Welcome to everybody that is on this call. We are delighted to have our Purdue Engineering Distinguished Lecture Series today. I'm Donna Riley. I'm the head of the School of Engineering Education here at Purdue, and we're delighted to be a partner with the college in hosting President Lisa Crumpton Young from Texas Southern, as well as Attorney Glenn Austin, who will be joining her for the lecture today. So I am going to first introduce Executive Associate Dean Arvin Rahman, who is the Robert V. Adams Professor in the School of Mechanical Engineering and Materials Engineering by courtesy here in the College of Engineering at Purdue. And so without further ado, I will turn it over to Arvin to do the introductions of our speakers. Thank you so much, Donna. And again, thanks also to the School of Engineering Education for helping nominate and host this event. It's really been a lot of fun. It gives me a real honor and pleasure today to introduce our distinguished lecturer, Dr. Lisa Crumpton Young. She is the president of Texas Southern University. She received her BS, MS, and PhD in Industrial Engineering from Texas A&M, where she was the first African-American female to receive a PhD in engineering. Prior to that, Dr. Crumpton Young held the positions of Provost and Senior Vice President for Academic Affairs at Morgan State University. Some of you may know that we have now an institutional partnership with Morgan State. And that pretty much began at the time that Dr. Crumpton Young was a Provost at Morgan State. So we really thank her for her support in getting us started on that as well. In fact, when we invited her, she was there. And she agreed to join us, even though it's her very first year as president of Texas Southern. So thank you very much. Prior to Morgan State, she was Vice President for Research and Institutional Advancement at Tennessee State University. She's been a program director at NSF, Associate Provost at Texas A&M University, Associate Dean of Engineering at Mississippi State University, Professor and Department Head of the Department of Industrial Engineering and Management Systems at the University of Central Florida and Department Chairman at UCF as well. Dr. Crumpton Young is an experienced, innovative and accomplished leader with a firm understanding of higher education who has strategically positioned the institutions by implementing transformative initiatives and working collectively to achieve unprecedented success at an accelerated pace, which as you'll see is listed as the subtitle here on the opening slide. Dr. Crumpton Young is an active researcher in modeling human systems, under dynamic conditions and is the recipient of the US Presidential Award for Excellence in Science, Mathematics and Engineering Mentoring, with more than 150 scholarly publications to date. Accompanying her today in this lecture is going to be a Tony Glenn Austin Jr. who serves as the Executive Director of Government and Community Relations for Texas Southern University as an executive at the institution, Austin coordinates and implements Texas Southern's local, state and national legislative advocacy of efforts. Additionally, Austin works to cultivate and maintain relationships and strategic partnerships with local and national nonprofits, chambers of commerce, community organizations and other public and private stakeholders. Prior to joining Texas Southern, Austin served as a staff member during multiple Texas legislative sessions and managed several successful political campaigns. Austin also spent time as a property tax and school finance attorney for government entities and school districts. Austin enjoys giving back to his community by volunteering with several organizations including the State Bar of Texas's Legislative Committee, Houston Young Lawyers Association, Houston Lawyers Association, International Cannabis Bar Association and Houston Black Leadership Institute. Austin intended Texas Southern's Thurgood Marshall School of Law where he earned his Juris Doctor degree as well as a certification in government law. Austin also earned mediation certifications from the University of Houston Law Center and a psychology degree from the University of Central Arkansas. Austin attends Wheeler Avenue Baptist Church and enjoys training in jujitsu, fishing and mentoring. Now, welcome, attorney Glenn Austin. Without further ado, over to you, President Crumpter Young. Thank you so much. Good afternoon to everyone. I always like to begin by thanking the individuals that have actually worked to help today be a success. So I certainly wanna thank Dr. Rahman for the introduction, especially for reading the entire bio of attorney Austin. I wanna thank him for that. For sure. He did an outstanding job as mechanical engineer. And I also wanna thank Dr. Donna Riley for inviting us to be here and for taking the time to text me and make sure that I had all of the information to make today a success. You know, when they asked me to come, they didn't realize that it was an easy request because I'm a person who absolutely loves coffee and conversation. I remember when I used to teach my classes, many of my engineering students, many of the engineering faculty would always say, yes, we wanna have coffee and conversation as well. And so it became an opportunity for us to have, to share a wealth of information and a venue for us to exchange ideas. And so that's why I'm here today. I'm excited about having coffee and conversation with you all as we think about a very important topic and that societal change. Now, of course, Arvin mentioned that my research background is in the area of modeling human systems under dynamic conditions. And I will tell you as we have conversations about how higher education has been a catalyst for change, a catalyst for societal change, it in many of these examples is the perfect example of how humans are being modeled under dynamic conditions. Because if we think about what's happening in our society, we know that there's been a human response that we all need to understand and we need to be intentional with. And so that's what our conversation is about today. So it is connected to my area of research. Just a very broad discussion of that research. I will tell you it starts with understanding that at Texas Southern University and in many other universities of higher education, the focus is on transforming lives. It is beyond just discussing how we help students earn degrees. We do more than that at our institutions. And we really are individuals that stimulate change through having very thought provoking conversations and also through implementing very strategic initiatives. And so as you'll see on the slide that's in front of you, we really are in an era of transformation in higher education. So while we're in this era of transformation, you've read all of the articles in the Chronicle of Higher Education, you've read articles and inside higher ed, you've read a number of things that have said to us is time to disrupt higher ed. Well, I think we've answered that call. The pandemic assisted us in answering that call. So now we're at a point where we're really in an era of transformation. So part of this conversation is really to serve as food for thought that will say to us, assess to us in higher ed, this is our time. And that we really need to carpe diem. We need to seize the day. There's so many issues being discussed. There's so many initiatives being planned. It's time for us to be major contributors to how we shape societal change. On this next slide, before he starts, I think he's gonna move to the next one. Before we start this video, I have this here for you because I would like to use this video as food for thought. Whenever I used to teach my classes, I would always bring in something that didn't appear to be absolutely specifically relevant to the topic. And so my students and my colleagues will say, what does this have to do with today's discussion? But I want you to look at it because it serves as an inspiration to all of us about the issues that we need to discuss in today's conversation. So it's a one minute video. Indulge me by looking at it for one minute and then we will continue our discussion. So here we go, hot spot, a revolution. You are experiencing history's highest rate of change, disruption, ambition, and opportunity. There's never been a better time for you to innovate. And you're capable of more than you think. You're capable today of anything you could dream. But most people don't realize this is a new era. This is not the time to preserve the status quo. It's the time for action, for ambition, for taking risks.  So be bold, pursue your dreams, design your own future. Now is the time to push your limits, to get out of your comfort zone, to make change happen even if it seems hard. Because I need you to take the leap. I need you to break your own rules. I need you to push harder, attack sooner, to never give up. If you want to get better and faster, be curious, be insatiable, be willing to destroy. And remember, you don't need a big idea, you need a little idea that you can make big. Be revolutionary. And so as we look at the next slide, it's just a reminder that societal change requires us to be revolutionary. It requires us to be innovative, to be transformative, to be disruptive. It's going to require us to have conversations that we have not always had. It's gonna require us to encourage difficult dialogue. It's gonna require us to think about new solutions. It's gonna require us to design new research methodologies, to gather new data and to begin to look at things with a new lens, a different lens. And through that effort, then we can begin to think about how we can influence societal change. So I chose to use this image of superheroes because I've always talked to my engineering students, my engineering colleagues, about how we, because we're engineers, because we're so well-trained, because we have so many skill sets that we learn. It's important for us to understand that we can use those, certainly within the day-to-day work we do in the academy, but as members of the academy, we are armed to make significant change. We actually have the opportunity in the academy to truly become the superheroes that can serve as the catalyst for societal change. There have been so many examples of that, and we're going to cover a number of the examples of when higher education has really been that catalyst for change. And so what I then want us to do is have a conversation about what we can continue, what we should continue to do. So it's absolutely critical that we have this conversation. And I know at this point, I want to make sure that Attorney Austin also has time to share his thoughts. But as we think about why this conversation is critical, I sort of said a few of those with move to the next slide. We know that within higher education, we have a group of enlightened decision makers, right? And the word enlightened for us has been defined as decision makers who are informed by data. They're not necessarily data-driven decisions, but they're data-informed decisions. One of the things we say on campus is that we want decision makers, but we want them to be enlightened. We want them to be able to think critically. We want them to be able to listen to conversations, understand the implications, understand the important items being discussed, but then think critically about how do we then respond to that? Or is that the correct assumption being made? Do we have the right hypothesis that will help to shape what we need to do? We also know, and I'm gonna invite E. Austin to come in here, we also know that critical thinking is important. He has done an excellent job of explaining why we, and thinking