Climate Underground Podcast
Did you know that petroleum is as natural as water? That radioactivity keeps our planet warm? That Earth is still in what’s called an ice-house state? These are stories from Climate Underground, a podcast hosted by scientist, author, journalist, and professor Robert Thorson that examines our current climate crisis from an earthly perspective. Learning more about the Earth and its geological history has helped his students cope with climate confusion, misinformation, and exaggeration. All episodes are read from written scripts that are sourced from the scientific and secondary literature. These scripts are in the process of being reviewed for listenability and accuracy by students and scientific colleagues. Thumbnail image from NASA.
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Episodes
Tuesday Jun 07, 2022
Tuesday Jun 07, 2022
Earth history plays out with four kinds of time: the arrow-time of story narrative, the cycle-time of repeating events, the one-time of unique events that never happen again, and the all-time of universal constants that never change.
Thumbnail image from NASA.
Tuesday Jun 07, 2022
Tuesday Jun 07, 2022
The vast majority of carbon in circulation on Earth is stored underground as limestone and buried organic carbon in the form of coal, oil, and gas that is often tapped as fossil fuels.
Thumbnail image from NASA.
Tuesday Jun 07, 2022
Tuesday Jun 07, 2022
The three great physical forces of gravity, centrifugal force, and geothermal heat operate from Earth's iron center, the ideal focal point for climates powered by the sun.
Thumbnail image from NASA.
Tuesday May 31, 2022
Tuesday May 31, 2022
Earth's atmosphere consists of the volatile gasses that boiled out of the infant Earth, were dense enough to be retained by gravity, and were sheltered from being blown away by our magnetic field.
Thumbnail image from NASA.
Tuesday May 31, 2022
Tuesday May 31, 2022
Earth is one of eight planets in the solar system and has a unique birth story. Attributes from its infancy continue to influence its climates today.
Thumbnail image from NASA.
Tuesday May 31, 2022
Tuesday May 31, 2022
Earth is a unified natural system that's been in continuous operation for 4.6 billion years. It's most important subsystem on land is the called the critical zone, which extends from the top of the vegetation canopy to the base of circulating groundwater. This is the subsystem where rock, water, soil, biota, air, and humans are hopelessly entangled.
Thumbnail image from NASA.
Monday May 30, 2022
Monday May 30, 2022
To deal with climate change clearly, objectively, and dispassionately requires that we go beyond our anthrocentric, biocentric, and spiritual frames of reference to reach a geocentric one.
Thumbnail image from NASA.
Monday May 30, 2022
Monday May 30, 2022
Earth materials --rock, sediment, ice-- contain an archive of climate change dating back 4.4 billion years. This is the context for modern climate change in the Anthropocene Epoch.
Thumbnail image from NASA.
Monday May 30, 2022
Monday May 30, 2022
Land elevation controls regional climate just as surely as does land location. The elevation of Earth's surface topography is fundamentally controlled by crustal buoyancy above the denser, softer, upper mantle.
Thumbnail image from NASA.
Monday May 30, 2022
Monday May 30, 2022
Weather is powered by the sun. Earth's climates are surface expressions of deep-seated, geothermal forces, for example the locations and elevations of land masses and the composition of the atmosphere as regulated by volcanic and tectonic processes.
Thumbnail image from NASA.