Lakeland Currents.

Your public affairs program for north central Minnesota.

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Hello again friends.

I'm Jason Edens, your host of Lakeland Currents.

Thanks for joining the conversation and thanks for your ongoing support of Lakeland Public TV.

The climate is changing and it's presenting an existential threat to humanity.

We can't dismiss climate change as a problem happening elsewhere.

That's someone else's problem.

The climate is changing right here in Minnesota and it's accelerating.

Here to help us better understand the extent to which climate change is affecting Minnesota are my two guests.

Mr. Paul Douglas is a meteorologist, an author, an entrepreneur and a climate change expert.

Dr. Mark Seeley is a personal mentor and inspiration, as well as the former extension climatologist for the State and Professor Emeritus at the University of Minnesota.

Gentlemen, welcome to the program and thank you so much for making time for our conversation today.

You're welcome!

Good to be with you Jason.

Yeah thank you Jason.

Appreciate your focus on this topic very much.

Absolutely.

Well, I'm curious.

When did the two of you first encounter climate change professionally in your work and how did you react to that?

Mr. Douglas?

I think you know I started talking about the theories back in the 80s.

Jason and as you might recall there was a period back in the 70s where people thought hey maybe we might be going into an Ice Age.

That was not the consensus of climate scientists.

That was a couple of articles.

But somehow that stuck in the minds of a lot of people.

I was keeping an open mind.

I wasn't sure throughout the 80s but by the late 90s, early 2000s, I was seeing things in the weather that so exceeded the bounds of average of normal.

The extremes seemed to be trending more extreme and that's what got me down the rabbit hole of climate science.

It wasn't a documentary.

It wasn't one particular climate scientist.

It was trying to connect the dots and make sense out of what I was seeing on my weather maps.

Not every day, but several times a month and with greater frequency.

The weather was playing out of tune and Jason that's what got me into climate science.

How about you Dr. Seeley?

I'm more of a, I guess a late comer.

I, through my career in the 70s and 80s, I was a pragmatist Jason.

So, mostly I was applying climate data to the resolution or managing certain elements of our infrastructure.

Agriculture, energy, transportation, etc.

Using the climate data more efficiently or effectively to, if you will, manage operations and make right decisions and things of that nature.

Starting though in the early 1990s, I saw in our Minnesota State database of which I was a caretaker, I started seeing our measurements in Minnesota really be out of character.

Much like what Paul was referring to was measurements of things like temperature or precipitation or in isome cases, the excursions of above normal temperature that would last and last and last and last.

Go on for a long period of time and so it was really the numbers themselves.

It was really the data themselves that sort of jumped off the page at me and said something significant is going on here.

Well, before we begin our conversation in earnest, let's define our terms.

My question for the two of you is, can we use global warming and climate change interchangeably and would the two of you define those terms?

Dr. Seeley, can we start with you?

On that pick one of those two and define it for us.

Sure, climate change is basically the measure of certain climate attributes Be it temperature, precipitation or whatever we're characterizing there.

That is all of a sudden beyond the measure of what our history of climate measurements show.

All of a sudden we're seeing things.

It's just like any other field in science.

We're seeing things outside the realm of what we've previously measured and so that's really important to me.

Now it's important to also discriminate between the terms global warming and climate change.

I for one, have always been an advocate of using climate change because global warming, it hears in in the public perception too too precisely to the measurement of temperature.

But what we see is way beyond the measurement of temperature only as an earth climate attribute.

So, that's why I discriminate between the two.

What's your reaction to that Mr. Douglas?

As a meteorologist?

Yeah, I absolutely agree with what my friend, Dr. Mark Seeley just said Jason.

I don't like either terms.

I really don't.

I mean you say climate change and people say, well the climate has changed for eons, since the beginning of time.

Which is true and there was always a reason why the climate changed and why we had ice ages and why we had periods even warmer than the period we're living through now.

Global warming, you know in February people say where's where's my global warming Paul?

It's confusing.

