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Welcome to Earth on the Rocks, a show where we get to know the person behind the science over drinks. Each episode will highlight a new scientist in the earth and atmospheric sciences to learn more about their journey, what interests them, and who they are outside of their science.
Host: Shelby Rader
Producer: Cari Metz
Artwork: Connor Leimgruber
Board Operator: Kate Crum, Betsy Leija
Funding for this podcast was provided by the National Science Foundation grant EAR-2422824.
Hi, folks, and welcome back to the second half of season two of Earth on the Rocks. I'm your host, Shelby Rader, and joining us today is Doctor. Ben Kravitz. Ben, welcome to the show.
Ben:Thanks for having me.
Shelby:So Ben, we're gonna get to know you over the course of this episode. And while we do that, what would be your drink of choice or non choice if you have one while we chat?
Ben:If we're keeping it family friendly, I've got a cup of coffee sitting right next to me. I don't think I could function without that. If we are talking about evening drinks, my wife is from Kentucky. I got very into bourbon when I started dating her. And relatedly, my drink of non choice.
Ben:There's an aperitif from Chicago called Malort.
Shelby:Yes.
Ben:And they advertise that only one in nineteen people like it. I am not one of those one.
Shelby:I have a friend who's a bartender who is a big fan of Mallort, and and I personally have never tried it. I'm a little nervous to try it, but I do find their advertising entertaining because they definitely lean into the fact that most people find it very odd.
Ben:It is worth a try. I'll say that. Don't buy a bottle
Shelby:of it. How do you take your coffee?
Ben:Anyway it comes. When I'm making it at home, I put heavy cream in it because I like little decadence in my life.
Shelby:And how do you take your bourbon?
Ben:Usually neat.
Shelby:Yeah. That's one of the best ways. Also good to mix, though. You can you can bourbon's versatile.
Ben:I do like a Manhattan.
Shelby:Yeah. So, Ben, if someone were to come up to you and say, you know, what do you do or what sort of scientist are you, how would you classify yourself?
Ben:It depends on my mood. So ordinarily, I call myself a climate scientist. And I don't have any degrees in climate science. I have degrees in math and atmospheric science, but it's what I do. Sometimes I'm a token climate modeler in the room.
Ben:Sometimes I'll say, I don't know what I do. I just show up and people ask me questions. Like, it really varies.
Shelby:And if you were to describe yourself as a climate scientist, sort of broadly for a general audience, what would that entail?
Ben:So what I'm interested in is when you push the Earth system, and you can do that in various ways. For example, the way we're doing it right now is adding a lot of greenhouse gases to the atmosphere. So when you push the Earth system, how does it respond, and how do we know?
Shelby:And we've had some other folks on the show that have sort of fallen under that climate scientist umbrella. And so, you know, some people who may have listened to earlier episodes probably have come to the conclusion that there are different sort of aspects under this climate scientist umbrella. So I would say as someone who's not in that field, you know, there's folks that are doing modeling studies. I'm assuming there's folks that are doing more hands on sorts of experimental work. And so under that range, where do you sort of fall?
Ben:Definitely on the modeling side. I've done fieldwork once in my life. It was nice to do. I like my computers. And so I I use models of all scales.
Ben:And one of the advantages is I'm very interested in scenarios of future climate. So given societal choices, what might the Earth look like? And we can't predict the future, but climate models all allow us to project forward based on our best understanding of physics. So that's what I do.
Shelby:And when you say societal choices, what are some of those choices, both that could go into these models, but then more specifically, the ones that you're interested in?
Ben:Yeah. So, on a basic level, what happens if we change our emissions of greenhouse gases? One of my main areas of research is called geoengineering. So we are not doing enough quickly enough to prevent climate change. Are there ways we could deliberately intervene in the climate system to keep temperatures down while we get our act together?
Ben:So one of the examples is we know after large volcanic eruptions, the planet cools a little bit, and that's because volcanoes, they create a layer of microscopic particles in the upper atmosphere, reflects a small amount of sunlight back to space that cools the planet. So people have thought, well, could we do that on purpose? And is that a good idea? We don't really wanna go out in the real world and just kinda try it because we live here. So that's why we use computer models.
Ben:That's one of the things that I work on.
Shelby:And so with this sort of modeling, I'm assuming that you're telling the model, show me what Earth's climate looks like in, you know, ten, fifty, a hundred years, whatever the time scale is. If we were to add some volume, some known proportion of specific chemicals, of specific particles into the atmosphere, how does that work?
