according to musk governments around the world are caught in a doom Loop in which they spend
increasingly large sums of money addressing the impacts of climate change while spending
very little on addressing the causes or enhancing biodiversity as governments devote more resources
to dealing with the more catastrophic events of climate change they are diverting attention away
from efforts to slow it down however what is this terrifying event that is already happening now but
even NASA cannot explain it let's find out more as the tech billionaire updates us all hello everyone
welcome back to Elon Musk Evolution where we bring you the most recent news about Elon Musk and his
multi-billion dollar companies space news and the latest science and technology but before we
begin make sure you subscribe to our Channel and click the Bell icon so you don't miss any of our
amazing videos according to musk in recent months a number of inquiries have been received wondering
if NASA has linked Earth's recent warming to changes in how Earth moves through space around
the Sun a sequence of orbital oscillations known as milankovic Cycles mulitan malankovic
a Serbian geophysicist proposed in the 1920s that variations in the Tilt and wobbling of the Earth's
axis affect the quantity of energy absorbed from the Sun altering the planet's temperature Through
Time milankovic computed the Cycles back 600 000 years taking into account the quantity of sunlight
reaching the planet's upper atmosphere and claimed that those variations were to blame for
the cyclical swings between the warm interglacials and the ice ages could this be the reason for the
Earth's present climate change let's dig in what are malankovic cycles and how do they impact Earth
a planet's orbital features undergo periodic variations known as melanchovic Cycles which
alter how much Sunshine it receives and ultimately how habitable it is over the course of millions
of years even though milankovic Cycles have nothing to do with the present climate shift
they are considered to have defined Earth's environmental conditions for millions of
years causing the Earth swing frequently between tens to hundreds of thousands year-long ice ages
and warmer periods called interglacials like the one that we live in today scientists are able to
simulate Earth's melanchovic cycles for both the past and the future millions of years in advance
and then compare their results to data discovered in geological deposits all around the planet some
think that the habitability of planets is strongly influenced by malankovic Cycles
three factors determine how much sunlight reaches our planet's outer atmosphere and these are the
its orbit eccentricity that is how elliptical the orbit is tilt of Earth's axis toward the plane in
which our planet revolves and what is known as the procession of the planet's axis as Earth spins its
axis slightly wobbles which points in different directions over time like a toy top spinning
these characteristics are affected by the gravitational attraction of the Sun the
moon and other planets in the solar system although each of these factors varies at
a different rate astronomers can calculate the melanchovic Cycles hundreds of millions of years
in the past as well as in the future because they have a highly accurate understanding of
our planets and its neighbors orbits the orbit of Earth is one of the most circular of any planet
in the solar system but it hasn't always been like this and it probably won't stay that way
forever these variations are largely controlled by the gravitational pull of Jupiter and Saturn
according to NASA an impact the duration of our Seasons the seasons are roughly equal in length
with a nearly circular orbit but as the orbit gets more elliptical the seasons begin to vary
in length this can lead to significant climate changes over extended periods of time according to
musk the total change in global annual insulation due to eccentricity cycle is very small although
it contributes very little to annual seasonal climate fluctuations it becomes significant over
extremely long durations at the moment Earth's so-called perihelion or closest point to the sun
occurs in the early months of January during the summer in the Southern Hemisphere and its aphelion
or furthest point from the Sun occurs in the early months of July during the same season NASA
estimates that the separation between the planet and the star at those two locations is roughly
3.2 million miles which is just about 3.5 percent of the typical sun earth distance this means that
each January 6.8 percent more sunlight reaches Earth's atmosphere than it does each July however
the short-term impact on the climate is minimal but NASA noted that this discrepancy will result
in 23 percent more sunlight reaching Earth's atmosphere around perihelion when the planet's
orbit reaches its most elliptical stage which will happen in roughly 100 000 years this variation
may eventually lead to significant alterations in the planet's climate our planet's axis is slanted
toward the orbital plane as it rotates this tilt which is also known as obliquity is currently 23.4
degrees off from what would be a 90 degree angle with respect to the orbital plane But as time
passes this obliquity changes according to NASA in the last million years it has fluctuated between
22.1 and 24.5 degrees as the tilt of the earth increases the seasons become more intense because
each hemisphere receives more sunlight during the summer when it is slanted toward the Sun and less
during the winter when it is tilted away from the Sun the lengthening of the winters causes
the Continental ice sheets and polar ice caps to grow throughout time most of the land on Earth
might be covered in ice at the height of an Ice Age turning the world into an unhabitable snowball
about every 40 000 years according to maliverno the tilt of the Earth's axis swings in this manner
the planet's axis oscillates in a circular motion as it spins axial procession is the name of this
phenomenon as a result the axis in our time points toward the star Polaris often known as the North
Star in the direction of the north but in a few thousand years according to NASA it will point to