some thoughts on abandoning the ego-centric decision-making. So please, E. Austin? Yes, so it's very important right now, especially because there is so much information out there right now. We are bombarded by all kinds of information every single hour of every single day. And some of that information is correct, some of it's incorrect. And it's very important for us as the Higher Education Institution to make sure that we are late in the community know what's real and what's not real. So it's very critical for us to keep that at top of mind. So now that we know we're armed with the information, we're armed with the strategies that are necessary to ensure societal change, we also know that we need to be keepers and guardians of, as E.D. Austin said, factual information. We need to, as a body, we need to prevent the proliferation of improper information. I think sometimes things are being discussed and we may be in those rooms and we know that's incorrect. So we wanna make sure that we assume our role as members of the Academy in making sure we don't continue to proliferate that improper information. Next slide, please. We also know that it's critical to have the conversation, it's critical for higher education to ensure that democracy continues to thrive. And but we know there's some really vanishes to having these kind of conversations. And just in just a moment, we're gonna show you some examples of how humans in dynamic systems and in dynamic conditions and institutions of higher education have actually served as catalysts, have actually served as catalysts for societal change. We'll show you some examples. Because we know that the advantage of having this kind of conversation in your classrooms, on your campus and encouraging people to be revolutionary, encouraging them to act as superheroes, we know that that helps to influence policy decisions. I mentioned that I had breakfast this morning with Congresswoman Garcia. We need to be able to have those conversations that influence policy because those policies impact our society. We also, we're gonna show some excellent examples of how engineers have been critical to societal change by designing solutions to problems that impact us and by providing information and data. We know it's also important because in higher education, we can become a force for amplifying certain voices. I remember when I was in Florida and we were having a conversation about the Brianna Taylor issue, an incident. It was perfect. I was walking through this very, very affluent shopping area. I had just finished having lunch. I overheard a conversation with a young lady who said she was in college. She said, I heard her say that she was a junior. She was actually an engineering major. She was home and she was in that shopping plaza with her parents and there was someone there kind of protesting and discussing what was happening real time with the Brianna Taylor incident. And the father said, I cannot believe this person is on this corner making so much noise and interrupting the day. And it was a pleasant, beautiful Sunday. And I love the way this junior was courageous enough to look at her father and say, but dad, he's discussing what just happened with Brianna Taylor and then she went to explain what happened. The father looked at her and said, oh my God, I didn't know that, that should never happen. And then the young child who was looked like he was a nephew or the grandchild said, oh my God, I would never do anything like that. And just that one conversation by that courageous junior who was an engineering major began to change the thoughts and the opinions of certain cases and certain issues in our society. So that's a very small example of how as members of the academy, as students, as faculty, we can be the catalyst for societal change. We also know that we need new systems, we need new methodologies to understand issues in our society associated with health disparities or urban disparities, rural disparities. And we know as engineers, we can be the driving force behind making sure that those systems and methodologies are developed as well. So as you'll see on the next slide, what we have to do and what we're called to do, we're called to think about, is to make sure that as we think about societal change, we think about how we can be part of that change. One of the things I just wanna remind you of is that good industrial engineer, I wanna remind you that those changes that you think of, they need to be strategic and they need to be intentional. We know that it's important to focus on strategy because we wanna do those things that are effective and efficient, but we know we need to focus on intentionality because we need to do those things that are transformative and that have a significant impact. So I am hoping that right now, the first part of our discussion that we've given you some food for thought so that you can take a moment and think about how you can be that catalyst for societal change. What, I won't hope you'll have a minute to think about what revolutionary idea would you like to input? Would you like to bring to fruition? So at this point, Edie Austin, as food for thought, is going to share some examples of how individuals within academia, within higher ed, how they have been strategic and intentional to ensure that societal change occurs. Next slide, please. Thank you, Madam President. And yes, we have some examples of how higher education has changed society in a positive way. And the first one I wanna go over is very recent with the COVID vaccine. And one of the things I really enjoy about higher education is the intersection between higher education, government and industry. And we saw that a beautiful example with the development of the COVID vaccine. University of Pennsylvania kind of spearheaded the development of the technology behind that vaccine but they partnered with obviously the federal government as well as the biotech industry to roll that out in record time to make sure that globally we beat this pandemic and made progress. And then on the next slide, on the next slide, you'll see how critical race theory is a big topic, especially here in Texas but also nationwide. Critical race theory started at Harvard Law School and as you can see, now it's being used nationwide for different political purposes, social purposes, but definitely to change society depending on how it's interpreted. So, and even here in Texas in our home state, you can see our Lieutenant Governor, Dan Patrick, has recently developed an institute at the University of Texas called the Liberty Institute. And the goal of that is to push a certain understanding of this theory. And again, it's for a promotion of a certain societal change. And what's been interesting about that discussion is faculty members have now said, well, wait, we didn't realize that this institute was formed for this purpose. And so now faculty members are starting to speak up and to discuss the importance of making sure that they are not used in any way other than the point of view that they are interested in making sure the research reflects positively. So once again, it is higher ed, once again, it's faculty members who are once again trying to make sure that societal change occurs. That's exactly right. And on the next slide, we'll see another example of higher education's role specifically in foreign policy. And I recently read a very good book called How to Hide an Empire. And in that book, it talks about post-World War II, we had several occupied territories. And in order to begin the peacemaking part of the post-war progress, what they did, what the military did was make sure that they taught English to these occupied territories. And the idea was the better communication we have, the less conflict we'll have. So you can see that that idea is still happening now with foreign international university training instructors to teach English throughout the world. So again, the better communication we have, hopefully the less conflict we have. And then the next example we have is an organization called Spark. And again, post-World War II, one thing that we did was we would provide scholarships to individuals in war-torn countries to attend university, especially in America and especially in Europe.  These kids would go to school in these other countries and they would stay there. They would build families, they would, their network was there so they just stayed there and created a brain drain. Well, to counteract that, instead of offering scholarships to leave, Spark is offering scholarships and opportunities to stay in your home country. You can see some of the countries that they work with. So what they do is they provide educational opportunities to students to stay in their home country, study at their home universities and that helps them build up that country even faster. And also it boosts the productivity of those universities. And then below you see Cuba and Russia are entering diplomatic talks right now. And one thing that they're using as a bridge towards diplomacy is higher education. It's one of those bridges where they can find common ground and say we all agree that higher education is something that's important to both of us. So always, always good when higher education can help opposite sides come together. I think there's next slide. Next slide, please. All right, and then here is an example from our own university, Texas Southern University. During the civil rights era, we had 13 students go and have a sit-in on a street called Almeda which is just a couple of miles away from campus and they were going to integrate this lunch counter and they were inspired by another university across the country in Greensboro, North Carolina and they were successful. And you can see this monument here which is still on campus here today to commemorate the courage and the effort that these students took to undergo this activity. And they were, this was not popular. They took a lot of risk and they in fact had legal consequences. Legal consequences, a lot of them were put in jail. They had just negative outcomes because of this but they knew that this is something that they needed to do and it's just interesting throughout the course of history students have shown a lot of fearlessness in driving societal change because they know and they understand that it's gonna be for the greater good and for future generations. And I'll add to that as you all know I'm the new president of Texas Southern and I'm learning about the history in many of these stories. Yesterday when we were honoring the lifetime and legacy of one of our professors who truly has been an example of African American history and black excellence, I learned the story of how we have what's called the Tiger Walk. It's a famous area that we're very well known on our campus. Well, I learned that the Tiger Walk actually came into existence. It used to be a freeway and well, individuals treated it like a freeway and literally they would just speed through campus and one of our students was injured in an accident and the other students came and decided it's time for a change that this should no longer be a street through our campus as individuals are trying to cross the street to get to class. And so what they did, they were not able to be successful in convincing the city to do so. And it's my understanding that what they did when they couldn't prevail, they decided that they were just going to take shifts and they were going to literally lie down in the street so that the cars could not pass by. And after doing that, several times, they successfully convinced the city to close the street and now it's called the Tiger Walk. People walk through our campus from the community. It's a