortunate it's put a crimp in my travels,
but I'm still getting around.
There's been a lot been going
on in my life since I retired.
And but I'm still busy in the
area of weather and climate.
In fact, that's what we want
to talk about right now.
Climate matters.
It started here in 2010.
It was starting out as I believe a
one year experiment here to find out
what you could do as far as your
team of meteorologists and informing
the public about climate change.
Tell me how that started
and and what happened from
there. It's very interesting.
There was a meteorologist who was
on the air at the time in Washington
DC who had this bright idea that
broadcast meteorologists could help
educate viewers about climate change.
So he got together with the Center
for Climate change communication
at George Mason University.
They came up with this proposal and they
contacted the stations Scientist Committee,
which is a committee of the Broadcast
Meteorology Group of the AMS.
And and I was on it.
And somehow another I convinced
them to let me be the test case.
So we spent almost a year
trying to get ready for this.
And then we did the year long
project which was 2010 2011.
We started in August of 2010.
The results of the
experiment were successful.
And that encouraged them to
go national with it in 2012.
And so this year.
We're celebrating 10 years
of climate matters and it is
amazing because of course I
was the first one to do it.
But now, about half the
broadcast meteorologist in the
country are using the material
and that's that's crazy to
think about, especially since
it started right here at WLTX.
I know it's it's just it.
It boggles the mind that 12 years
ago when we were starting the project
that it could end up like it is today.
And of course, we.
We were very fortunate.
You get a paper published on that in nature.
Climate change, which is one of the
top scientific journals in the world.
And that just came out right.
Just came out.
Tell me a little bit about that.
Well, it, it highlights the
whole process that's been going
on with developing the program,
and we learned an awful lot we we
could apply the same techniques
that we did with climate matters
with other things as well.
But keep in mind,
when we started climate matters, we were.
We were just.
Kind of in a in a fish,
in a pond.
This had never been attempted before,
so we didn't have.
Much guidance on how to do this,
so we learned a lot from the year
long experiment here in Colombia and
others have weighed in on on the project.
A lot of people have gone
into making this a success,
not to mention the scientist
who have participated in in this
effort and there they came to
us from climate central.
Let's talk about just how big of a
deal and how important climate change
is right now in climate matters.
That plays a role in all this climate change.
Scientists say this has been
happening over the last many years,
correct? Yeah, basically since the
beginning of the industrial revolution,
that's when our carbon dioxide in
the atmosphere started to increase.
Now it has increased about 50%
over what it was at the beginning
of the Industrial Revolution.
And it has exceeded the levels that we
have seen during the interglacial periods.
So we're setting ourselves up for
a much warmer future already.
The climate has warmed about
1 1/4 degrees Celsius,
and that doesn't seem like an awful lot,
but keep in mind that's an awful lot of
energy that's gone into the atmosphere.
If there was a study that was done
a few years ago. That indicated.
That if it wasn't for the oceans which
are absorbing about 93% of the heat.
If it weren't for the oceans,
this planet would already be unlivable.
Even in the polar region,
because the temperature would have
increased by at least 50 degrees Fahrenheit,
and that's just beyond the bounds
by which humans can tolerate.
Not everybody's on board.
With all this, we'll talk
more about that in a moment,
but a lot of leaders are on
board a lot of world leaders,
national leaders, case in point,
just a few short years ago you were
speaking to then President Obama.
All of this, that's true.
And that was with the release of
the National Climate assessment.
Number three or four, I can't remember,
but yes, that that was what 2016 I
think it was something like that.
And that was that was an important meeting.
You know it is interesting.
That in the last two years.
100% of the papers have
been a scientific papers.
There have been well over.
10,000 scientific papers written
on climate change and all of them
have pointed in the same direction.
Again, there are some doubters out there
because anytime you have something like this,
it it stirs up a little bit of controversy.
You know that in the scientific community
and the scientific, the scientific community,
pretty much it's it's a done deal, right?
But this is not the first time
that's happened. You know,
Einstein's theory was accepted by the
scientific community long before it was
accepted by the public. Excuse me so.
It happens, it takes a while,
but what we're seeing right now are
some of the ramifications of that.
Warming the heat waves,
the flooding that takes place in some parts,
the drought in California,
and to a large extent, now again,
it's not being caused by climate change,
but it is being enhanced by climate change.
It would not have been this dry had it not
been for what climate change is doing.
To the temperature of the planet,
what do you think is gonna
happen down the road here?
I mean here we are now 12 years into
your participation with climate matters.
Again, starting here at WLTX,
12 years from now, what do you see?
This you think it's going to be more
widely accepted by people out there that
the climate is drastically changing?
Yeah, in fact, you know the UN.
