so I have one question to ask all of you
would you imprison somebody for a crime
where there’s no eyewitness to that
crime well we do this on a very regular
basis in our criminal justice system and
we use lots of different evidence right
these evidence is called proxies proxies
are really important and so we use them
in a lot of different ways and you can
see it based on on the slides we use
things like DNA evidence fingerprints
sometimes video recordings tire tracks
sometimes geochemical evidence and so we
use these proxies to understand who
might have been there and what they
might have done and sort of recreate a
line of thinking of what might have
happened right and this is exactly the
same thing we do when we try to
reconstruct climate and so proxies are
exactly what we use some of our very
similar proxies use similar machines
even but we reconstruct climate using
these proxies in proxy data so I want to
show you guys today
how we some some of the aspects of how
we do this and the puzzle that we’re
trying to recreate or reconstruct in our
in our record and so you can think of
the earth as one big puzzle and many
puzzle pieces right there’s far too many
pieces here to count and we’re trying to
recreate what that climate might have
looked like in the modern record that is
relatively easy I say relatively because
it’s it’s easier than time periods of
the ancient record and so there might be
either fewer pieces or less pieces
missing but we can put together and
piece together the climate record and so
what we’re trying to do is is use these
different lines of evidence and proxies
to reconstruct that climate some pieces
are more important than others right
some pieces like off the east coast of
Brazil here you can see that you don’t
know if that might be an ocean that
fills in and so you have an island next
to it or if it’s the entire continent is
filled in and so some pieces of the
puzzle are more important than others
sometimes we fill in the puzzle
incorrectly like if you were doing any
large puzzle and they have
the same colors like blue oceans were
out you probably put them in the wrong
places and we do that in science but we
go back and recreate that and
reconstruct it and fix some of those
things and we’re putting those pieces
together and so over time we’re getting
a much better and clearer vision of what
the climate has looked like so in the
direct modern record we can use things
like instrumental records right we can
measure the co2 in their atmosphere and
we’ve been doing this for about sixty
years and we know that co2 in the
atmosphere is increasing dramatically
it’s true increasing by about a hundred
ppm over that sixty years which is very
very significant and so this is one way
to do it we have instrumental records
that go about it back about 150 years we
also have anecdotal evidence from
people’s Diaries and things that can go
back a little further than that human
history but after that what do we use to
be able to reconstruct climate and
that’s a really big important factor and
so to do that what we actually use here
is is various different proxies to fill
in those pieces of the puzzle and so one
piece of the puzzle would be something
like the tree rings which is the green
dots in this and you can see quite a lot
of green dots these green dots are
representing where we have tree records
from and you can probably add made out
at this point that these are in our
temperate regions right these are places
in those sort of mid latitudes and these
have records that have seasonality and
that’s why they only exist in that area
they’re very good records but they only
go back until the last living tree which
is a few tens of thousands of years
other records might be ice core records
which many of us have heard about and
those are the yellow dots here now there
are polar regions and so they give you a
piece of the puzzle in that polar region
and those go back about a million years
other lines of evidence might be corals
and so corals and these red dots are you
can see that they’re in the equatorial
regions give us very good records of the
Equator and they’ll go back a little bit
farther maybe two or three million years
at times and so it doesn’t go back all
of Earth’s history so to reconstruct the
entire Earth’s history we have to use
other lines of evidence and these all
have strengths and weaknesses they all
fit piece and pieces of puzzle and
they’re different and so when we look at
sediments you can see that we have lots
of sediments all over the ocean and it
makes up a lot like I said they’re all
pieces of the puzzle and so they’re
their strengths and weak
is with them and so when we look at
these sediments these sediments are
something that we’re trying to relate
when we’re talking about climate is we
have to use we have to unify different
parts of science which equals taking and
integrating physics and chemistry and
biology all in one to better understand
the system and so it really takes a
large team and a lot of a large amount
of people to do this and for example
when we look at sediments we might
actually take out single organisms and
look at the biology that exists and
sometimes we actually can take those
organisms and run chemistry on them as
well and understand the chemistry of
them and then you might need to know a
little bit about how the ocean is mixing
and that’s where the physics starts
playing a role and so all these
different aspects are really important
and trying to integrate this record
which becomes complicated right it’s not
an easy system and you’re trying to put
together how the earth responds to
different climate change and so that
over the time we’ve been doing this for
40 or 50 years we’ve gotten much better
idea right that puzzle is becoming more
clear with with the passing days and so
we’re getting a better record and so
what we really noticed is that you could
take these different records and we can
reconstruct co2 and so many of us you
guys might have seen glacial