wonderful walking trail, if you will, as well as a nice avenue through our campus. But just one more example of how students and how individuals in the academy came together to influence societal change. All right, and now I'd like to talk a little bit a little bit about how faculty has been change agents. You can see here, this is a scholarly article that was written, it's from the UK, and it talks about how societal change really starts in the classroom. And when teachers teach the students, the students take those ideas, proliferate those ideas throughout the community and then society changes as a whole. So teachers really are the catalyst in higher education, it really is the catalyst for societal change. I had to include Purdue here. We also have a noted Purdue professor who explained that idea to recent graduates how they are the next thought leaders, they are the next catalyst for change within their communities and it's incumbent upon them to remember that and keep that at top of mind as they go forward and advancing their careers. And then we will see how students have led societal impact as well on the next slide. And you can see there an article from the Chronicle of Higher Education that talks, it's from 2008, note the date please. This is when, yes, this is when this is during President Obama's rise to power and students played a key role in his rise to power and the Chronicle noted that. So certainly we had shown a number of examples. There are a plethora of other examples but since Dr. Rahman only gave us a few minutes, we didn't want to share too many, that was a joke. I think he's still there. We didn't want to share all of the examples but there's so many examples of how individuals individuals in the academy have been successful change agents and they truly have encouraged us to make some significant changes but they've also encouraged us to do it at an accelerated pace in responding to some of the needs in society. Now of course, there are probably other examples where individuals have been interested in doing this but they haven't decided to be that type of change agent and there are many challenges to being change agents. I know that and I hope we'll have a chance to talk about them. I just want to share a few that I have found in my research in having conversations with some of these humans that I've modeled under dynamic conditions. Many of them have talked about if you're thinking about being a change agent, if you're thinking about helping society, being transformative, that one of the things you have to do is you have to confront the challenge of not having the courage. And I had someone who explained this to me very similar to a scene out of the whizz, right? When the lion was looking for some courage. I love the way it was explained. And so I do think it's important we do have to find the courage. And sometimes it means just searching for it, talking to others, but we have to find that courage because without finding the courage then the impetus for change just doesn't happen. We also, similar to those students, we have to be persistent and we have to persevere. The first time we try to impact change it probably won't happen. I think we know as engineers that almost the first time you design a solution that's not always the first one you wanna go with you need to have multiple solutions when you're in your solution space. So we know then the importance is to be persistent and to persevere. I know Edie Austin is the one who gave insight to the third one on this chart in terms of challenges. So I wanna give him a chance to share his thoughts on that. Yes, you've got to overcome the naysayers. There will be naysayers anytime, anytime you're doing something monumental or new or innovative there will be naysayers. So you just have to expect that. You've got to overcome that.  You've got to know what you're there for and get it done and just understand that's gonna be there and get past it. Absolutely and you know those naysayers and one of the things I always say I love this song I don't know how many of you get inspiration from music the way I do but Whitney Houston was outstanding songstress and one of her songs says that whenever someone tells me no I'll show them that I can and I think it's important to have that type of resolve when you're thinking about societal change because people need the transformation. They are waiting for individuals to do those things that transform their lives. So we do have to overcome those naysayers. I also think it's critical that we use our voice as individuals in the academy. We are the intellectual capital. We are the scholars. We have the information. We know the knowledge. We are prepared and we have to use our voice when it's being asked of you and sometimes you have to do something different. Like I'm giving a totally different lecture about modeling humans under dynamic systems and dynamic conditions. You sometimes you have to use your voice in the way that you believe as all of the researchers have shown about leadership that one quality of importance is authenticity. So use your voice in the way that you think will help to promote societal change. And then of course these next two on the slide I wanna let Eddie Austin speak too because he shares those points better than anyone else. Thank you. I'll kind of take these two together, especially the last one, embrace the grind. So anytime you're doing something that's transformative and innovative, disruptive, it's going to be difficult and it's gonna be hard. I'm a big fan of mixed martial arts and boxing and just combat sports in general. And there's a mantra that's on that scene and that mantra is embrace the grind. And it's a mentality of enjoying the process.  When you're training for a fight, you are taking bumps and bruises, you were getting headaches, long hours. But when you feel that pain, that's a sign that you're on the right track. If you can't get to, when you hit those speed bumps, when you hit those hurdles, that means you're not stationary. So embracing the grind, being comfortable with that discomfort, it's gonna be critical to confronting those challenges. And this morning when I was with Congresswoman Garcia, the co-host, her name is Sophia Androlli. She is, and they're just amazingly accomplished women. One of the things that they discussed this morning as it relates to being a catalyst for societal change, they said that you have to think about grit, grind, gravitas, and being grateful and gratitude. So it's critical that as we embrace the grind, that we understand that resilience and grit is also necessary, but then also making sure that we are grateful for the small wins, for those small things that occur, that really do propel you to work on those larger things, those, the more grand challenges. So we do have to stay in a position where we continue to keep ourselves encouraged as we're working on these confronting challenges. And then I think our next slide, I'm so impressed with us in terms of our time. Of course, I'm an industrial engineer, so I know you all expected that. But we are, as we get to this next slide, this is actually our last slide. I am a person who believes that when you have a thought-provoking conversation, as I said to you all earlier, that we also need to end that conversation with a call to action. And so I'm looking forward to the Q&A session and I have a chance to actually hear what you all are thinking about doing as your call to action. But there are a couple of points that we wanna encourage you to think about. The call to action is your call to action. That's why you see nothing there on that slide other than a group of people being mobilized and pointed in a direction that we believe will be a direction of collectivism that achieves something significant.  So we just wanna remind you that in higher education, we have to lead the change that we believe should happen. We have to lead the change that we believe should happen, even if it's different from what someone else believes. We have to lead that change. I'll tell you a story of when I was a, an intern at Northern Telecom, they gave me the project to work on a mobile cellular switch. And many of the individuals in the engineering team at that time said, Lecia, don't spend much time on that. That project's never going to amount to anything. No one is ever going to use a cell phone. Well, I think we now know that is not true. So thank goodness I didn't listen to them and I worked on the project to lead the change that I believed would come to pass. So just remember, we do need people to lead change. I think it's also important to remember that we have to conduct the research. We have to deliver the data sometimes that tells the story that will serve as the impetus for change. We have to collect that data. We have to be compelling. We have to make the argument. I also think we have to convene the conversation. Sometimes we have to just say, let's have that critical conversation. Let's sit everyone down. Even if we have opposing views or opposing, appear to have opposing thoughts. I think that's critical. And then I know that there are a few things that Edie Austin would like to add to this last slide as well. Sure thing. A couple of things. When I think about a call to action, sometimes it's hard to know how do I get started? Where do I fit in? And one of my mentors said to me, the best thing you can do is awesome where you're planted. And wherever you are, you have the opportunity to make impact. And if you think about a higher education institution, there's so many different divisions and departments. We've got athletics, academics, faculty, staff, students and all those parts play a role in the overall goal which I think is promoting education. So remember to blossom while you're planted. Do what you can from where you are and that's your contribution. And then also, it's up to us. If not us, then who? We're the ones that have the degrees. We're the ones with the connections. We're the ones with the skills and the knowledge to make things happen and drive change. So it's up to us. We can't leave it up to the next person because they're blossoming where they're planted. We're equipped to do this. So make sure that you don't leave that responsibility to someone else. If you can do it, you should do it. And just make sure you're doing your part to drive society's changes in a positive way. Absolutely. So I will tell you, we've had an opportunity to think about this topic, to share examples, to gather information, hopefully to encourage you to become the change agents that we know higher education has been for many years. And we're encouraging you to continue to be those change agents so that we can see the change that society needs for many, many, many decades to come. So we would love to stop here and answer any questions that you have. Right, thank you. So if we can get people to do their reactions, I'll do mine, except I don't have the right reaction. Sorry, I was gonna do a little reaction on Zoom, but I lost my applause reaction. So I'm applauding. So thank you so much. And I hope that folks are gathering ideas for questions. You can type them in the chat or you can potentially raise your hand. I think I'll be able to see raised hands on here if you have such a capability on your reaction to chief there, you can raise your hand or type something in the chat, I'll let people type. And meanwhile, as we're typing, I think I might talk a little bit about some recent conversations at Purdue. I think there's been a lot of recent student activism and I'm wondering about folks who might have been part of that, who might have something to say. Everybody would have done it. Our screen has gone dark, unfortunately. So can you hear us, Dr. Riley? Yes, yes, we can hear you just fine. So let's see. I don't know if Ed can help. Yeah, Dr. Riley, if you can hear us, I'm going to say my normal statement that technology is always fantastic when it works. Yep, exactly. Oh, we give you fantastic. So we can hear you fine. Can you hear me? That's why I can. I do have a question for you. Okay, great. So I do have the question. I can see you. So you might not be able to see us, but we can still see you fine. So I'm going to proceed to ask a question, which is in particular when there are naysayers, what are some strategies that you have used in those circumstances?  