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Covid19: it's not ALL bad · PlanetGeo: The Geology Podcast

0:03
SPEAKER_00: Welcome to Planet Geo, the podcast where we talk about our amazing planet, how it works, and why it matters to you.
0:13
SPEAKER_00: All right, let's do some introductions real quick.
0:15
SPEAKER_00: You are Chris Boys, a nationally recognized and award-winning Earth science teacher in the great state of Michigan.
0:21
SPEAKER_00: I am Dr.
0:21
SPEAKER_00: Jesse Rymink, a geoscience professor at Penn State, and your former student.
0:25
SPEAKER_00: About 15 or 20 years ago, who's really counting anyways, I remember sitting in your class learning the basics of geoscience from you.
0:32
SPEAKER_00: And this is Planet Geo, a podcast where you and I talk about some amazing aspects of our planet, how it works, and why the geosciences are really important to society.
0:42
SPEAKER_00: How are you doing, Jesse?
0:43
SPEAKER_00: Hey, I'm doing all right, man.
0:44
SPEAKER_00: How about you?
0:45
SPEAKER_00: I am doing great.
0:46
SPEAKER_00: You bet.
0:47
SPEAKER_00: Yeah, excited to be here.
0:49
SPEAKER_00: Um what's got you fired up this week, Chris?
0:52
SPEAKER_01: I am right now I'm in the process of uh getting ready to head off to the Black Hills.
0:57
SPEAKER_01: I leave uh in just a few days.
0:58
SPEAKER_01: I'm going to the Black Hills for a couple of days to perform a wedding of a couple of my former students, uh, which is really interesting because we're gonna they want to do this on top of Little Devil's Tower, uh, which is in Custer State Park, and they want to do it at sunrise.
1:12
SPEAKER_01: So we're gonna get up at uh we're gonna begin hiking at 4 a.m.
1:15
SPEAKER_01: and get up to the top with about 30 people and get these two married off.
1:20
SPEAKER_01: So that'll be uh that'll be pretty cool.
1:22
SPEAKER_00: So you so you're a preacher now, is that right?
1:24
SPEAKER_00: Or what's uh what kind of thing?
1:26
SPEAKER_01: So it's pretty easy to get uh certified to perform marriages.
1:30
SPEAKER_01: So yeah.
1:32
SPEAKER_01: So oh, very cool.
1:33
SPEAKER_00: Well, I'm jealous you get to go to the Black Hills, that's one of my favorite spots.
1:36
SPEAKER_01: And then after that, then then we had to the Jenny and I and my wife are gonna we're gonna head to the Tetons for uh about two weeks and just kind of do some backpacking and a little bit of climbing and can't wait.
1:45
SPEAKER_01: Need to get in the mountains, fill my soul.
1:47
SPEAKER_01: Awesome.
1:48
SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
1:48
SPEAKER_01: So how about you?
1:49
SPEAKER_01: What's got you fired up, Jess?
1:52
SPEAKER_00: Yeah, I'm uh we we just got a grant funded or had a grant funded through the National Science Foundation.
1:57
SPEAKER_00: Uh so I just got a week or two ago.
2:01
SPEAKER_00: Um, yeah, I'm excited.
2:02
SPEAKER_00: I mean it's a relatively small grant, but and it's working on some instrumentation that development that I've been doing the last couple years.
2:08
SPEAKER_00: So I'm really excited to get started on it.
2:11
SPEAKER_00: Um but with the uh COVID restrictions in place, we're waiting to see when we're allowed to get back into the labs and and start working in the labs.
2:20
SPEAKER_00: Um yeah, and that's kind of a a lead-in to what we're gonna talk about today.
2:25
SPEAKER_00: Um, as we're recording this, we are, you know, kind of in the middle of a of the COVID, or let's see.
2:31
SPEAKER_00: We don't know what the future will hold.
2:32
SPEAKER_00: That's for sure.
2:33
SPEAKER_00: We're past the tail end of of the COVID lockdowns, but there might be more on the horizon where we're not really sure.
2:40
SPEAKER_00: Um, so it's a really uncertain time.
2:43
SPEAKER_00: You know, many everybody's been affected in some way or another.
2:45
SPEAKER_00: I I just consider myself lucky enough to be in a position in a job that has been able to continue working remotely and I've been able to be, you know, fairly productive in it.
2:57
SPEAKER_00: Uh, how about you?
2:57
SPEAKER_00: How's COVID affected you so far?
