1 00:00:00,000 --> 00:00:22,200 Hi everybody, welcome back to episode 3 of Look What I've Found. 2 00:00:22,200 --> 00:00:29,640 We are going to do a brief introduction of ourselves for those who are new to this podcast 3 00:00:29,640 --> 00:00:32,600 and I'll hand it to Kay. 4 00:00:32,600 --> 00:00:33,800 Thank you, VK. 5 00:00:33,800 --> 00:00:34,800 This is Kay. 6 00:00:34,800 --> 00:00:37,800 Hi, I am a college professor. 7 00:00:37,800 --> 00:00:46,360 I teach physics and I'm married to VK and VK and I talk about science all the time. 8 00:00:46,360 --> 00:00:53,320 So we are here to share some of these thoughts that we discuss from media articles that have 9 00:00:53,320 --> 00:01:00,600 been covered by popular press about real science and scientific topics. 10 00:01:00,600 --> 00:01:03,040 Thank you Kay for that lovely introduction. 11 00:01:03,040 --> 00:01:04,400 I am VK. 12 00:01:04,400 --> 00:01:09,720 I have a PhD in psychology and I am also a college professor. 13 00:01:09,720 --> 00:01:19,320 Kay and I have been married for 21 years and four years ago we visited Weaverville in North 14 00:01:19,320 --> 00:01:28,600 Carolina which is going to be part of the episode today and we love the area in Asheville. 15 00:01:28,600 --> 00:01:31,000 We've been there four times. 16 00:01:31,000 --> 00:01:39,480 We visited various parts of that region. 17 00:01:39,480 --> 00:01:46,680 So this episode which is entitled When Bent is Better Than Straight is actually deeply 18 00:01:46,680 --> 00:01:55,120 personal for us and really meaningful so strap on and hopefully you enjoy this conversation. 19 00:01:55,120 --> 00:02:01,360 Yeah, this is a great find VK because like you said, we've been to Asheville. 20 00:02:01,360 --> 00:02:06,720 We like the place a lot and we hear that some of the rains that brought all the devastation 21 00:02:06,720 --> 00:02:12,160 that we've heard about there really makes this article a little more sort of closer 22 00:02:12,160 --> 00:02:14,600 to our heart if you will. 23 00:02:14,600 --> 00:02:18,240 And so the article that we're going to be talking to you about I think was carried by 24 00:02:18,240 --> 00:02:20,680 BBC. 25 00:02:20,680 --> 00:02:26,040 That's where we saw this and it was actually quite interesting. 26 00:02:26,040 --> 00:02:33,080 It was talking about meandering rivers is the norm as it has been for sort of how a 27 00:02:33,080 --> 00:02:37,720 human kind of known rivers except for the past 200 years. 28 00:02:37,720 --> 00:02:47,640 Yeah, so just to give you all a little bit of a background, one of the things that I'm 29 00:02:47,640 --> 00:02:59,040 going to start with is by reminding us that this episode was initiated, inspired by the 30 00:02:59,040 --> 00:03:04,520 devastation that we saw happen due to Hurricane Helene. 31 00:03:04,520 --> 00:03:13,760 In particular, folks in Asheville have experienced profound, profound devastation. 32 00:03:13,760 --> 00:03:16,320 Their lives have been impacted tremendously. 33 00:03:16,320 --> 00:03:21,200 So if you all can do anything for them, please do to help. 34 00:03:21,200 --> 00:03:30,320 But I'm going to before we get into the article that we saw on BBC, I'm going to read out 35 00:03:30,320 --> 00:03:39,280 this passage that I think will provide a nice framework and then we'll tie it back towards 36 00:03:39,280 --> 00:03:46,240 the end of the episode in terms of how it relates to the science that we read, the conversations 37 00:03:46,240 --> 00:03:48,280 that we had. 38 00:03:48,280 --> 00:03:50,280 So here goes. 39 00:03:50,280 --> 00:03:57,000 Darkness filled the Appalachian sky, but in the east, a line of pink emerged. 40 00:03:57,000 --> 00:04:01,840 Days came and went, showers ebbed and floored. 41 00:04:01,840 --> 00:04:07,240 The coming hurricane spared Asheville from the brunt of the rains. 42 00:04:07,240 --> 00:04:14,440 But onto the soils and rivers, the splintered ancestral brooks and creeks of the French 43 00:04:14,440 --> 00:04:21,880 broad basin, water fell from the sky throughout the region too often to dissipate. 44 00:04:21,880 --> 00:04:28,640 South-eastern rivers rose exponentially and filled every basin, where there were mountains, 45 00:04:28,640 --> 00:04:33,320 narrow valleys and shallow beds delivered disaster. 