I saw a tweet recently. It was a gentleman that was trying to sell something. And people were making jokes about this person. It looked kind of awkward. It looked kind of clumsy. But one of the comments said, if you don't buy your own hype, how is anyone else going to? So whenever people say those things, you just have to have ultimate confidence in yourself. The president says, have crazy faith. You got to have that crazy faith in yourself. And that's at least my strategy for overcoming the naysayers. Just try to have ultimate confidence. Yeah. I do think that confidence is extremely important. And one of the things that I do as an engineer is I like to try to show people examples. Because sometimes the naysayers are, they have that position or they have that lens because they haven't seen anything else. So I try to show them relevant examples. Try to find the, you, this is really gonna sound like an engineer. Try to find the primary contributor to why they are naysayer. And then use that. Once you know that primary contributor, then you have an opportunity to address it through an engineer problem solving approach. Excellent. All right, so I've got another question for you, which is about the kind of social media environment that we're in right now and the amount of disinformation or misinformation that's out there. And how can we best both determine what's factual and what's not, but also, how do we help our students do the same? How do we teach that? I'll start. Yeah, I just think you have to question everything. And you have to, sometimes you can trust, but always verify.  What kind of agenda is attempting to be pushed by the expansion of this information? Just verify, do your own research and just understand that it's easy to be misled if you don't and you don't want that to happen. And I'll just add to that the one thing I say in my team on campus is I say, in God we trust and in all others bring data. I think it's absolutely critical. I see Rahman laughing. Use that one, you go ahead and use that one. I say this in all of my meetings, in God we trust and in all others bring data. So I think it's important that we communicate from a data-centric perspective as well. All right, excellent. Other questions, folks can use the, you can use your hand-raising icon or you can type in the chat. Or one of the things I always say is they can just unmute themselves and talk. Yeah, we can also do it that way. Our speakers are comfortable. So if you want to unmute, feel free to do that. Hello, this is Shauna, I'm a first year PhD student in engineering education. And one of the questions I have with following up on the response for lead with data or use data, what do you do or do you have any recommendations for those, especially when trying to motivate and inspire a group of people who may not be connected to the data? How do you, what are some ways or possible ways of motivation so that they can be comfortable with receiving the information from data? Cause some people may say, oh, you're trying to speak above me or you're not connecting to the issues that we may fill in the community. So with the data-driven approach, how do you balance data with empathy and with acknowledgement of maybe the opinions that may be in rebuttal to the express information that's being presented? You know, I think that's an excellent point. In fact, one of my conversations yesterday was about empathy. And if we approach a conversation where it's 100% data-driven or it sounds like a statistical analysis, sometimes that does omit the factor of empathy. And so it is important that we balance both in the conversation. And it's also, as we think about empathy, we also have to think about that not everyone is as comfortable with a data-driven discussion as we are as engineers. And so I've had to teach myself to have the conversation about the concept first and then just use the data to support it. As opposed to when I was in graduate school, I would start with the data. Well, you know, 40% of the people think and they say, well, I know. So it's important to start with the context and then use the data to support it. I also think that when we're in those conversations empathy matters, and we have to find a way to connect in the conversation before individuals sometimes become receptive to hearing opposing points of view. So I always look for a way to make a connection in the conversation first. I don't mind giving this example, I don't think he would mind. On my campus this week, I had Senator Cruz here. And I've been away from Texas for many years, 30 years in fact, and I've been back seven months. It was absolutely important for me to sit down as president of the university and have a good conversation with my senator. So I started that conversation because most people said, oh my gosh, what are you all going to talk about? I said, we're gonna talk about the university, we're gonna talk about students, the faculty, the facilities, resources, research. Those are things you talk about in higher education. But before starting that, I looked for a place to make sure we had a connection, a common area, a common framework that we could establish. And that strategy worked very well, we had an outstanding visit. So that's what I wanna encourage you to do, Shawna. And I'll also add to that. I'll give you two examples from two of my previous lives. First, when I was just out of law school as a practicing attorney, I had a divorce case. And for me, it was all about knowing my audience. And the audience at that time was the judge. The judge was gonna make that decision. So I researched. I researched as much as I possibly could, found out everything I could possibly find out about the judge. I find out that this judge is an affisherman. So I tell my client, I'm preparing my client, and I say, you just wanna say that you just wanna take your son fishing. That's all you wanna do. You need custody so that you can take your son fishing. And when you connect with a judge like that, it really makes a difference. And then also when I was doing political campaigns, when you run a campaign, you have a different message for every single audience. And again, you're doing lots of research. So when you're talking to, you're gonna have a different message when you're talking to faith leaders, something else when you're talking to Greek organizations, something else when you're talking to students, grassroots organizations, the business community, every single organization is gonna get a different message crafted towards their interests.  Thank you for both, for all of those responses. Excellent, all right. We have a few more minutes. We've got about seven more minutes for Q and A if folks have further questions. If you all don't have questions, I have a question actually. Please. I'd love for students, faculty, anyone on the call to tell me some of the societal changes you'd like to make or you'd like to see. That's excellent. So feel free to unmute yourself or type in the chat. What are some changes you'd like to see society make? And I'm an auditory learner. So just feel free to unmute yourselves. I'd love to hear you.  This is Sean again. One of the things I would like to see is the universal health care in a way that that can be implemented fairly for all. I remember one of my experiences when I was in an internship, it was right when the Affordable Care Act was being, right when Affordable Care Act, Affordable Health Care Act was being implemented. And one of the responses I got at my internship, I was listening to some of the senior engineers talking. I was silent, but one of things that was said I don't understand why they implemented that law. Now when I got to go to a doctor's office, those people who haven't been able to go to a doctor are gonna be taking up my time. So now I won't be able to go to the doctor and actually see my physician. He said, if they've been living with this element for all this time, what hurts for them to continue to live with it now? And I sat in my desk and just was mortified by that conversation with the little regard that people have for other people and their ability to have access to healthcare. And the conversation was more about privilege than about something that everyone should have as a human right. So that's something that I would love to see implemented as a catalyst for a change. But I think it also impacts education, it impacts housing, it impacts a lot of different factors with access to healthcare. But I think that's an excellent point. And I also think, Shauna, in that conversation, you discovered something that I used to talk about in my classes a lot and I speak about with my leadership team. I think at one time we called it ego-centric decision-making. But I'm not sure it's quite ego-centric decision-making in the classical definition. So I call it self-perspective decision-making, right? So what is it that from my perspective, I would like? And since we now know that that is very prevalent among most individuals, I think it's critical as change agents that we learn how to educate or have great conversations when someone is using self-perspective decision-making. Because if we don't help them change their frame or change their perspective, then we won't be effective in creating societal change. So I think to know that now is to be armed with understanding what has to be done as a change agent. And so now we're, once you know that, then you become less shocked by the self-perspective and then armed to respond to it. Excellent, thanks. There's two more that have been posted in the chat. One is from Dr. Tolson to use lots of good data to understand students' potential rather than just using test scores and grades. Dr. Tolson, I am looking forward to him serving on the panel. He is just a wealth of information, but I agree wholeheartedly. And I think as engineers, we've always seen the data to show that there's a low correlation, I'm not using the word poor, a low correlation between some of those standardized test scores and student outcomes. And we've known that for a very long time, but when the pandemic disrupted the ability for the students to take those exams, and then in higher ed, naturally we had to continue to admit students. So many of our institutions made that admissions criteria optional because the students couldn't take the test. And so I think now we have an opportunity to demonstrate through a data-driven approach that we really have seen students perform well who traditionally may not have been expected to have good standardized test scores. Thanks. And then another one posted by Dr. Rahman was alleviating extreme poverty, understood multi-dimensionally, and I might add my own climate justice, something that I'm passionate about as an engineer. I try to work on. Well, we would love to actually work with both of you on that topic. I'll tell you, Dr. Riley, we have somebody on our faculty named Dr. Bullard, and he has written 80 books. Yep. And his work is in the area of climate and environmental justice. And so we would love to do a joint research project with you or something related to that. He has been an