2:59
SPEAKER_01: It's certainly different.
3:00
SPEAKER_01: You know, I'm a high school teacher, um, and so since March, uh middle of the March, I I've been I've been teaching from home.
3:08
SPEAKER_01: I've been doing online stuff.
3:10
SPEAKER_01: Uh and you know, I do my best.
3:13
SPEAKER_01: Um, I try to I try to make it still me and do my thing, but it's very difficult.
3:18
SPEAKER_01: I'm not a I'm not a sit at a desk kind of teacher anyway.
3:22
SPEAKER_01: Um I need to be up and moving.
3:24
SPEAKER_01: So you you know, like you said, I am I'm I I count myself extremely fortunate to to be able to still do this though from home.
3:33
SPEAKER_01: Um so you know, uh I'm not you're not gonna hear me complaining about my situation.
3:40
SPEAKER_00: Yeah, I agree completely.
3:41
SPEAKER_00: I mean, you know, there's been a a fair bit of suffering silence, I think, for me, of, you know, yeah, it sucks, but there's a lot of other people who it sucks a lot more for.
3:49
SPEAKER_00: So um anyway, that this week we're we really want to focus on a couple of let's say silver linings uh from the geoscience perspective on this whole COVID lockdown.
3:59
SPEAKER_00: And I've learned a lot from from investigating the things we're gonna talk about today.
4:03
SPEAKER_00: And I don't know if you've done this.
4:05
SPEAKER_01: You know, that's one of the the things about this that I'm excited about doing these podcasts is that it forces me out of my comfort zone.
4:11
SPEAKER_01: This is certainly I I as I was getting ready to to talk to you about this, um, I learned a ton about things that I was maybe uh more ignorant on than and and so you know it's these this benefits me a lot having this uh this these discussions with you.
4:29
SPEAKER_00: So yeah, it's I mean it's super fun.
4:32
SPEAKER_00: And and there's a lot of really interesting stuff that that happened during this lockdown.
4:36
SPEAKER_00: So I guess as a brief summary, you know, you're listening at home.
4:39
SPEAKER_00: If you're listening, you know, a couple years from now or several months from now, we're in the middle of these lockdowns, uh economies are just starting to open up, but but many of much of the developed world sort of went into this this shutdown where people were staying at home, stay-at-home orders, um, businesses were shut down and affected, and a lot of interesting things happen.
4:56
SPEAKER_00: We're gonna kind of summarize two aspects of the geosciences that from a from a kind of a data detection point of view of what happened when everybody stayed at home for a while.
5:06
SPEAKER_00: What happened to our planet when everybody stayed at home for a while?
5:09
SPEAKER_00: Um, and it I think it's really interesting, and there's some positive, some positive things and some, at the very least, some information in in this stuff for for um determining how we just one thing I'd like to add is you know, during this whole lockdown, it's amazing how long a tank of gas lasted, isn't it?
5:26
SPEAKER_01: You know, I mean it'd go I I I I went over a month without filling up my my gas tank, which is crazy.
5:33
SPEAKER_01: As I was getting ready for this, I I just was I I Googled because I'd seen this before from like early April, just some photos before and after photos of areas.
5:44
SPEAKER_01: Um, like for instance, uh you can see in in early April, Mount Everest became visible from Kathmandu for the first time in decades because of lower particulates, lower levels of pollution in the atmosphere, and you could yeah.
5:58
SPEAKER_00: Oh, is that right?
5:59
SPEAKER_00: So just the the haziness kind of did declined enough where you could see Everest from the case.
6:03
SPEAKER_00: Yeah, unbelievable.
6:04
SPEAKER_01: And and you know, I'm sure some of you have seen the like, for instance, Venice, uh, you know, how the with with less boat traffic in the canals and how now the water has cleared and you can see down to the bottom of these canals.
6:17
SPEAKER_01: It's absolutely amazing.
6:20
SPEAKER_00: So yeah, and it's kind of it's kind of interesting, right, to see how nature sort of takes takes over the system.
6:26
SPEAKER_00: I remember seeing early on that when New York City locked down, you see these pictures of coyotes running running through the streets and and all this kind of stuff, you know, wildlife kind of taken back over.
6:35
SPEAKER_00: Um, I saw the Venice photos on Twitter for the first time.
6:38
SPEAKER_00: Um, and and I also was turned on to the first topic we're going to talk about, which is seismic noise, um, via some seismologists on Twitter who were who were highlighting this kind of thing.
