0:00

Clouds. Known for

0:03

being fluffy. Famous for

0:05

being puffy or shapes. Nobody thinks

0:08

much about them so let's have some

0:10

fun. Let's find out why clouds are

0:13

secretly incredibly fascinating.

0:33

Hey there folks, welcome to a whole

0:35

new podcast episode, a podcast all about

0:37

why being alive is more interesting than

0:40

people think it is. My name is

0:42

Alex Schmidt and I'm not alone because

0:44

I'm joined by my co-host Katie Golden.

0:46

Katie, what is your relationship to or

0:49

opinion of clouds? They're

0:51

nice. They're fluffy. I always

0:53

want to eat them. You know, I remember

0:56

in Aladdin how they go on

0:58

a magic carpet ride and they're

1:00

sitting on the carpet and Aladdin

1:02

scoops up some cloud for

1:04

Jasmine. Like it's freaking cotton

1:06

candy. You can't do that.

1:09

They lied to me. So that frustrates

1:11

me. Like I want to sit on

1:13

a cloud. I want to eat a

1:15

cloud like it's soft serve and the

1:17

fact you can't that it's just like

1:20

water molecules in the sky is

1:22

super annoying. Yeah,

1:24

there's a story later in this where

1:27

we'll talk about a fine artistic representation

1:29

of clouds in a general way. Actually

1:31

two stories, but we won't really

1:33

talk about the many cartoon ones which are

1:35

probably the main way I think about them.

1:37

Like the tiny little rain cloud above a

1:39

sad or frustrated person is so iconic to

1:41

me just from cartoons and it has never

1:43

ever happened. It's cute.

1:45

It's fun the idea that

1:48

the weather itself would have a vendetta

1:50

against one guy and

1:53

just make that guy's life miserable. I do like

1:55

that. I like the sort of Greek God version

1:57

of the weather where it's like a cloud. has

2:00

just decided to mess with one guy's

2:02

day. And

2:05

I agree, we don't get to touch them like

2:07

Aladdin. They feel very remote. I really

2:09

like looking at them and they're just there.

2:11

Yeah. And it is the kind of thing

2:13

where when I notice it and I'm like,

2:15

I guess you'd call it mindful about it.

2:17

It feels good. When

2:20

I actually look at a cloud, I'm

2:22

like, that's amazing. I wish stuff besides

2:24

Catholic Church calendars really celebrated these clouds.

2:26

That would be good. Yeah,

2:29

I do. I do feel awe when I look at

2:31

clouds. I think it's interesting because like I'm somewhat

2:33

bored, I think, by cloud paintings, paintings of

2:36

clouds. But then when I see clouds that

2:38

look like a painting, I'm like, wow, I

2:40

like that. I like to see the real

2:42

clouds. Also, I think my

2:44

mom is a member of the Cloud

2:47

Appreciationist Society. Oh, there's something

2:49

called the yeah, the Cloud Appreciation. Oh,

2:51

good, good. Yeah, because my mom is

2:53

a proud member, a card carrying

2:55

member. She had I think she got like

2:57

a little card. Oh, that's great. I

3:00

just know that when I see a cloud,

3:02

I'm like, that one looks good or that

3:04

one. I don't know. It's

3:06

nothing special. Yeah. Yeah. And

3:08

the other thing to say about the format today is

3:11

we won't talk about the most basic

3:13

meteorology in a science class stuff very

3:15

much like we're not going to break

3:17

down the water cycle that much. That's

3:20

just textbook stuff. We'll get into the

3:22

weirdest stuff and wildest stuff. So also

3:24

cloud names might come up, but we're

3:26

not being encyclopedic about it. Right.

3:28

Clouds is made out of water, water

3:31

molecules, water vapor, and it poops water

3:33

back down at the Earth and then

3:35

water evaporates and makes clouds again, then

3:37

it pops back down into words again

3:39

over and over. Water cycle, that's all

3:41

you need to know. Yeah, that's it.

3:44

And on every episode, our first fascinating thing

3:47

about the topic is a quick set of

3:49

fascinating numbers and statistics. This week, that's in

3:51

a segment called, does anybody

3:54

really know what stats it is?