advocate for that work for many, many years. And then we also have someone working on poverty disparities and doing research to understand it, I guess, synonymously to how we always describe the social determinants of health. Right? And we, of course, we know poverty is one of those. But to really start to look at the factors that continue the cycle of poverty, and then how do you break that cycle and how do you ensure advancement of individuals from low socioeconomic conditions? So I would love, those are two very important questions. Now, we have developed a new center on our campus, and the name of that center is the catalyst. We just formed that, and so we're going to begin building renovations and all of those things, but the catalyst for us is the name of our Center for Urban Transformation, and poverty will be one of the factors we're looking at, as well as climate and environmental justice. So we'd love for you all to be partners with us at the catalyst. I know when I was at Morgan, I formed the partnership to look at academic programs. So maybe now Texas Southern will form a partnership to look at, to do research together through our center of urban transformation. That's fantastic. I dropped a link to Dr. Bullard's website for folks that are interested in learning more, and I've been a fan for, since about 1989. So it's about just a couple years after that report, the first report came out on environmental justice is something that's inspired my life as an engineer. So I'm very appreciative of your mention of him. So we're at time, so we'll continue this conversation in about 10, no, five minutes, right? We're sort of starting right away. We have about a five minute break, if I'm not mistaken, before the panel will commence. So hold your thoughts. If you had more you'd like to talk about, we've got an amazing panel lined up and we'll be introducing those folks shortly and we'll continue this conversation along many of these same lines with a view to the practicalities of how we operationalize these ideas from this fantastic talk. So thanks everybody and stay tuned. Thank you.


Greetings, creatures in New Zealand. In 2015, governments from around the world met in Paris and agreed to attempt to limit anthropogenic climate change to well below 2 degrees. Unfortunately it seems that since then we have not done enough and the climate crisis has only gotten more urgent. Our next speaker, Stefan Rammstorf, has more accolades than I have time to tell. He's published more than 100 papers, including in the journals Nature and Science, co-authored four books, and won the Climate Communication Prize from the American Geophysical Union, the first European to do so. Please welcome him and heed his advice. Here's Stefan. Hi, everyone. My name is Stefan Rammstorf, and I'm thrilled to be invited to give a talk at the Chaos Computer Club's Remote Chaos Experience 2020. I want to give you an overview of a climate tipping point, a very exciting subject that I will try to shed some light on. But let's first start with some background on climate change. You probably know this image. It shows the global temperature evolution since the year 1880. The line is one year. This is the more conventional way of viewing this time series. And the last seven years have been the hottest seven years since record keeping began in the 19th century. We know the reason for this warming. It's the increase of carbon dioxide, which you can see here for the last 10,000 years. And if you just look at the end of the curve, how the increase has accelerated in ever shorter time spans, we have seen an ever greater increase in the amount of carbon dioxide in our planet's atmosphere. This increase causes what we call a radiator forcing that is a kind of heating in terms of energy released per square meter of Earth's surface. And the increase in CO2 in the atmosphere until now is causing a heating at a rate of two watts per square meter of surface. We understand the energy budget of our planet pretty well. On the left here in this diagram, you can see the incoming solar radiation in yellow. Part of that is reflected already in the atmosphere by the clouds, for example. Another part is reflected by the bright surfaces, that's the snow and ice surfaces primarily, and the rest is absorbed. On the right hand side, and let's zoom into that, you see in orange the longwave radiation, which is clearly distinct from the incoming shortwave solar radiation by its wavelength. And this thick arrow of longwave radiation leaving the Earth's surface basically to a large extent gets absorbed by the atmosphere, and the atmosphere itself emits like anything, any substance, any matter, depending on its surface temperature on its, sorry, depending on its temperature, emits also infrared radiation. And one thing that few people realize is that the back radiation coming down from the atmosphere through the greenhouse effect, the greenhouse gases, is actually twice as large at the Earth's surface as the absorbed solar radiation. So heating by the greenhouse effect by the longwave radiation is twice as big as the absorbed solar radiation at the Earth's surface. And so it's little wonder that if we are increasing this natural greenhouse effect, which actually makes our planet livable in the first place, if we are increasing this effect, that it is going to get warmer. We can also quantify this effect, and if you add in not just the CO2 increase, but other human-caused greenhouse gases, and also cooling effects caused by humans, then you see that the total human-caused warming that we see here in the orange bar is to within uncertainty as big as the observed global warming since the 1950s. And that means that about 100% of the observed global warming over the past 70 years is human-caused. And the best estimates of the human-caused warming is actually even slightly more than the observed warming, which has to do partly or is consistent with the fact that solar activity has gone down. So the decrease in solar activity has compensated a small part of the human-caused global warming. It's also very interesting, and especially to me as a paleo-climatologist who studies natural climate variations in Earth history and has done so for more than 25 years, how the modern warming compares with the changes throughout the Holocene and before that since the last Ice Age. And this is what we see here based on decades of paleo-climat research, countless sediment cores taken at the sea bottom, ice cores on the big ice sheets and so on. We have enough data now to form meaningful global average temperatures. And you can see here the warming from the height of the last Ice Age into the Holocene, the Holocene optimum, the warmest period until about 5,000 years before present. And since then we have seen a very slow cooling trend, which we have bent around due to human activities and we have within a hundred years more than undone 5,000 years of natural cooling trend, which normally would have very slowly continued. These natural variations, by the way, are due to the Earth orbital cycles, the so-called Milankovic cycles. You can easily read up on those, for example, at Wikipedia. Now let's come to the famous, much feared tipping points in the climate system. What is a tipping point? That has been described in a seminal paper, which I'm proud of having been a part of from 2008 by Tim Lenton and colleagues. And this is called tipping elements in the Earth's climate system. And it says that the term tipping point commonly refers to a critical threshold at which a tiny perturbation can qualitatively alter the state or development of a system. And the different parts of the Earth's system which can undergo such a transition, they are called the tipping elements. This whole concept is illustrated in the red line that's shown here. In the horizontal axis we see a control parameter and that could be the greenhouse gas content of our atmosphere. It could be the temperature. It could be, if you talk about natural climate changes, for example, those orbital changes, what we call the Milankovitch forcing, which drives changes. And on the vertical axis you see the response. And if you imagine the control parameter changing from left to right in this diagram, you would march along that upper part of the red curve here, the branch, until you come close to a threshold and at that threshold the system will undergo a major change and reach then this lower part of the curve, a different kind of equilibrium state. So it's basically a small change in the driver causing a very big systemic response. That is what defines the tipping point. If we want to be very accurate here we can distinguish two different types of tipping points. Next one is what I just showed you is repeated here on the left side and it is characterized by the fact that this red equilibrium line has one state for every point on the x-axis. So every amount of forcing corresponds to one particular system state. And this system state just makes a major transition in a small range of the driving parameter around this threshold. Now a second even more drastic or non-linear type of tipping point is shown in the right hand side where the equilibrium states are somewhat more complex than the single red line on the left. You can see here that there is again an upper stable branch and there is also a lower stable branch but they overlap. So there is a region that is shaded here where two stable equilibria exist and it depends on the initial conditions on which of these branches you are. Now there is what is called a bifurcation structure underlying this with a bifurcation point. There is an unstable branch which separates the basins of attraction of the two stable branches so if you're in the bistable regime and you start kind of away from an equilibrium but above the dashed line you will fall up onto that upper stable branch. If you start out below the dashed line you will fall down on the lower branch. That actually is pretty standard non-linear dynamics it's a whole branch of physics which investigates exactly this type of behavior in many different physical systems. So the second type of tipping point the right hand side one is corresponding to multiple equilibrium states in this case two stable equilibria. That's why this arrow range here is called bistability two stable equilibria. It is coming with irreversibility so basically if you march to the right here on that upper stable branch at that bifurcation point you fall off down onto the lower stable branch but you can't just go back up from there. You have to go all the way to the left to that second lower blue point there until you can go back onto that stable branch. The second type is actually as an everyday system that behaves like that it can be easily compared to a kayak. If you're sitting in a kayak and you lean a little bit to one side then you experience a counter force. So the kayak is trying to upright itself it's resisting you tipping it but if you move further and further and further eventually you will reach a tipping point. This is the point where the kayak stops resisting your further leaning over and instead it starts tipping over further by itself and then it flips right over until it's upside down and you're falling out.  