Ben:Yeah. So probably what I study most is sulfur. That's what volcanoes put up there. We kinda know what would happen. We have been able to validate our models.
Ben:And so I might say, what would happen if we put about 10 megatons per year of sulfur dioxide up into the stratosphere? And that would cool the planet by about a degree Celsius on average. So you can look at how do the winds change, how does how much is reflected, how does rainfall change, how do clouds change, things like that.
Shelby:And when you say something like megatons, think for for most listeners, that just seems like a really, really, really big number. So can you put that into perspective? Is that something that would be concerning? Is that something that's dangerous? Is that something that feels realistic to add to the atmosphere without negative impacts?
Ben:Yeah. It does sound scary. And so or you can call it teragrams, which is even more obscure. So if you look at how much sulfur we're putting out just as a part of our daily activities, things like pollution, and you convert it to sulfur dioxide because there are lots of forms of sulfur. It's more like 230 megatons.
Ben:And so what we're talking about is an extra 5%. So it it's actually not that much. And then how would you get it up there? There have been lots of studies on this. Probably the most reasonable way to do it would be airplanes.
Ben:And it wouldn't require a new technology. We've just never really built an airplane to ferry large amounts of things up to the stratosphere because we've never needed to. That's not what we use airplanes for. It would be additional air traffic on the order of another large airport.
Shelby:Basically, just taking sulfur up into some level of the atmosphere and and releasing it. Yep. And when you say there's been studies done on on sort of identifying the best way to get sulfur into the atmosphere, if we were to go down this route, are those sort of experimental studies or modeling studies, or are they ones where people are actually doing, like, small scale, what's the best way to transport this sort of thing?
Ben:There have not been any people, like, building anything yet. There have been a couple engineering studies. And this actually goes back the National Academies did a study in 1992 on how would you get stuff up to the stratosphere. And they looked at all sorts of things like, could you build a large tower and pump stuff up? Could you shoot it up there with artillery?
Ben:Could you take it up with weather balloons? And there's an amazing quote in there that the falling weather balloons would be quote, a form of annoying trash rain. This was actually published. Airplanes are probably the way to go. And that's based on there's a a buddy of mine who works in this field.
Ben:I don't know why he wanted to be academic, but we're happy to have him. He was an executive at Boeing for years. Wow. And so when he wants to know something about airplanes and airplane design and could you do this, he calls up people at Boeing, Airbus, Northrop Grumman. The list goes on and on.
Ben:He actually listed it once and my jaw hit the floor. And they'll take his call. And so if he says, you could do it with airplanes, I believe him.
Shelby:And you're talking about taking this up into a level of sort of air above ground level, the stratosphere. For people that are listening, can you sort of tell us what is the stratosphere? How far up is that? You know, if somebody were trying to shoot these with artillery, which I can't believe was an option, what would that have looked like in terms of how far it would have to
Ben:Yeah. I that's we shouldn't do that one. So the the stratosphere, the the height varies with season and it also varies with latitude. It's highest up in the tropics. It's somewhere around fifteen, sixteen, sometimes 18 kilometers up.
Ben:In the poles, it can get down to about eight kilometers. So if you've ever taken a transoceanic flight and you pass over the poles, you've been in the stratosphere. So it it depends on where.
Shelby:And why is that the sort of area that is targeted for these sorts of things?
Ben:The stratosphere, it's air tends to not move vertically very much. It's stable, and that's because of the different ways temperature changes in that layer. And so if you put stuff up there, it tends to stay for a couple of years. Whereas in the troposphere, there's lots of chaotic air movement, there's rain, we have clouds, and so stuff stays in there on the order of weeks.
Shelby:And so the idea with these sorts of studies is you would want to sort of introduce these materials and have them stay for a longer period of time so that their impacts of, in this case, reflecting sunlight are longer lasting.
Ben:Exactly.
Shelby:And then at some point, they eventually fall out of suspension and then settle back down to Earth's surface somewhere.
Ben:And that's a good thing because we wouldn't want to do anything permanent in case we saw some side effects we didn't like.
Shelby:Right. And, you know, you're talking about these sorts of of, like, geoengineering techniques and modeling them and trying to project, is this feasible? Could this help us? If so, how much? So I have a few questions about it.