46 00:04:33,320 --> 00:04:39,160 At Pilkmo Village, North Carolina, in the early morning hours, an exhausted 17-year-old 47 00:04:39,160 --> 00:04:44,880 named Catherine, cohere'd alone on a tree, praying for her life and the safety of her 48 00:04:44,880 --> 00:04:50,360 family, most of whom sank into the turbid waters that day. 49 00:04:50,360 --> 00:04:56,320 You might think that this passage describes what happened due to Hurricane Haleen, but 50 00:04:56,320 --> 00:05:02,440 this passage actually describes the great flood of 1916. 51 00:05:02,440 --> 00:05:11,720 And it's provided in an article by Anthony de Paul Sadler from 2016. 52 00:05:11,720 --> 00:05:17,680 The flood that is described in the article took place more than a century ago. 53 00:05:17,680 --> 00:05:20,360 Yeah, exactly, this is not new stuff. 54 00:05:20,360 --> 00:05:25,560 This is, we've known about these sorts of events. 55 00:05:25,560 --> 00:05:29,040 And here we are again, sort of witnessing this. 56 00:05:29,040 --> 00:05:37,400 So let me sort of start by phrasing this article, which is the idea of that rivers naturally 57 00:05:37,400 --> 00:05:49,720 meander, but over the past couple of centuries, we've started to canalize rivers, to make 58 00:05:49,720 --> 00:05:55,800 them sort of flow straighter when we want them to, to sort of help with controlling 59 00:05:55,800 --> 00:06:03,080 where the water flows, how things are irrigated, to sort of keep farmland safe. 60 00:06:03,080 --> 00:06:08,280 And the article is about a river in the UK. 61 00:06:08,280 --> 00:06:16,600 And I think it, it was sort of stark to me, it was amazed me to say, I realized that 97% 62 00:06:16,600 --> 00:06:22,160 of the rivers in Britain are fragmented, which means they're sort of canalized and they 63 00:06:22,160 --> 00:06:28,520 have manmade barriers that have been installed there to control how the river flows, to control 64 00:06:28,520 --> 00:06:33,400 its speed in some places, to accelerate it in some places to sort of stall it a little 65 00:06:33,400 --> 00:06:36,800 more to sort of control the river. 66 00:06:36,800 --> 00:06:44,240 So I just want to say that Kay's description of the article is absolutely accurate. 67 00:06:44,240 --> 00:06:50,400 One of the things I want to highlight is that folks believe 200 years ago that straightening 68 00:06:50,400 --> 00:06:56,560 the river artificially, which means not allowing the river to flow where it wants to, would 69 00:06:56,560 --> 00:07:03,640 actually prevent flooding and increase the possibility of using the land, which is around 70 00:07:03,640 --> 00:07:10,280 the river, which is extremely rich in not just water, but nutrients for farming. 71 00:07:10,280 --> 00:07:13,800 Now that strategy succeeded, off and on. 72 00:07:13,800 --> 00:07:20,360 River flooding was actually seen as a positive thing because it enriches the soil, it clarifies 73 00:07:20,360 --> 00:07:22,760 the water quality. 74 00:07:22,760 --> 00:07:27,200 And that's how we live for 200 years. 75 00:07:27,200 --> 00:07:28,960 But here's the problem. 76 00:07:28,960 --> 00:07:35,520 We've got this other issue that's happening right now, which is climate change. 77 00:07:35,520 --> 00:07:41,760 And what climate change is doing per the article that got published in Earth's Future is that 78 00:07:41,760 --> 00:07:51,720 climate change is changing the amount of water that is falling in valleys, in places where 79 00:07:51,720 --> 00:07:52,720 rivers flow. 80 00:07:52,720 --> 00:07:54,760 Yeah, so let me explain that a little more. 81 00:07:54,760 --> 00:08:04,720 So when things were stable, when the rainfall was as it was 200 years ago, we could control 82 00:08:04,720 --> 00:08:09,480 the rivers flow by making these canals and everything else because they flowed a particular 83 00:08:09,480 --> 00:08:10,480 way. 84 00:08:10,480 --> 00:08:14,600 Things were stable in some historical sense. 