A conversation with Chicago weather expert Tom Skilling about climate change
The top meteorologist says it's time to stop the disinformation & get to work on renewables and other climate solutions.
Tom Skilling is a renowned Chicago meteorologist who has taken a keen interest in climate change. I had the chance to talk with him recently on WCPT-820AM about the issue and what we can do about it. Here is an edited transcript of that conversation.
Tom explained at the outset why he was going out wherever he could to talk about this important issue.
SKILLING: “At Yale University, their climate folks have done polling of the public in this country. And 78% of the American public gets the fact that the climate is changing. Problem is only 46% of them view this is threatening their lives are being important from that standpoint. And there's so much misinformation that's been pervaded on this subject for so long. And it's there's been a concerted effort to do that, to confuse people. And so, any chance to talk about this and straighten out some of these misconceptions on the subject that climate change is always an honor. It really is and something I think those in our line of work should be doing.”
I asked for examples people could point to, evidence of climate change before our very own eyes.
SKILLING: “Climate change is real. It's happening now. We're paying for it as taxpayers because the weather and climate disasters that we have are expensive, and they involve cleanups and the American taxpayers on the hook for that. And anybody who thinks it's not happening need only look at some of the things that are going on right now on the planet. We have a 1200-year mega-drought going in the West Lake Mead and Powell, which are the moist water sources for Las Vegas and Phoenix, also a hydroelectric source is at record lows. They just announced in the last week that one of the intakes for the hydro electric generators on the Hoover Dam, the water flow has fallen below that level. The Gulf Stream has slowed dramatically. Here in the Midwest, our lake levels have been varying widely.”
Tom wanted me to understand that change has always happened, but at a dramatically different rate.
SKILLING: “Those who say climate change has always happened and we as a civilization have survived it really are misstating the facts. Yes, climate change has always happened. But two things are different now. One, past climate changes like the ones that drove our major ice ages (except for asteroid hits like the one that killed the dinosaurs 66 million years ago when it hit the waters near the Yucatan Peninsula) occurred over 10s of 1000s of years which leaves time for adaptation. Now, that change occurred in a period in which that we haven't had the 7.9 billion souls who populate our planet today and are therefore critically dependent on food supplies and water supplies that are stable, and they're becoming less stable as we get these weather extremes that are driven by climate change.”
Tom is in no doubt about the drivers of this accelerating change.
SKILLING: “Never in the history of the human species on this planet has so much carbon been put in the atmosphere is so fast. We produce 40 billion tons of carbon dioxide through fossil fuel use every year. That's 60 times more carbon dioxide that is produced by all the volcanoes on the planet. And the change in our climate is happening 210 times as fast as any climate change that's occurred during human civilization.
I asked about the consequences of a slowing Gulf Stream.
SKILLING: “Ice has been melting in Greenland. Just as it has in Antarctica at a stunning rate. The Arctic regions on our planet have lost 40% of their ice satellite observations in 1979. That's a lot of ice to lose. And Greenland has been among the areas melting. The freshwater that flows off Greenland flows into the North Atlantic. This has slowed down the northward progression Gulf Stream that runs out of the tropics over to Europe. And that's had a bunch of different effects. One thing-- the water is kind of damming up along the east coast of the United States, and sea level rise is occurring there faster than many other places in the world because of this slowest Gulfstream movement in 1000 years. The fastest warming body of ocean water anywhere on the planet is the Gulf of Maine, which is where fishermen catch a lot of the lobsters, we, and seafood. This has profound impacts on the marine system. But you've also been hearing about this sunny day flooding that goes on along the East Coast. This is where you don't have a storm, but at times the tides are higher than normal because of your rising sea level and the sun will be shining and yet you're flooding areas along the Florida coast. The Norfolk Naval Station in Virginia floods frequently. And this is partly the product of this Gulfstream slowing down and it's slowing down because of all the water and melting off Greenland.”
Tom drives an electric car. He advocates for electric air travel when that becomes possible. He talks about the push for renewable generation of electricity. Tom is a scientist and a meteorologist. He talks about the changing market value of renewables. He is not comfortable with politics. But when I push, he does caution us that elections matter.
SKILLING: “I think do due diligence and the people we send to represent us and their government. It's important who we have representing us in our government. We as single human beings can't develop a cleaner car. I don't know about you at one but I'm not able to build the computer screen I look at every day any more than I am to develop my own automobile or develop a cleaner flying airplane. But there are a lot of smart people who will, and our representatives have their hands on to support these efforts more. So, it's important, who we send to represent us in these fields, but also to clean up the disinformation.”
Despite the challenges of climate change and the disinformation around it, Tom is optimistic.
SKILLING: “History tells us that we move from dirty fuels to cleaner fuels, step by step. It's not an overnight process. It's not that we move to a completely clean form of energy we're aways from that. But every improvement we make, I mean, we use the heat our homes by burning wood. Then we moved to coal, then we moved to oil then we moved to natural gas. And you know, every step you make you improve the whole situation. And that's, that's the goal. And we got a lot of brilliant people. When I hear somebody like Seth Darling of Argon Labs talk about reconstructing our grid using renewables…” he continues to list the exciting things scientists are doing to address the problem.
I ask if we have a window to act now based on the embargo of Russian oil. He tells me he knows it’s controversial, but nuclear energy needs to be part of the transition.
SKILLING: “It clearly has its own environmental problems and big ones, namely the nuclear waste, but it generates electricity with no greenhouse gas. We've just got to figure out how to dispense with these noxious, you know, nuclear waste issues that rise but and, you know, a lot of European electricity is generated by nuclear power, they're gonna must rely on that for a while. But the fact is that when the economics of fossil fuels are fast changing, renewables are becoming cheaper and, in many respects, the Europeans are ahead of us in wind, energy and so forth.”
I ask him what it is like going on the road to talk about climate change.
SKILLING: “You know, Edwin, in all these talks, and I've done this for years in front of all different venues, in all different venues and in front of all different groups you could hear a pin drop. You would think from all the noise that this issue raises that you know, there's a majority that really question all this. That's not true. I find a lot of people quietly interested in this and trying to figure it all out for themselves and more than willing to listen to the scientists who are doing the frontline work on this and that is very gratifying. I think, if my role is to be a conduit between the research community and the public, if I can help in that way, that's what I like to do.”
The fight for our planet needs folks like Tom Skilling. You can follow him on twitter @Skilling and watch him on the WGN-TV News. Listen to our entire conversation here: The Big Picture - Heartland Signal