Shelby:One is how do you sort of ground truth that? Like, if if you have a model that says this is gonna be really effective, how do you know how accurate that is, especially if you're sort of projecting into the future for a few years?
Ben:Yeah. So the nice thing about using a climate model, there's no such thing as a geoengineering engineering model. We use models that have been developed for, at this point, sixty years, trying to reproduce various aspects of Earth's climate. And we validate them on a number of things that we've observed. So we have observations of how the Earth works.
Ben:We have observations after large volcanic eruptions. We kinda know what happens. And so if the model can reproduce past events, called hindcasting, and we do that a lot, that gives us confidence that this is a good tool to use.
Shelby:And you also have sort of focused on this idea of sulfur, and there's this natural analog with volcanoes. Are there other things that that groups are considering and sort of doing these these Hansaeder forward models of determining if they would be effective for lowering global temperatures?
Ben:Yeah. So the other sort of big idea out there is called marine cloud brightening. So we know there are areas with clouds across the planet. What if we could make them brighter? And you wouldn't have to make them a lot brighter, just enough that they could also reflect more sunlight to space and that would cool the planet.
Ben:And so there are people looking at that. I personally consider that a lot more challenging because it's based on how these microscopic particles, aerosols, interact with clouds. Aerosol cloud interactions are the single largest source of uncertainty in climate science. They have been for a long time. They probably will be for a long time.
Shelby:And so the the sulfur idea seems a lot more feasible and maybe better quantifiable in terms of how useful it may be for some of these issues.
Ben:I would say we know more about how it would work.
Shelby:And, you know, you're sort of describing this here in The US. Well, I could imagine a few things. One, could imagine that that when you start to talk to sort of people outside the field about how we're gonna take airplanes up and dump a bunch of chemicals, even though you and I know all that seems very safe, that it could be a little alarming for the general public to hear about that. So I guess one, is that true? And two, sort of how do you alleviate those fears whenever you talk with folks about this?
Ben:Yeah. I mean, it it's alarming to me too. I I I'm kind of upset that we have to take this idea seriously. I wish that we would stop treating our atmosphere like a sewer and stop putting greenhouse gases up there. So what I tell people is if this idea is scary, good.
Ben:It means you have a pulse. But there's one thing that scares me more, that's climate change.
Shelby:And then, also would maybe guess, and this could absolutely be a 100% incorrect or inaccurate, that some of this may be a little bit like the wild wild west. Like, if this were something that was gonna actively be taken into account and attempted, how does that work globally? Because the atmosphere is global. So so how do people come to terms with, yes, we should do this. No, we shouldn't.
Shelby:If we're gonna do it, here's where we do it. These are the people involved. Those sorts of logistics.
Ben:You have hit on, I think, one of the thorniest issues in this field, which is essentially how do you govern this? What does governance look like? What does informed consent look like? What happens if some country just says, you know what, we're desperate. We're gonna do this.
Ben:And there's an interesting case study in there and that the Australian government is doing marine cloud brightening right now. So they basically said, the Great Barrier Reef is important to us. It's dying. We're gonna try this. We don't expect it to work, but if it does, we'll keep doing it.
Ben:And so they're doing marine cloud brightening in territorial waters. Nobody said a word. So I think that's interesting. I don't know what it means.
Shelby:And how long have that has Australia been doing this and has it shown any evidence of success that you know of?
Ben:A few years. They are starting to publish papers. I would say that the results they're getting are kind of the results that I would expect. It's the effects, if there are any, are pretty modest because it's not really a cloudy area. So, you know, you can't brighten a cloud if it's not there.
Shelby:Yeah. And then have there ever been conversations from sort of private individuals or private groups attempting to do some of these things or is that an issue that that you collectively as a community have to figure out how to to handle?
Ben:Yeah. There there have been. So thankfully not very many because there's no financial incentive to get involved in this. But there are a few private interests out there and the ones I can think of are essentially entirely disingenuous. They'll just straight up lie to people.
Ben:And I don't particularly care for that. And so I think the community, the research community has been reckoning with that recently because we've we've essentially done a lot of hand wringing. Like there's a lot of good work that this community has done, but you know, whenever anyone says, okay, well, what do you think about this? We hedge and we back off and we're we're afraid of what other people would think and that's kind of left a vacuum for these bad actors to come in. So I'm glad to see that there are people in the community who recognize this and are stepping up and saying, you know what?