I prefer and I don't think this will ever catch on, but what we're really seeing is more climate volatility, leading to greater weather disruption.

Weather and climate flip sides of the same coin.

You heat things up even by just a few degrees, you increase the amount of water in the air, the warmth of the oceans, it's going to manifest itself in greater weather extremes.

We've always had floods and droughts since the beginning of time, but right now it looks like, you know, we're pouring hot sauce on our ice cream sundae and wondering why does it taste different?Why is the weather different?

The patterns are different than what I grew up with.

Well, there's a good reason.

Mr. Douglas, I've heard you say something along the following lines and I paraphrase, of course, we can debate the solutions to climate change but we can't debate the science.

What do you mean by that?

Is it conclusive that the climate is changing in Minnesota?

We have thousands of climate scientists and I don't profess to be a climate scientist.

I am not.

I'm a bewildered meteorologist, but I've over the past 20 years, tried to educate myself as much as I possibly can as to what's going on.

Look, the biggest skeptics on the planet are scientists.

Science is organized skepticism.

It's good to be skeptical and I approach this topic like everybody should approach this topic, with a certain level of healthy skepticism.

My eyes are wide open.

I respond to data and evidence and you've got thousands of the world's leading PHD climate scientists all saying the same thing.

Yes, it's warmer and yes in all probability it has something to do with the nearly doubling of CO2, of greenhouse gases.

It's either the mother of all coincidences or there is in fact a correlation Jason.

Dr. Seeley, what's the most compelling body of evidence to suggest or confirm that climate change is happening here in our state?

If you had to cite one particular body of evidence.

That's a tough one.

It kind of focuses on your preference.

What impacts your life the most.

I think our food system, our agricultural system has seen some huge impacts Jason.

We have a longer growing season.

Considerably longer up to 17 days longer in portions of Minnesota than it used to be.

Thanks to the change that's going on in the climate.

We also have these huge levels of interest and in fact legislation going on in the state to try to control the moisture situation in our state and the runoff.

What's going into our large bodies of water.

The Minnesota River, the Mississippi River, the St. Croix River, the Red River, of the North, ect.

and this is a result of getting magnified change in our precipitation.

Both in terms of overall quantity but also in terms of intensity.

Intensity beyond the measurement that we've seen in our historical records.

So, I think that's ample evidence.

I've heard this from most audiences all over Minnesota.

That what they're witnessing is just beyond what they've ever understood to be the case with our climate.

It's behaving so erratically different.

Those are some of the circumstances I think that are absolutely convincing.

So when you say intensity, can you tell us more about that?

Are you referring to rain events or what's more intense?

Yeah, the manual that came out partly as a result of our efforts here in the State of Minnesota called NOAA Atlas 14 a few years ago that was an entire recalculation of the return periods of one hour maximum rainfalls, five hour, 24 hour, one day, two day, one week, etc and all these numbers changed dramatically.

Just unbelievable.

So, that the frequency, for example of five inch rains was becoming more frequent and those are highly destructive.

Many aspects of our infrastructure, whether it be our drainage systems, our road systems or what have you, were not designed for levels of that intense precipitation that we're now measuring and experiencing with a higher frequency.

Sure, well the two of you of course have access to copious amounts of data.

Most people don't and most of us are only able to make more qualitative observations.

How might we see climate change in our own backyards whether it's Cardinals in northern Minnesota or turkeys on the Iron Range?

What are some examples that we might see in our own lives?

When people ask me about this and by the way we have a place up on Pelican Lake.

We've had it for a long time.

It's a slow motion transformation and you don't look out at your thermometer for evidence of climate change but you do look out at your yard, maybe the lake for signs of change.

Things that are maybe growing there that weren't growing there a generation ago.

The climate zones are shifting.

It is warming and northern Minnesota is warming the fastest.

As as much as three, four, five degrees fahrenheit in just over a hundred years.

So, when it comes to new species, invasive pests.

There are things happening that are directly attributed to this warming that we see across our climate.