6:48
SPEAKER_00: So I think the first thing we're gonna talk about is seismic noise.
6:51
SPEAKER_00: The earth really quieted down because people weren't driving around, there weren't as many trains going, planes landing, um, big trucks rolling past, all this stuff.
7:00
SPEAKER_00: The earth really quieted down, which is really interesting.
7:02
SPEAKER_00: So let's start out.
7:03
SPEAKER_00: I mean, size seismometers, what is a seismic?
7:06
SPEAKER_01: All right, Chris.
7:07
SPEAKER_01: So this is a device that measures vibrations um on the surface of the earth and traveling through the earth itself.
7:15
SPEAKER_01: It's amazing how sophisticated they are and how little uh the motion has to be in order for it to even pick this up.
7:24
SPEAKER_01: But that's what a seismometer is.
7:26
SPEAKER_01: Um, you know, we've been using these.
7:27
SPEAKER_01: This is what we you know we use to assess earthquakes and so on.
7:31
SPEAKER_01: People often think about what a seismometer is in relation to earthquakes, but in fact, we're we're talking about uh, you know, seismometers that are detecting anthropogenic human background noise from, like you said, trucks and trains and and cars and planes and things like this.
7:51
SPEAKER_00: Yeah, so I I think you know the the seismometers, they use you can think of it basically as this this pendulum suspended in the air, where if the earth moves under it, I mean they really used to be just a vertically hanging thread with like a pencil attached to it.
8:06
SPEAKER_00: And if the earth moved under that pencil, the pencil would draw a line on the chart, right?
8:10
SPEAKER_01: That was sort of the the very clock, and so it recorded exactly when the the vibrations took place, and then of course, because of the the amount that the that the device moved, the pen would draw on that drum and show exactly how much the ground moved.
8:32
SPEAKER_00: Exactly.
8:33
SPEAKER_00: So you can just imagine this this piece of paper that's sitting on the ground with a hanging pencil above it.
8:38
SPEAKER_00: If you shift the ground beneath it, it's gonna scratch out a movement.
8:41
SPEAKER_00: And the amount of movement is recorded on that scale.
8:44
SPEAKER_00: Nowadays, the the seismometers are are much more precise.
8:47
SPEAKER_00: And I was I'm just looking at the scale of the first article we're gonna talk about.
8:51
SPEAKER_00: Um and I should mention we're gonna link all these articles in the uh in the podcast description so that you can go and look at them.
8:58
SPEAKER_00: But the scale here, we're looking at nanometers of ground displacement, is what they're recording, which is amazing.
9:04
SPEAKER_00: I mean, nano nanometer is is a billionth of a meter, um, and so this is a really tiny amount of of movement that they're recording.
9:12
SPEAKER_01: So, Jesse, can you talk about then uh you know how we would use seismographs for monitoring buildings and and things along that line?
9:21
SPEAKER_01: Like, you know, you did your postdoc at Carnegie.
9:24
SPEAKER_01: So can you talk a little bit about that?
9:27
SPEAKER_00: Yeah, no, that's right.
9:28
SPEAKER_00: Um Carnegie is this research institute in northwest Washington, D.C.
9:33
SPEAKER_00: Um, and it was originally built kind of outside of the city to get away from the electric tram noise because they had these really sensitive uh magnetic field detectors.
9:43
SPEAKER_00: Um was built outside of the city, you know, in the 1930s, which now it's in golf, the city has engulfed it.
9:49
SPEAKER_00: So it's kind of a noisy urban or suburban environment around there.
9:53
SPEAKER_00: But we still have at Carnegie, we we still had um really sensitive instruments.
9:57
SPEAKER_00: A lot of the mass spectrometers are sensitive to this nanometer scale ground movement.
10:01
SPEAKER_00: Um, so it's kind of a funny story.
10:03
SPEAKER_00: There was this sort of retirement home that was being renovated right next door to Carnegie, and uh they they were doing a whole bunch of construction, building big new buildings, and so the the uh architects you know had to get approval, they had to you know sign a contract and say we won't we will create less than some X amount of of ground disturbance.
10:25
SPEAKER_00: So that Carnegie seismologists who are on staff placed these seismometers around the campus and were you know actively detecting the ground movement due to this construction site, which was you know a quarter mile away.
10:37
SPEAKER_00: And actually, there's a couple times where they tripped, they went over the limit.
10:40
SPEAKER_00: So you know, they went in and said, Hey, you went over the contractual limit, you need to stop making that noise.