Ben:We need some form of good governance in here. Let's try some stuff.
Shelby:And sort of on that note, and this maybe is a little bit of a controversial question, but, you know, the idea of climate science, I feel like, has become more polarizing over the last several years with the general public. Have you all as a community felt that? Has that ever been a risk towards the efforts of trying to better understand sort of climate change and ways to combat it?
Ben:Yeah. I mean, the geoengineering has not been very popular over the years. It was basically entirely underground until 2006 when Paul Krutzen published an essay saying, you know, we might have to do this. Here's what it would look like. And when a Nobel Prize winner says that, people pay attention.
Ben:But even then, there has not been enough integration between the geoengineering community and the climate science community. Like, I'm considered an expert in geoengineering and I don't think that's healthy. I think I should be an expert in climate dynamics who works on geoengineering. So it indicates to me that the field is still quite small. Although I think that's changing because there's been a lot of emphasis recently on prevent tipping points?
Ben:And a lot of people at meetings are starting to point out, hey, you know, there's this whole community of geoengineering researchers over here who have been asking this exact question for, like, fifteen years.
Shelby:And for listeners, what is a tipping point?
Ben:I don't know. So it's it it is it it's kind of a thorny definition and I'm coming at that from a mathematics standpoint. The concept is that we get a shift in the climate system to a new state and you can't go back. And we do see this sort of thing in ecosystems, for example. Like if you extirpate an apex predator, the ecosystem does change, and it's really hard to get that back.
Ben:We have seen that.
Shelby:And so the idea is that that within the spectrum of climate that there are some of these events that if these things occur, we're past the point of return where we can't sort of get those back.
Ben:Yes. And so like what if the Thwaites Glacier falls into the sea? You can't refreeze that. Right. So what does that mean?
Ben:That's a tipping point.
Shelby:And so you mentioned, you know, that you're considered an expert on geoengineering. And so I guess, one, can you sort of elaborate a little bit on what the difference is between someone who's an expert in geoengineering versus climate dynamics? Because you said you really would like to see see those intersect a little bit more. So so for the listeners, what what is that distinction?
Ben:I don't actually know because to my mind, I work on climate dynamics and I use geoengineering as a tool to ask questions about climate. And so we've wrestled with this. Like, just because I'm working on something, does that mean it's tainted with the geoengineering label? I don't really know.
Shelby:And I know that you founded cofounded GeoMIP.
Ben:Mhmm. Geoengineering model intercomparison project.
Shelby:And so can you yeah. Just tell us what is that? What does that mean? What is it like to found something like that? What's that process?
Ben:Yeah. So it was in 2008, and there was a review paper on geoengineering, which I thought was a little premature because, you know, we still didn't know a whole lot, but they wrote it. And there's a a figure in there that basically says, these two models ran geoengineering experiments and they got really different answers. And I looked at that, and I was like, well, yeah. They ran different experiments.
Ben:They did totally different things. Wouldn't it be nice if we could get models together to figure out, well, what do all the models say if they run experiment?
Shelby:And these are climate models?
Ben:Climate models. Yes. There are climate models all over the world developed by various modeling centers. And so that's what a model intercomparison project does. And that's why we founded GeoMIP.
Ben:And so founding basically, we just sent out a letter to climate modeling centers saying, hey, this is what we're thinking. Do you wanna participate? And surprisingly, we got a lot of people. So the first round, we had 12 models initially and a few more joints. We got up to 15.
Ben:That was a great response at the time. So there are a lot of people in climate science who really wanted to understand this topic just as a a scientific problem.
Shelby:And so with these sort of model intercomparison projects, because there there are a variety of these MIP programs, the idea is that, you know, you ended up having 15 modeling centers that said, sure. We're we wanna be involved in geo MIP and and try to understand geoengineering a little better. Then do you all as the sort of founders send them instructions of this is what we want you to test on your model and then report results back or how does that evolve?
Ben:GeoMIP has always been pretty organic. And so the way I like to run things is by building consensus. And so essentially what we did, we we came up with the the first protocol to sort of like a few of us. And then ones that followed after that, so we eventually built up a community. We built up an email list.
Ben:And so just emailed the list like, hey, it's time for some new GeoMIP experiments. We wanna look at so the first time we looked at solar dimming, which is sort of like stratospheric aerosols, but every model can do it, and stratospheric aerosols. And then the second one, we wanted to look at marine cloud brightening. So we came up with some ideas. We sent them around to the list.