So, and again, life goes on.

I keep telling people the world isn't ending.

Its warming.

That will have some benefits but it appears to me as a meteorologist that the downside, the negatives, will be greater than the upside.

Maybe our winters won't be quite as ferocious as they were back in the 1970s.

Going forward, we're already seeing some evidence of that.

Yeah, it gets cold.

It just doesn't stay as cold for as long as it did for our parents and our grandparents.

But again this becomes an issue of what we leave behind for our kids and their kids and what obligation do we have as stewards.

I'm an environmentalist.

I'm a person of faith.

I think we have an obligation to those who come next and I think our kids, your kids, at some point are going to ask you what did you know?

What did you do?

Did you sit on your hands or were you part of the solution.

So, I think there is an intellectual reason and a spiritual and moral reason for us to pay attention to the data and these changes and how it's going to affect our hometowns, our families, our grandkids.

Dr. Seeley, what are some other examples that we might be observing in our own communities or backyards of climate change across the state?

Several come to mind.

I'd like to make a comment about the public health sector Jason.

That's because I have many friends and neighbors who suffer from allergies.

So, the allergy and mold season in Minnesota has expanded.

It's many, many, many more days than it used to be and the Mayo Clinic has done studies of this and confirmed this and also the issuance by the National Weather Service in terms of the heat advisories and excessive heat warnings.

I've seen personal friends and family members suffer from this, where we have because of the combination of high water vapor or what we call dew point, coupled with a 92 or 93 degree temperature.

Suddenly we're looking at a heat index of 105 or 110 or god forbid back in 2011 we had heat indexes in the State of Minnesota over 120 degrees.

Most of us, even healthy individuals are quite prone to risk when the climate gets that extreme and we have to be wary of that and we see that in in how people react and of course the kids go into the soccer games in the summer.

They have to take, instead of playing for over a fixed period of time, they have to take frequent water breaks and things like that, you know to stay hydrated and so there's lots and lots of examples of backyard effects if we just look at how some of our neighbors and family members have been experiencing changes with respect to the public health regime.

Oh, I appreciate those relatable examples.

Well.

Dr. Seeley, I'd like to continue with you.

There are some that refute that climate change is happening or refute that it's too complex to model.

So, I'm interested to get your reaction on whether or not we can actually model the global climate and document change.

Is that possible?

Technically?

Yes, I think it is.

In fact, in my lifetime I've seen a tremendous transition of that starting in the 70s and 80s with rather crude earth climate system models and then more and more sophistication.

At one time I think we had between 20 and 30 global climate models.

Now there's been Jason, about 14 of them that have been thoroughly evaluated and verified against the measurements.

Of course, that's the ultimate verification.

Is how well do they mimic our actual measurements and I've become friends with Dr. Ben Santer, who's one of the world's leading climate modelers and he's devoted his life to this.

Now, we have models that not only mimic the measurements pretty well but they mimic them down to a finer and finer scale.

So, instead of looking at broad geographies and how well they do with broad geographies, we've been able to hone them down and see how well they fit with more regional geography.

So, I think, indeed, they've become better and better.

We've scientifically gained the knowledge to know what drives those and what drives those at the finer scale.

I'd like to ask both of you a little bit more about how it is that we measure this change.

My understanding is that there are a couple different units of measure or metrics for documenting climate change.

Whether it's radiative forcing or carbon dioxide in the atmosphere on a parts per million basis, temperature.

Of course, how exactly are we documenting this change over time Mr. Douglas?

It's the entire earth system Jason.

I mean it's the cryosphere.

It's what's happening in the Arctic and the Antarctic.

It's what's happening in the oceans becoming warmer and more acidic over time.

It's not just measuring air temperatures.

It's soup to nuts.

A to Z and we have a lot of proxy data.

We have satellite data.

We have ocean buoys.

There's no shortage of data and back to one of the questions you asked previously.

It's amazing how well the climate models have done.

30 years ago, climate scientists came out with their forecast and they were accused of being sensationalistic and hyping this for personal gain.