10:45
SPEAKER_00: That's awesome.
10:45
SPEAKER_00: Yeah, I'm sure I'm sure the guy, you know, the boss of the construction site was like, Oh, for goodness sakes, these stupid scientists, right?
10:52
SPEAKER_00: Like, they're just moving the ground a little bit.
10:54
SPEAKER_00: Are you freaking kidding me?
10:55
SPEAKER_00: What the hell's going on, right?
10:57
SPEAKER_00: Must have been extremely frustrating from his position, but you know, it disturbed the instruments.
11:01
SPEAKER_00: So, anyways, it's kind of a funny story about how these seismometers are.
11:03
SPEAKER_01: I read an article on MLive um about you know Michigan's football stadium and how they have you know they have these seismometers there, and they can actually they're sensitive enough to pick up when there's a touchdown scored in the big house.
11:18
SPEAKER_01: That's uh unbelievable.
11:20
SPEAKER_00: That that's awesome.
11:22
SPEAKER_00: There was, I think there's an article maybe last year about Penn State too.
11:25
SPEAKER_00: You know, some enterprising young grad student had gone and placed the seismometer, you know, near the football stadium or something like that.
11:30
SPEAKER_00: And you is that it's impressive.
11:32
SPEAKER_00: You could watch during the game, you can see when touchdowns happen, you see when kickoff happened because everybody's making a lot of noise and stomping their feet or whatever.
11:39
SPEAKER_00: So they're incredibly sensitive instruments.
11:41
SPEAKER_00: Um and I think this this Michigan seismometer was one that was tracking the quieting of the earth.
11:46
SPEAKER_01: I came across uh another article, and I I can't remember what it is, Jesse, but um the my takeaway was that the quieting from from COVID, although it lasted longer, is comparable to what we see um on Christmas Eve and Christmas Day.
12:05
SPEAKER_00: This oh, that's really interesting.
12:08
SPEAKER_00: Because everybody's at home and and sort of hanging out with their family.
12:10
SPEAKER_00: That's really interesting.
12:11
SPEAKER_01: All right, Jesse, let's transition then.
12:13
SPEAKER_01: Uh how's this important?
12:14
SPEAKER_01: You know, why is this?
12:16
SPEAKER_00: Yeah, so uh I guess you know the data we're we're looking at this graph.
12:20
SPEAKER_00: We'll link the again, we'll link the article in the podcast description, but basically you're looking at the seismic noise or basically the the vibration of these seismometers as a function of time.
12:31
SPEAKER_00: And at background, it's really interesting because you can see weekends in this data put in this data chart.
12:37
SPEAKER_00: So this is a seismometer sitting, you know, at Michigan Stadium um in Ann Arbor, and it's recording ground movement, just background ground movement.
12:44
SPEAKER_00: So it records earthquakes when they come in, um, it records any movement, trucks passing by, stuff like that.
12:50
SPEAKER_00: And there's a little bit of background noise.
12:52
SPEAKER_00: And I'm looking at the chart right now, and and on a typical weekday, it's something like 50 or 60 nanometers of of movement.
12:59
SPEAKER_00: And the weekend it kind of drops down to something like 40, maybe.
13:03
SPEAKER_00: Um, so it's kind of interesting.
13:05
SPEAKER_00: You can see the weekends in there because people aren't driving around, presumably, right?
13:08
SPEAKER_00: Or walking around campus or something like that.
13:10
SPEAKER_00: Um, and then during COVID lockdowns, as soon as the lockdowns hit, you know, the the weekday noise level dropped down to below 40 nanometers of ground displacement.
13:20
SPEAKER_00: So it basically dropped by a third.
13:22
SPEAKER_00: And this is a good thing.
13:22
SPEAKER_01: That's amazing.
13:23
SPEAKER_01: We're kind of talking about bright spots.
13:25
SPEAKER_01: So, how can something like that benefit these professionals?
13:30
SPEAKER_01: You know, what's the bright spot here?
13:34
SPEAKER_00: Yeah, no, exactly.
13:35
SPEAKER_00: I think it, you know, it means that these seismometers as you know, they're really sensitive instruments, but the background noise is kind of like static in a radio.
13:43
SPEAKER_00: So if you have a lot of static coming through your radio, you can't hear any noises, any actual, you know, speaking or music or whatever is coming through your radio.
13:51
SPEAKER_00: You can't hear that above the static.
