Head in the geoengineered clouds - with Dr. Paul Goddard
Hi, folks. Welcome back to Earth on the Rocks, the show where we get to know the person behind the science over drinks. As always, I'm your host, Shelby Raider, and this is the first episode in the second half of our first season. So it's exciting to be back and hopefully to have you all back for us, for the next several episodes. And joining us today is a colleague and friend of mine, doctor Paul Goddard.
Shelby:Paul, welcome to the show.
Paul:Thanks for having me.
Shelby:So, Paul, since we're getting to know you over drinks, presumably, what is your drink of choice for today?
Paul:Yeah. I think, since it's wintertime, I'm gonna go with a Manhattan. If we were in the warmer times, I would say maybe a Negroni would probably be my my seasonal picks.
Shelby:Those are excellent picks. Are these ones that you're gonna make at home, or are you going out for them?
Paul:I like making them at home. Negronis, you can kinda riff on them quite a bit, so I like to try different, you know, amounts and different main ingredients too. So
Shelby:We'll find out over the course of this episode that Paul is a man of many talents, and one of them is drink mixing, I would argue. And I have been the beneficiary of that a few times, so that's always that's why I keep Paul around, basically, so I can get those invitations every now and then.
Paul:I must be doing something right.
Shelby:Yeah. So, Paul, you're also part of our department, earth and atmospheric sciences, which over the last eight episodes we've seen is pretty diverse in our research interests. So how would you classify yourself if someone said, what sort of scientist are you?
Paul:Yeah. I'm a climate scientist that uses climate models, so large computer simulations, to learn more about how the climate will react to CO2 and global warming. Then also a large part of my research is on climate engineering or it might be called geoengineering. So that's, something we can dive into a little bit more. I'm sure there's some curiosity there.
Shelby:Yeah. Yeah. I think that will be a fun thing for us to talk about. So Paul and I go way back at this point. It feels like we met when we were in graduate school, both at University of Arizona over ten years ago Yeah.
Shelby:Now. So it feels like a a long time. But that was not sort of where you you started your career. So can we go back to to sort of how all of this transpired? What were you doing before you ended up at Arizona?
Paul:A long and winding road. My initial undergrad degree was in mathematics and secondary education. So I taught high school math in the Cincinnati area for a few years, and then I really decided that I liked science a lot more than mathematics. I like the kinda see the the impact of whatever, you know, phenomena I was looking at and always liked just looking at weather maps in the news in the newspaper each morning. My brother would get the sports section first, so I just started looking at the metro section and looking at the the weather maps.
Paul:So I went back and got a an undergrad in in environmental science as well, and that, that kind of led me towards deciding to go to grad school. But, yeah, before that, it was teaching high school, and then I also worked at a golf course quite a bit when I was younger.
Shelby:So how how long did you teach in a high school?
Paul:I did you know, the student teaching process is about a year, and then I did about two years after that.
Shelby:Yeah. And and were there, so my sister is in the school system, and, like, hats off to folks that are in k through 12 education. I think that's a a tough place to be, especially right now for a lot of reasons, but is a really fulfilling job to have. And so what were some aspects of that that you enjoyed or brought you joy versus some aspects that maybe made you think, I might wanna go back to school and and think about something else.
Paul:Sure. I I love the teaching part of it and having you you know, kind of instructing and and getting the light bulbs to click with the students is a big payoff. I think that I've always valued education, and I was like, well, yeah, sure. Then I I I should be an educator because, you know, I I think this is extremely important, especially in k through 12 education. What I wasn't prepared for was kind of the the not so great match of kind of my personality and how my my insides work, if you will.
Paul:I was always a little little nervous in front of the classroom. It was, very difficult for me to kind of make sure to maintain interest in what was going on in the classroom. And sometimes there's even days when I'd be, you know, talking algebra or geometry, and I'm up there at the whiteboard. And even I'm like, gosh. This is boring.
Paul:Yeah. You know? And and, and yeah. So I that was kind of, the eureka moment where I was like, maybe this isn't, like, exactly what I was put on earth to do. So, yeah, that that led to a transition for sure.
Shelby:Yeah. Math would be I mean, I think math is one of those subjects that a lot of students are always like, oh my gosh. I don't wanna have to go to math class. Like, I hate this sort of thing. And so for you to for you to personally sort of embrace that and to teach that and and now, in many ways, incorporated it into what you do is is pretty important and and useful.
Paul:It takes a special talent that teachers have to be able to take a subject like math and make it interesting for students and so that they actually learn and and move on. Like, that's extreme talent, and I always admire those kinds of teachers, and I had many of them. It just was unfortunately in the cards for me.
Shelby:And so at the same time, you said you were also working at a golf course. What were you you doing there?