Now this kayak also has a range of bi-stability so once it's flipped over it's also in a stable state and it takes considerable effort to turning upright again into the other stable state when it's vertical upright rather than upside down. Now the whole point is that systems like this exist also in the climate system. The kind of first type on the left hand side corresponds for example to sea ice and on the right hand side this type of tipping element compares to refers to the Greenland ice sheets or continental ice sheets or Antarctica or the Atlantic ocean circulation. In terms of the transient behavior that means if you kind of go through a global warming phase you're moving from left to right in these diagrams then in that sense they don't differ very much because in either case you follow a line like this green line. So on the left hand side the green line more or less follows more or less closely the red equilibrium line with a certain delay depending on how sluggish the system responds so that's why the green arrows are not exactly on top of the red line here and in the right hand side case you have a similar thing you're kind of in theory in equilibrium you'd fall off the cliff at this bifurcation point but in practice the system has some inertia it takes some time so if you gradually move on the right towards the right there you will also follow a green line which is very similar to the one in the left so in practical terms if you're not trying to go back but you're just going forward progressive global warming the difference isn't all that big and the main difference comes from the intrinsic timescale of the system obviously sea ice can respond much more quickly to being just a few meters thick compared to continental ice sheets like Greenland ice which is about 3,000 meters thick and that just takes a very long time to melt. Now here's an overview of different tipping elements in the climate system. A few examples you can see starting on the left here the boreal forests that are the kind of northern forests which typically like ecosystems do have a tipping point a point of collapse the whole idea of these tipping points and the system collapse is very strongly linked actually to ecosystem research and the boreal forests they have a point where they get too dry that fires and pests are weakening the forest so much that in a hot summer like last year in Siberia they go up in flames lit by lightning or the amazon rainforest this is also a tipping element has been shown in many vegetation dynamics models which is partly linked to the fact that such a forest generates its own rain to an extent by storing water in the soil keeping it there and then bringing it up again through evapotranspiration as we call it the tree brings up water to the leaves from where it then enters the atmosphere again and then it moves with the winds and maybe 50-100 kilometers downwind it falls again as rain so it's a kind of perpetual rain recycling system which keeps the whole forest nice and moist but if you stress that too far and reduce the first of all you cut down forest you make it smaller and also you make it more drought prone by warming up the climate which leads to faster loss of moisture etc greater moisture requirements by the trees then you can stress it up to the point where it gets so dry that even the amazon rainforest can go up in flames another example if you see the top right is the permafrost thawing this is when it gets too warm there is a very simple threshold namely the freezing point of course that is a tipping point in a sense a freezing point of water when the permafrost thaws then there is methane gas escaping to the atmosphere which then also can enhance the further warming which then leads to more permafrost thawing and so on typically these tipping points are associated with such amplifying feedbacks i will discuss three of these in a little bit more detail the greenland ice sheet which is undergoing accelerated ice loss the atlantic overturning circulation or often called gulf stream system and the third one is a coral reefs which are suffering from large-scale die-off which also as a typical ecosystem the response have a critical threshold these examples are discussed in our paper climate tipping points to risky Tibet against which we published in nature about one year ago and they are also some of these tipping points interact they're interlinked and one of our quotes there is that the clearest emergency would be if we were approaching a global cascade of tipping points that is a situation where one tipping element is triggering the next one in a kind of domino effect this is what we fear most now let's have a look at the green and ice sheet this is a nazar video showing based on gray satellite data where the ice sheet is losing mass you can see an increasing blue colors here that the green and ice sheet is indeed losing mass you can look up at the nazar vital signs website which is very good indicators of various vital signs of our planet including the data on greenland ice loss constantly updated now the point with the greenland ice sheet is that it does have a stability diagram like the schematic one that I showed you earlier with the bi-stable range and this is shown I think it was shown for the first time by my colleagues Karlof and Ganopolski in 2005 in this article where they used a three-dimensional ice sheet model coupled inside a global climate model with ocean atmosphere and so on and on the x-axis there's basically increasing amount of heating going on in this case because they were interested in the paleo climate question it is this driving force by the orbital cycles the milankovic cycles you don't need to understand the numbers but on the vertical axis you see the response of the ice sheet the size of the ice sheet in million cubic kilometers and you can see that upper branch in the blue line we're actually moving towards the right here in this model simulation experiment and you can see you stay on that upper branch until you reach this value on the x-axis of around about 500 and this is where the tipping point is there the ice mass declines melt survey away very quickly and you then end up at that lower branch with no ice on greenland and they played this game they ran this simulation out to more than 550 watts per square meter and the light blue line is what happens when they return you know when they turn down the heat again you move towards the left on this diagram but you don't go back up the same way as a dark blue line you have to go to much lower radiation values until the ice sheet starts to grow again and comes back the dots by the way are points where this has to has been run for many thousands of years really into an equilibrium just to show that there are really for the same value on the x-axis two very different equilibrium states with and without greenland ice sheet and the fact that we now and in the Holocene in the last 10 000 years have a greenland ice sheet and it actually is stable in the Holocene climate is only because of the initial condition because we came out of an ice age if you took away the greenland ice sheet now then in the current climate or the Holocene or pre-industrial climate it will never grow back what is the positive feedback there with positive we don't mean that it's good there's actually quite bad a positive feedback we mean an amplifying feedback and the key amplifying feedback here is what is called the ice elevation feedback the greenland ice sheet does not melt because it's very cold at the surface mostly below freezing and why is it so cold because it is very high up in the atmosphere this ice sheet is 3000 meters thick after all so it's like in a high mountain area where it is quite cold if you took away that ice sheet though the surface then would be down at sea level or even below if you did this quickly because the the bedrock is depressed but surface would come up to sea level but down there it's much warmer than up at 3000 meters altitude in the atmosphere and there it is actually too warm to keep any snow on the ground year-round which would be required to regrow a new greenland ice sheet and that's why you'd have to go back to a much colder climate than the Holocene to get the greenland ice sheet back once it were lost this is a typical example of this amplifying feedback which leads to a self-stabilizing system it can either self-stabilize in the upper branch here when you start there or it self-stabilizes in the lower branch with no ice when you start there this is what makes it a bi-stable system to summarize the greenland ice sheet is melting as the nasa data the gray satellite show but also other data sets it has a tipping point due to the ice elevation feedback now what i haven't shown but it's come out in in study with many climate model simulation experiments going through more than 200 000 years of simulation from the past through the emian interglacial period where we know how much the ice sheet shrank back and we could use those data from the past behavior of greenland to calibrate the model and uh so we know the tipping point for the complete loss of the greenland ice sheet is somewhere between one degree and three degree global warming we're already at one point two degrees global warming so we have started to enter the danger zone where we cross that tipping point it doesn't mean that it suddenly starts to melt very fast or so because it has its own intrinsic slow response time but what that crossing that tipping point means is that even without further warming the greenland ice sheet is doomed it will continue to melt until it's gone and this will lead to seven meters of global sea level rise drowning most of our big coastal cities and many island nations here is a look at the future from model simulations from ashwanden from nasa and you can see a nice view of what the surface looks like and here's what the what it looks like in the ice sheet model you can see the ice flowing you can see it retreating so in purple that's bedrock that is exposed where the ice sheet has was drawn in this simulation and so that's as much as ice of ice that you would lose in the coming 300 years a substantial fraction of the greenland ice sheet now let's look at another kind of tipping element and that is the gallstream system or the north atlantic current and i i can't really introduce this topic is one of my favorite topics which i have studied since the early 90s without showing a clip from the famous hollywood blockbuster the day after tomorrow what about the north atlantic current what about it the current depends upon a delicate balance of salt and fresh water we all know that yes but no one has taken into account how much fresh water has been dumped into the ocean because of melting polar ice i think we've hit a critical desalination point yeah now that statement about the critical desalination point is a completely correct description of the bifurcation point of the atlantic circulation i'll show it in a minute and the the statement that nobody has taken into account the melt water from the greenland ice sheet is also was completely correct when the movie appeared in 2004 until then the typical climate simulations that you could see in the ipcc reports actually until quite a few years later still had not taken account greenland melt water because basically at that point in time the models almost all climate models were just ocean atmosphere models plus land surface but they didn't have continental ice sheet models coupled into them and so in the meantime of course we have better models that include experiments either with artificially added green and melt water from data estimates or fully coupled with ice sheet models and from that an example here being that nature article by claus burning and colleagues we know that the melt water input from greenland has a non negligible effect on the north atlantic overturning it's probably not the dominant effect but it adds to various factors that weaken this north atlantic current and we also know that this system has a well-defined tipping point actually i described that in a nature article in 1996 due to assault transport feedback the basic idea behind that has actually been known since the late 1950s