13:53
SPEAKER_00: If you lower the static, you can start to hear softer and softer noises.
13:56
SPEAKER_00: You can hear whispers if you lower the static.
13:58
SPEAKER_00: Um, so these seismic waves, it's a shockwave basically, and it gets deflected by different boundaries and different layers.
14:05
SPEAKER_00: And it's extremely important for hydrocarbon industry for checking, looking underneath of sediments, looking underneath the earth for where oil and gas might be trapped.
14:14
SPEAKER_00: Where should we put these drills?
14:16
SPEAKER_00: Um, you know, it costs many millions of dollars to drill a hole in the ground.
14:19
SPEAKER_00: So having information about the subsurface is is really a seismic uh uh question.
14:25
SPEAKER_00: So it also helps inform you know where the ground is moving.
14:28
SPEAKER_00: We talked about Yellowstone and the volcano breathing in and out.
14:31
SPEAKER_00: Uh a lot of that is recorded in very small earthquakes.
14:34
SPEAKER_00: So we can see those much better if this makes noise.
14:38
SPEAKER_01: It's kind of like um if you're having a conversation but you want to eavesdrop on another conversation, you shush the people around you so that you can hear what's exactly that's a good that's a perfect analogy.
14:47
SPEAKER_00: That's a perfect analogy.
14:49
SPEAKER_01: That's really cool.
14:49
SPEAKER_00: Yeah, but these are surface seismometers, right?
14:51
SPEAKER_00: These are seismometers sitting on the surface, so they're kind of perhaps more sensitive to trucks driving by um than if they were deeper down.
15:00
SPEAKER_01: And we have those, right?
15:01
SPEAKER_01: We have deeper bored uh seismometers that are, I guess, maybe immune to what's going on at the surface to a much greater extent.
15:09
SPEAKER_01: I think I'd have a hard time this is me.
15:11
SPEAKER_01: I'd have a hard time um if that was my line of work, not being distracted and just want to put seismometers in certain areas and play around with Oh yeah.
15:21
SPEAKER_00: I mean, I I would totally be the person putting it in a football stadium or putting it, you know, outside and stomping around it, doing all that kind of stuff, you know.
15:28
SPEAKER_00: All right, Jesse.
15:29
SPEAKER_01: So that's that's really amazing about seismometers and so on, and and the bright spot with that.
15:34
SPEAKER_01: Uh let's also let's touch on the air pollution reduction caused by the COVID uh stay-at-home orders and lockdowns.
15:41
SPEAKER_01: Um you know, particularly carbon dioxide, right?
15:47
SPEAKER_00: Yeah, I think there's a couple interesting studies that that uh we kind of explored here, uh, and again we'll link them in the in the notes, but one was on CO2 reduction, and another one we sort of highlighted the air other air pollution reduction.
15:59
SPEAKER_00: I think there's a couple really interesting aspects to this.
16:02
SPEAKER_00: I'm no expert on uh I don't study climate change.
16:05
SPEAKER_00: Um I'm no expert on it.
16:07
SPEAKER_00: So this was very much what I think.
16:08
SPEAKER_00: I agree.
16:08
SPEAKER_01: As I was reading through these articles, um it it caused me then to look for other articles to explain things that I didn't quite understand in the original articles that we read to get ready for this podcast.
16:21
SPEAKER_01: Uh that's right.
16:23
SPEAKER_00: Oh yeah, there's a lot I didn't understand.
16:24
SPEAKER_00: I mean, I I it took it took a little while to learn about that.
16:27
SPEAKER_01: I just want to quick mention it.
16:28
SPEAKER_01: Well, uh, you know, I already kind of alluded to it when I said that you can see Everest from from Catman Doo for the first time in decades, and that's smog and particulate matter in the in the atmosphere.
16:39
SPEAKER_01: And one of the things that I I came across is that you know we're seeing a reduction in nitrogen oxides.
16:48
SPEAKER_01: And and at first I I was confused by that.
16:50
SPEAKER_01: I I had to think about nitrogen oxides.
16:53
SPEAKER_01: Well, why is that a byproduct of of uh driving your car?
16:58
SPEAKER_01: So I had to, you know, that's one of the things I looked into then is is how the well during combustion um you have oxygen and nitrogen that are present because those are the two most abundant gases in the atmosphere, and and how at high temperatures uh there's a chemical reaction that creates these nitrogen oxide compounds.
17:18
SPEAKER_01: And and so, and that's a greenhouse gas.