Paul:I worked inside and outside. So inside the pro shop, which is basically just, you know, checking people in and running carts every now and then. Nothing extravagant. But then I'd spent two years doing outside work during the summer, so maintenance, groundskeeping, mowing, getting up at 05:00 every single day. I think I worked, like, sixty straight days in one summer, and great for, exercise.
Paul:And it was really fun, the people that you work with, and the camaraderie that you develop with your coworkers is a lot of fun. And being outside and and I I love the sport of golf. So just getting a little bit more into the inside of how things actually work was was very fulfilling.
Shelby:Yeah. And you're still an avid golfer. Right? Yes. So did you start golfing at a young age and then that has just sort of carried through?
Paul:Yeah. I think I started in fourth or fifth grade. I remember that my brother and I both wanted to play, and my dad, you know, bless his heart and probably the right move. He was like, well, we're not gonna go play it, but we can go to a driving range. And I I do remember I remember this vividly.
Paul:I do not have a good memory, but being kinda disappointed that, oh, we're just going to a driving range. We're not playing. But we went to a driving range, and then I happened to just find a friend that also wanted to play. And in fifth grade, we would go to a local nine hole course, and we would just, you know, play as many holes as we could before dark. And the town I grew up in had a had a club for junior high kids.
Paul:So once we were in junior high, we had organized golf we were already playing and then played for the high school team and and, yes, still carry on with it today.
Shelby:Yep. Yep. I know that you you play pretty often, and I think I'm assuming you're pretty good from things that I've heard or picked up on.
Paul:It's all relative. Yeah. Some some days you feel like you're pretty good, and you're like, maybe I should check out the senior tour when I get older. Other days you're quite humbled, and you're like, no. That that that is not gonna happen.
Shelby:So then after this sort of period of teaching, then you decided to go back and get a second undergrad degree. And was this also sort of in the Cincinnati area?
Paul:Yeah. So all of the I went to University of Cincinnati for my undergrads.
Shelby:So I, this is gonna be a really strange aside, but I have to ask. I feel like for folks that are listening, maybe they're not familiar with some of this. Cincinnati is known, at least regionally, for a specific type of chili, and folks from Cincinnati seem to be very passionate about it. So I guess my first question is, are you a big fan of Cincinnati chili?
Paul:Yes. For sure. And and definitely Skyline is the way to go. And we can't be talking about this around over lunchtime. We're rumbling over here.
Paul:Yeah. The the Cincinnati style chili, it's it's to new people, I like to just call it just think of it as like a sauce, a pasta sauce, and that that kinda goes over a little bit better until you put the heaping mounds of cheddar cheese on it, and then then they, like, also raise an eyebrow there. But, I love it. It's very unfortunate that there's not Cincinnati Chili here in Bloomington, so I I have tried to macerate, Cincinnati chili myself and and make a pretty good batch.
Shelby:Wow. I've never been invited over for that, and now I'm a little, little personally offended. Cincinnati chili has cinnamon in it. Is that right?
Paul:Yeah.
Shelby:Is that part of what makes it distinct in the chili spectrum?
Paul:Yeah. There's a lot of, like, wintery spices in it. So cinnamon, allspice, some nutmeg sometimes goes in there, baker's chocolate. It's just heaping teaspoons of many different kinds of spices.
Shelby:Yeah. The times that I've had it, it's been on top of spaghetti noodles and, like you said, with just, like, heaping mounds of cheddar cheese. And it does sound a little strange when you describe it, but it is so delicious.
Paul:Yeah.
Shelby:And I think the way you mentioned it, thinking of it as a sauce is a really good way because it's sort of a thin chili, but goes really well on noodles.
Paul:Right. Yeah. The the meat itself is kinda pulverized into, you know, a little bit, so it's more like a sauce. You can you can add beans to it, but that's not the traditional way. It's an option.
Paul:I prefer no beans, but I do prefer onions and cheese on it.
Shelby:Yeah. Yeah. As people who listen to the show know, I'm a big fan of regional snacks, so I'm I gotta throw the the Cincinnati chili in there. So after you went back and got your second degree, was it immediate from there to grad school?
Paul:It was not immediate. That was actually when I worked at the golf course. So between the initial undergrads, I did teaching, and then I went back for the environmental science. And then I worked at golf courses for about two years before I decided to make a transition and kind of career path, if you will, and and applied for grad schools. And what would that have been?
Paul:Twenty eleven, '20 '12?
Shelby:Yeah. Yeah. And then ended up at at Arizona where we cross paths. And, again, for listeners of the show, Paul is also a coed wiffle ball champion. So that is one of my only claims to fame, and I will try to shout that from the rooftops any chance that I get.
Shelby:I still have the T shirt. Almost wore it today Wow. Good. In honor of this episode, but it's a little cold, so I didn't.
Paul:Yeah. I I do not fit into my T shirt anymore.