interglacials the last million year
of temperature where it’s going up and
down on a sort of hundred thousand year
record and with that we know temperature
is also changing on about that timescale
and so these two things are definitely
linked together what we should really
note is that the concentration change in
co2 over the glacial versus interglacial
normal record is about a hundred ppm so
I said that just previously what we’re
measured about 100 ppm change in about
sixty years what we’re talking about
when we talk about glacial interglacial
records is 100 ppm on hundreds of
thousands of years right and so there’s
a difference of about three and a half
orders of magnitude difference on how
fast this is changing and that’s a
really important aspect what I actually
really am interested in is understanding
how this might affect in the ancient
record and what those changes might be
and so what what is this telling us is
we study the ancient record to better
understand what our future might look
like and how the changes in co2 might
might have
and so you can think of the modern
record as being sort of this
anthropogenic release of co2 the ancient
record when we do this we can only use
basically volcanoes that release co2
very rapidly when I say very rapidly I
mean on geologic timescales so it’s very
slow compared to the modern record and
so what we do is is try to reconstruct
this well what we do have some ideas
that we can have some predictive
hypothesis right so with increased co2
there’s some predictions that you might
make you might have higher temperatures
well we see that today right there also
should be a sea level change we’re
seeing sea level change not nearly as
fast but it’s certainly responding and
we’re starting to see sea level rise
which is a big issue locally right in
this state and so those are two aspects
that most people have heard of other
things we know that pH is changing so pH
we’re getting more acidic this is a
really big effect on coral reefs for
instance and so that’s a major aspect
but one thing that you probably haven’t
heard of is oxygen so we’re actually
seeing a decrease in oxygen
concentrations in our and in our
atmosphere in our oceans which I’ll talk
about here in a second so how does how
is this sort of interrelated right if
you guys remember sort of from a basic
chemistry class we probably have all
seen this this equation at one time or
another if we remember it or not might
be different but you can see going from
left to right organic matter and oxygen
this is what you and I do any other
animals as well right we take up organic
matter and oxygen and we get energy from
this so I can be up here speaking to you
guys and we released co2 and water vapor
and so that’s what we are breathing out
plants or primary producers
photosynthesizers are doing the exact
opposite so they’re working from the
equation from right to left right so
they take water and co2 make organic
matter and an oxygen and so equilibrium
these things are not really changing
right their balance but what we do when
we burn fossil fuels is combustion and
you can think of combustion as being the
exact same thing as respiration so we
chemically it’s the same idea right so
it’s actually another player in the
carbon emissions and so the co2 or
organic matter
that we take and put in our cars fossil
fuels right we combust that using oxygen
and our in our motors and that then gets
energy we release co2 and and water and
so if we’re doing a lot of that we would
expect and we see co2 changing we would
expect oxygen decreases as well and we
actually see this and this is one that
line of evidence that suggests that
volcanoes are not really a big player in
this is that we actually can measure in
the last 15 years oxygen decreases in
our atmosphere now you might be going oh
my gosh how is that going to affect us
we have a lot of oxygen relatively in
our atmosphere this is a really really
small difference there’s there’s no harm
to us at this point in our atmospheres
but we do measure a difference and it’s
equal to the amount of co2 that we’re
releasing and so this is a really good
line that this is really happening in
its anthropogenic or human induced but
what is probably a much bigger important
players that our oceans are becoming
deoxygenated and so over the last two
decades each decade we’ve lost about one
percent of the oxygen out of our oceans
and that’s not a huge amount but it’s
enough to start really affecting things
like fisheries and primary producers in
our oceans and how that might respond
and so you can imagine if you play this
out for a while what that might do to
our ocean ecosystems the chemistry and
the biology and so we are interested in
my lab of understanding how oxygen has
changed through our Earth’s history and
so you can imagine that the the the
puzzle of Earth you get a lot less
pieces large the longer farther back you
work in geologic history and so it does
become difficult and there’s certainly
aspects that we can’t explain or have a
full understanding of but you can see
that we’ve removed about a quarter of
the pieces out of this figure and you
can still make out the large dominant
features right and that’s what we’re
trying to do and we’re trying to
understand ancient climate change
throughout geologic history and we are
starting to get to paint a picture there
we have a much better understanding of
and so with this this is a relatively
complicated figure but this is the last
six hundred million years which has went
since we’ve had animals on this planet
and
blue bars represent time periods of
glaciations so these are major
glaciation similar today means you have
ice at your polar regions and you can
see that doesn’t make up a large amount
of Earth’s history but they are time
periods when both sea level and carbon
dioxide are a little bit lower and then
the time periods in green are greenhouse
events so this would be similar to when
a dinosaurs were around you have no
glaciations even sometimes palm fronds