the star kochab in the constellation Little Dipper the axis takes 25 772 years to fully revolve
around itself seasonal contrasts worsened in one Hemisphere by axial precession and diminished in
the other according to NASA the planet's orbital precession Works in conjunction with this effect
in essence the plane in which the planet orbits the Sun as well as the axis of Earth's rotation
are both in motion because of this the closest and furthest points of the planet's orbit around the
star are not constant but rather change over time in thirteen Thousand Years the Northern Hemisphere
will be closer to the star during the summer than it is now when perihelion occurs during
the southern summer the fact that astronomical calculations agree with what geologists observe
when they date sedimentary layers discovered in locations that once formed the ocean's floor is
the most compelling evidence that melanchovic Cycles control earth's climate according to
maliverno we know that the malankovic Cycles had an impact on glaciation because we can see that
clearly in geological records at the bottom of the oceans there is always some sediment that
slowly deposits when you have a period when it rains more for example because of changes in the
global circulation there will be more erosion and more sediment of a certain type when the climate
becomes drier you will get a different type of sediment that's how these sediments record climate
change according to the Utah Geological Survey scientists now know that Earth has gone through
at least five significant ice ages in the past 2.4 billion years as a result of such excavations
approximately twenty thousand years ago during the pleistocene epoch which span from 2.6
million to eleven thousand seven hundred years ago the last ice age reached its height the world's
average temperature was around 10 degrees Fahrenheit cooler at the height of the last
ice age when woolly mammoths roamed the huge ice seats covering North America and Eurasia deniers
of climate change frequently assert that global warming would still occur even in the absence of
greenhouse gas emissions that humans are sending into the atmosphere however according to malovorno
there is no evidence in the geological record to support this according to maloverno researchers
have conducted several campaigns where they have drilled into the Antarctic Ice Sheets and taken
samples of deep below the surface reaching layers that are up to 800 000 years old they analyze the
concentrations of carbon dioxide trapped in those layers there are tiny air bubbles in the ice
essentially samples of the atmosphere as it was back then and they have found that even during the
interglacials the maximum amount of carbon dioxide was nowhere near the amount that we see today
additionally maloverno noted that attempts to simulate present-day climate change using solely
Natural Factors such as the malenkovic Cycles failed to match the present-day rate of warming
so when is the next ice age even if man-made climate change did not exist the planet would
face a major climate disaster at some point in the future however that period in time would not
arrive for tens of thousands of years according to maloverno the next ice age would occur in 50
000 years however what happens to the climate in the coming decades could set us up for a much
sooner climatic catastrophe we've had an extremely stable climate for the past ten thousand years
according to maloverno we are altering the climate and significantly altering the extremely even
Plateau that we have benefited from for the past few Millennia according to malivernon agriculture
could only start during the interglacial which is when human civilization flourished he said so what
do malankovic Cycles have to do with the planet's habitability the moderate nature of the planet's
melanchovic Cycles is thought by scientists to be the only factor that allowed life on Earth as we
know it to emerge using the malankovic cycles of exoplanets Russell Dietrich creates models
of their habitability he thinks that the existence of liquid water is not necessary for an Earth-like
planet to support life even when it is in the so-called habitable zone the area surrounding
the star it is not yet apparent though how precisely melanchovic Cycles impact habitability
strong melanchovic Cycles particularly those with significant obliquity changes have been
discovered in certain studies to be beneficial for habitability according to Detrick it might
prevent the planet from entering the snowball state in my study from 2018 I found however
the exact opposite I found that with large obliquity changes you might have super large
ice sheets building up land which are basically permanent and very difficult to get rid of as they
introduce thermal inertia according to Dietrich a planet may be less habitable the more pronounced
the malankovitch Cycles are the models he claimed are still somewhat rudimentary to understand the
malenkovic cycles of an exoplanet we need to have really good measurements of the orbital parameters
of the planet that we're looking at but also all the orbital parameters of all the other planets in
the system said Dietrich the complex phenomenon known as malenkovic Cycles is brought about by
perturbations from all of the other planets in the system as well as from the host star and any
moons that the planet may have apart from Earth Mars is the only planet about which scientists
know enough to examine its melanchovic cycles and how they affect the climate the melanchovic
Cycles on Mars are much more extreme than those on Earth according to Dietrich its eccentricity
changes by larger amounts than Earth's and its obliquity changes by larger amounts than Earth's
Mars polar regions have experienced repeated changes in temperature over the ages according
to measurements of polar deposits made by orbiters scanning the red planet these measurements reveal
alternating layers of ice and dust According to some experts there may not even be a chance
for life to exist on Earth without the moon in their 2000 book Rare Earth evolutionary
biologists Donald brownley and Peter Ward from the field of astrobiology supported this notion