Shelby:So while you're at Arizona, what sort of work do you get into while you're there? What are you working on as a grad student?
Paul:I was immediately started working with climate models, the the big kind of Earth system model. So looking at how the entire globe would react to things like global warming. My adviser had worked quite a bit on sea level rise and how it would react in the next, like, century or so. So we did a few papers on sea level rise, and specifically along the East Coast Of The United States. And then at the latter half of my graduate career, I worked with looking at, heat transport around Antarctica and how you can get warm water onto the onto the shelf and melt ice and kind of chain reaction that allows the land ice to move into the ocean and and then, again, initiate sea level rise.
Paul:So kind of a tangential, but still tied to sea level rise.
Shelby:Yeah. Had you ever worked with climate models or any form of modeling before this?
Paul:No. I was very fortunate to, be accepted at into Arizona because I really didn't have any climate background or even atmospheric science background or computer science, which turns out to be probably one of the most important skills to have. So I, was very fortunate and learned on the fly how to run these time and mile simulations and how to analyze the model output and also be placed in what I found to be a very interesting topic, which was sea level rise.
Shelby:And I I don't I mean, I'm not in this field, but from folks I know in this field, it doesn't seem terribly unusual for folks to come into a graduate program in in modeling and to not have some of that experience like you had mentioned. Was that a tough transition for you? Like, I'm sure there's a really steep learning curve, but you had a really strong math background, which I would imagine helped a lot. Yeah.
Paul:I think the ability to kind of at least understand mathematics and be able to grasp kind of what's behind physics as far as moving things around in the equation, you know, I was quite comfortable with. So it was more just like in mathematics. It's not, at least to the stage that I got in undergrad, you're not really applying it to real world problems. And thankfully, when you get to climate science, you are applying it to real world problems and ones that have tremendous impact. So I really like that part of the field and and having that extra interest certainly drove you to stay there long hours trying to figure out what was going on and and and understand not only the science behind it, but also computer science.
Paul:Like, how can you make the computer do what you want it to do? And then as another part of the job I never considered before I got into grad school, how do you write? And that was a long process too. Like, I went from being very fearful of writing to, actually, I I enjoy writing now. When you have a story to tell, it's kind of fun to to organize it in a way that other people would enjoy reading as well.
Paul:Yeah.
Shelby:I think that that's something I I feel like most people struggle with at some point, and, certainly, I feel like now I feel students struggle with that. You know, I can see that from the side where science writing, like, writing for some sort of scientific publication is so different from any sort of formal writing training that you get through undergrad and even through some classes in graduate school. It's a very different style. And so the first time you do it, even if you have written a lot before or felt like you were a good writer, to me, it's so foreign that it feels uncomfortable. You know?
Shelby:Like, it's really tough to feel like you're doing it well, at least for me. And, yeah, I think that that's always something that takes a little bit of time to get used to. But like you said, I think if you can view it as a story, because to me and it seems like to you communicating what you're doing to the public in a way that they can relate to it is really important for what we do, especially now for, again, a number of reasons to sort of highlight the impact of of the work that you're working at.
Paul:Yeah. I mean, it's the end product of what we do. I mean, it's why we get hired. It's why we get promoted. So, yeah, trying to make a story that's that's informative but also catchy is kind of the key.
Paul:I actually run the the the grad student writing group at at IU here, so I've been reading the texts and just getting a lot more pointers, and and and you learn every day about how to write better. So it's kind of it's always gonna be an ongoing struggle.
Shelby:Yeah. Yeah. That's a good way to put it. So we had someone on last semester, Travis O'Brien, who also has done some work with models. But can you talk a little bit about especially for what you were working on at the time at Arizona, how are these models operating?
Shelby:What are you asking them to do, and then what are they giving you out? Because a lot of I think what a lot of what you did was sort of running these simulations to see if we're giving the model sort of these parameters that we either have some knowledge about from previous conditions or we're curious about if we change these moving forward, how's that gonna impact things like the Antarctic ice shelf or sea level on the East Coast and then seeing what they give back. So sort of how do climate models work for the things that you were studying at the time?
Paul:Yeah. I would refer the audience to Travis's explanation because it was it was quite good. I remember listening to that and being like, man, that that's very articulate and well said and concise. But yeah. So these climate models are huge, massive physics and mathematics problems.
Paul:They're run on the largest computer systems across the world. So I typically deal with kind of the end product of what comes out of them. I'm not I'm not a climate model developer. I'm not really in the code too much, like, writing out the equations except for to set up, like, experiments. So what I mean by experiments is these climate models have been tested against historical climate records and are known to be pretty good.
Paul:They can recreate the global mean temperature curves or even down to a regional level, kind of what's going on in the climate system. What I do is I set up an experiment. So it could be as simple as saying, well, what if we all of a sudden have two times the amount of CO2 in the atmosphere? How do things react? What reacts quickly?
