ASM167 Prairies, Vegetarians, and Climate Deniers

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prairies vegetarians and climate change deniers we're talking about climate actions on this week's episode of ask science [Music] [Applause] he may not mike he'll talk anyway he got problems he won't stop there but he'll talk and talk and talk until he flew in the face science faith welcome to ask science mike the weekly podcast where i answer your questions about science faith and life i'm your host mike mccarth also known as science mike and this week we are unpacking the utter panic from my recent episode on climate change and the most recent ipcc report regarding that so what do you say we'll do a podcast let's get it started [Applause] i was recently talking with my good friend and colleague i think i can say colleague of a podcast co-host my good friend and colleague hillary mcbride and uh we were talking about something that's come up on twitter a few times and that's why there's never been an ask hillary version of ask science mike like a special episode so we're gonna do that we're gonna do and ask hillary mcbride ask science mike team up so if you have questions uh that would be appropriate for a licensed and practicing psychotherapist and phd candidate in the discipline of interpersonal neurobiology or you know hillary has expertise in embodiment and eating disorders and psychology from an intersectional feminist perspective if you have questions that you'd like to send to hillary just send them into this show like normal using ask sciencemike.com but then just let us know that the question is for hillary we will put those together and uh pick the best ones and do a show that show will come out when we have enough questions so if you want to hear from hillary sooner send in a question sooner um and we'll do like we've done before with other folks we did it ask pete and that was lots of fun ask bible pete i think we called it uh so we'll do it ask hillary mcbride episode also i do want you to know that we are just getting started with the cosmic campfire online book club which has been a lot of fun so far we're just now entering into week one you can still be involved in that and that is uh pay what you want so if you don't want to pay anything you can pay zero dollars and that's fine or if you've got a couple of dollars to throw at us we appreciate it uh really active community forming around that and uh some of the discussions are so heady that i don't even know what people are talking about and i have to consult uh research resources in order to decipher the conversation then other things are quite accessible and experiential so i think there's something there for everyone who's kind of wondered about mysticism and science and what we do with faith now you can learn more by going to cosmic campfire dot party that's cosmic campfire dot party and then on the events front which you can see all my events anytime you want by going to ask sciencemic.com and clicking on events you'll find that november 16th and 17th the liturgist gathering is going to be in minneapolis minnesota i'd love to see you there for the liturgist gathering we've been planning uh some new sessions and new topics because we know some of you have been to multiple gatherings so we have new things planned for minneapolis we also will be in nashville number 30 november 30th to december 1st uh that one looks like it's going to be uh definitely a sellout so if you don't have tickets yet don't wait there's only a handful left if there are any national tickets left you can find tickets to both by going to the liturgistgathering.com and then on february the 10th this is kind of an early announcement i'm going to be doing something called theo ed uh which is going to be really cool it's the first presbyterian church of atlanta and i'll be giving a 20-minute talk and so will uh peter ends and so will diana butler bass and so will patrick reyes so um that's a pretty good lineup actually uh so if you're in the atlanta area you wondered if i was ever coming back yes february 10 2019 you can get more information at asksciencemike.com but what do you say let's get on with the show [Music] well a few weeks ago i did a special episode on climate change called how screwed are we and that was uh digesting the information from the most recent report from the intergovernmental panel on climate change or the ipcc and uh boy did a lot of people panic based on that episode which is great panic is actually warranted uh in regards to human activity and climate on planet earth now the problem is if all we do is panic uh it's not going to end well for our species or in fact most species on this planet right now so action is required so this week as a follow-up to that episode i took some of the most common questions questions that i got you know dozens of people asking in different forms and uh picked you know a kind of representative question from each of four big categories and put a show together uh so this episode is all about climate change but the po as opposed to this the status of the science on climate change and what's coming which if you want to hear go back and listen to the how screwed are we episode this episode is all about questions about actions that we can take to mitigate and prepare for climate change now these are simple entry-level questions um and don't worry we're not going to cover everything we could cover on climate change in one episode that's impossible that's why i'm going to be doing regular frequent episodes on climate change from now on on ask science mike so we're just going to start with four questions and as i've mentioned earlier i've already reached out to some climate scientists who've agreed to come on the program that will be happening in the future probably on the other end of my loony absolutely wild travel schedule for this fall so as we move to the winter i'll have time to actually put those episodes together i didn't want you have to wait though so i went ahead and weighed in on questions that i thought i could answer starting