Peter Ward: “Oceans - What’s the Worst that Can Happen?” | The Great Simplification #08

On this episode, we meet with author and paleobiologist Peter Ward.

Ward helps us catalogue the various risks facing Earth’s oceans, how the Atlantic Ocean’s currents are slowing due to warming, what happened in Earth’s history when ocean currents stopped, and why a reduction in elephant poaching is contributing to the destruction of coral reefs.

Peter Ward is a Professor of Biology and Earth and Space Sciences at the University of Washington. He is author of over a dozen books on Earth's natural history including On Methuselah's Trail: Living Fossils and the Great Extinctions; Under a Green Sky; and The Medea Hypothesis, 2009, (listed by the New York Times as one of the “100 most important ideas of 2009”). Ward gave a TED talk in 2008 about mass extinctions.

00:45 - Peter Ward website and books
03:00 - We need a little bit of CO2, but it’s easy to have too much CO2
04:20 - Rare Earth: Why Complex Life is Uncommon in the Universe (co-written with Dan Brownlee)
04:40 - Excessive heat and mortality
05:12 - Volcanic activity responsible for past CO2 spikes
05:40 - Previous mass extinctions
05:57 - Non-animal mass extinctions
07:18 - Uneven atmospheric heating
08:00 - Ocean currents and how they work
08:51 - Hydrogen Sulfide (H2S)
09:12 - Paleocene-Eocene Thermal Maximum
10:25 - Fossil fuel availability
10:50 - Under a Green Sky
11:50 - The Gulf Stream
13:22 - What lives at the bottom of the ocean?
15:13 - Shallow ocean grasses and climate
19:11 - Oxygen in the ocean has dropped 2%
20:20 - North pacific ocean increasing acidity
20:48 - Billions of sea creatures died during summer ‘21 heat wave
23:11 - 30% of houses in Seattle have air conditioning
23:50 - Positive feedback loop
25:00 - We are highly attuned to smell hydrogen sulfide
25:45 - 400 ppm of hydrogen sulfide will kill a human
28:25 - Fred Hutchinson Institute
28:50 - Warm blooded animals are more sensitive to H2S than cold blooded
29:45 - Atlantic meridional overturning circulation has slow 15-20% in the last 30-40 years
31:56 - We’ve lost 15% of the amazon, if we lose 20% it will tip into a carbon source
34:10 - In the last 20,000 years sea level rise has gone up 450 ft
34:30 - How many of the world’s ports are built 3ft above sea level
34:52 - Wet bulb temperature + *Factual Correction - Higher wet bulb temperatures do not prevent sweating, it makes sweating less effective
36:15 - What temperature can mammals still reproduce at
40:10 - Eric Steig
41:48 - Social media algorithms encourage polarization and extremes
44:25 - 40% of students at the University of Minnesota are using some mental health aid
45:39 - A switch to renewables completely will not fix all of our issues
45:45 - The energy Americans use outside of the body is 100x the amount they eat
46:08 - 20% of Americans lost everything during COVID
48:13 - The Flooded Earth
48:41 - Northern Europe most at risk for sea level rise
49:46 - Rice is the number one food source for the largest portion of people
49:53 - Bangladesh rice crop destruction via salinization
53:31 - Sam Wasser
55:58 - Giant clams are replacing ivory
57:23 - We’ve lost 50% of animals since the late 1960s
57:55 - 5,500 mammal species and 10 million other species we share the earth with
59:07 - Save the Nautilus
1:01:25 - 25 million dollars worth of clams being shipped to China
1:01:49 - Giant clams are extinct in many places
1:03:23 - We’ve underpaid for the main income to our economies
1:03:30 - We can shift away from GDP as measure for success
1:04:49 - Male libido and the exotic trade market
1:06:25 - Pangolin scales second most trafficked item
1:12:10 - Human biases and drives
1:12:31 - We are energy blind
1:13:00 - Emergence
1:13:40 - Elephants have evolved to be tuskless because of the ivory trade

#PeterWard #TheGreatSimplification #NateHagens

[TheFlyingBrain.]

Nate, that last bit from Peter about the natural process of evolution rapidly producing tuskless elephants really did cheer me up. I've been at this information gathering process about as long as you have been. Actually 30 years for climate disruption. Except I came at it from the opposite direction, with decades of knowledge of natural ("alternative") forms of medicine and biology, and then plunging into study of climate, politics, history and now economics during the last 20 years. Even so, I learn so much from these podcasts of yours, and I am so grateful for them. My only wish is that I could wave a magic wand and instill an irresistable desire in more people to listen to them. Everyone who does goes crazy loving them, but so few will take the time.

The levels of resignation in the US among the older half of our generations seems amazingly high. I'm at a loss as to how to make a dent in it after years of trying. All I get from others in answer to the question "How to break through" is some version or other of "Give up, " which is just more resignation.

[LightSearch]

Everytime I hear 2100 I think about a stage 4 lung cancer patient worrying about if he will have Alzheimer.

[ragereset]

Can't believe there was Peter Ward content up for a year and l didn't know. He and Peter Brannen are my absolute favourites.

[brushstroke]

It's amazing that we are even here. Inexplicable really. The universe is a wonder. The whole thing is alive somehow.

[williamjmccartan]

Thank you Nate and Peter for continuing our planetary education

[emceegreen]

Many thanks to Nate and Peter. Let’s preserve what we have left. Make that job one.