85 00:08:14,600 --> 00:08:20,080 And what has happened, the opposite effect, which is what we're seeing now, which is that 86 00:08:20,080 --> 00:08:29,160 there's pronounced flooding that happens in these river systems today, as VK was pointing 87 00:08:29,160 --> 00:08:35,360 out because of climate unpredictable weather patterns, where we have enormous amounts of 88 00:08:35,360 --> 00:08:42,680 rainfall, because the morphology of the river now does not support the flow. 89 00:08:42,680 --> 00:08:50,240 And in physics, you think about flow as a volume and a speed of fluid moving through 90 00:08:50,240 --> 00:08:51,240 some areas. 91 00:08:51,240 --> 00:08:58,760 So there is some geometrical idea that comes into this naturally. 92 00:08:58,760 --> 00:09:02,880 One of the things I was thinking about, Kay, when you were mentioning this, is that if 93 00:09:02,880 --> 00:09:09,880 you drop water straight from a glass, it will flow down really quickly. 94 00:09:09,880 --> 00:09:17,920 But if you drop that same water onto a table first, it will flow across the table down 95 00:09:17,920 --> 00:09:22,600 to the floor, which essentially means it will flow slowly. 96 00:09:22,600 --> 00:09:29,240 And what we've done by straightening the rivers when there's a lot of water is that that water 97 00:09:29,240 --> 00:09:32,520 has gained a lot of speed. 98 00:09:32,520 --> 00:09:33,520 Indeed. 99 00:09:33,520 --> 00:09:39,840 And on the downstream consequences of those sort of high speeds is that it doesn't support 100 00:09:39,840 --> 00:09:43,040 some kind of fish. 101 00:09:43,040 --> 00:09:48,920 For instance, I think salmon and trout were sort of mentioned in the article as the fish 102 00:09:48,920 --> 00:09:54,880 that disappeared because the speed of the flowing water was too high. 103 00:09:54,880 --> 00:10:00,320 And so the article, of course, was about not just about the problem, but about the fix, 104 00:10:00,320 --> 00:10:02,400 which was so beautiful. 105 00:10:02,400 --> 00:10:03,920 You just add the wiggles back. 106 00:10:03,920 --> 00:10:04,920 Yeah. 107 00:10:04,920 --> 00:10:06,680 Let the river go. 108 00:10:06,680 --> 00:10:09,400 We all like let the river go. 109 00:10:09,400 --> 00:10:11,200 The river wants to curve. 110 00:10:11,200 --> 00:10:12,800 It wants to be wiggly. 111 00:10:12,800 --> 00:10:15,240 It wants to be chaotic. 112 00:10:15,240 --> 00:10:22,520 And to me, there is a real beauty in that response, right? 113 00:10:22,520 --> 00:10:30,400 Because for 200 years, we did what we needed to do for economic progress. 114 00:10:30,400 --> 00:10:34,920 And now the answer is to go back to the way things were. 115 00:10:34,920 --> 00:10:40,920 And one of the things I want to make clear is that these problems come in about because 116 00:10:40,920 --> 00:10:48,040 climate change has made it so that there's tons of water in the hurricanes. 117 00:10:48,040 --> 00:10:51,880 There is like the rains and that's that's pouring down. 118 00:10:51,880 --> 00:10:52,880 That's right. 119 00:10:52,880 --> 00:10:56,920 Because the atmosphere can hold water better when it's warmer. 120 00:10:56,920 --> 00:10:59,640 And it's going to therefore dump it back when it's raining. 121 00:10:59,640 --> 00:11:00,640 Yeah. 122 00:11:00,640 --> 00:11:04,800 So they're like saturated sponges, you know, and they're like like dumping it all. 123 00:11:04,800 --> 00:11:11,400 And because the rivers are straight, they can't hold the water in their banks. 124 00:11:11,400 --> 00:11:18,320 Now if they were curvy, that same water would flow more gently, which means it would not 125 00:11:18,320 --> 00:11:20,080 overflow the banks. 126 00:11:20,080 --> 00:11:25,200 The other thing that's very important is to remember that when rivers hit their flood 127 00:11:25,200 --> 00:11:27,880 plain, they actually like to split up. 128 00:11:27,880 --> 00:11:28,880 Yeah. 129 00:11:28,880 --> 00:11:33,200 And you know, and this happens in nature all over the place because you can see this 130 00:11:33,200 --> 00:11:40,080 in geological structures, you can see this in biological structures where natural processes 131 00:11:40,080 --> 00:11:46,360 will somehow increase what we think of as sort of surface area or, you know, sort of 132 00:11:46,360 --> 00:11:50,560 because of the curviness, the length of the river is starting to change the length around 133 00:11:50,560 --> 00:11:51,640 the edges. 134 00:11:51,640 --> 00:11:55,800 And that's exactly what we need because it absorbs water better. 