with this one hi mike i studied environmental engineering sciences in graduate school and so i understand our global predicament on a deep level i moved to huntsville alabama with my husband when he began work as a rocket engineer at nasa very good brag there i'm i'm genuinely impressed that's me talking by the way not the questioner two of the hand two of the handful of climate change denier professors that regularly get referred to by republican officials are based here at the university of alabama in huntsville campus their influence is strong especially in the city's conservative churches since they're both fundamentalist christians i feel so helpless i know that this issue is partisan and polarized everywhere but it seems especially so here in my city i feel like the missing piece here is that so many climate change deniers in my area don't attribute their denial to a misunderstanding of science but to their christian faith i hear a lot of god is in control or it's all going to burn one day anyway denial is a matter of tribal identity that is bonkers to me as an exangelical who is knowledgeable about scripture i try to point to things like the babylonian exile to say god certainly does allow terrible things to happen but i've not found that helpful so far how can i communicate with people who have had climate change denial imprinted upon them as part of an ethic of white supremacist privilege protection rather than as part of a fact-based scientific argument we are so often speaking past each other am i wasting my time i know the bible well but i'd love advice as to how to set up a conversation within a scriptural framework so that perhaps folks can hear me better when it comes to the science also any tips on how to cope in a deep red state where policy activism usually goes nowhere would be so appreciated thank you melissa well melissa i would start by saying um policy advocacy seems to go nowhere until it suddenly does um some of the most dramatic and powerful actions of the civil rights movement in the united states happened in alabama so uh sometimes the most oppositional soil [Music] i guess the most oppositional cultures create good soil for change and transformation um but on to your larger question of of talking to people about climate change you asked if you're wasting your time and i think you might be wasting your time here's why it may seem like there are two sides to the climate debate and that is absolutely a great narrative to sell if you're a politician trying to motivate your base to get out the vote but the reality is that people's views on climate change even in the united states are quite nuanced there's there's not some binary of people who who are active and and making a difference and that's half the people and then there's half the people who say no it's not true the bible disagrees there's no data to support that kind of a binary even though that's the conversation we have in our culture one 2009 study identified no less than six yeah six major points on a spectrum of views about climate change here's what those six points look like 18 percent of people on one end of the spectrum are alarmed those people believe climate change is a serious problem they've taken action personally and they support national actions government level actions to combat climate change next on this spectrum we have the concerned which is 33 of the population the largest group by far the concerned believe that climate change really is an issue and they support a national response but they haven't taken any action personally as we move in towards the middle we find the cautious at 19 percent the cautious believe climate change is happening but don't see it as a personal threat and so they feel no sense of urgency the disengaged come next at 12 percent they really haven't thought about climate change although they are the most likely to say that they'd easily change their mind on climate change when compared to any other group the doubtful make up 11 percent they're evenly split among those who think global warming really is happening those who think global warming is not happening and those who say they have no idea many within this group believe that if global warming is happening it's caused by natural changes in the environment or in other words it is not caused by human activity and they believe global warming won't harm people for many decades into the future if at all and the doubtful say that america is already doing enough to respond to the threat of climate change finally on the opposite end of the spectrum from the alarmed we have the dismissive at seven percent of the population the dismissive are actively engaged in advocacy about climate change just like the alarm but in the other direction they either don't believe climate change is happening at all or believe that the causes are non-human and unavoidable and therefore oppose personal and national actions on climate change the dismissive are the most likely to say that we can't sacrifice economic progress for the sake of climate change or environmental issues and when you look at these six points along a spectrum the alarmed the concerned the cautious the disengaged the doubtful and the dismissive you see that most of the conversation in our media be that broadcast media be that news media or even social media is happening between the alarmed and the dismissive then you see the doubtful and the concerned cautiously weighed in with less frequency but you would see that most people aren't actually involved in any sort of dialogue or action in either direction on climate change and that presents us with a major opportunity in your question when you reference people who say that god is in control or it's all going to burn one day anyway you are talking to the dismissive or the doubtful the 7 and 11 respectively of the population who doesn't want to take any additional action on climate change and that's not a big opportunity the big opportunity in creating real change real change for the protection and preservation of life on earth and indeed human culture