Ben:Anyone who responded, they got to help with the paper.
Shelby:And how many versions of GeoMIP have there been now? So you said this first sort of trial, there were 15 centers that signed on. Has that expanded?
Ben:It's hard to say just because so the model in our comparison project world has gotten so much bigger. It used to be that everything was housed under one umbrella. We were one of the first sort of satellite MIPS where they didn't wanna make it. They we were sort of an official part joining in and then like other people saw that like, hey, we wanna do that too. Eventually, there were I think 23 MIPS.
Ben:Wow. And climate modeling centers were like, guys, we we can't do all this. Basically, all we're gonna be doing is running simulations and not doing any science. And so it's kind of evolved since then. So I I don't really know how to talk about what does participation look like.
Shelby:Yeah. And maybe this is a question that's hard to answer too, but over the course of this sort of GeoMIP tenure, have there been improvements in how the models can can sort of constrain these geoengineering attempts that you've mentioned?
Ben:Yeah. Constantly. There was a paper that I led. It was published a few years ago where we took a look at the original GeoMIP simulations and then a newer version of all of the models that were available doing that same simulation just to see how have the models evolved. And the answer is they evolved quite a bit on clouds, but other than that they were basically giving us the same answer, which was really interesting for us.
Ben:I mean, it's kind of odd to write a paper about how the novel contribution is it's not novel at all. Yeah. But here we are. And what it said is that, you know what? We know this one.
Ben:There's some fundamental physics in here that I think we really understand and that's useful.
Shelby:And I think that the results of these GeoMIP simulations have also been used in IPCC reports. Is that correct?
Ben:That is. So I was a contributing author for the fifth and sixth assessment reports, basically putting GeoMIP results in there. They're going to be heavily featured in the next report, and I know a lot of the authors. I'm actually leading a review paper right now looking at regional effects of geoengineering that I'm hoping if we can get it all done in time, we'll do some heavy lifting for informing that chapter.
Shelby:And a few follow ups. So far, we've been talking about what happens if we go up into the atmosphere, do different things to hopefully reflect more sunlight, and this is a sort of a global scale process.
Ben:Mhmm.
Shelby:Can you tell us what would be some of the regional impacts that you all would be mindful of?
Ben:Yeah. So there there are some choices like if you decide you're gonna put sulfur in the stratosphere. If you put it more in the Northern Hemisphere, it tends to stay in the Northern Hemisphere. If you put it more in the Southern Hemisphere, it tends to stay in the Southern Hemisphere. So different choices about what people might wanna do can affect how different regions are impacted.
Ben:So for example, it's not just what do you want global temperature to be. It could be, do you wanna cool the Northern Hemisphere more than the Southern Hemisphere? And there might be reasons why you would want to do that because the Northern Hemisphere is warming more. Or if you're really worried about the poles, like the poles are melting. Maybe you wanna cool the poles more than the tropics, and that is another choice that could be made.
Ben:So there are a handful of choices, each of which would affect different regions differently.
Shelby:And does it seem realistic like these sorts of geoengineering geoengineering techniques may be adopted at some point? Or or what's the sort of time scale that you all are projecting before these may be implemented potentially?
Ben:I don't know. So I have a couple of thoughts on that. Number one, something that we have learned from the original Geomet paper is that as an expert, what I say matters in terms of how people perceive geoengineering. So there was a really simple experiment a long time ago. Quadruple the carbon dioxide, turn down the sun so the temperature doesn't change.
Ben:This is like a really nerdy climate modeling experiment. You use it to learn about forcings and feedbacks and how to quantify those things. And so we published those results. Then there were papers out there that said, okay, here are these results. This is what geoengineering would look like.
Ben:And I panicked because like I did that. And so we've been very careful over the years to start talking about geoengineering in terms of choices, not saying, you know, this is the result. And we we had to learn that as we went along. So you asked about timelines. And I don't know, but I'm gonna use that as a segue into what is my favorite project right now that I'm working on.
Ben:So at some point, there's gonna be a decision about should we do this. And if you ask around about, you know, what's people's knowledge about geoengineering, it's not that much. Most people haven't heard of this, you know. Climate science and science literacy in general is kind of in trouble, so this sort of niche topic doesn't have a chance. And that's a real problem for an informed decision.