135 00:11:55,800 --> 00:12:04,040 It allows leaky wood trees to sort of, you know, be formed around them, which which just 136 00:12:04,040 --> 00:12:07,680 form natural sort of barriers again to absorbing excess water. 137 00:12:07,680 --> 00:12:13,400 So they're just more efficient to contain extra water that we have all the time now. 138 00:12:13,400 --> 00:12:14,400 Yeah. 139 00:12:14,400 --> 00:12:19,800 And one of the things that the article talked about was some of the like natural flood management 140 00:12:19,800 --> 00:12:22,880 techniques, which is what Kay is talking about. 141 00:12:22,880 --> 00:12:29,920 And one of them is allowing beaver pens and actually like allowing beavers to make their 142 00:12:29,920 --> 00:12:34,640 pens because their pens are made out of wood. 143 00:12:34,640 --> 00:12:40,000 That would actually like literally forces the water to slow down. 144 00:12:40,000 --> 00:12:47,680 The other thing is to allow tree planting around rivers so that trees shed wood into 145 00:12:47,680 --> 00:12:54,960 the ground into the ground into the water again, just adding a natural barrier that 146 00:12:54,960 --> 00:12:55,960 over time decay. 147 00:12:55,960 --> 00:13:01,760 So it's not like, you know, you're pouring concrete, which you can't change, but naturally 148 00:13:01,760 --> 00:13:03,200 adding a barrier. 149 00:13:03,200 --> 00:13:09,520 And the other one, of course, which I thought was really interesting is that rewiggling 150 00:13:09,520 --> 00:13:10,640 of the river. 151 00:13:10,640 --> 00:13:11,720 That's exactly right. 152 00:13:11,720 --> 00:13:18,520 And I found sort of a sister article from this one, which was that they did this rewiggling 153 00:13:18,520 --> 00:13:20,440 or maybe it was in this article itself. 154 00:13:20,440 --> 00:13:22,320 I can't recall now. 155 00:13:22,320 --> 00:13:29,080 In 2016, they literally sort of used some length of the river to go back and, you know, 156 00:13:29,080 --> 00:13:34,920 stretch it out and use tractors and just excavators to change the shape. 157 00:13:34,920 --> 00:13:39,760 And in three months, the salmon and the trout were back. 158 00:13:39,760 --> 00:13:46,480 And that's because when the water is moving at speed, right, like some of the aquatic 159 00:13:46,480 --> 00:13:54,160 life that fish feed on, like frogs and tadpoles, can't live in that water because that water 160 00:13:54,160 --> 00:13:57,560 won't support the things that they eat. 161 00:13:57,560 --> 00:14:01,080 And so, you know, like this is this is part of the issue, right? 162 00:14:01,080 --> 00:14:07,200 Like when we intervene, we've got to be really careful that we understand the connections 163 00:14:07,200 --> 00:14:10,400 between all parts of the ecosystem. 164 00:14:10,400 --> 00:14:14,640 So the fish are back because the tadpoles are back and the tadpoles are back because 165 00:14:14,640 --> 00:14:18,360 the aquatic, the plants are back, right? 166 00:14:18,360 --> 00:14:21,760 So they're all connected to each other. 167 00:14:21,760 --> 00:14:30,120 The other thing that I loved about this article in the BBC was the fact that one of the one 168 00:14:30,120 --> 00:14:36,600 of the researchers literally said rivers have to be dynamic and chaotic. 169 00:14:36,600 --> 00:14:38,560 How beautiful is that? 170 00:14:38,560 --> 00:14:42,440 That nature loves chaos and it wants to be a little bit chaotic. 171 00:14:42,440 --> 00:14:45,120 It needs to roam free, y'all. 172 00:14:45,120 --> 00:14:47,680 It just needs to do its own thing. 173 00:14:47,680 --> 00:14:53,680 And by adding bends or allowing rivers to curve, we actually like slow down the flow 174 00:14:53,680 --> 00:14:59,320 of the water as well as the volume of the water in any one place, right? 175 00:14:59,320 --> 00:15:01,520 Which is what prevents the flooding. 176 00:15:01,520 --> 00:15:02,520 Yeah. 177 00:15:02,520 --> 00:15:03,600 Thanks, VK. 178 00:15:03,600 --> 00:15:08,040 That was all of those great points. 179 00:15:08,040 --> 00:15:11,600 How are we going to get there? 180 00:15:11,600 --> 00:15:15,680 There were a couple of thoughts that followed from this article. 