Has been trying to, you know,
scientific community trying to cap
a warming at 1 1/2 degrees Celsius.
Well, right now we're at 1.25.
More than likely we will reach
1 1/2 degrees in 10 years.
Beyond that.
It's hard to say exactly how
the atmosphere will respond,
but we've already seen some surprises.
We've seen some of the ice caps melting at
a faster rate than we were anticipating.
Sea level rise is increasing
at a faster pace,
and we know from just the historical record.
That the amount of warming that has
already taken place means that the
sea level is going to be rising
for the next several centuries.
Try
to simplify this for some of our viewers.
I can remember going to the Sumter
County fair back in the 60s.
It was very cold in late September,
very cold in late September.
You had jackets on you had sweaters on.
Now you go to that same fair
and at the end of September,
and you're battling 90 degree
plus temperatures. So is that.
Want to simplifies it right there?
It does, but it.
It's not just the heat around here,
it's also the humidity.
The amount of moisture in our
atmosphere has increased substantially,
so now it's not just the
heat that we're battling,
it is the the addition of the
humidity and what it makes it feel.
The Heat index is much
higher than it used to be,
so this isn't something that is going
to correct itself over time is it?
Is is it's not going to get
any better. It's only going to
get worse. Well until we.
Find a way to reduce our emissions.
Yes, it will get worse until we start.
We're we have collectively and
I just saw this study today.
Collectively, we've made a dent.
Because instead of being at 420
parts per million on carbon dioxide,
where we are right now, 30 years ago,
the projections were by this
time if we didn't do anything,
we'd be at 437. Now.
That doesn't seem like very much,
but it is a star.
O, we're escaping the worst
outcome at the moment,
but there's still going to be some
pretty dire consequences going forward.
People traveled this country.
They could see a climate matters
segment on a local TV station.
And if you do that,
knowing that it started right here
with this gentleman right here,
South Carolina's weatherman some
12 years ago here and and I
know you mentioned it earlier.
You mentioned in your article that was
published in Nature Climate Change,
but that's a pretty big deal,
so we're going to give props.
Where it's deserved right there and
and getting other meteorologists
involved across the country to to
buy in to the climate change and
and and climate matters in general,
that's a pretty big
deal, yeah, because?
And to beginning there were still.
A significant segment of the
broadcast meteorology community.
They either didn't know if climate
change was occurring or didn't
think that it was occurring
only about half thought it was.
And of course, they're the ones
who wanted to to talk about it,
but back in 2010 there wasn't
much on TV about climate change.
Now you're seeing a great
deal of information.
The number of stories just
from 2012 to this year.
Has increased a hundredfold.
There were close to 15,000 stories on
television about climate change last year.
And this year,
I suspect we will surpass that
because of what we're dealing
with now here in South Carolina.
It's hot, it's humid.
We call that summer.
It hasn't been as bad as
some summers in the past.
But don't let that fool you because
it's not the high temperature
that's warming the fastest.
It's the low temperature.
And when we're seeing low temperatures
not breaking 75 degrees at night.
That impacts us in agriculture.
Because it sterilizes the pollen.
And that makes it difficult
for vegetable farmers.
To get a crop in during the month of July,
what can we do here on Earth to make
things better when it comes to climate
change? Well, you know it's gonna be it's
gonna take a collective effort basically.
You know people say, well,
we're not gonna go back to the Stone Age. No,
we're not going to go back to the Stone Age,
but we have to make a shift in in the way
we produce energy here on the planet.
We have to get away from burning fossil
fuels to something that's more renewable.
It's happening,
it's just not happening fast enough.
Here in South Carolina there are there
are quite a few things that we can do.
Obviously we can embrace solar technology.
It's getting much cheaper to
do solar now than it used to.
We can do things like convert from
incandescent bulbs to LED lights.
Whenever you replace your air conditioner,
replace it with an energy efficient
system that helps cut down.
Don't run your air conditioner so cold
it it really doesn't do you that much
good in the summertime to be running it at,
say, below 75 degrees, because the air
conditioner just can't cool it that much,
particularly when it's 95 degrees outside,
so you know be a little bit more sensible.
About your energy use, that can help,
but those are individual actions.
It doesn't stop there.
Companies have to get on board
and a lot of them have Walmart.
Here has has done a lot in in
converting to solar technology.
You've got Amazon doing that.
Google is on board apples on board,
so you've got companies here
that are embracing it.
And you know why?
Because it's cost efficient.
What company does not want to save money?
And if you can save money by
reducing your energy cost.
Then that's that's great for the company.
It's great for the environment.
It's great for shareholders,
alright,
South
Carolina's weatherman, Jim Gandy.
Congratulations again on the on the
article. Thank you very much.