Ben:And so what we're doing is we have developed modules where we can go into high school and middle school classrooms and teach students about geoengineering. You know better they hear it from us than I don't even know where. So that's that's one of the things that we've been working on quite a lot. And the the goal is we're not trying to influence anyone this is a good idea or a bad idea. We're basically just trying to make sure that when this decision comes around, the people sitting in classrooms are gonna be voting on this or maybe even leading this, they know what they're talking about.
Shelby:Yeah. I think that sort of public knowledge and literacy is really critically important for a lot of what we do. And as we talked a little bit about some of these things you all are working on going into these IPCC reports. Can you tell us what that is and how those are used?
Ben:Yeah. So the the IPCC, the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, it's an organization that nations all around the world contribute to. And about every so it used to be every five years and then it was every six and seven. I think the timeline for this one is eight because they keep getting bigger and we keep knowing more. Essentially, they do is they produce these authoritative reports.
Ben:Here is what we know about the climate system and climate change, how it's affecting our world. And so there's there's no new information in there. It is synthesized from peer reviewed literature, but it's you know, it's written by experts in the field who know what they're talking about. And so the idea is basically this is the one stop shop if you wanna know about climate change. And it's really cool that geoengineering gets to participate in that.
Shelby:And, you know, talking about sort of exposing young folks, students to some of these ideas in the classroom and giving them the the tools and the skill set to be able to make some of these decisions on their own. Like you said, you're not trying to convince them one way or another. You're just sort of giving them the knowledge they have the power. Do these IPCC reports go into decision making at any level?
Ben:They go into societal choices. So and especially related to well, they're they're all kind of intermixed, but there are different scenarios of climate change. And the goal is to say what goes into those scenarios and what would happen as a result of those scenarios? So what would happen if we just went all in on fossil fuels? What would happen if we went all in on a green economy and various places in between.
Ben:And so those different scenarios are analyzed.
Shelby:And when you say what would happen, you mean we went a 100% fossil fuel power or we went a 100% green power or somewhere in between. What does the climate look like? How does it respond in these scenarios?
Ben:Yeah. And so that's that's what's called working group one. And then working group two would be and what are the impacts of those? Because, you know, I don't go outside thinking what's global mean temperature today. I go outside thinking, are we gonna get a flood or a drought?
Ben:Am I gonna have enough food? These are things that people really care about. And that's what working group two does.
Shelby:For that idea, are these, like, physical impacts or are some of them societal impacts that are evaluated?
Ben:That's working group three.
Shelby:Okay. How many working groups are there?
Ben:There are three.
Shelby:Okay. So there's the one that sort of here are the projections. So if we had these different scenarios, really good, really bad, and then some number in between, what does Earth's climate look like? Working group two is, then what are the physical impacts of that?
Ben:Yeah. You could call it that. Yeah.
Shelby:And then working group three is based on those changes, what are the societal impacts? So I'm assuming that working group is asking questions like, if this area is gonna warm, what does that mean for sea level for this country that, you know, is close to sea level? Or what does that mean for groups that are living in this region that now is gonna be five degrees hotter? Those sorts of things?
Ben:Yeah. Stuff like that. And also, they they talk to each other. And so, like, I remember a a really cool study from a while ago that is very much working group three material, which is the main conclusion was that if we reduce our greenhouse gas emissions, we might end up with more water scarcity. And the reason is, well, if the way you do it is by growing more biofuels, those require water.
Shelby:Right.
Ben:And so those sorts of, you know, conclusions that make sense but you wouldn't necessarily think of it, that's that sort of stuff goes in there too.
Shelby:Yeah. Yeah. Interesting. And so we started this segment off by you saying, you know, you didn't get a degree in climate science. You had a degree in math and in atmospheric science.
Shelby:So sort of how did you get into this field? So when you were in high school, did you know this was something you wanted to do? And so you went into undergrad and said, this is the path I'm on? Or what did that look like for you? What was that journey?
Ben:What even is a path? Yeah. Most people I talk to, there's no such thing as a path. It's been circuitous, and you stumble into things and you just pick up skills along the way. So my journey into climate science, I wanted a PhD in math.
Ben:Was a
Shelby:You knew this very early on.
Ben:Not really. So I originally wanted to be a doctor. And then somewhere in high school, I was sort of like, well, I don't like biology. It's all memorization. I want to go into why things happen.
