July 25, 2016 6:59 pm

No More Ice Ages? Find out when StarTalk All-Stars Premieres with “Understanding Climate Change”

On tomorrow’s premiere of StarTalk All-Stars, Dr. Gavin A. Schmidt tells episode host Bill Nye and co-host Chuck Nice that climate change means it is unlikely that we will ever have another Ice Age here on planet Earth.

And he should know. As a leading climatologist and the Director of the NASA Goddard Institute for Space Studies, few people on our planet know as much about climate change.

Our planet was due for another Ice Age in the next 30-50,000 years, but the amount of carbon we’ve dumped into our atmosphere and our oceans is enough to prevent anything of the kind.

It makes sense, though.

As Gavin tells one of our fans in answer to their question about how to convince climate change deniers to change their minds:

1. The planet is warming.
2. We understand why.
3. We’re not stopping our emissions so it’s going to get worse.

It’s not all doom and gloom, though, as Bill and Gavin answer your Cosmic Queries about climate change. You’ll hear about advances in energy production that could help turn things around, and how molten salt could be important to harnessing the energy of the sun to power our industry.

It’s not all rainbows and unicorns, either. You’ll hear about the impact of El Niño, rising sea levels, nuisance flooding, the loss of glaciers, and how climate change is having a massive impact on agriculture.

You’ll also hear how the fossil fuel industry has been obfuscating the facts and trying to control the conversation – as well as how we use isotopes (Carbon-14, Berylium-10 and Chlorine-36) and other data (ice cores, tree rings, and what’s being unveiled after hundreds of thousands of years by melting glaciers) to prove that climate change is really happening.

As I mentioned before, this is the premiere episode of StarTalk All-Stars. Starting tomorrow, July 26^th, we’ll air new episodes each Tuesday at 7pm EDT, on iTunes Podcasts, Google Play Music, SoundCloud, Stitcher, TuneIn and right here on our website. At least for now, all StarTalk All-Stars episodes will come through the same feeds you’re used to, so there’s no need to subscribe to anything new. Hosts will vary from episode to episode, as will co-hosts. We’ll be trying out some new formats, as well as sticking with content you’ve come to know and love, like Cosmic Queries. You can find out more about StarTalk All-Stars here.

That’s it for now. Keep Looking Up!
–Jeffrey Simons