and civilization itself lies at other points on this spectrum if instead of trying to convince the dismissive or even the doubtful we focus our energy on convincing the concerned to take personal action both in lifestyle changes and advocacy then you're almost at half of all people and that's a huge opportunity if you get the cautious to become concerned you gain partners in supporting political action supporting national action if you combine the alarm the cautious and the concern you have a clear majority of people and politicians will take notice and companies will take notice and then finally there's a real opportunity to get the disengage that 12 percent who really just don't think about climate change at all to realize that climate change really is a problem these are productive areas to focus your energy now that's not to say there's no point in discussing things with the doubtful or the dismissive i find myself on stage in rooms with doubtful and dismissive climate change folks all the time and i still give my talk and i still take their questions but there's no doubt that the majority of my energy is focused on driving the concern to action and the cautious and the disengaged into paying attention and accepting that climate change represents one of the most significant threats to human civilization and indeed human life that we know of now if you go to ask sciencemike.com i will link to this research called global warming's six americas that you can prove for yourself and it also has helpful points and understandings for how to talk to each of these six constituencies about climate change [Music] our next question also arrived via email and it reads hey science mike like you i am deeply disturbed by the recent climate change report from the ipcc i am personally looking at ways i can reduce my own carbon footprint and this has led me to do some research on the subject something i have frequently seen reported is the correlation between animal agriculture and climate change my question for you is how big of an impact does animal agriculture really make on climate change and what are the ways that i as a consumer can make better choices is there an environmentally smarter way to eat meat i would love to hear your thoughts on this matter so i know what to do before the [ \_\_ ] hits the fan in 2040. thanks for all the work you do you've been an inspiration to me and many others close to me matthew well matthew your question uh was by far the most common question i've gotten in recent weeks for ask science mike uh like dozens and dozens and dozens and dozens of variations of this message and i get it because the climate impacts or diets in a capitalistic society are very very complicated uh think about it this way less meat is better generally but so many affluent vegetarians or low meat consumers buy a variety of vegetables and plants that have to be shipped in from all over the world and uh we know like right now significant areas of rain forest are being cleared to make room for all the avocado demand right so uh i i don't want to see rain forest get cut down so that we can grow more avocados so this is a really really complicated thing and um the solutions are not simple there's no simple solutions you know it's easy to become paralyzed because oh gosh it seems like you can't do everything right and the fact is you can't do everything right so forget what the best diet is and go for better than what you're doing now so i might make some recommendations here that aren't ideal and i know that and the reason i know that is because i've seen differing opinions from qualified experts in direct contradiction with each other so i already know i'm going to get feedback on this answer and i look forward to it i'll offer corrections and clarifications as appropriate on the show in the future but i want to equip you matthew and all of you listening to make better food decisions in regard to the client climate now the first thing i would say is that not all meats are created equally in terms of climate impact cows are generally the worst so beef is the worst meat you can eat and then other meats get better or worse well none are worse than beef that i'm aware of anyway so let's kind of look at five ways that you could structure your diet and look at what that does in terms of your carbon footprint we're going to look i'm getting this from shrinkthatfootprint.com they've done some some data gathering and they've shared their resources a significant amount of carbon does come from diet um now there's some there's some debates on on exactly how agriculture compares to transportation for example based on some methodological fault flaws in research but i'm going to go with what we can be confident of and what you can be confident of is the carbon footprint for an average american based on five different diets so we're going to look at the tons of co2 emissions for a given diet so uh we're looking at 3.3 tons per year if you're someone like me who's a meat lover you eat a lot of meat a lot of beef a lot of lamb in fact you eat more beef than any other meat that's not me currently but that was certainly me a few years ago and if that's you that's 3.3 tons of co2 emissions per year if you are average an average person it cuts to two and a half if you eat no beef at all but still eat other meats 1.9 tons of carbon emissions co2 emissions vegetarians 1.7 vegan 1.5 so you'll see what a big difference cutting beef alone makes to your carbon emissions the jump from average to no beef is much bigger than the jump from no beef to vegetarian or vegetarian to vegan and there's a significant jump from being a meat lover to an average consumer of meat so one thing you could think about your diet is just moving one click so if you're a meat lover like i used to be moving towards average if you're average like me go to no beef i'm actually kind of almost on the threshold of no beef now i'm eating beef much much much much less than i used to i'm not sure i'll ever make the click till full-on vegetarian but i am constantly trying to reduce the amount