Ben:I want to understand things. And so I chose math. I later found out that's not actually true about biology, but, you know, I was in high school.
Shelby:Yeah.
Ben:So I started working toward a PhD in math. And I was a mediocre mathematician, I will say. There's there's an old saying, you don't choose math, it chooses you. Well, math didn't choose me. And so I didn't pass my qualifying exams and had to go do something else.
Ben:And I sort of stumbled into atmospheric science. I I was at Purdue and I basically just wandered over to the Earth and Asymmetric Science department one day and said, hey, what's this all about? I chatted with some people and he was like, let me introduce you to some folks down the hall. And they started talking to me about their research and about various performance of models. So I went from not knowing anything to a half hour later being offered a research assistantship.
Ben:And I I didn't wanna stay at Purdue anymore for personal reasons, but that's what I went into. So I went into atmospheric science. I started at Rutgers in 2007. I heard Alan Robuck, who became my adviser, he gave a talk on geoengineering, was something that he was just sort of into. So I listened to his talk.
Ben:I went home and I was like, who would work on this? This is a terrible idea. Shame on him. But I couldn't get it out of my head. And then the more and more I thought about it, the more I realized not only is this a really interesting problem, but it's a really important problem to do right.
Ben:And then I went and talked to him and I said, I wanna work on this. So that was 2007. That's it. Just, you know, being in the right place at the right time.
Shelby:And, you know, once you sort of decided that when you were at Rutgers, was it sort of a straight track then from from finishing up and graduating and ending up where you are now?
Ben:No. I got a postdoc at Stanford. And then through some personal issues, I I left. And I thought about quitting science for a while. It was without much of a plan.
Ben:Didn't really know what I wanted to do. I just emailed somebody at Pacific Northwest National Lab who I knew. He was like, hey, you know that that postdoc you applied for, we never actually filled it. Do you want it? I was like, yeah.
Ben:So I moved to Eastern Washington to work at Pacific Northwest National Lab. Never really thought about either place before going there and I was there six years. I was a postdoc and then a staff scientist and then this job came up. I'm from Indiana. I grew up an hour and a half away from where I'm sitting and so it's the only job I applied to and was just sort like, let's let's see what happens.
Ben:Why not? And because, you know, it's attractive being like an hour and a half away from home as opposed to thirty four hours from home.
Shelby:Yeah.
Ben:And here I am. So funny how that works.
Shelby:Yeah. And I think, you know, that's something that I've enjoyed being able to see and highlight on the show is that everybody's path has been really different. And I think that's that's probably typical of other fields, but it feels particularly pertinent for Earth and atmospheric sciences.
Ben:Yeah. I mean and this is a fun field because, like, we literally study everything. And so you can come into it with any kind of background, any kind of experience. You'll probably be successful.
Shelby:So on that note, if there are people that that listen to this that say, man, this seems kind of interesting. I'd love to think more about atmospheric science or geoengineering. What advice would you have for folks that may be interested in the field or thinking of pursuing something in the area?
Ben:You're welcome to email me. I'm easy to find. But also, there's no there's no wrong answer. Like, academia is a very different place from when I was, you know, even in grad school. It used to be like, you know, if if you didn't go straight into academia after your PhD, you were a disappointment.
Ben:And that's not true anymore and it never should have been. So I see people who leave or come in from industry or go in and out of industry or go to startups or go work at national labs. What I would say is the most important thing is whether you're curious. If you want to know how the earth works and think you have any ideas to contribute in that, you can probably do this.
Shelby:And just very briefly, you know, you mentioned folks going in or out of industry for sort of your field. What are some of those industry options? Because I think that's something that we also don't really highlight very well for the general public is there's a lot of opportunity outside of the academic institution to apply a lot of these skills or this knowledge base whenever you go through Earth and atmospheric sciences.
Ben:Yeah. And and I'll be honest, I I don't know a lot of them. I was I sort of always knew I was gonna end up in academia. Was just a question of when. I I don't think I'm really well suited for anything else, to be honest.
Ben:But, you know, we we send people all over the place. So AccuWeather, National Weather Service, there are startups every day. Like, I I get LinkedIn requests from people like, what's that company? Oh, cool. I I knew someone from grad school who got a degree in atmospheric chemistry and she works for Nike as a sustainability officer.