Paul:What reacts slowly? What is the end result? What is kinda like once you finally get to another steady state, what do temperatures look like? What does sea level rise look like? What does the anaerobic look like?
Shelby:Can you can you tell us what you mean by steady state?
Paul:By steady state, I mean there's no more changes. You've kind of I don't have to use another jargon word, but you kind of asymptote. You've kind of you've kind of stopped making large changes in the climate system, so you can start to look at what what has changed. That's different from what we would call a transient run, so things that are changing through time. You could also just increase c o two a little bit each time step or every month.
Paul:You could just increase it and then look at how things are changing in time, which is also another type of experiment that would be common to what I would analyze. Then, obviously, there's the big chunk of experiments I look at that's under geoengineering, which is a much bigger hammer we're taking to the climate system and taking a look at how that reacts.
Shelby:So when you're in grad school, you're focused mostly on sort of modeling things related to the ocean. Is that accurate?
Paul:Yeah. So Earth system models means that when you're running the climate model, you're getting atmospheric circulation going, you have ocean circulation going, you have interactions with land, you have interaction with the cryosphere, which is the ice. So all of that works together. So it's an Earth system. But, yeah, I typically looked at the ocean model output.
Paul:So the variables that are going on the ocean, heat transport, obviously, with with, sea level rise, we're looking at the column water temperature, how that changes because that can increase or decrease sea level as well as its salinity can increase or decrease, And then how the actual ocean circulation or the ocean currents change, that can also change local sea level too. So we kinda combined all those ideas into what was causing the sea level rise change, let's say, on the East Coast Of The US.
Shelby:Right. And when Travis was on, one of the things that we had talked about was that, you know, these big computers that you mentioned you have to run these models on. IU has one of these, a supercomputer. At the time you were at Arizona, did Arizona have a supercomputer you were using, or were you having to go somewhere else?
Paul:I did not run anything on Arizona's supercomputer. I know they had a a pretty large system, and then my adviser bought servers, which are basically just a bunch of computers, and mostly that was for data storage. But the actual simulations were given to us by the Geophysical Fluid Dynamics Laboratory out of Princeton, New Jersey. So we worked very closely with them, and and they generated a lot of the data that I analyzed.
Shelby:And when you're working sort of I don't know if this is gonna be the correct terminology, but with, like, an outside modeling group
Paul:Mhmm.
Shelby:How does it work in terms of priority for computer time? Because that's something that that is someone who's, you know, not in this field and is only on the periphery from knowing people in the field. If you, like, have a supercomputer here, maybe IU folks are given priority to run their simulations using IU facilities. But what if you're not at at GFDL and you're wanting to run? Do you buy that time?
Shelby:Do you just get in sort of a line and hope that, I don't know, somebody's run ends quicker than they hope and you can sort of jump in on the tail end? Or how how does the the sort of queue or fight for the computer resources work?
Paul:That's a good question. So with these large computer systems, I'll actually bring up the National Center for Atmospheric Research, NCAR, which is out of Boulder. They have a community Earth system model, and their funding is back to allow the general public to use their computers. But you do first have to write a proposal of this is how we're gonna use our computer system. You have to if if it's, requires a lot of work, then you will have to pay for that time on the computer system, and you get what's called an allocation.
Paul:Like, here's how many core hours you get to use on our computer system. And even though you have an allocation and you have core hours, when you submit a submit a job or say, hey, computer do this, you do still have to sit in a queue with everybody else that's in the queue. So you have to wait for your code to run. And if you're running a really large simulation, that you can sit in the queue for quite a while before there's enough available computing power to run your climate model.
Shelby:How long is quite a while? Like, a few hours, a few days, months?
Paul:I've never had anything more than a couple days.
Shelby:Okay.
Paul:But that's what's great about IU and having our own supercomputer is the queue time is typically less than twelve hours. And many times, once you submit a job, especially if it's a smaller job, it goes it starts running right away, which is phenomenal and saves a lot of time and and a little bit of frustration too. Yeah.
Shelby:So so you sort of work on ocean modeling and simulating things within the ocean while you're at Arizona. And then where do you go once you you graduate from there with your just as a reminder, coed intramural wiffle ball championship trophy in hand?
Paul:Yes. That's important. You know? Because we were only made runner-up, I think, in softball, maybe once or twice.
Shelby:So Yeah. The we didn't do strong softball or basketball.
Paul:Oh, basketball was terrible. Yeah. I mean, I could barely make it down the court.
Shelby:So Same.
Paul:So after that, I went and did a postdoc research position at University of Connecticut. And there, I continue to work with Antarctica stuff except for I was kind of looking at ice cores. So I was more on the surface of of Antarctica, and I took actual records of ice core data, you know, temperature and precipitation data, that that we can get out of ice cores and applied a climate model to see how well the climate model could recreate the paleo record that was in the ice core record. So it was kind of a mix between modeling as well as some actual observations, if you will, of previous climates. So the study was to see how well a climate model could recreate that precipitation record or that temperature record that you got out of an ice core.