of meat that i eat so different foods have really different carbon impacts and uh beef and lamb are just the worst followed by chicken fish and pork followed by dairy okay um that's that's that's kind of how it works um so when we kind of look at how those uh emissions stack up which i'd encourage you to do by going to sciencemike.com and clicking the link to shrink that footprint you'll get a lot of details about diet breakout and you'll see that in general just the less meat you eat the more carbon efficient the calories you eat are now there's i already know some pushback i'm going to get about the role that cows and cow-like animals play in the environment don't worry that's coming in our next question we're going to talk about that but i feel confident saying eating less meat is better for carbon emissions i feel very confident with that claim with the given caveat earlier that kind of globally sourced vegetables are nowhere near as good for carbon footprint as locally produced vegetables and also don't don't miss the importance food waste plays here so if you're kind of in the no b for headed toward vegetarian area but you throw away a lot of food that's not really helpful in fact some experts say that um frozen vegetables uh can be competitive with fresh vegetables when you account for food waste right so with frozen vegetables there tends to be much less food thrown away than when people are cooking with fresh vegetables so you've got to kind of accommodate food waste into your personal decisions here so that means eating less meat and being more careful and proportioning how much you purchase compared to how much you consume which might mean you need to start tracking how much food you throw away if you're throwing away tons of vegetables you might be better off going frozen packaged than fresh which surprised me personally now in terms when we talk about the actual impact of animal agriculture on climate change it's not just about cow farts and belching methane people i've heard push back on that you know they say well methane breaks down that quickly it's not that big a deal what i mean is in terms of producing a calorie of food or 100 calories of food whatever amount of calories you want to talk about things change dramatically for cows versus plants so you need 90 percent that's right 90 percent less cropland to produce an equivalent amount of calories if you eat a plant compared to eating a cow you produce 96 percent less greenhouse gas emissions and you reduce nitrogen-based fertilizer by 94 so there actually are dramatic differences in consuming plant-based versus beef calories now most meats are going to be more efficient than beef but still less efficient than plants in terms of land used for agriculture greenhouse gas emissions and nitrogen fertilizer production and consumption some grazing animals absolutely are essential for ecosystems we'll talk about that in the next question but if you need simple recommendations for how to make a reduced climate impact with your diet i have three one eat less meat than you are eating now especially beef two look at how much vegetables you throw away and make better purchasing decisions and three strongly preference local vegetables to vegetables that have to be shipped or flown into your area before being consumed and those three things will take you a long way on reducing the carbon footprint of what you eat [Music] our next question came in via email and it reads hey mike maybe you can't see the forest because of the trees but you also can't see the prairie because of the forests one of my callings is to work with native plants and ecosystems i'm from an area where prairie grasslands were historically dominant but have now become the most rare and endangered ecosystem they've nearly all been converted to agricultural land and forest prairies are actually the ecosystems with the highest potential for biodiversity in our area i keep hearing you talk about deforestation and it's linked with climate change and i hear michael g he's referring to michael gunger my co-host on the liturgist podcast talk about how pain he is every time he sees a tree cut down i agree with the point that you're trying to make but maybe a bit more nuance is in order here i am trying to remove encroaching trees to preserve rare habitats and save endangered species while you're making it sound like i'm on the wrong team isn't the real issue here vegetation density and biomass there appears to be a false binary we've set up in some of the research between agricultural land and forest in reality there are a few more options than that i've read that because of the vegetation density and exceptionally deep roots in a tall grass prairie it can store more carbon underground than a forest can above tall grass prairie is actually supposed to be comparable in carbon sequestration sequestration potential to a tropical forest why doesn't anyone ever mention that i imagine the same goes for water cycling potential too though i've yet to dig up any good research comparisons evapo transportation is related to vegetation surface area another great strength of the prairies and then to open an additional can of worms if prairies are actually just as effective at moderating climate change as forests are and they would naturally support and even be enhanced by in their effectiveness by moderate stocking rates of grazing animals maybe we also need to have a bit more nuance in our discussions of eating meat animals can process healthy but inedible natural ecosystems into something we can eat that sounds like it could be used to everyone's advantage there may be other cases to be made for veganism and replacing healthy ecosystems with irresponsible models of agriculture is obviously a bad deal but it seems like there are more discussions more options to discuss here thoughts gabe e p.s see you next month at the liturgist gathering well gabe i think i agree with everything that you've said um i've actually read a lot about prairies and grasslands in climate change and their potential to help reverse climate change