[KathiTrujillo-knqn]

So good to know I am not alone in my thinking. I have to hug my dog every day just to remind myself of the beauty that still exists in our world.

[garyhoover]

Thank you for a great conversation.
I know that young people are really very stressed, as you have pointed out.
I hope one day you can address the great “moral injury” of our time. Young people who are aware of science feel betrayed and also feel like that betrayal is ongoing, and full-tilt at that.
We also sure do need to develop a meta narrative that will help give people a shared sense of meaning and a shared sense of being deeply engaged in making a way for life together.
Do hope you do have Peter Ward back for more.
I hope you are able to discuss scientific literacy further as well.
Thank you both very much for sharing this conversation.

[davidmacminn]

Love your podcast from a person who takes a deep science approach with a multidiscipline approach. I first read one of Peter's earlier books in a Paleontology course way back in 1997. I'm not sure I agree with his 800ppm of CO2 being a tipping point nor that CO2 was the major cause of mass extinctions. but I do like his emphasis on sulfur dioxide. What he didn't mention is both in the air and water a good amount of sulfur dioxide converts to sulfuric acid. That helped create the Permian extinction from the Siberian traps as well as the Deccan Indian traps of the KT extinctions. Both have been correlated with high pyrite sediments on the ocean floor. (FeS) 55million year ago heat wave had a 5000ppm CO2.not 1000ppm The oyster failure in Puget sound has been linked to pH 5 -5.5 which is the range when carbonates start to dissolve. On a side note one of the best indicators of stupidity is oversimplification and trying to explain things using only one or two variables. Greta and current climate end of times freaks want to blame CO2 and fossil fuels for everything. 90% of atmospheric heating comes from water vapor. That means anything that causes more evaporation will increase heat retention. Another source could be all the BTU's we create. Every motor, every transmission of electricity loses at least 50% of its efficiency to waste heat. Urban heat islands are often 5 degrees hotter. Forests are 10 degrees cooler. I could go on but I'm sure your aware of other sources. Oversimplification also comes from ADHD and any short attention span behavior. Social media, video games, click bait, texting, failure to read anything past 500 words, movies that jump from scene to scene every few seconds, all contribute to this short attention span. 20 year olds today except for the top 10% know less today than 30-50 years ago despite the internet which should have made them smarter. Anyway keep teaching for that is our best hope.

[Rosemountainfarm]

Mind blown! Thank you so much! All of this is so interesting and soooo relevant. As a farmHer, I see so much nature and the changes in nature on a micro level. Your views and your guest are so welcome as my conscious grows to see farther than my own plot and the strugles we must embrace that are ahead. I farm in Appalachia, the most northwest corner of NC. Last summer all my springs were dry for seven weeks. I nearly gave up! Now I realize it may be my new norm. Holding space here in my temperate rain forest that once was.💚💪

[seansmith]

The Flooded Earth was one of the first climate change books that didn't pull punches and wasn't afraid to speculate on the worst case scenarios. You can see it's influence in later books like The Uninhabitable Earth which in turn have influenced a lot of the discussion and activism.
Thanks for this unflinching (and reliability disturbing) conversation.

[rapauli]

Very informative. Thanks ---- Yikes Nate! This is a year old... bring Peter back for an update!

[Boudica]

We're looking at more than a great simplification. We're looking at a great culling. At this point it's unavoidable. We're fucked.

[CoryDavisPAg]

Peter's voice needs to be heard!!! Thank you for sharing. I am a big fan and have read almost all his books. From Rivers in Time to a New History of Life, Under a Green Sky, the Life and Death of Planet Earth and so on, his writing captivates me. It puzzles me how he remains under the radar of so many important circles yet is so well respected and cherished in others.

[mikeharrington]

Thanks guys - it's good to hear you outline clearly & concisely your thoughts & opinions on a cornucopia of facts interconnected to our survival as a species. Oceanographer Jim Massa's VLOGs discuss the Ocean Heat Content (OHC) as being a sleeping giant, having accumulated 93% of the additional insolation energy trapped (over & above the pre-industrial carbon cycle equilibrium) by CO2 rising from 280ppm to 420ppm (+ other GHgases).

That heat is not being drawn down to deep water because of upper surface stratification (top ~700 meters) - the point being that all this extra heat energy has to go somewhere & so more will diffuse upwards accelerating the heating of the atmosphere. (The OHC has other potential implications for the AMOC)

[raginaldmars]

... as a German Biologist -
Peter Ward is a highly impressive Biologist
and Role Model for the World.
As the World has no respect for Persons like Ward
we self extinct
easy...

[treefrog]

Wouldn't it be a wonderful and miraculous thing if Nate Hagens and like-minded contemporaries would have a national platform on mainstream media! The fact that it will never happen is an eye-opening, existential reality that is as confounding as any ecological dilemma we face.

[awetravelsOG]

Thank you for sharing this profound information!

[emceegreen]

This is the most important interview and this channel. We have to avoid this fate. Remember we caused it. We can. Fix it. But not without cooperative effort.

[sendler]

No human can live totally alone. But even if someone could drop out of society completely to minimize their impact, they would only address 1/8, 000, 000, 000th of the problem of human overshoot. Hagens and his brilliant compatriots, seek to MAXIMIZE their impact through selfless efforts to reach out and educate us as to our dilemma so that we can steer the conversation to better outcomes.