181 00:15:15,680 --> 00:15:20,800 But before we get into that, let's talk about the other piece that both of us found quite 182 00:15:20,800 --> 00:15:23,840 intriguing about this work. 183 00:15:23,840 --> 00:15:31,280 The first thing that popped up was there was no cited literature in this article. 184 00:15:31,280 --> 00:15:33,080 There was no primary citation. 185 00:15:33,080 --> 00:15:40,120 So we had to dig around a little bit to find the science, so to speak, in this area. 186 00:15:40,120 --> 00:15:42,320 And it was catershot at best. 187 00:15:42,320 --> 00:15:49,560 So I'm not a geologist and I'm not an expert in water management. 188 00:15:49,560 --> 00:15:54,880 But it's fairly easy to look around and find literature in areas. 189 00:15:54,880 --> 00:16:03,480 And it took a long time to find articles that connected to this piece of reporting. 190 00:16:03,480 --> 00:16:07,000 Yeah, KK, I'm just, thank you for mentioning that. 191 00:16:07,000 --> 00:16:09,680 I'm just like heartbroken about this, y'all. 192 00:16:09,680 --> 00:16:16,800 Like, as I say in every episode, I love science and I genuinely thought like, oh, this is 193 00:16:16,800 --> 00:16:17,800 important research. 194 00:16:17,800 --> 00:16:22,040 Like, I'll go look and there'll be like 5,000 articles. 195 00:16:22,040 --> 00:16:27,680 And it was shocking to me how difficult it was to find the stuff that we did find, how 196 00:16:27,680 --> 00:16:34,040 difficult it was to read the material, how difficult it was to understand it. 197 00:16:34,040 --> 00:16:40,640 And then it's just the volume of the work that exists in Europe versus the United States. 198 00:16:40,640 --> 00:16:43,600 Like, there's a big difference, y'all. 199 00:16:43,600 --> 00:16:45,800 Like, they're doing a lot more work on this than... 200 00:16:45,800 --> 00:16:52,000 But even in Europe, I mean, it's not concerted and it's certainly not what I would think 201 00:16:52,000 --> 00:16:58,600 of as a thriving sort of a scientific area of work and contribution. 202 00:16:58,600 --> 00:17:03,200 So that was very interesting to see. 203 00:17:03,200 --> 00:17:10,840 Though, well, a couple of things did show up unequivocally in some senses from literature. 204 00:17:10,840 --> 00:17:17,080 One of the things is that over the past 200 years, industrial demands is kind of sort of 205 00:17:17,080 --> 00:17:21,880 one of the big reasons why this has happened in terms of sort of taming the river, so to 206 00:17:21,880 --> 00:17:22,880 say. 207 00:17:22,880 --> 00:17:28,240 And it made me wonder whether this was sort of partially lobbied or funded and controlled 208 00:17:28,240 --> 00:17:30,920 in some way. 209 00:17:30,920 --> 00:17:34,160 And that would be sad if that were true. 210 00:17:34,160 --> 00:17:41,000 But industrialization causes straightening is not something that scientists are afraid 211 00:17:41,000 --> 00:17:42,000 of saying anymore. 212 00:17:42,000 --> 00:17:44,920 So they're certainly reporting that in literature. 213 00:17:44,920 --> 00:17:51,120 And then the other thing that really sort of also is this clear is that we have what's 214 00:17:51,120 --> 00:17:56,320 called compound flooding as they call it from here, which is both coastal and riverine flooding, 215 00:17:56,320 --> 00:18:01,800 which is floods that come out from the coasts because there are hurricanes or winds. 216 00:18:01,800 --> 00:18:05,720 And then there's also rain that sort of just swells water bodies like rivers and that floods 217 00:18:05,720 --> 00:18:06,720 together. 218 00:18:06,720 --> 00:18:09,240 And so they call these compound flooding events. 219 00:18:09,240 --> 00:18:14,960 And that's also reportedly gone up clearly over the past few years. 220 00:18:14,960 --> 00:18:17,960 So that's the literature and that's the science right now. 221 00:18:17,960 --> 00:18:23,000 Yeah, I mean, and I don't want to talk a little bit about compound flooding because to me that 222 00:18:23,000 --> 00:18:29,920 was a really interesting article was published in Earth's Future, which is an open source 223 00:18:29,920 --> 00:18:30,920 journal. 224 00:18:30,920 --> 00:18:35,160 We link that to the episode description. 