3:57

Do any numbers really count for

3:59

the. I

4:02

feel like I need to learn how to play

4:04

the saxophone and

4:07

contribute more to this

4:09

podcast. That was

4:11

the band Chicago. I think they have saxes. That

4:13

makes sense. And thank you, Ivan Jahovsky, for that

4:16

idea. We have a new name for this segment

4:18

every week. Please make a Massilian Wacky and Bad

4:20

as possible. Submit through Discord or to [email protected]. And

4:23

if you mail a saxophone to Turin, maybe that

4:25

gets Katie going. You know, that's also a thing

4:27

you could do. I

4:30

might just put a piece

4:32

of wax paper on a comb and do...

4:39

Because I think that's all I could

4:41

probably manage. But yeah, so yeah, let's

4:43

get into these cloud statistics. Yeah,

4:46

and we'll start with something we've been talking about.

4:48

The first number is the year 2003. The

4:52

year 2003, that is when

4:55

a British magazine editor named

4:57

Gavin Prater-Penney took a

4:59

works sabbatical and moved to Rome. OK,

5:02

why do we care about this guy?

5:05

This life change led him to found the

5:07

Cloud Appreciation Society. Oh, OK. What's

5:10

this fellow's name again? His

5:12

name's Gavin Prater-Penney. And

5:15

one source later in the show will be one of

5:17

his books. It's called The Cloud Spotting Guide. Within

5:21

the last, as you can tell, 20 years

5:23

from that date, he's become a leading advocate

5:25

of appreciating clouds in kind of a tongue

5:27

in cheek way, but also a sincere way,

5:29

because it really is nice. Yeah,

5:33

I'm not like super passionate about

5:35

clouds, but I am super passionate

5:37

about birds. And I

5:39

totally know the feeling of like when you're just like,

5:41

man, I just love looking at like birds and hearing

5:43

birdsong and trying to pick out like when I hear

5:45

a bird and then I'm like, oh, what was that?

5:48

And then like I mentioned it to my husband, he's

5:50

like, I didn't I didn't notice anything.

5:52

I'm not I'm not like locked in on birds

5:54

like you are. And it's like, why

5:56

aren't you? Everyone should be. Everyone

5:58

should be always constantly aware. the birds

6:00

around. And so I really do

6:02

sympathize with like the feeling of

6:04

like, I think people should be

6:06

aware of clouds more. Yeah,

6:09

that's so this has been

6:11

written up a few places. My favorite is

6:13

a piece by an amazing writer named John

6:16

Mualim. It's in his essay collection titled Serious

6:18

Face. He writes about

6:20

Gavin Pretter Penny is burned

6:22

out from the pace of his work as a

6:24

magazine editor and publisher. So he trades his apartment

6:26

in London for a place in Rome, and he

6:29

starts hanging out in the art museums of Rome.

6:32

And as he especially looks at religious

6:34

art, he noticed there's amazing clouds in

6:36

that stuff. They love a semi

6:39

illuminated cloud. I mean, I'm telling

6:41

you having a cloud that's semi

6:43

illuminated. Oh, yeah, that

6:46

really gets those Jesus feelings going. Yeah,

6:52

God is the ultimate. I

6:54

think the Hollywood position is key grip.

6:56

Hmm. Whoever does the lighting like just

6:58

perfect angle that on that cloud. Yeah.

7:01

Yeah, I don't know. Boy, neither

7:04

of us have done much lighting or sound. Neither

7:06

of us does movies. Pretter

7:11

Penny described it as voluptuous

7:13

clouds like the sofas of the

7:15

saints, which I really like. Voluptuous

7:18

clouds. Yeah, it's kind of

7:20

a sexy cloud at that point. And that's fine. Yeah,

7:22

you know what? Look, if you I

7:24

can think of worse things to sexualize.

7:27

So Pretter Penny would step out of these

7:29

art museums in Rome and say, Oh, no,

7:32

the Mediterranean relatively clear skies. I miss

7:35

the cloud cover of England and getting

7:37

to see clouds a lot more. But

7:40

he at the end of his sabbatical, he goes

7:42

back to England. The next year, he gets invited

7:44

to speak at a literary conference, just

7:47

about whatever he wants. And he

7:49

says, I'm going to do a gimmick

7:51

where I claim this is the inaugural

7:53

lecture of the cloud appreciation society. That

7:56

doesn't exist. I'm just going to claim that's what's going

7:58

on. He drew a

8:00

huge audience and people asked him how to join

8:02

after the lecture. They were like, this club is

8:05

great. Can I join? And he said,

8:07

it doesn't exist. But so

8:09

then he made it exist. He made a

8:11

website, photo galleries of clouds, a manifesto about

8:13

clouds. And he offered

8:15

an annual membership with a physical mailed

8:17

certificate and got 2000 signups in

8:20

the first few months and then a lot more from there. Okay,

8:22

is this a cult? Is my mom in a cult?