17:20
SPEAKER_01: Those are they're greenhouse gases, and they also are uh very closely associated with particulate matters, which in in other words, smog, right?
17:28
SPEAKER_01: And so we've seen a reduction actually in these nitrogen oxide compounds due to COVID, due to the lockdowns and less travel.
17:35
SPEAKER_01: But we've seen an increase in the rise in ozone.
17:39
SPEAKER_01: That's unbelievable.
17:40
SPEAKER_01: And that's because you know, so I had to look into why why is that?
17:44
SPEAKER_00: Well, yeah, that doesn't seem to make sense, right?
17:48
SPEAKER_00: I mean, ozone is uh again uh something we're putting into the atmosphere and we're trying to reduce the the the or we're trying to keep the ozone layer intact and all this kind of stuff.
17:57
SPEAKER_00: So so why is that happening?
17:58
SPEAKER_00: Why this is the same thing?
17:59
SPEAKER_01: Well, so we're talking that's a good point.
18:01
SPEAKER_01: We're talking about ozone in the lower atmosphere, it's called the troposphere, and we don't want that.
18:06
SPEAKER_01: We want ozone in the next layer up in the atmosphere, 20 to 50 miles up in the in a layer called the stratosphere.
18:12
SPEAKER_01: That's good ozone.
18:13
SPEAKER_01: We don't want it down here.
18:14
SPEAKER_01: It's it's uh it's an irritant, it's a greenhouse gas, um, it it it it affects people that have respiratory issues greater and so on.
18:22
SPEAKER_01: So we we don't want this ozone, but these nitrogen compounds in the presence of sunlight and higher temperatures, so warmer days, uh it breaks down the ozone.
18:32
SPEAKER_01: And so with less nitrogen compound, nitrogen oxide compounds, there's been an increase then in ozone.
18:42
SPEAKER_00: Oh wow, that's crazy.
18:43
SPEAKER_00: So these unintended consequences of actually decreasing a pollutant increases another pollutant.
18:48
SPEAKER_00: Yeah, um that it is.
18:50
SPEAKER_00: That's really interesting.
18:50
SPEAKER_00: I think so.
18:51
SPEAKER_00: We're we're talking about a Science Daily article here that referred to two papers in the journal Geophysical Research Letters that just came out during COVID that are talking about this air quality response in highlighting um, can you talk a little bit about then some of the numbers?
19:05
SPEAKER_01: Um because I think the article you're referring to deals primarily with carbon dioxide emissions.
19:13
SPEAKER_00: Yeah, that's right.
19:14
SPEAKER_00: So so we we also were turned on to a uh paper by Lequel et al in uh Nature Climate Change that just came out.
19:23
SPEAKER_00: And again, we'll link this in the podcast description.
19:25
SPEAKER_00: But this is really looking at global CO2 emissions um during the COVID confinement or during the COVID lockdowns.
19:32
SPEAKER_00: So they came up with a way to kind of track global CO2 emissions, which is a complicated thing in and of itself.
19:39
SPEAKER_00: Um and not not something we're particularly good at, although we know it's rising pretty substantially year to year on a year-by-year basis.
19:47
SPEAKER_00: Um so they're looking at daily CO2 emissions, so comparing you know how much CO2 is emitted per day, comparing it to the same time last year.
19:57
SPEAKER_00: And basically what they're seeing is that we uh globally, on average, the CO2 emissions drop by like 17% or 20% per day during the lockdown.
20:07
SPEAKER_00: So everybody stay home, nobody drive around, nobody go to work, everybody just stay in your house, drop by 17%, which I guess doesn't it kind of struck me as as less than that.
20:16
SPEAKER_01: I was gonna say the exact same thing.
20:19
SPEAKER_01: Um, because I think about how long a tank of gas lasted me, and everybody else had to be in the same boat, right?
20:25
SPEAKER_01: Uh you know, I I I was using I was emitting a lot less just from transportation, but maybe that's the thing, too, right?
20:33
SPEAKER_01: You get a lot of carbon dioxide emissions, and we used more electricity, I would assume, right?
20:37
SPEAKER_01: Because we're staying at home.
20:40
SPEAKER_00: Yeah, exactly.
20:41
SPEAKER_00: I mean, they broke this down in the paper.
20:43
SPEAKER_00: CO2 emissions uh by industry, by sector, and and power production kind of stayed basically the same.
20:50
SPEAKER_00: It increased in some areas.