in the the polar regions and so very
warm high sea levels higher co2 and what
I want to point out here is that the
orange bars or places that we can
definitively say that there’s a reduced
amount of oxygen in the and the oceans
very very small amounts of oxygen and
they relate almost entirely to every
extinction event that we have so far
looked at right and so the extinction
events that we see all are related to
some sort of deoxygenation or climate
change in general and so this becomes
really important of how how is this how
quickly is this happening and can this
be a major important effect that might
happen in our future if we don’t work
sort of slow down climate change and
make some changes and so this is a
really important fact we’re probably not
headed there like tomorrow or anytime
and maybe even our our lifetimes but
certainly in in terms of thinking of the
earth and how it responds this one
becomes really important and so there
are some solutions right this sounds
kind of doom and gloom and everybody
always sort of ices over when we talk
about climate changes because it does
sound really scary
these are usually long terms changes but
what we do have is some solutions the
obvious solution is reduce our co2
emissions or a carbon dioxide and that’s
easier said than done right probably all
of us are still gonna use electricity
I’m gonna drive my my vehicle when I
direct go home as well but there are
other types of solutions and certainly
communities solutions and and here in
Florida what I would like to really
drive home is that one of our major
solutions is is protecting certain types
of lands and those are estuaries and
marshlands so sort of coastal regions
and so we can reduce the amount of let’s
say building on these these environments
or getting rid of them entirely we will
actually decrease the amount of effect
that co2 emissions has and this is
because these environments
picked up much more co2 than any other
types of environments on earth
they also trap nutrients and toxic
metals so they’re there good lots of
different reasons and so protecting
these are really good and any of us can
sort of help this make sure that our
land is being protected throughout these
environments and we have a lot of them
in Florida so we should certainly be
cognizant of this and so you get a lot
of people that say well you know I don’t
like I don’t think that climate change
is happening or at least it’s not human
induced and what I will leave you with
is this one last slide which has been
sort of around for a while but it talks
about well what is the worst thing that
could happen if we make these changes
and I think all of us would say we were
we would like to have all these things
up in blue that’s behind the speaker
happening to us and having our world
that’s a really nice place to live in
and I think that’s one of the reasons
that we should be changing making
changes regardless of what you might
think about climate change thank you [Applause]
would you imprison somebody for a crime
where there’s no eyewitness to that
crime well we do this on a very regular
basis in our criminal justice system and
we use lots of different evidence right
these evidence is called proxies proxies
are really important and so we use them
in a lot of different ways and you can
see it based on on the slides we use
things like DNA evidence fingerprints
sometimes video recordings tire tracks
sometimes geochemical evidence and so we
use these proxies to understand who
might have been there and what they
might have done and sort of recreate a
line of thinking of what might have
happened right and this is exactly the
same thing we do when we try to
reconstruct climate and so proxies are
exactly what we use some of our very
similar proxies use similar machines
even but we reconstruct climate using
these proxies in proxy data so I want to
show you guys today
how we some some of the aspects of how
we do this and the puzzle that we’re
trying to recreate or reconstruct in our
in our record and so you can think of
the earth as one big puzzle and many
puzzle pieces right there’s far too many
pieces here to count and we’re trying to
recreate what that climate might have
looked like in the modern record that is
relatively easy I say relatively because
it’s it’s easier than time periods of
the ancient record and so there might be
either fewer pieces or less pieces
missing but we can put together and
piece together the climate record and so
what we’re trying to do is is use these
different lines of evidence and proxies
to reconstruct that climate some pieces
are more important than others right
some pieces like off the east coast of
Brazil here you can see that you don’t
know if that might be an ocean that
fills in and so you have an island next
to it or if it’s the entire continent is
filled in and so some pieces of the
puzzle are more important than others
sometimes we fill in the puzzle
incorrectly like if you were doing any
large puzzle and they have
the same colors like blue oceans were
out you probably put them in the wrong
places and we do that in science but we
go back and recreate that and
reconstruct it and fix some of those
things and we’re putting those pieces
together and so over time we’re getting
a much better and clearer vision of what
the climate has looked like so in the
direct modern record we can use things
like instrumental records right we can
measure the co2 in their atmosphere and
we’ve been doing this for about sixty
years and we know that co2 in the
atmosphere is increasing dramatically
it’s true increasing by about a hundred
ppm over that sixty years which is very
very significant and so this is one way
to do it we have instrumental records
that go about it back about 150 years we
also have anecdotal evidence from
people’s Diaries and things that can go
back a little further than that human
history but after that what do we use to
be able to reconstruct climate and
that’s a really big important factor and