Paul:So if it did very well and you had all these ice core records in a certain area, you could use a climate model then to kind of capture what the regional atmosphere was doing at that time or even maybe some things that are going on the ocean. So could you get more out of an ice core than just temperature and precipitation? Could you actually talk about regional dynamics that were happening?
Shelby:Yeah. Which would be a very useful and impactful application of some of that work.
Paul:Yep. That was that was a lot of work, and it was a long paper, and it's probably was not written as well as it would like it to be. I think, that's one of those key ones that I bring up with, like, in my grad student writing group where I'm like, there are some really good ideas, but I did not make that the focus of the paper. So I completely understand if someone, like, read the abstract and started reading, I was like, I can't I can't make sense of this because I agree. Like, my head was kind of all over the place when I was trying to write that paper.
Shelby:I feel like if you make it into a career and you don't look back and have things that you wish you had done differently, then then you're doing it wrong.
Paul:Right.
Shelby:So you've gone from sort of ocean up to some surface level things.
Paul:A little bit of atmospheric circulation, at least around Antarctica.
Shelby:Yeah. And then you come to IU. And while you've been here, what have you you've been working on also with models?
Paul:Yeah. So I started, also in a postdoc position here working with Ben Kravitz, and he is a world expert in climate engineering or geoengineering. So that's the purposeful modification of the climate system to reduce the negative impacts of climate change or global warming. So purposely trying to cool the planet is one way of thinking about it. So when I first got here, I, yeah, did another big transition in in kind of the research field, and I learned about a specific type of climate engineering called marine cloud brightening.
Paul:So the thought behind this is you take a cloud and you populate it with more aerosols or really, really small particles, and you don't change anything else about the cloud. The cloud droplets will actually become smaller and more plentiful if you add more aerosols. And these cloud droplets since the cloud droplet number increases, there's more places for sunlight to hit and reflect back. So you're essentially increasing the surface area of a cloud and making it brighter. That's the idea of it is you're gonna allow more sunlight to reflect back the space, so there's less sunlight that's entering the Earth system and warming the surface.
Paul:And so we applied this idea again in the climate model, trying to simulate if you can do this in the Gulf Of Mexico, again, for, you know, potential impacts, you know, to help out coral reefs, help out ecology around there, help sea level rise, power temperatures, even terrestrial plants and animals as well. So that's the first study that I did.
Shelby:And so the the idea there is you can increase the number of droplets in a cloud, make it more reflective, and so then at least for that region, decrease the temperature because not as much sunlight is getting through. And the work that you all are doing at this stage is all just modeling. So let's see what may happen if in theory we were to do this, but you Exactly. You're not going up in a plane and, like, dropping things out of the sky. Right?
Paul:No. Yeah. That I'm glad that you brought that up. Right now, everything's just being simulated in in computers. There's a lot to learn about this idea.
Paul:It's kind of a well, was science fiction when I was learning about it in grad school, you know, less than ten years ago, but now has become a a realistic, like, idea and and and possibility of one way to combat climate change. It it won't be the only option. The best option is to still reduce greenhouse gas emissions. That's that's the only way we're getting out of this position that we're in. But it might be something that can supplement our efforts and might kinda buy us some time until we really start cutting back on CO2 ad greenhouse gas emissions.
Shelby:Yeah. And when you say you're sort of adding things to the cloud to to make it have more of these particles, what are those sorts of things that you're simulating being added?
Paul:So, again, this idea is called marine cloud brightening. So it's marine clouds. So it's clouds that are over the ocean. So we would actually would have sprayers that would spray seawater, which includes sea salt, up into the the low lying clouds. So the aerosol particle would be small, sea salt particles.
Paul:That's what would serve as the cloud droplet or cloud condensing nuclei, if you will.
Shelby:And so when you say sprayers, my my mind immediately goes to thinking of a whole bunch of giant fountains in the ocean. Is that accurate? Is that
Paul:If the fountains were more like misters, yeah. Okay. Yeah.
Shelby:Okay. Wow. That's interesting. So I have lots of questions about some of these things because I feel like I could envision this being a topic that, especially when different folks in the the general public hear geoengineering are, like, immediately very concerned about. And so in your work, I guess, have you encountered some of those opinions where people are immediately closed off to this idea in the community and think there's too much we don't know about this?
Paul:Yeah. There there's a lot of opposition to it. And to go back to what you're saying, like, when you hear the word geoengineering, you should be scared, and it's really unfortunate. This is where we're at right now is that this is, something that we're actually considering. But I actually think I hear when I talk to people, let's say, on the golf course, people that have a completely different career and don't know much at all about climate science, I get more positive feedback from that because they see it as, like, oh, there is possibly a solution to this, like, it's not complete dire and, you know, we're all we're all in trouble.