225 00:18:35,160 --> 00:18:41,000 Yeah, we'll link all these articles because you know, in this particular episode especially 226 00:18:41,000 --> 00:18:42,400 it was hard to find some of this. 227 00:18:42,400 --> 00:18:44,840 So we'll try to put out as much as we can for this. 228 00:18:44,840 --> 00:18:52,120 But essentially what that article is saying is that as seas get warmer, when there are 229 00:18:52,120 --> 00:18:56,880 storms, these storms gather up more water. 230 00:18:56,880 --> 00:19:03,680 Essentially even as these storms move inland, that water drops to the soil, which means it 231 00:19:03,680 --> 00:19:06,800 goes into the river because water finds water. 232 00:19:06,800 --> 00:19:08,440 That's what it does. 233 00:19:08,440 --> 00:19:13,800 And the water that finds the rivers is like the volume is much higher. 234 00:19:13,800 --> 00:19:20,040 And because of that, if you've got a coastal hurricane, you're going to see some flooding 235 00:19:20,040 --> 00:19:28,000 inland because of the sheer volume of water due to the warmth, right? 236 00:19:28,000 --> 00:19:34,480 So the other thing that I thought also that was worthy mentioning here is that this was 237 00:19:34,480 --> 00:19:40,040 an article from Nature in 2019 that historical sort of patterns for rainfall and water catchment 238 00:19:40,040 --> 00:19:41,480 areas have changed significantly. 239 00:19:41,480 --> 00:19:45,000 And this was based in Europe again. 240 00:19:45,000 --> 00:19:47,960 But you know, and it has gone both ways. 241 00:19:47,960 --> 00:19:51,040 In some places it's increased to over 11%. 242 00:19:51,040 --> 00:19:53,960 And in other places it's decreased by 23%. 243 00:19:53,960 --> 00:20:01,680 So this impacts sort of human living conditions because we've evolved our societies and our 244 00:20:01,680 --> 00:20:06,280 cities and our towns around natural water bodies all the time. 245 00:20:06,280 --> 00:20:12,200 So this is, you know, it's obviously impactful and something that we all have to take sort 246 00:20:12,200 --> 00:20:13,960 of a little more seriously. 247 00:20:13,960 --> 00:20:19,440 And one would hope that they would be a little more hard science because I think we have the 248 00:20:19,440 --> 00:20:27,520 tools as just a matter of sort of finding out how to work it together and finding motivation 249 00:20:27,520 --> 00:20:30,200 and funding, I would imagine to sort of keep this going. 250 00:20:30,200 --> 00:20:31,200 Yeah, okay. 251 00:20:31,200 --> 00:20:36,240 I'm going to talk about that a little bit later because I do have some thoughts. 252 00:20:36,240 --> 00:20:42,800 But right now what I do want to say is that the Nature article in particular, right, like 253 00:20:42,800 --> 00:20:48,000 the one that Kay was just talking about how there's increased water in some places and 254 00:20:48,000 --> 00:20:50,080 decreased water in others, right. 255 00:20:50,080 --> 00:20:55,720 And that's part of the confusion that a lot of people have that, you know, locally, I'm 256 00:20:55,720 --> 00:20:58,360 not seeing more water, right. 257 00:20:58,360 --> 00:21:01,160 Like that was a response in Nashville too, right. 258 00:21:01,160 --> 00:21:02,880 Like how did we get flooded? 259 00:21:02,880 --> 00:21:03,880 Yeah. 260 00:21:03,880 --> 00:21:08,520 So that's happened in Southern Europe and Eastern Europe. 261 00:21:08,520 --> 00:21:12,640 They've lost sort of their dryer, they're not as wet. 262 00:21:12,640 --> 00:21:18,440 So people living in areas like that start to imagine that this is, well, it can be right. 263 00:21:18,440 --> 00:21:19,760 You know, I'm not getting more water. 264 00:21:19,760 --> 00:21:23,040 So certainly not flooding here, but it's local. 265 00:21:23,040 --> 00:21:25,040 These phenomena are local. 266 00:21:25,040 --> 00:21:32,480 And we're sort of, as you mentioned earlier, these are chaotic, complex systems. 267 00:21:32,480 --> 00:21:36,920 That complex system part is the one that I want to unpack a little bit. 268 00:21:36,920 --> 00:21:41,680 What that essentially means, let me try and explain it in human terms because that's what 269 00:21:41,680 --> 00:21:43,960 I understand best. 270 00:21:43,960 --> 00:21:53,320 If you are a member of a family and your parent or your child is having a tough time, they 271 00:21:53,320 --> 00:21:56,440 are having mental health problems. 272 00:21:56,440 --> 00:21:59,040 You're going to be impacted. 