so to do that what we actually use here
is is various different proxies to fill
in those pieces of the puzzle and so one
piece of the puzzle would be something
like the tree rings which is the green
dots in this and you can see quite a lot
of green dots these green dots are
representing where we have tree records
from and you can probably add made out
at this point that these are in our
temperate regions right these are places
in those sort of mid latitudes and these
have records that have seasonality and
that’s why they only exist in that area
they’re very good records but they only
go back until the last living tree which
is a few tens of thousands of years
other records might be ice core records
which many of us have heard about and
those are the yellow dots here now there
are polar regions and so they give you a
piece of the puzzle in that polar region
and those go back about a million years
other lines of evidence might be corals
and so corals and these red dots are you
can see that they’re in the equatorial
regions give us very good records of the
Equator and they’ll go back a little bit
farther maybe two or three million years
at times and so it doesn’t go back all
of Earth’s history so to reconstruct the
entire Earth’s history we have to use
other lines of evidence and these all
have strengths and weaknesses they all
fit piece and pieces of puzzle and
they’re different and so when we look at
sediments you can see that we have lots
of sediments all over the ocean and it
makes up a lot like I said they’re all
pieces of the puzzle and so they’re
their strengths and weak
is with them and so when we look at
these sediments these sediments are
something that we’re trying to relate
when we’re talking about climate is we
have to use we have to unify different
parts of science which equals taking and
integrating physics and chemistry and
biology all in one to better understand
the system and so it really takes a
large team and a lot of a large amount
of people to do this and for example
when we look at sediments we might
actually take out single organisms and
look at the biology that exists and
sometimes we actually can take those
organisms and run chemistry on them as
well and understand the chemistry of
them and then you might need to know a
little bit about how the ocean is mixing
and that’s where the physics starts
playing a role and so all these
different aspects are really important
and trying to integrate this record
which becomes complicated right it’s not
an easy system and you’re trying to put
together how the earth responds to
different climate change and so that
over the time we’ve been doing this for
40 or 50 years we’ve gotten much better
idea right that puzzle is becoming more
clear with with the passing days and so
we’re getting a better record and so
what we really noticed is that you could
take these different records and we can
reconstruct co2 and so many of us you
guys might have seen glacial
interglacials the last million year
of temperature where it’s going up and
down on a sort of hundred thousand year
record and with that we know temperature
is also changing on about that timescale
and so these two things are definitely
linked together what we should really
note is that the concentration change in
co2 over the glacial versus interglacial
normal record is about a hundred ppm so
I said that just previously what we’re
measured about 100 ppm change in about
sixty years what we’re talking about
when we talk about glacial interglacial
records is 100 ppm on hundreds of
thousands of years right and so there’s
a difference of about three and a half
orders of magnitude difference on how
fast this is changing and that’s a
really important aspect what I actually
really am interested in is understanding
how this might affect in the ancient
record and what those changes might be
and so what what is this telling us is
we study the ancient record to better
understand what our future might look
like and how the changes in co2 might
might have
and so you can think of the modern
record as being sort of this
anthropogenic release of co2 the ancient
record when we do this we can only use
basically volcanoes that release co2
very rapidly when I say very rapidly I
mean on geologic timescales so it’s very
slow compared to the modern record and
so what we do is is try to reconstruct
this well what we do have some ideas
that we can have some predictive
hypothesis right so with increased co2
there’s some predictions that you might
make you might have higher temperatures
well we see that today right there also
should be a sea level change we’re
seeing sea level change not nearly as
fast but it’s certainly responding and
we’re starting to see sea level rise
which is a big issue locally right in
this state and so those are two aspects
that most people have heard of other
things we know that pH is changing so pH
we’re getting more acidic this is a
really big effect on coral reefs for
instance and so that’s a major aspect
but one thing that you probably haven’t
heard of is oxygen so we’re actually
seeing a decrease in oxygen
concentrations in our and in our
atmosphere in our oceans which I’ll talk
about here in a second so how does how
is this sort of interrelated right if
you guys remember sort of from a basic
chemistry class we probably have all
seen this this equation at one time or
another if we remember it or not might
be different but you can see going from
left to right organic matter and oxygen
this is what you and I do any other
animals as well right we take up organic
matter and oxygen and we get energy from
this so I can be up here speaking to you
guys and we released co2 and water vapor
and so that’s what we are breathing out
plants or primary producers
photosynthesizers are doing the exact
opposite so they’re working from the
equation from right to left right so
they take water and co2 make organic
matter and an oxygen and so equilibrium
these things are not really changing
right their balance but what we do when