or early 60s since work by the famous american oceanographer henry stommer but what i showed in my nature article in 1996 is that it actually works that way in a complex three-dimensional global ocean circulation model not just in very simplified models and since then this has been shown for a whole range of different climate models the salt transportation feedback is also one of these amplifying feedbacks and it's easy to explain the overturning circulation of the atlantic is called overturning because it's it's really a vertical overturning where water sinks down from the surface to great depth of two to three kilometers in the atlantic because this water is heavy and it spreads then in the deep ocean until it rises up in other parts mainly around Antarctica in the Antarctic circumpolar current area and comes back at the surface so basically the whole ocean is overturned with deep water being renewed and then coming back to the surface on very long timescale of about a thousand to two thousand years for complete overturning there now the whole system is driven by the fact that the water sinks down where it has the highest density and that's in the northern atlantic and around Antarctica around the Antarctic continent and it has the highest density there not only because it's very cold but also quite salty this is why you don't have deep water formation in the north pacific in the northern hemisphere you only have that in the north atlantic and that's because the north atlantic waters are quite salty and this is because this north atlantic current exists and brings salty water from the subtropics up to the high latitudes where normally it isn't very salty because it gets diluted by excess rainfall whereas the subtropics have excess evaporation and that's why they're salty and so it's like a chicken and an egg situation the northern atlantic is salty because you have this overturning circulation and you have this overturning circulation because it's salty there and so you can see the self-amplifying feedback there again which means it is a self-stabilizing system up to a certain breaking point a tipping point which can be reached if you add too much fresh water diluting the northern atlantic and the stability diagram again looks like that second one you've seen that for the greenland ice sheet and as I said this has been verified in detailed model simulations with many different models that it really works like that in a complex 3d situation where you have depending on how much fresh water you add into the northern atlantic this is the control parameter here you can move along that upper stable branch with the overturning to circulation until that stumble bifurcation point and there this overturning breaks down and you fall down onto that lower branch without this overturning it's labeled here nadw flow that nadw stands for north atlantic deep water it's uh yeah I would say one of the favorite water masses of the oceanographers now let's look at the Gulfstream the surface circulation in a climate model this is the cm 2.6 global coupled climate model ocean atmosphere by the geophysical fluid dynamics laboratory in princeton you can beautifully see the Gulfstream in dark red here because it's warm leaving the coasts of the united states at Cape Hatteras they're starting to meander breaking up into these eddies etc and it actually means the meets the cold waters coming down inshore from the north which are shown in blue here and so this is what this the surface part of the circulation looks in a global climate model and if you add carbon dioxide to that climate model's atmosphere the climate warms of course but it does show a peculiar pattern of sea surface temperature change which you see here and this actually shows the sea surface temperature change relative to the global mean so everything that is blue has either warmed less than the global average or even cooled which is actually the case south of greenland and everything that is orangey or red has a warmed substantially more than the global average sea surface and you see a very strong pattern in the northern atlantic with this big cold blob the blue blob south of greenland and a very warm region inshore of the Gulfstream along the coast of north america and in the climate model of course we are a bit like gods in that sense that we have complete information about what's going on there if we store all the data at every grid point we know exactly everything that's happening and we can analyze the reasons and the reason for this funny pattern in the northern atlantic actually is a slowdown of the north atlantic overturning circulation that means that less heat is transported to the sub-polar ocean south of green and there that blue area which makes it cool down and the Gulfstream proper at the surface moves inshore there is complicated dynamical reasons for that but there is already long before this was shown in this model a theoretical underpinning for this it has to do with the vorticity dynamics on a rotating sphere too technical to go into in such a talk but it's a well-understood phenomenon and so we know that this slowdown of the Gulfstream system is the reason behind this peculiar temperature pattern and this pattern is predicted by this climate model for a global warming situation and my phd student live get Cesar who was the first author on this nature paper from 2018 she looked at all the available measurements of sea surface temperature since the beginning of the 20th century and of course because we have only limited ocean temperature measurements we have only a fuzzy picture here not a sharp one like in the climate model but you can see a similar pattern in the north atlantic in the observations compared to what the model predicts in response to a slowdown of the overturning circulation and our conclusion here is that we are actually observing this slowdown of the circulation why do we take indirect evidence for this like this because we don't of course have measurements going back 100 years or more about the strength of that overturning circulation we have actually only started to measure this regularly in 2004 with a so-called rapid array at 26 degrees north in the atlantic and what we reconstructed about the evolution of this current for the last period where we do have the direct measurements agrees well with what the direct measurements show we concluded that the overturning circulation has declined since at least the mid 20th century by about 15 percent so far there are of course other indirect types of measurements you can use sediment data of various kinds and with various methodologies to reconstruct the strength of this atlantic overturning and the number of different studies are compiled here in this diagram and even though of course they differ somewhat in the detail they all tend to agree in this overall picture that the atlantic overturning circulation has been quite stable for the previous thousand years or so before the 20th century but then in the 20th century has showed a clear declining signature and one example of the media coverage of this is that washington post article here which if you can see the small print of the most read articles there on that day actually made it to number three of the most read washington post articles there is definitely an interest in science and climate change science by the readers in the newspapers so far we've talked about a slowdown and not so much about where this tipping point is one reason is we don't know really we know there is a tipping point that is a robust result of many different studies and model experiments and theory but we don't know how far away we are from this that is very typical for these tipping points because they involve highly non-linear dynamics that means they can depend very sensitively on the exact conditions for example in this case the exact salinity distribution in the atlantic and the exact circulation pattern and models get these things kind of approximately right but not exactly right and if you have a situation where the question of where the tipping point is is very sensitive to the exact conditions then you have a large uncertainty about where the tipping point is and so there is discussion in the literature I just point out to one study here in science advances that try to correct for the inaccuracies in how we can reproduce the salinity in the atlantic waters and found that if you correct for that the circulation is actually a lot more sensitive than in other models and maybe that model is more correct of course it has other weaknesses as well we don't know which of the models is correct but should we cross this tipping point then the north atlantic circulation system would break down and you get a temperature pattern like the one shown here the cold blob in the atlantic that is now only over the ocean it exists right it's the only part of the world that has cooled since the beginning of the 20th century but it hasn't affected any land areas but if the circulation would break down altogether and not only weaken by 15 percent this cold would expand greatly and affect Great Britain Scandinavia Iceland as you can see here which would then get a much colder climate whereas the rest of the globe continues to have a warmer climate this is really distinct from an ice age and so this is also really distinct from that Hollywood movie the day after tomorrow where the earth goes into a huge ice age instant freeze that of course is totally unrealistic and the screenwriter and the director they knew this they actually told me that if they were in the business of making a movie for a few million viewers they would stick to the laws of physics but since they make movies for a few hundred million viewers they stick to the laws of Hollywood drama but you would get a substantial regional cooling with major impacts on ecosystems on human society now let me come to the third type of tipping point that I want to discuss today this is the coral reefs coral reefs like many ecosystems do have critical thresholds coral reefs are very important even though they only cover a very small percentage of the earth's surface they support a quarter of all marine life 40 coral cover of the world has already been lost 100 countries depend quite substantially on corals there's a 800 billion total global asset of coral reefs so it does have a major impact on people now corals when they are about to die they bleach they are abandoned by their algae that provides them with nutrition and that's why they lose their color and then after a while they they die they get covered by other by seaweed non symbiotic algae and they die and they do have a temperature threshold there's a critical warming threshold where this bleaching happens but an additional factor not yet the most important factor is the acidification of water it's a direct chemical chemical effect of adding carbon dioxide to the atmosphere which then goes partly into the oceans and acidifies the ocean waters but the main effect until now is the marine heat waves which cross more and more frequently the temperature tolerance threshold of coral reefs and here you can see that for the great barrier reef a huge fantastic world wonder that you can see from space and you can see here the bleaching in the years 2016 2017 and 2020 three major bleaching events which affected in each case the red area here with the most severe bleaching you can see that by now large as a very large part of the great barrier reef has bleached in these three events it's very tragic and you can see here for example the March the 2016 bleaching event in March the coral was bleached by May it was already overgrown by seaweed and just in 2015 and 2016 we actually had worldwide coral reef bleaching