Paul:Doom and gloom. Thank you.
Shelby:Yeah.
Paul:Yeah. So there is some kind of optimism that comes out of talking about it once they understand what it is, because it, you know, it sounds like, oh, this is those contrails or whatever, you know, or all these, conspiracy theories. But, no, this is legitimate science, and it's it's actually not that difficult to understand. Hopefully, you know, the audience kind of grasped at least what marine cloud brightening is, and there's not a secret to that. That is as described about what it takes to to brighten a cloud.
Shelby:Yeah. And some of my other questions are sort of in this realm of, so right now, all of this is being done through modeling just to see what potential impacts may be. I could imagine that if we get to a stage where collectively some group decides we actually need to try this. So, like, let's put some of these giant water fountains in in the middle of the ocean and start misting the lower clouds. There there'd be some difficulties in implementing this in terms of global politics.
Shelby:So, like, who gets to decide, yes, let's try to enhance cloud brightening, and this is where we wanna do it? Is that something that you all have thought about or had encounters with?
Paul:Yeah. There's there's conferences where we bring together climate engineering scientists, if you will, but also bring in people from the social sciences, from government, and they all kinda talk about how could we actually implement this if if we need to. I haven't personally been too involved in those. There are people that I work with that are intimately involved with them, and it's really fun to kinda sit and listen to them present at a group meeting about what they've learned. And they must be making some progress at least as far as let's continue the research and perhaps even get to field experiments.
Paul:So by field experiments, I mean, actually trying it out at least on a small scale because we're we're getting funding. I mean, there's funding from the government. There's funding from private industries to look into geoengineering more closely across the world, not just here in The US.
Shelby:Yeah. Yeah. I think that folks that are in the sort of climate science community, I think that the work they do sounds so interesting because there's so many applications for it that could have really dramatic positive impacts for literally everyone on the planet. And so to also see how interdisciplinary the work is, you know, I think for us and and maybe for folks that started listening to this episode, you think of climate modelers as very much on the STEM side of things, the science side of things. A lot of this ends up having overlap with social sciences, with political science, with environmental science, with industry because you're gonna need some partners to help develop these technologies or or methods to implement some of these.
Shelby:So, yeah, I think the work that you do is really it's just cool to hear about because it is so interdisciplinary and not just in the sciences, but in ways that brings in a lot of different viewpoints and perspectives.
Paul:You can put on a lot of hats if you're a climate scientist, especially someone that cares deeply about science communication, which which I do. I don't dive into the politics part of it, but as far as, like, communicating with other people and giving talks and things like that, it's another skill that you have to develop if you wanna be a climate scientist that that hopefully makes an impact.
Shelby:Yeah. And I think even just hearing sort of your trajectory in the field highlights how diverse the field can be. I mean, you have have literally made your way from oceans up to atmosphere just in the modeling community. And what you mentioned is actually a really nice segue. That was unintentional, I think, but way to go, Paul.
Shelby:So now that you're here, you're also doing a lot of outreach. Right? Sort of educational components to the work that you're doing. Can you tell us a little bit about that, how that came to be, and and what you all are doing with that?
Paul:Yeah. This is a project I'm very passionate about. It's something I'm also doing with Ben Kravitz, who has been kind of my mentor since I've been here at IU, and we also work with the School of Education, particularly Adam Scribner. I do wanna give the shoutout because this project is as much as theirs as it is mine. But we've developed a climate engineering teaching module, we call it.
Paul:It's a set of lesson plans that, secondary teachers can use. So seventh through twelfth grade totally would be able to to use these lessons in their classroom, but it teaches the students about how they could potentially design a geoengineering technology that, you know, that would hopefully work to reduce global mean temperature or negative impacts of climate change. They do a a hands on experiment of marine cloud brightening, where it's kind of like the cloud in the bottle, kind of traditional experiment, but you modify how much aerosol's in the bottle so you can actually see that. If you increase aerosols, you can actually increase the reflectivity of a cloud that's just contained in, like, a soda bottle.
Shelby:Can you tell us a little bit about that? Because there probably are people who don't know what the cloud in a bottle experiment is.
Paul:Sure. So you can make a cloud in a bottle several ways, but the way that we do it is by putting some water into, like, a one liter bottle is is typically what we use. Some water in there, and then you spray aerosol hairspray into that. And so the aerosol hairspray serves as the cloud condensing nuclei.
Shelby:So, like, little droplets for water to then condense onto and form
Paul:Cloud droplets.
Shelby:Yeah.