273 00:21:59,040 --> 00:22:01,960 Even if it's not happening to you. 274 00:22:01,960 --> 00:22:12,040 And if you use that idea in nature, something that's happening 250 miles away could impact 275 00:22:12,040 --> 00:22:15,840 you because everything in nature is interconnected. 276 00:22:15,840 --> 00:22:18,880 Yeah, that's well put, VK. 277 00:22:18,880 --> 00:22:25,000 So you know, let me try to do the technical piece here about complex systems and chaos 278 00:22:25,000 --> 00:22:26,440 really quickly. 279 00:22:26,440 --> 00:22:34,440 The idea is that when you have simple systems, you know, something even as simple as in many 280 00:22:34,440 --> 00:22:41,200 of our physics classes that we use as a model as a ticking pendulum, when you have multiple 281 00:22:41,200 --> 00:22:46,480 of the same objects, you have multiple pen, you know, bobs that are ticking away. 282 00:22:46,480 --> 00:22:53,760 If you just connect them, you're going to see completely chaotic, crazy motion sometimes. 283 00:22:53,760 --> 00:22:55,880 That's kind of sort of what we're talking about here. 284 00:22:55,880 --> 00:23:04,080 The weather is an interplay of small basic localized pockets of systems that are all 285 00:23:04,080 --> 00:23:08,240 interconnected, just like our brains. 286 00:23:08,240 --> 00:23:16,160 And just like many biological sort of systems, our bodies and hills, all of these possess 287 00:23:16,160 --> 00:23:18,800 the same features in some sense. 288 00:23:18,800 --> 00:23:21,520 And that's kind of what we think about as complex systems. 289 00:23:21,520 --> 00:23:28,880 These systems can be inherently chaotic, but yet extremely stable for very long periods 290 00:23:28,880 --> 00:23:29,960 of time. 291 00:23:29,960 --> 00:23:35,240 And then suddenly just dissolve away and sort of move into other patterns. 292 00:23:35,240 --> 00:23:42,000 Yeah, I when you were describing the multiple pendulum strung together, I was actually thinking 293 00:23:42,000 --> 00:23:45,080 of like a box full of tennis balls, right? 294 00:23:45,080 --> 00:23:49,920 Like if you shake the box, you don't, you don't know where they'll fall. 295 00:23:49,920 --> 00:23:52,360 They'll stay contained, but you don't know. 296 00:23:52,360 --> 00:23:57,560 So if you mark a tennis ball, you put it in a box full of like multiple tennis balls and 297 00:23:57,560 --> 00:24:00,760 you shake the box up, you won't know where your balls going to end up. 298 00:24:00,760 --> 00:24:02,440 And that's the chaotic piece of it. 299 00:24:02,440 --> 00:24:06,920 And they're still in the same box though, and they're all connected to each other. 300 00:24:06,920 --> 00:24:10,680 And the very fact that they're connected is what causes the chaos. 301 00:24:10,680 --> 00:24:15,280 So the problem we've got right now is that we know the seas are getting warmer, which 302 00:24:15,280 --> 00:24:18,400 means the hurricanes have more water. 303 00:24:18,400 --> 00:24:22,640 But what has got to go somewhere where it's going to go? 304 00:24:22,640 --> 00:24:25,080 That depends on a whole host of other factors. 305 00:24:25,080 --> 00:24:35,240 But what we know, we understand is that allowing rivers to curve to become wiggly to bend is 306 00:24:35,240 --> 00:24:38,040 a potential solution to the flooding. 307 00:24:38,040 --> 00:24:44,560 Yeah, the straight line approach is not always the best one that nature has told us or no 308 00:24:44,560 --> 00:24:50,120 more again, a straight line is probably a human construct that we need to understand 309 00:24:50,120 --> 00:24:52,560 to wiggle a little ourselves. 310 00:24:52,560 --> 00:24:53,560 I agree. 311 00:24:53,560 --> 00:25:00,120 I had to do tons of wiggling over this one because y'all, I was shocked. 312 00:25:00,120 --> 00:25:04,680 I was shocked at the smaller model literature that I could find. 313 00:25:04,680 --> 00:25:10,160 I was uncomfortable that I could not like, you know, cite like multiple resources like 314 00:25:10,160 --> 00:25:11,240 the stuff that I do. 315 00:25:11,240 --> 00:25:12,760 And this is okay. 316 00:25:12,760 --> 00:25:19,040 This is a little bit of a rant, but this is part of the problem is, you know, who's funding 317 00:25:19,040 --> 00:25:21,080 the research, right? 