so i'm totally on board i would say that hitting talking points in a podcast especially when a deforestation isn't the primary point is tough because things move so fast being a podcaster has made me really sympathetic to newscasters and journalists because of my work i have way more time to unpack and offer nuance than the average newscaster but i still find that for the sake of time i have to blaze past important ideas or even edit out things that i've said for the sake of time people probably think the liturgist podcast is long enough as it is and here we are we've already crossed the half hour mark and we're on question three in this podcast uh so time is a limited resource and i apologize for editing uh out my agreement with you so i want to be clear for you and for everyone listening whenever i talk about deforestation i'm talking about cutting down natural forests that are appropriate to local ecosystems in order to create crop lands or pasture for agriculture i'm talking about tropical rainforests i'm talking about uh forests in the pacific northwest where they're naturally occurring uh the those those beautiful and brilliant forests i am not talking about cutting down planted trees like planted by timber companies for example in areas that should naturally be grasslands or prairie grasslands in fact i actually heard an npr story once about a landowner who cut down all of his cypress trees that had been previously planted by another owner and a area that experienced frequent drought because cypress trees were so thirsty they were drinking all the water out of the soil when it cut them all down the native grass is restored and the once dry riverbed started to flow again with a huge boost to local flora and fauna so i'm not talking about putting trees everywhere putting trees places they don't belong places that trees aren't native i'm talking about deforestation removing natural forests and in fact i know that our grasslands have been hit hard by the removal of large herbivores at least in the u.s because of what we see with buffalo as buffalo numbers were reduced and in fact collapsed our prairies started to turn into deserts desertification took in and desertification is terrible for climate change because deserts have very little uh carbon sequestrant sequestration potential uh and they also reflect sunlight back out so readily they heat things up they provide like a one-two punch in creating climate change doesn't mean deserts are bad we have natural deserts all over the earth but the fact that more and more land is becoming desert is a huge problem for climate change so the solution is we need more plants especially native plants now whether that's grass or shrubs or trees depends on the local ecosystem and the local climate as the climate changes some ecosystems are going to migrate this is not a simple thing of simply planting what used to be there 100 years ago and then even when we we restore local plants they don't necessarily thrive without local animals to support them including apex predators you know when we restore native plants and native animals it shapes the land in positive ways when we reintroduce wolves into yellowstone we saw the wolves and also a resurgence of mountain lions and a resurgence of grizzly bears trimmed down elk herds and then that brought back uh some some critical trees like willow trees to the environment which then grew the number of songbirds in the area and we saw rivers start to go into old flow patterns because some beaver populations rebounded now of course that recovery is not complete it may take more than lifetimes to recover because it's far easier to protect existing ecosystems than it is to restore them which is why i talk about deforestation so much but i'll make sure in the future to also talk about the loss of natural grasslands and i still support cutting a lot of meat from our diets because for the protection of natural forest and in fact the protection of natural grasslands we just eat too much meat our natural ecosystems anywhere in the world don't need one and a half billion cows our natural ecosystems don't need 1 billion sheep or 19 billion chickens or 2 billion pigs human meat based agriculture has completely reshaped the biomass of the world the speciation of our wild lands when we look at mammals on earth we find something remarkable 60 percent of all mammals on earth today are livestock used in human agriculture 36 of all mammals on earth today are humans and four percent of all mammals in the world are wild mammals so what i'm talking about do when i talk about cutting the amount of meat we consume is lowering the number of animals that are livestock and increasing the number of mammals that are wild let's bring back buffalo and maybe we can eat some of them but let's let natural predators eat those buffalo and in fact eat more of those buffalo than the humans do when we look at birds seventy percent of birds in the world are chickens and other poultry thirty percent are wild so our agriculture systems are taking over the very forests and prairies that you and i both care about and a diet-based solution will help that one of the most powerful things i can do to change the balance between livestock and wild animals on earth today is to consume less meat i immediately reduce the amount of demand and therefore increase the natural resources available to wild animals so when you hear me talk about deforestation gabe i hope you hear and understand uh that i i really do have a nuanced perspective um and i appreciate the opportunity you've given me here and be able to communicate it with everyone who listens to ask science mike um and i'm not saying everyone needs to be completely vegan but i am saying and stand by the notion that almost everyone needs to eat less meat than they eat now and almost everyone needs to eat less beef especially than they eat right now because our forests and our prairies depend on large wild herbivores and the ecosystems that they play a part of [Music] okay our last question is one i got dozens of time as well hi mike i came