Paul:Yep. And then you have to pressurize it. So you I used to use, like, these and well, like, a bike hand pump, and, like, a little rubber stopper to pressurize, but then I came across those, like, fizz keepers, they're called. They they don't actually work to keep CO2 in a in a pop bottle, but that's what they they tell you that they do.
Shelby:They need to rebrand as cloud condensers.
Paul:Yeah. Exactly. So we attach one of those on top of the the bottle and pump it up till it's pressurized. And then once you pop the top, the cloud forms. So by varying the amount of hairspray you put in or the amount of aerosols you put in, you can record a different reflectivity.
Paul:So the experiment has a flashlight. It also has a lux meter, which captures light intensity, basically. So you have this all set up and you run a bunch of trials, and you'd begin to notice that, oh, if I spray less in, we have a dark cloud. If you spray more and you get a more reflective cloud, it helps them connect what marine cloud brightening actually is.
Shelby:That's very cool application of of your work, and maybe people will hear this and wanna wanna do it themselves.
Paul:It's all online.
Shelby:Yeah. All of y'all's materials are available publicly. Right?
Paul:Yes. It is. Climateengineering.iu.edu.
Shelby:There you go. People can go check it out. You'll have to see if you get extra hits after the episode drops. Uh-huh. So, yeah, I mean, that sounds like a really rewarding application of some of the work that you're doing.
Shelby:And I also think it's really important to be able to communicate, especially with young folks, you know, how important this work is, but also some optimism, as you mentioned, that that there are options for us. Like you said, the best option is for us to reduce CO2 emissions, but there are other things that we can think about, so it's not all hope is lost.
Paul:Yeah. I go to the classrooms and see, like, their final designs and talk to them about how it works and costs and, you know, maybe some negative potential, like, limitations of it or negative outcomes that may come. You know? So we get into a good conversation, but you can also see the relief in their faces that, like, climate change is not all doom and gloom that it's a problem. It's a problem that we can solve.
Paul:We just actually have to mobilize and and get that get it solved.
Shelby:Yeah. I'm I'm an eternal optimist, so I always view it as an opportunity, especially for young folks, to be creative and come up with solutions and really make an impact on the world that they live in. So I hope that other people will view it that way.
Paul:I agree.
Shelby:Do you have advice for people that may be interested in this field, either the broad field of sort of modeling or sort of the climate engineering aspect of it?
Paul:My advice would be you're probably interested in the science part. So that's probably not one of the things that I mean, if you're not interested in climate science or physics, then, yeah, this probably isn't quite the path you wanna go on. But I would recommend, like, really trying to learn computer science. It's been every single day, I go in and I try to code, and it's always like, am I doing this right? Is there a better way of doing this?
Paul:Is it more efficient? You know, if someone was looking over my shoulder with more expertise, you know, what kind of guidance would they be giving me? And I've never took a computer science course. Still have not taken a computer science course. And it would be such a relief to have taken them and know that, yes, have been instructed that, yes, this is an appropriate way to solve this problem.
Paul:Right now, I feel like I'm just, you know, blindly throwing darts sometimes. So I would advise don't be scared or shy away from taking computer science. It's it's a way for the future for all all careers, really. So, I would that would be my number one.
Shelby:Yeah. Yeah. I will I would reiterate, I feel like it's so useful across disciplines. Like, I'm like you. I never took a formal computer science course.
Shelby:I really wish that I had. My full extent of coding came in HTML form when I was customizing Myspace pages, but having an actual computer science course would be so helpful. So I think anytime that students can take those, it's it's great.
Paul:Yeah.
Shelby:So that brings us to our last segment, which is our yes, please segment where we each get a minute to stand on a soapbox and talk passionately about something that we're excited by in the moment. Paul, you're welcome to go first. If you want, I can go first, whichever you prefer.
Paul:I'm happy to go first. Okay. Let me just get my timer up too.
Shelby:Okay. And I'll give you a verbal sort of warning of thirty seconds fifteen and five. This is Paul Goddard's. Yes, please.
Paul:Okay. I'd like to spend this time talking about women's professional golf, or the LPGA Tour. I I really enjoy watching women's golf. Not only are they obviously extremely good and well and talented, but they're they actually play the courses as they were designed. So they go to a lot of classic courses where their games fit up, fit match well with the types of challenges that the course is meant to present.
Paul:On the flip side, if you look at men's golf, they just
Shelby:thirty seconds
Paul:men's golf, it just bombed the drives way too far. So they're hitting it over all the hazards. But in women's golf, they're playing they're playing the course like it should be played, and it's really fun to watch. Also, the last tournament that just ended, out of the top ten, eight different nationalities were represented. So it's a very diverse and fun fun field, but you also have really dominant Americans as well to to kinda cheer on.
Paul:So that's my one minute spiel.
Shelby:Perfectly timed. You know, I I had never thought of it in that way that the women are playing the courses as they're designed because they're actively having to to interact with these hazards.