318 00:25:21,080 --> 00:25:23,960 And what are they funding? 319 00:25:23,960 --> 00:25:28,880 And who's stopping folks from talking about the solutions instead of just talking about 320 00:25:28,880 --> 00:25:29,880 the problems? 321 00:25:29,880 --> 00:25:32,920 Because the solutions are being implemented in Germany. 322 00:25:32,920 --> 00:25:35,560 They're being implemented in the UK. 323 00:25:35,560 --> 00:25:38,200 And we'll link those articles so you all can see them. 324 00:25:38,200 --> 00:25:43,000 Well, yes, and, you know, I'll just sort of add to that, even in Europe, which has by 325 00:25:43,000 --> 00:25:51,360 far way more sort of peer reviewed journal articles on this subject matter, even there, 326 00:25:51,360 --> 00:25:57,920 the approaches that are getting implemented are being done locally, you know, they're, 327 00:25:57,920 --> 00:26:02,280 it's privately done in some sort of English castle. 328 00:26:02,280 --> 00:26:08,520 I read an article, it was done in a small town in Germany where they had wastewater and sewage 329 00:26:08,520 --> 00:26:10,920 sort of pollution in the river. 330 00:26:10,920 --> 00:26:14,760 So they had to clean up 85 kilometers of that river. 331 00:26:14,760 --> 00:26:18,720 They used all these techniques mentioned by the BBC article there. 332 00:26:18,720 --> 00:26:22,960 It costs money, but it brought in 1400 jobs to that town. 333 00:26:22,960 --> 00:26:27,160 So you know, there is sort of, there's meaning in all of this, we can, we can actually do 334 00:26:27,160 --> 00:26:30,040 this if we decide to. 335 00:26:30,040 --> 00:26:34,560 We got to be stewards of nature, I feel, rather than sort of overlords. 336 00:26:34,560 --> 00:26:39,880 Well, and also I'll just, I'll just say this, that, you know, there's also the other issue 337 00:26:39,880 --> 00:26:40,880 that we've got to consider. 338 00:26:40,880 --> 00:26:48,840 Either we spend the money trying to clean up after a flooding event, or we spend the money 339 00:26:48,840 --> 00:26:51,440 preventing flooding events, right? 340 00:26:51,440 --> 00:26:53,600 Like those are our options. 341 00:26:53,600 --> 00:26:56,120 And there are solutions available, right? 342 00:26:56,120 --> 00:26:57,320 And we can all use them. 343 00:26:57,320 --> 00:26:59,280 Like I was excited to see the solutions. 344 00:26:59,280 --> 00:27:01,640 A stitch in time saves nine. 345 00:27:01,640 --> 00:27:02,640 Yeah. 346 00:27:02,640 --> 00:27:06,320 And like the thing that broke my heart was like those solutions exist. 347 00:27:06,320 --> 00:27:10,960 And it's not the science that's picking this up. 348 00:27:10,960 --> 00:27:13,560 It's, you know, folks doing their own thing. 349 00:27:13,560 --> 00:27:15,480 Yeah, volunteers mainly. 350 00:27:15,480 --> 00:27:16,600 Yeah. 351 00:27:16,600 --> 00:27:20,600 So that's, that's our discussion for today. 352 00:27:20,600 --> 00:27:22,360 This was a pretty heavy one. 353 00:27:22,360 --> 00:27:24,960 And you know, that was our discussion for today. 354 00:27:24,960 --> 00:27:30,560 But for next week, I think we've got something that's really funky out there. 355 00:27:30,560 --> 00:27:31,560 Yeah. 356 00:27:31,560 --> 00:27:38,280 We're going to be talking about centipedes that are eight feet long. 357 00:27:38,280 --> 00:27:43,160 Yeah, stuff from all of the nightmare video games that I play. 358 00:27:43,160 --> 00:27:46,600 Yeah, I'm going to have nightmares all week. 359 00:27:46,600 --> 00:27:53,960 Do not forget to download, like, subscribe, send us an email if you like this. 360 00:27:53,960 --> 00:28:00,840 If you have questions, let us know, you know, how you feel about the episodes because we 361 00:28:00,840 --> 00:28:03,960 love talking to you all and we'd love to hear from you. 362 00:28:03,960 --> 00:28:04,960 Yep. 363 00:28:04,960 --> 00:28:07,000 I would echo everything VK said. 364 00:28:07,000 --> 00:28:11,640 It's great to see that people are actually enjoying some of the stuff and listening to 365 00:28:11,640 --> 00:28:12,640 this. 366 00:28:12,640 --> 00:28:13,640 So we'd love to hear from you guys. 367 00:28:13,640 --> 00:28:17,200 So take care and we'll see you next week. 368 00:28:17,200 --> 00:28:18,200 Take care, y'all. 369 00:28:18,200 --> 00:28:24,200 Bye.