not only at the great barrier reef in Australia only the blue ones out of these hundred reefs that were observed in this study only the blue ones escaped bleaching so we are actually in the midst of a great worldwide coral die-off event which is another prediction of climate science coming through if you look at the latest IPCC report it states that with two degrees warming virtually all coral reefs will be lost more than 99 percent 1.5 degree warming if we managed to limit the warming to 1.5 degrees we can save between 10 percent and 30 percent of the corals that is really depressing now let me talk briefly about what can we do a major success is of course the Paris Accord the biggest failure of which is that it hasn't come 20 years earlier after all the world community already in 1992 decided to stop global warming at the Rio Earth Summit the nation signed the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change and it took a full 25 years of further negotiations to finally reach the Paris Accord now you can see here that the goal of this is to hold the increase in the global average temperature to well below two degrees above pre-industrial level so it's not two degrees it's well below two degrees that's very important point many countries would not have signed up if it simply had said two degrees which was an older goal but it has shown to be insufficient and and to sorry and to pursue efforts to limit the temperature increase to 1.5 degrees above pre-industrial level so that is a more stringent Paris goal but at least the nations have committed to pursue efforts so my view is that every person should ask their own government what you are doing here is this a credible effort to try and limit warming to 1.5 degrees we might not make it but at least we should try to limit the warming to 1.5 to avoid the risk of destabilization of the greenland ice sheet almost complete coral die-off and many further risks so what does this entail that is an important point if you want to limit global warming to some value whatever it is 1.5 2 3 whatever you choose it means you can only emit a limited amount of carbon dioxide that is because the amount of global warming is to good extent proportional to the total amount of CO2 that we have ever emitted so to the cumulative emissions it's like filling a bathtub with water if you want to draw the line at any level and say no further than here you can only add a limited amount of water and if you want to limit global warming to some value you can only add a limited amount of CO2 to the atmosphere and this is shown here for two different examples two different amounts this is actually the numbers here are emissions from the year 2016 so it's don't take these numbers from now we have already had four more years of emissions the solid lines throw show three scenarios with 600 billion tons of CO2 and they all have the same amount of emission so they all three solid lines get the same amount of warming this is about actually these lines correspond to about a 50 percent chance of ending up at 1.5 degrees and so they all get you the same amount of warming but with different times of when the peak emissions are reached so 2016 went past without us getting over the peak of the emissions 2020 maybe we still have a chance emissions have dropped a bit in 2020 but not for structural change mostly but due to corona but we still we have a chance that maybe next year they are lower still and what this shows is that the longer you wait the steeper your reductions have to be not only because you're starting later but also because you have to reach zero earlier at the end notice how all these three lines the later you start with reducing the earlier you have to reach zero emissions because the surface area under these curves is what counts for the climate goal the dashed line is a more generous goal which would end us at about 1.75 degrees or so best estimate this is kind of the weaker Paris goal of well below two degrees which would allow us to gradually reduce emissions to zero by 2050 this is not counting in any negative emissions afterwards by the way this is the net emissions if you like so we have to reach net zero emissions in 2050 but of course if we wait five more years until emissions start to decline then they'll have to be at zero five years earlier so this is why it's so important to start now this by the way is from an article by Christiana Figueres et al in nature published 2017 where I was a co-author as well now final point can tipping points maybe help us and I'm talking here about societal tipping points and there are also some interesting studies on that the basic idea is that shown in the top right here we are in a kind of stable equilibrium where the red ball is now and we are stuck there it's it's hard to get out of this but there is a better equilibrium a more stable one further off to the right and the question is how do we get over the hill into that beneficial equilibrium of a sustainable global economy a sustainable energy system a stable climate and so on complete decarbonization that means no more fossil fuel use and these this green addition there that is added there is there just some examples of how we can make this transition earlier easier and the hill that we have to get over smaller so we can make this current status quo that we're in a little bit less comfortable by putting a price on carbon we can make the transition easier by subsidizing renewable energies there are there is a greening of values there is a tipping point in thinking in society there are many co-benefits of this transformation in terms of avoided air pollution for example millions of people die every year from outdoor air pollution which which to a large extent go away if we stop fossil fuel use and we have seen a massive movement by my young people Fridays for Future he is Greta Thunberg talking to me at our institute she came last year to visit us there here is a Friday's demonstration in Berlin where I took this photo this is really changing the society's values and it's changing election results and it could be a tipping point towards a sustainable global society and with that hopeful message I want to end and I thank you very much for your attention if you want to read more there's a couple of books of mine that have also come out in English you can follow me on the blogs and of course in social media preferably a Twitter put also the scientists for future logo there because many thousands of scientists are engaged there to try and stop the climate crisis this is really a matter of a survival of civilization thank you very much for listening should stick to science and leave policy to us well we tried that approach you didn't want to hear about the science when it could have made a difference thank you so much Stefan for your talk now we have some questions from the internets see the first question which additional tipping points will be triggered at two degrees three degrees and so on that is actually a difficult question to answer because of the uncertainty that I mentioned in my talk about where these tipping points are there is one in Antarctica the Wilkes basin that is a part of the Antarctic ice sheet that that could be triggered say below three degrees there are others like the ocean circulation where you probably at least we hope you have to go beyond three degrees to really trigger a collapse of the Gulf Stream system but the truth is that there are very large uncertainty ranges and the main fact is that with every bit of extra warming we increase the risk of crossing more tipping points and are there some of these tipping points that are interrelated or correlated for instance could we save some tipping points if we are able to save others for instance the collapse of the Gulf Stream yes there are these interconnections for example if the Gulf Stream system collapses it will affect the atmospheric circulation the monsoon systems and it can shift the tropical rainfall belts this is not just theoretical we see that in paleo climate where we have seen these collapses of the North Atlantic circulation and the paleo climatic proxy data show that it comes with shifts in the tropical rainfall belts that could then in this way trigger a major drought in the amazon region if the Gulf Stream system collapses and so it would be very wise to prevent these tipping points especially when it comes to the ocean circulation or atmospheric circulation because that's really going to mess up the the weather patterns in a major way how long have we known about human caused climate change well in principle in the 19th century Alexander von Humboldt actually wrote in 1843 if I remember correctly that humans are changing the climate by cutting down forests and emitting large amounts of gases at the centers of industry that's almost a little literal quote by Alexander von Humboldt we've known about how sensitive the climate is to a change in CO2 since the Swedish Nobel laureates van der arenas remotely related to Greta Thunberg by the way in in yeah studied the effect of a CO2 doubling he wasn't worried by that because he thought global warming would be great you know bring it on let's just die no no it's back you can see my picture still yeah don't know what happened there and so he suggested you know burning a lot of coal to enhance global warming I guess he came from Sweden and thought coal is bad without thinking this through properly but the first real expert report warning the US government Lyndon B. Johnson of the coming global warming due to fossil fuel use was a rebel report in 1965 exactly 50 years half a century before finally the Paris agreement was reached will you be publishing your slides from the talk uh yes I will uploading the slides what is or what should be the ultimate goal of the climate change mitigation for instance is it saving lives saving other species well I think the the ultimate goal is of course preserving human civilization as we know it because I think if we let this run we will not only destroy a lot of ecosystems and biodiversity but we will probably cause major hunger crisis which you know with big droughts like the the one in Syria before the unrest in Syria started in 2011 the country went through the biggest drought in history and according to sediment data from the eastern Mediterranean it was the worst drought in at least 900 years and then you know I think especially in some unstable conflicted countries this can really turn them into failed states that is what happened in Syria and it's what a German report for the German government actually warned in 2009 it was called climate change as a security risk I was actually one of the co-authors of that report because I was in the German government's advisory panel on global change at the time and I think we will see increasing hunger crisis failed states and all the effects that that has on international politics if we cannot keep global warming below two degrees and finally is there a specific call to action for the chaos community is there anything that we can do with our mindset and our skills that's a good question that I haven't thought about but maybe you can know yourself the best thing what you can do I think the key is really to keep up the pressure on the political world like Fridays for Future has been doing go on the streets protest vote with climate as a priority I think these are the key things that everyone should be doing and specifically in whatever profession they are they will see some ways of how you can help to reduce emissions in your company put sustainability at the top of the agenda and so on chef and thanks so much for taking the time to join us today it's a great pleasure and honor always welcome and now the news