20:51
SPEAKER_00: Um, and what also increased is residential CO2 emissions.
20:55
SPEAKER_00: So people were just staying home, burning more electricity, you know, running AC, running the power, heat, whatever.
21:01
SPEAKER_00: That sector is it was sort of emitted more CO2 during the lockdowns, kind of as you'd expect.
21:06
SPEAKER_00: What really decreased is the surface transport driving your cars around and actually airplanes.
21:11
SPEAKER_00: So airplanes flying around that dropped dramatically.
21:14
SPEAKER_00: Uh so that really was driving it dropped by about 17%.
21:18
SPEAKER_01: But it's important to note, I think, that that's that is all through early April.
21:22
SPEAKER_01: Okay, that's in really in the height of the lockdown.
21:26
SPEAKER_01: So they also went on then, and now they can't predict the future really, but you know that everything is starting to open back up, and we don't know what's going to happen.
21:34
SPEAKER_01: Uh you know, nobody knows this, but um they're on the low end, they think that this COVID shutdown will result over the course of the year 2020, maybe a four percent uh decrease in carbon dioxide emissions, and on the high end, up to maybe seven percent decrease in carbon dioxide emissions.
21:53
SPEAKER_00: Okay, so yeah, so let's let's break that number down a bit.
21:57
SPEAKER_00: I mean, the seventeen percent number is a daily reduction.
21:59
SPEAKER_00: So So every day 17% decrease over the you know the same day last year.
22:05
SPEAKER_00: But if you ex so if you did that every day for the whole year, you'd have a 17% decrease for the year.
22:11
SPEAKER_00: But what they're what we're the uncertainty comes in predicting that into the future.
22:14
SPEAKER_00: If COVID lockdowns stay in place, if they're restricted, if they're released, if people start moving around, then you're gonna see a return back to daily CO2 emissions that are kind of higher.
22:23
SPEAKER_00: Um, which means that the for the year you're not getting that 17%.
22:28
SPEAKER_01: That's really interesting.
22:29
SPEAKER_01: And and a four to seven percent drop.
22:32
SPEAKER_01: Okay.
22:33
SPEAKER_01: That puts us back to uh the levels that uh we were emitting in 2006.
22:42
SPEAKER_00: That's amazing, isn't it?
22:43
SPEAKER_00: I mean so that it's amazing, yeah.
22:45
SPEAKER_00: We're we're winding back the clock.
22:47
SPEAKER_01: Uh but to me, I look at that and I say, wait a s that means that we've had a lot of increased carbon dioxide emissions in the last 14 years then.
22:57
SPEAKER_01: If this lockdown puts us back to 2006 levels.
23:03
SPEAKER_00: Um Yeah, I mean 2006, you know, we both remember 2006.
23:08
SPEAKER_00: And and I I mean you were what 80 in 2006 or something like that.
23:12
SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
23:13
SPEAKER_00: Um yeah, I think it's interesting.
23:15
SPEAKER_00: And also put it in the context of of sort of global climate change and and and how what the the sort of recommendations are, is that you know, we're looking at the recommendations vary, but we're looking at something like six to seven percent decrease every year going forward is is what we need to sort of stem things like um ocean rise, sea level rise and things like that.
23:39
SPEAKER_00: And so this four to seven percent decrease due to a month or two of COVID lockdowns is basically we need to implement the high end of that globally going forward.
23:49
SPEAKER_00: So we either need to lock down our economies for a month or two.
23:53
SPEAKER_00: Nobody is advocating or figure out a more no, absolutely not, right?
23:58
SPEAKER_00: Absolutely not.
23:59
SPEAKER_00: Um, or we need to provide some structural changes to the energy sector, uh, you know, provide power with these other means, these more um sort of CO2-friendly means, which either way you look at it, it's an interesting statistic.
24:13
SPEAKER_00: And it hopefully will help guide how we can.
24:15
SPEAKER_01: You know, this is kind of like an unintended experiment, right?
24:18
SPEAKER_01: What we're going through with COVID.
24:19
SPEAKER_01: And but it provides us though with a glimpse into the possibilities of emission regulations.
24:27
SPEAKER_01: Um that's I think what you're talking about.
24:29
SPEAKER_00: Absolutely.
24:29
SPEAKER_00: And so let's uh yeah, let's put this kind of on a personal level, Chris.
24:34
SPEAKER_00: What what do you take home, you know, for your daily life from either the CO2 thing, seismometer thing, what what are you gonna think about more as you walk around the world uh after reading these articles?