across ask science mike and subsequently the liturgist podcast about a year ago and i can't overstate how grateful i am for your voice in the world listening to that first ask science mike podcast brought me such a sense of relief like running into a fellow traveler who speaks my language after years of not being able to communicate with the world around me i know you've been through a lot of pain and upheaval to create the platform you have today so i'm grateful for your willingness to do so those of us out here in deconstruction bill thank you here's my question i recently saw this story about a carbon neutral fuel being made from carbon sucked from the air and then there's a link provided to national geographic it almost sounds too good to be true but i don't know the science behind it or how much energy it takes to turn the co2 into fuel is this a possible future of clean energy i also look forward to hearing from experts on how to talk to climate change deniers though to be honest i don't see that we would ever change the perspectives of my staunchly republican relatives supreme leader trump says he has a good instinct for science and knows that climate science is wrong and therefore there's no such thing as global warming anyway god wouldn't allow us to destroy the planet so we're all good i'm still shocked daily to find myself in a social reality where facts don't count thank you for all you do and i'm looking forward to the upcoming episodes i would just go ahead and note that recently president trump did accept that climate change is happening but continues to minimize and ignore the role human activity plays in that climate change and reinforce the necessity of protecting the economy from environmental lobbyists so you win one you lose a dozen in terms of your carbon fuel your gas made from atmospheric co2 i've read a lot of articles on that it is a completely valid process it works basically you're making liquid fuel like diesel or gasoline by capturing carbon dioxide out of the atmosphere and then combining it with hydrogen from water gasoline and and all forms of petroleum are hydrocarbons so the main ingredients are hydrogen and carbon so they're getting those elements co2 from the atmosphere and pulling the hydrogen from the water uh boy there's a lot here that process takes energy and one part of the process is very expensive in terms of energy and that's performing electrolysis on water to separate hydrogen from oxygen so in the limited trials they've done they've gotten that energy from renewable sources but if you scale that up to the capacity to replace the carbon fuel that we pull out of the ground all the time i don't know that you can get enough electricity from renewables to keep that process carbon free and renewable and if you you know burn coal or something to get the electricity for the electrolysis to get the hydrogen to make the fuel well hell why don't you just keep pumping oil out of the ground now assuming they have some solution to that problem we also run into the problem that this fuel is not cost competitive with existing oil it's just not unless we put a tax on carbon emissions they say is about twenty dollars per ton would do um and they've you know the pro it's going through peer review so that may or may not be plausible i don't know but an important thing to say is this would not be clean energy it would be carbon neutral potentially given the caveat of where the electricity for electrolysis comes from um but it wouldn't be clean he'd be pulling carbon out of the air putting it into gas and then putting it back into the atmosphere so um this could help us you know get to carbon neutral it could help us continue to use some existing fossil fuel infrastructure as we transition and certainly rapidly recycling carbon in the atmosphere i think is better than pulling it out of the ground and burning it and not sequestering it or recapturing it in any way so this could be one piece of a transitional plan a sustainable energy infrastructure with a couple of big question marks around cost and where the electricity comes from uh we we already have a surging demand for electricity worldwide and if we increase that further uh trying to convert atmospheric carbon into gasoline uh i i just have a lot of questions here and a lot of questions that don't have answers yet so we need to watch this closely we need to look at this cautiously it's easy to get excited with these kind of blue sky technological developments they don't always pan out a lot of things work in the lab and then don't scale up to industrial levels that happens all the time so if this works and it really is carbon neutral you know could be great especially if the developing world but this is not like an ultimate solution to the problems of carbon emissions and energy on earth this is at best a temporary band-aid while we engineer sustainable solutions to our global energy needs [Music] if there's anything you get from this week's episode it's i want you to understand it's not hopeless there are actions we can take to combat climate change there are actions you can take today to combat climate change so if my last episode on climate change left you feeling hopeless i hope this episode starts to help you feel as i do that there is hope that we can work together and make a difference ask science mike is brought to you by some very generous people who support the program financially as little as a dollar a month or if you're feeling very generous five dollars a month makes this program possible if you'd like to know how you can make ask science mike possible over the long term go to ask sciencemike.com and then click on the patreon icon and that'll show you how you can join the community of the people who also get to pick the questions for this show i'd like to thank greg nordine for producing a science mic i'd like to thank andrew gallucki for his work in pre-production and as always i'd like to thank jeff waterford for writing the ask science mike theme song thank you everyone for listening and i can't wait to talk to you next week