the two claim that the huge large Moon exerts a torque on Earth's equatorial bulge which is the
planet's enlargement at its equator stabilizing the planet's axis procession according to Warden
Brownlee the Earth's axis would wobble by up to 30 degrees without the moon producing significantly
more extreme climate changes Dietrich warns that this theory has not been proved nevertheless
although there are breakthroughs in computer modeling there are still several unanswered
concerns about the Earth's changing climate and the melanchovic Cycles according to geological
records the earth's climate changed with the periodicity of around 100 000 years
up to 1.5 million years ago such oscillations would correlate to changes in the eccentricity
of the planet's orbit however older sediments show a considerably shorter cycle of only 40
000 years which would correspond to changes in the obliquity or tilt of the Earth's axis the reason
for this abrupt transformation is completely unknown given how little the eccentricity changes
are and how little the accompanying changes in sunlight are Dietrich said it doesn't make
much sense that it would happen as a result some climatology have suggested that the ice ages may
not be related to melanchovic Cycles at all so how can we be sure malankovic Cycles are not to blame
first milankovic Cycles operate on lengthy time scales spanning from tens of thousands to hundreds
of thousands of years the current warming of the Earth in contrast has occurred over a period of
decades to centuries the quantity of solar energy that Earth has absorbed over the past 150 years
has not significantly changed as a result of melanchovic Cycles in truth NASA satellite
observations reveal that solar radiation has actually somewhat declined over the past 40 years
second malenkovic Cycles are but one potential component in the past and present climate change
even for Ice Age cycles variations in the size of ice sheets and changes in the amount of carbon
dioxide in the atmosphere have been key factors in determining the magnitude of temperature
oscillations over the past several million years for instance the size of ice sheets influences
how much solar radiation is reflected back to space and consequently how hot the Earth is
now there's the matter of carbon dioxide as part of the malenkovic cycle driven changes to earth's
climate the concentration of carbon dioxide in our atmosphere changed from roughly 180
parts per million to 280 parts per million throughout previous glacial Cycles these
oscillations contributed significantly to the overall change in Earth's climate that occurred
during those Cycles currently however it is the direct intake of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere
from the combustion of fossil fuels rather than climate feedbacks from the ocean or land induced
by melanchovic cycles that is responsible for changing Earth's atmospheric composition over
the last century since the beginning of the Industrial Age the level of carbon dioxide in
Earth's atmosphere has increased 47 percent from roughly 280 PPM to 412 PPM there has been an 11
increase in carbon dioxide over the last 20 years alone since the carbon dioxide created by burning
fossil fuels leaves a specific fingerprint that instruments can detect scientists can say with a
high degree of certainty that this carbon dioxide is predominantly the result of human activity
the average temperature on Earth has risen by more than one degree Celsius since 1850. additionally
according to recent scientific assessments the Earth might warm by another 0.5 degrees Celsius
as early as 2030. this rather rapid warming of our climate owing to human activity occurs in
addition to the very slow changes in temperature induced by malankovic Cycles temperature models
show that any forcing of Earth's temperature caused by melanchovic Cycles is overpowered
when the quantity of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere exceeds 350 PPM since 1750 the
amount of warming caused by greenhouse gases released into the atmosphere as a result of
human combustion of fossil fuels has increased by more than 50 times compared to the small increase
in heat that the sun has produced over that same time the lower atmosphere or troposphere and the
next layer of the atmosphere the stratosphere are both expected to warm if the Sun is to
blame for the current warming of Earth the Earth's surface and lower atmosphere have warmed but the
stratosphere has cooled according to studies made by balloons and satellites scientists
are unaware of any natural shifts to the balance between the amount of solar radiation absorbed by
Earth and the amount of energy reflected back to space that might account for such a rapid period
of global warming the amount of incoming solar radiation has increased relatively marginally
over the last century and is hence not a driver of Earth's current climatic warming the Earth
is currently experiencing an interglacial phase which is a time of milder weather between ice ages
according to scientists if there were no human influences on climate Earth's orbital locations
within the melanchovic Cycles would indicate that our planet should be cooling rather than warming
following a long-term cooling Trend that started six thousand years ago that isn't cool in the
least Elon Musk and climate change Elon Musk is not a climate skeptic to be clear what is true is
the opposite along with artificial intelligence he considers climate change to be one of Humanity's
two biggest concerns he was on the point of Tears as he spoke to Joe Rogan's microphone and stated
this we are really playing a crazy game with the atmosphere and the oceans we're taking
huge amounts of carbon from deep underground and putting it into the atmosphere it's crazy
we should not do this this is very dangerous we should accelerate the transition to sustainable
energy I mean the strange thing is that we're obviously going to run out of oil in the long
run there is only so much oil we can extract and burn that ends today's episode what do you
think of this episode let us know your thoughts in the comment box below please subscribe and
don't forget to like today's video we'll see you in the next video thank you so much for watching