What we're seeing, in reality, tracks very very closely with what was predicted a generation ago, 30 years ago and it's showing up in Minnesota.

Our insurance premiums, homeowner insurance premiums have tripled in the last 15 years.

Half of the mega rains, the DNR tracks these multi-county floods of six to eight to ten inches of rain ever since we became a state in 1858.

Roughly half of them have occurred since 2000.

It's basic physics.

You warm up the air.

It can hold more water.

That water is coming down with greater frequency and I think it's the frequency of flooding, invasive pests and other things, a longer growing season, a longer boating season, more erratic winters.

Ask a snowmobiler about how the snow has changed.

How our winters have become more erratic and fickle when it comes to snowfall.

So.

I think people are paying attention and most adults and most kids, younger people, they have their eyes wide open too by the way.

They don't refute the fact that the climate is changing and it may have something to do with the doubling of CO2.

CO2 levels are higher now than they've been in three million years and it's the rate of increase.

This spike in CO2 that has so many scientists concerned.

So, we are at an inflection point.

Let's debate what to do about it.

Not debate the science because we don't really like the implications of the science.

Well, one of the things that I don't hear about a great deal during climate conversations, is this concept of carbon loading.

How long can or does carbon dioxide stay in the atmosphere Dr. Seeleyy?

Well, it can have a long residence time and it's taken out by a lot of different dynamical processes.

There's a lot of chemical reaction that goes on in the atmosphere.

Over time there's a significant quantity of the earth's atmospheric carbon dioxide that is taken up by the oceans.

But again, that takes decades to play out and the fraction that isn't taken up by the oceans sometimes is in residence in the atmospheric circulation for hundreds of years.

So, it can take a long time.

It's not something that you immediately see disappear.

Although there is confounding the understanding of this, is the seasonal fluctuation of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere.

Especially in the mid to high latitudes.

The latitudes that have distinct growing seasons, where the landscape surface vegetation is interacting with the carbon dioxide and taking it up.

So, you have a lot of up and down fluctuation in certain bands of latitude Jason.

But overall, this residence time is quite lengthy.

As is some of the other greenhouse gas constituents like nitrous oxide and methane and things of that nature too.

So, if i'm heating my home with fossil fuels or driving a vehicle that emits fossil fuels, it's possible that that carbon dioxide could be in the atmosphere up for up to hundreds of years.

Is that what i'm hearing?

Absolutely, absolutely, yes absolutely, that's absolutely correct.

I might for your listeners and viewers, I might add one more piece of information that might be worth browsing.

For those that have an interest in more detail, is each year the annual greenhouse gas global inventory is published and it's published not only based on current year measurements, it's published with the historical context.

So you can look at how all these different constituents are changing over time.

If you just Google the annual greenhouse gas inventory, you can find that kind of information.

Annual greenhouse gas inventory.

Thanks for sharing that.

Well, something else that most Minnesotans can relate to is forest cover and it's my understanding that climate change in Minnesota can and potentially will have a dramatic impact on our forest cover and forest type.

Are we seeing changes already in the forest?

Absolutely and again it's a slow motion transformation but as you continue to warm things up, what we're seeing is changes in the water table.

Hydrology.

We flip flop between too wet and too dry.

Rarely is the moisture just right.

I'm going to defer to Dr. Mark Seeley on this because he has been tracking this.

I know that we're already witnessing changes in the great north woods.

Can we hang on to our pine trees in Minnesota?

Will we see more deciduous trees?

Will the prairies continue to advance as things warm up?

There are some troubling projections.

You look out, you know 30, 50, 100 years as to what Minnesota might look like and those things that make Minnesota so precious and so amazing are changing over time.

I don't think we want the climate of Missouri.

Our lakes would not fare very well in that climate.

But Mark, what do you say when people ask you about the north woods and the vitality of the trees we love?

Well our famous forest ecologist at the University of Minnesota, Lee Frelich has published extensively on this and I've deferred to Dr. Frelich's work quite a bit.