we burn fossil fuels is combustion and
you can think of combustion as being the
exact same thing as respiration so we
chemically it’s the same idea right so
it’s actually another player in the
carbon emissions and so the co2 or
organic matter
that we take and put in our cars fossil
fuels right we combust that using oxygen
and our in our motors and that then gets
energy we release co2 and and water and
so if we’re doing a lot of that we would
expect and we see co2 changing we would
expect oxygen decreases as well and we
actually see this and this is one that
line of evidence that suggests that
volcanoes are not really a big player in
this is that we actually can measure in
the last 15 years oxygen decreases in
our atmosphere now you might be going oh
my gosh how is that going to affect us
we have a lot of oxygen relatively in
our atmosphere this is a really really
small difference there’s there’s no harm
to us at this point in our atmospheres
but we do measure a difference and it’s
equal to the amount of co2 that we’re
releasing and so this is a really good
line that this is really happening in
its anthropogenic or human induced but
what is probably a much bigger important
players that our oceans are becoming
deoxygenated and so over the last two
decades each decade we’ve lost about one
percent of the oxygen out of our oceans
and that’s not a huge amount but it’s
enough to start really affecting things
like fisheries and primary producers in
our oceans and how that might respond
and so you can imagine if you play this
out for a while what that might do to
our ocean ecosystems the chemistry and
the biology and so we are interested in
my lab of understanding how oxygen has
changed through our Earth’s history and
so you can imagine that the the the
puzzle of Earth you get a lot less
pieces large the longer farther back you
work in geologic history and so it does
become difficult and there’s certainly
aspects that we can’t explain or have a
full understanding of but you can see
that we’ve removed about a quarter of
the pieces out of this figure and you
can still make out the large dominant
features right and that’s what we’re
trying to do and we’re trying to
understand ancient climate change
throughout geologic history and we are
starting to get to paint a picture there
we have a much better understanding of
and so with this this is a relatively
complicated figure but this is the last
six hundred million years which has went
since we’ve had animals on this planet
and
blue bars represent time periods of
glaciations so these are major
glaciation similar today means you have
ice at your polar regions and you can
see that doesn’t make up a large amount
of Earth’s history but they are time
periods when both sea level and carbon
dioxide are a little bit lower and then
the time periods in green are greenhouse
events so this would be similar to when
a dinosaurs were around you have no
glaciations even sometimes palm fronds
in the the polar regions and so very
warm high sea levels higher co2 and what
I want to point out here is that the
orange bars or places that we can
definitively say that there’s a reduced
amount of oxygen in the and the oceans
very very small amounts of oxygen and
they relate almost entirely to every
extinction event that we have so far
looked at right and so the extinction
events that we see all are related to
some sort of deoxygenation or climate
change in general and so this becomes
really important of how how is this how
quickly is this happening and can this
be a major important effect that might
happen in our future if we don’t work
sort of slow down climate change and
make some changes and so this is a
really important fact we’re probably not
headed there like tomorrow or anytime
and maybe even our our lifetimes but
certainly in in terms of thinking of the
earth and how it responds this one
becomes really important and so there
are some solutions right this sounds
kind of doom and gloom and everybody
always sort of ices over when we talk
about climate changes because it does
sound really scary
these are usually long terms changes but
what we do have is some solutions the
obvious solution is reduce our co2
emissions or a carbon dioxide and that’s
easier said than done right probably all
of us are still gonna use electricity
I’m gonna drive my my vehicle when I
direct go home as well but there are
other types of solutions and certainly
communities solutions and and here in
Florida what I would like to really
drive home is that one of our major
solutions is is protecting certain types
of lands and those are estuaries and
marshlands so sort of coastal regions
and so we can reduce the amount of let’s
say building on these these environments
or getting rid of them entirely we will
actually decrease the amount of effect
that co2 emissions has and this is
because these environments
picked up much more co2 than any other
types of environments on earth
they also trap nutrients and toxic
metals so they’re there good lots of
different reasons and so protecting
these are really good and any of us can
sort of help this make sure that our
land is being protected throughout these
environments and we have a lot of them
in Florida so we should certainly be
cognizant of this and so you get a lot
of people that say well you know I don’t
like I don’t think that climate change
is happening or at least it’s not human
induced and what I will leave you with
is this one last slide which has been
sort of around for a while but it talks
about well what is the worst thing that
could happen if we make these changes
and I think all of us would say we were
we would like to have all these things
up in blue that’s behind the speaker
happening to us and having our world
that’s a really nice place to live in
and I think that’s one of the reasons
that we should be changing making
changes regardless of what you might
think about climate change thank you [Applause]
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