Paul:Right.
Shelby:But, yeah, that's sort of a fun way to view it and a a good viewpoint to take when watching women's golf.
Paul:Yeah. Their game is much more relatable, to to me. You know? I I am a good golfer, but the if I played a course, I would play it much more like a professional woman than a professional male. Professional males, they're hitting it fifty, sixty yards farther than I am, and they're just playing a completely different course.
Paul:So I I like watching the women play, especially, like, recently they played Saint Andrews, which is the home of golf, in in Great Britain. And it's just much more fun to watch them play, like, all the all the little interactions that all the features of the course actually shine through.
Shelby:Do you this maybe you don't wanna answer this publicly. Do you have a favorite course around the state of Indiana? Since you mentioned course design, again, something I personally have never really thought about.
Paul:Well, IU has a phenomenal course. So the Pfau course here, it's been ranked as one of, like, top five or one of the best, college courses, but it's also In
Shelby:the country?
Paul:In the country.
Shelby:Okay.
Paul:Yeah. And but it's also highly ranked as one of the best public courses, and I really get behind public golf. So I'm really proud that we we live in a place where we have a great course, but also that it's public and and anyone can play.
Shelby:Is that what brought you all to Bloomington? It was the golf first and then then the work afterwards?
Paul:I think it it had opened maybe the year of or the year before we arrived. So no. That it did not. It was just a big benefit when we got here. Yeah.
Shelby:Alright. It's up to me now. This will be my my one minute yes, please segment, the first of the season. Again, I gotta get creative having to come up with eight of these. So, Paul, if you can just give me an update when there's thirty, fifteen, and five Okay.
Shelby:We'll go from there. Yes, please. Let's bring back the idea of mixed or burned CDs. So for some listeners, this might be a foreign concept. Paul, I I wanted to talk about it on this show because I thought you would register with this too.
Shelby:So whenever I was growing up, I felt like I was sort of on this generational cusp where the way that you listen to music really changed. So we could download music online, and you could choose individual songs instead of having to go to a store and buy a full CD. You could either pay 99ยข for a song, or you could illegally download it on things like Napster or LimeWire, which if you're familiar with how those ended up, it wasn't so great. And so you could really pick and choose the songs that you wanted to listen to, and then you would burn them or physically or or digitally copy them onto a CD that you could listen to. And so through this process, you could end up having a really, really diverse CD of, like, 18 to 20 songs that had no relation to one another, which made for a really enjoyable listening experience.
Paul:I couldn't agree more. I I loved burning CDs when I not even that long ago, to tell you the truth, because I've had some very old cars. So so they only had CD players, so I would I would be burning, new collections of music to to play in those cars.
Shelby:Yeah. I hadn't thought of burned CDs for a while. And then a couple weeks ago, I was with a friend, and I was driving my vehicle. And for whatever reason, they randomly opened my glove box, which had this historic collection of my burned CDs. And so we listened to a few of them, and they were from, like, 2008 because I'd written the date on them.
Shelby:And, yeah, like, it it takes you back to why like, you had to be intentional about choosing the songs that went on them, and so it takes you back to why you burn them in the first place. And I love music. I love getting out on the dance floor. I don't know how often we overlapped in Arizona social functions. But
Paul:They don't allow me on dance floors.
Shelby:I don't think they allowed me, but I I made my way there regardless. They usually had to drag me off. Yeah. So if you saw that Paul, when we were in Arizona, don't ever mention Alright. How that went.
Shelby:But yeah. So, like, some of the songs from these CDs, I had put on them specifically because of memories or events, and, yeah, it just was sort of fun to to go back and listen to them and have those reactions. And so the idea of curating playlists not for specific activities, like this is my workout playlist or this is, my driving playlist, but one that is just songs that have brought you some joy for some reason, I think, is a good idea.
Paul:It's always shocking. Like, it could be twenty years since you listened to that burnt CD, but you still know what song's coming next. Like, it's amazing how, like, well, your your brain works in that kind of memory capacity with Yes. Being triggered by a song and then, like, oh, I know what the next one is.
Shelby:Yeah. Or the lyrics, you know, I like singing the songs, which again does not need to happen for me publicly, but in the privacy of my own car, I'm happy to do. Yeah. It's been a lot of fun to to hear those again. Thanks, Paul, for coming on.
Shelby:This has been a great opening show for the season.
Paul:Thank you.
Shelby:And thanks to the listeners. We have a really great season planned with a special surprise for the season finale, so I hope that everybody tunes in for that. I'll give you some reminders as we come up to it. And until next time, we'll see you then. Earth on the Rocks is produced by Cari Metz with artwork provided by Connor Leimgruber, with technical recording managed by Kate Crum and Betsy Leija.
Shelby:Funding for this podcast was provided by the National Science Foundation Grant, EAR-2422824.