The Boreal Forest is projected and showing symptomatically, although a slow progression of a retreat to the north.

So, the conifers that we've been so used to dominating at least well over a third of the landscape in Minnesota, are slowly receding to the north.

Deciduous trees of different species are moving into different areas that they formerly haven't necessarily occupied.

But, it's a jump step.

That's the other thing Jason, it's important for people to understand that what's happening with the climate and Paul alluded to this earlier, is as the climate changes, different niches open up for certain organisms and we get these invasive species coming into Minnesota.

Some of which may be highly destructive to some of our forest species and so by jump step, what I mean is not only are we going to have the climate driver in play to look at the northern migration of the Boreal Forest but it's going to be jump stepped or there's going to be episodes where we have prolific damage done by some of these invasive species and we we lose whole groves of trees or something like that because of some of these episodes that are going to come about because of continuing pace of climate change.

Look at what's happening in the West right now.

California, much of the west with these beetles.

The fact that it's warmer and drier across much of the West.

These beetles are decimating hardwood forests in the West including the Sequoias, the mighty Sequoias and leaving them more vulnerable to brush fires.

So, you've got this vicious cycle.

My understanding and I may be way off, is that if it doesn't consistently get down to 40 below in the Boundary Waters, that you don't kill off these pests.

These pests can linger year after year.

Chomping away and so that you know, a few degrees warmer sounds good but not if you're trying to hang on to the Great North Woods.

Right, well gentlemen we only have a couple more minutes here and I've still got a few questions for the two of you.

The next of which is, in your opinion, why is the climate change conversation so politically divisive?

Dr. Seeley?

I don't, I'm not a psychologist or a social scientist, so this gets off into more personal comment although I have visited all 87 counties and probably interacted with as many Minnesotans as anybody in the state on this topic.

It's a little bit about values.

What's important to you.

It's also a little bit about what the stress of your own life brings.

Everybody has I call it their own personal worry box and that can only be crowded with so many worries and so to put climate change in there sometimes crowds the box a little too much.

But it's nevertheless a very important issue because it's going to be affecting almost everything that anybody likes and it's going to be the the coveted pristine environment of our lakes, our rivers, our streams, our forests, our soils, our wildlife, etc.

All going to be drastically impacted by this.

The operation of our infrastructure.

Oh my god.

The efficiency of our energy system, our transportation system, our water system, our agriculture, our food system.

All of this highly impacted and to ignore it is absolutely the wrong decision.

To dismiss it or ignore it, is probably the worst case scenario for all of us.

So, how do you fit it in and then as you fit it in, how does it impact your own personal life?

Maybe your job or what you do for a profession or maybe how it affects your family or something like that.

I think there's a lot of economic worry that comes into play that still makes it a front burner issue with respect to a good conversation about this.

It wasn't politically divisive back in the 1990s.

There was a fair amount of agreement on the left and the right, that the climate is changing.

Al Gore came out with this documentary and now it became a political football and I'm not blaming Al Gore for this, but to me it's just crazy.

We should acknowledge reality.

There is nothing liberal or conservative about ignoring reality.

You ignore reality, you ignore scientists, bad things often happen.

We may disagree on policy and politics.

One thing that unites us, we love our kids.

We love our grandkids and if you ignore this, if you just shrug and say it's no big deal, let's kick the can down down the road.

You're making it harder for your kids.

For the people you love the most.

So, keeping an open mind, being open to data that makes you squirm, let's debate solutions not reality Jason.

Well, gentlemen I want to thank you so much for elevating this conversation and for all the work you've done over your careers and I want to also thank you very much for your time today.

I really appreciate it.

Thank you Jason.

My pleasure Jason.

Great to get together with you.

Always fun hanging out with my friend, Mark Seeley.

I wish you the best.

And I want to thank all of you for joining me once again.

I'm Jason Edens, your host of Lakeland Currents.

Be kind and be well.

We'll see you next season.