The Climate Change Debate Is Long Over And There Is Nothing We Can Do

so there are many hard questions I'm just gonna ask you expand on the report pretend you're an expert witness and I'm your lawyer sounds good bro intense stand by camera one that the four hundred and fifty parts-per-million will soon be crossed the question remains how will we respond and joining us now Studios Richard Westbrook deputy assistant administrator of the EPA welcome Thank You mr. Westbrook you've spent most of your professional career as a climate scientist in the public sector yes ten years as a supervisory management analyst in the office of environmental information and before that I was a program specialist in the EPA's resource management division and you have a PhD in climate science from Stanford yes and another in chemistry with a master's in biology okay tell us about the findings in the report that was just released the latest measurements taken at Mauna Loa in Hawaii indicate a co2 level of 400 parts per million just so we know what we're talking about if you were a doctor and we were the patient what's your prognosis a thousand years 2,000 years a person has already been born who will die due to catastrophic failure of the planet what did he do say okay can you expand on that sure um the last time there was this much co2 in the air the oceans were 80 feet higher than they are now two things you should know half the world's population lives within 120 miles of an ocean and the other humans can't breathe underwater you're saying the situation's dire not exactly um your house is burning to the ground The Situation's dire your house has already burned to the ground situations over so what can we do to reverse this well there's a lot we could do 20 years ago or even 10 years ago but now no can you make an analogy that might help us understand sure um it's as if you're sitting in your car in your garage with the engine running and the door closed and you've slipped into unconsciousness and that's it what if someone comes and opens the door you're already dead what if the person got there in time you'd be safe okay so now what's the co2 equivalent of the getting there on time shutting off the car twenty years ago you sound like you're saying it's hopeless yeah is that the administration's position or yours there isn't a position on this any more than there's a position on a temperature at which water boils the administration let me try to your administration and don't forget I need you to stretch solar and clean coal nuclear power raising fuel economy standards and building a more efficient electrical grid yes and that would have been great just see if we can't find a better spin people are starting their weekends the report says we can release 565 more gigatons of co2 without the effects being calamitous says we can only release 565 gigatons so what if we only released 564 well then we would have a reasonable shot at some form of dystopian post-apocalyptic life but the carbon dioxide in the oil that we've already leased is 2,795 gigatons so what would all this look like well mass migrations food and water shortages spread of deadly disease endless wildfires way too many to keep under control storms that have the power to level cities blacken out the sky and create permanent darkness you're gonna get in trouble for saying this publicly okay mr. Westbrook we want to inform people but we don't want to alarm them can you give us a reason to be optimistic well that's the thing well Americans are optimistic by Nature and if we face this problem head-on if we listen to our best scientists and act decisively and passionately I still don't see any way we can survive okay Richard Westbrook deputy assistant administrator of the EPA thank you for joining us thanks Ari

Channel: undefined

Views: 788,076

Rating: 4.848382 out of 5

Keywords: Climate (Literature Subject), Global Warming (Film Subject), Physics (Field Of Study), Can, Film (Media Genre), Think, Energy, Power, Change, You

Id: 6CXRaTnKDXA

Length: 4min 13sec (253 seconds)

Published: Mon Nov 24 2014

Reddit Comments

[u/MBDowd]

SS: Good prep for today's debate/conversation with r/Futurology / It's also a good "casual Friday" post. :-)

This 4-minute clip may be the most unflinchingly bold and factually accurate segment on climate change that has appeared on TV in the U.S., and it's from the HBO series, "The Newsroom" (i.e., it's fictional - a.k.a., "fake news").

James West at Mother Jones did a follow-up "We Fact Checked Aaron Sorkin’s Climate Science on “The Newsroom” and judged it to be true to the evidence as we understood it in 2014. Things have gotten worse ("faster than expected") since.

Before HBO removed it from Youtube I captured the longer 8-minute clip, which can be accessed here.

[u/Robinhood192000]

This clip has been posted multiple times in the past on here but I think it's still an amazing clip so consider it approved.

[u/Volfegan]

"If we had done something 20 years ago..." The hopium equivalent of this is sustainable clean nuclear fusion will be ready in 20 years.

If you believe in hopium: NASA Lattice Confinement Fusion [2020] (plot twist - it will solve nothing).

[u/EnjoyLifeWhileUCan]

Great video on what's coming down the pike. Never get tired of seeing it.

[u/SchmooieLouis]

Amazing to see the deadly diseases and wildfires ALREADY ticked off on that list. You could argue the storms too.

[u/Magnesium4YourHead]

My fave.