Ben:Like because you know Nike makes things and they have effluence that comes out of their smokestacks. What happens to it? And is that a good idea? Can we do better? So there are all sorts of companies that have use for these sorts of skills.
Shelby:The Nike one is really a fun way to apply this sort of stuff that I wouldn't have thought about otherwise. So Ben, we end each episode with our one minute yes please segment where we each get a chance to talk passionately about something that's exciting us at the moment. And so if you want to go first, then I can can time you and hear your yes, please segment. Check out. Okay?
Shelby:Alright. So this will be Ben Kravitz with yes, please. Take it away.
Ben:So we've been watching the Winter Olympics, and I am just obsessed. So the alpine skiing has been amazing. They're just some really cool athletes watching the biathlon and the history of why it exists from World War one. I've been obsessed with curling, and there's a big scandal in curling right now with the Canadian team and it's it's all just very fascinating because it's usually such a professional polite game.
Shelby:30.
Ben:Yeah. It's yeah. I just this is this is what we do all evening these days. It's just so much fun. Skeleton, like who who would have thought of that?
Ben:Like a sled's not enough. You have to strip it down and go head first I I guess meet yours your doom. So how do people even get into these sorts of sports? But, yeah, these are the things that I'm thinking about these days.
Shelby:Great. That was perfect timing too. Share the sentiment with how do people get into some of these events? Like, how do you know that you're good at flying down a tube of ice on a very small sled or in something that's sort of covered? Right.
Shelby:Yeah. How do you get recruited into those things? Where do you train for that? It from what I can gather, it seems like a lot of folks in some of those events are athletes from other sorts of sports that are then recruited in because they're fast runners or they're very strong or whatever the case. But, yeah, I think I love the Olympics.
Shelby:I find the Winter Olympics really interesting because it's it's basically how can I do this athletic feat that also may kill me and and how can I do it quicker or more dangerously and somehow survive it? So it's always really, really impressive.
Ben:Yeah. For sure. And you you do see some, like, these top athletes getting injured sometimes and like, oh my god. This is this is serious.
Shelby:Yeah. Like, I don't know if you I'm sure you did. It sounds like you've been following Olympics, but the whole Lindsey Von scenario where she was gonna ski well, she did ski without an ACL, which that in and of itself is a testament to how strong she like, how how physically strong her leg must be, and then had an injury unrelated to that that seemed to be a pretty serious compound fracture in her leg. And, you know, it wouldn't surprise me if she's skiing again sometime.
Ben:She seems to be doing well, which I'm very glad about. So yeah.
Shelby:Yeah. All right, Ben, if you don't care to Tom me however you want to. Sure.
Ben:Alright. Three, two, one, go.
Shelby:So I'm also gonna talk a little bit about the Olympics, but I'm specifically gonna talk about curling. So curling, I find fascinating. The idea behind it, you know, it's sort of like a a slow paced game in some ways and fast paced in other ways. Whenever I watch it, I find it relaxing, but then you have these moments of tension, particularly this year because of the the cheating scandal with the Canadians. But they also use very very specific for their curling stones.
Shelby:And so a friend of mine actually in a group chat had sent a published article, a research article, about the the of petrography, so the physical characteristics of the granite that they use for these So curling it has to be a specific type of rock so that it doesn't break or fracture whenever they hit each other. So it's really interesting to think about those aspects that go into the sport.
Ben:Cool. 57. Yeah. I hadn't thought about that, but they do have to get their granite from somewhere.
Shelby:Yeah. There are a very small number of areas globally that they will get this granite from and then polish into these stones, they have to be, you know, like, similar. But then if you watch the Olympics coverage, sometimes the announcers will talk about how one set of stones are behaving differently than the others. And so if you're a team using the red or the yellow stones, you sort of have to figure out their behaviors. And I think for this Olympics, some of the stones, this is the first time they've been used in competition.
Shelby:So the curlers didn't know how they would react. And and so, yeah, there's geology in the Olympics too that goes into lots of different events.
Ben:Very cool.
Shelby:Ben, this has been great. Thank you for coming on.
Ben:Yeah. Thank you.
Shelby:And for folks that are listening, hopefully you'll see us next week when we have a new guest. Earth on the Rocks is produced by Cari Metz with artwork provided by Connor Leimgruber, with technical recording managed by Kate Crum and Betsy Leija. Funding for this podcast was provided by the National Science Foundation grant, EAR dash 2422824.