24:43
SPEAKER_01: Definitely puts me on the spot, but I think my first takeaway is that I have I've got more to learn and I'm excited about that.
24:50
SPEAKER_01: I always love that.
24:51
SPEAKER_01: Um and I also just I was also just uh excited about um or interested, I guess, is maybe a better way of saying it that um this two-month you know lockdown resulted in um a reduction in emissions that can have a real impact if it's sustained.
25:11
SPEAKER_01: Yeah, um I don't you know four to seven percent.
25:15
SPEAKER_01: I I guess I I don't know.
25:16
SPEAKER_01: Um I don't know how difficult that is to get to.
25:20
SPEAKER_01: I mean, obviously then you start thinking about all right, how how can that happen?
25:23
SPEAKER_01: What we have growing populations and so on.
25:25
SPEAKER_01: How do you get to reduce carbon dioxide emissions by seven percent?
25:30
SPEAKER_01: But then you start talking about you know um renewable forms of energy and and supplementing our use of fossil fuels with that, and maybe we can get there that way.
25:40
SPEAKER_01: Um I don't know.
25:41
SPEAKER_01: What do you think?
25:42
SPEAKER_01: What's your takeaway?
25:44
SPEAKER_00: Like you, I did kind of a deep dive, except I took a deep dive into the seismometer uh aspect of this and sort of the earth gliding down, and but I really did a close look at you know all the information we gather from these really sensitive seismometers and how important it is for hydrocarbon studies and hydrocarbon extraction and understanding the Defense Department uses these seismometers to detect nuclear testing around the world and using these really sensitive things.
26:11
SPEAKER_00: Um it's super interesting.
26:13
SPEAKER_00: I thought that was a really, really uh good take-home conclusion.
26:15
SPEAKER_00: But I agree with you completely that the understanding of the emissions reductions and how power is generated, how CO2 is produced in our in our um culture, in our society, that's something I'm uh I think was is really a good take home.
26:31
SPEAKER_01: I want to just add one other thing, just a kind of a personal thought and an observation on my part.
26:36
SPEAKER_01: You know, when you hike up to the top of Blacktail Butte, uh overlooking the Grand Tetons, um every morning now, there is a layer of stunning view, first of all.
26:46
SPEAKER_00: That is like one of the most powerful things thinking about the T.
26:49
SPEAKER_00: I mean, we'll get we gotta talk about the Tetons at some point.
26:51
SPEAKER_00: Unbelievable, most spectacular mountain range.
26:54
SPEAKER_01: Anyway, sorry, I interrupted you.
26:56
SPEAKER_01: Um just that uh every morning there is a you can see smog in the valley.
27:03
SPEAKER_01: Um it wasn't there 15 years ago, but it is now, and it's there all the time.
27:08
SPEAKER_01: You know, it lifts during the course of the day, but it's there every morning.
27:11
SPEAKER_01: That bothers me every time I see it.
27:14
SPEAKER_01: And so this is something that I feel strongly about.
27:17
SPEAKER_01: Um because I I don't like it, you know?
27:20
SPEAKER_00: Yeah, yeah, absolutely.
27:22
SPEAKER_00: Absolutely.
27:23
SPEAKER_00: And you know, although I think it's really interesting the the unpredictability of the future, you know, we can't really predict it, but I think we have we have some understanding of how we can at least try and do better, right?
27:32
SPEAKER_00: Um so anyways, I those are those are kind of the my take-home point from a personal perspective, and I think um, you know, mainly I thought that in this really stressful time, there's some interesting aspects to what happened, and there's some interesting geoscience implications for the whole world being locked down, basically, for a little bit.
27:53
SPEAKER_00: Uh it was really interesting.
27:54
SPEAKER_00: I thought it meant some positive things.
27:56
SPEAKER_00: Yep, I agree.
27:57
SPEAKER_00: I I enjoyed it.
28:00
SPEAKER_00: That's it for this week.
28:02
SPEAKER_00: Um, as usual, if you enjoyed what you heard, please give us a subscribe, a like, maybe a review even, uh, and pass us along to anybody you think might enjoy the geosciences and learning a little bit more.
28:14
SPEAKER_00: Uh, we are at Planet Geocast on all the social medias, and if you feel like sending us an email, we are planetgeocast at gmail.com.
28:22
SPEAKER_00: Uh, thanks for listening, and we'll talk to you soon, and then we're gonna do it.