8:26

It's such a pleasant club. It's just so

8:28

good. And it's from a

8:32

pretty good era of the internet. Apparently

8:34

the big spark for this was in 2005. It

8:37

got featured on the front of Yahoo. It's

8:40

that time online. There's not social media yet.

8:43

It's people just passing this stuff

8:45

around. When

8:48

a cat having bad grammar

8:50

and desiring cheeseburgers was the

8:52

pinnacle of comedy. It's

8:55

deeply cheeseburger. And then there's

8:57

a sidebar of a bunch

8:59

of slushy links and one of them is

9:01

this. Yeah, it's that kind of time for

9:03

better or worse. And more innocent time. Yeah.

9:06

So yeah, Gavin Pritter-Penny runs that

9:08

now professionally. And

9:11

I'll link off to cloudappreciationsociety.org, which is

9:13

fun. And the other number

9:15

here is 2017 because in 2017, the Cloud

9:17

Appreciation Society was able

9:22

to convince the world's cloud atlas

9:24

to add a new shape. It's

9:28

not an official big shape, but

9:30

it's like a subcategory supplementary sort

9:32

of shape that they added based

9:34

on their observations. A

9:36

new cloud shape, a new type of cloud.

9:39

Yeah, the name is Asperitus.

9:42

And it's considered to be

9:45

like a supplemental additional version

9:47

of an existing cloud shape

9:49

called Angelatus. Yeah,

9:51

I'm familiar. I'm not. I

9:53

don't know what it even says. And

9:56

since we're audio, that's one reason we won't

9:59

talk a lot about specific cloud. shape. Paint

10:01

a picture. No, you're trying

10:03

to get out of it too easy. Paint us

10:05

a picture with your words, Alex. Paint

10:09

a word painting. It's

10:11

like it's a big rolling dark

10:14

storm like cloud, like very flat

10:16

over the sky, but

10:18

the asperidous shape, it tends to form and

10:20

look a little threatening and rolling, but then

10:23

just dissipate and not actually be a storm.

10:25

It's like a giant sky manta

10:27

ray that dissolves. Yeah,

10:30

it is. They should have called it manta

10:32

rayus or something. It

10:36

seems like clouds are not

10:38

quite an obsession for most cultures.

10:40

Like they're just a nice thing.

10:42

Like if you're Christian, for example,

10:45

you're worshiping things and then decorating

10:47

them with clouds. The clouds are

10:49

not a central focus for anybody.

10:51

It's like the grass under a

10:53

figure on the ground. Like

10:56

since gods are in the sky, we dump

10:58

some clouds under them and then they sit on it. Yeah,

11:00

clouds is god's lawn. So

11:06

this society is nice. It's just

11:08

like, let's appreciate the art

11:10

that the sky is giving us really often.

11:13

Pivoting over into science. The

11:16

next number here is back

11:20

to gods. Next

11:22

number this week is 43,000 feet, which is

11:25

over 13,000 meters. 43,000 feet. That's the usual maximum

11:32

height of clouds on Earth. It's

11:34

not the absolute maximum, but most clouds are

11:36

at 43,000 feet or lower.

11:39

I see. What happens? Like why

11:42

can't they be higher than that? The

11:45

thinness of the air, but it

11:47

also means that when clouds are

11:49

above that, they just form a different shape. The

11:52

next number is as high as 279,000 feet. That's

11:54

even more feet. So not 43. 279,000

12:01

feet. That's 53 miles

12:03

or 85 kilometers. And

12:06

that's the highest clouds, the maximum.

12:09

It's a shape of cloud called

12:11

noctilucent clouds. Noctilucent.

12:14

Sounds cool. Paint, paint award

12:16

painting, Alex. There's

12:18

amazing photos if you just google it. We're

12:20

linking the Royal Museum's Greenwich. This

12:22

is a very, very wispy,

12:25

thin, very, very high altitude

12:27

cloud. And the main way

12:29

people see it from the ground with their

12:31

eyes is just after sunset.

12:34

So like just after sunset, when

12:36

the sun is just below the

12:38

horizon, that's sort of blocking the

12:40

rays coming straight at us, but

12:42

there are still rays peeking over

12:44

the horizon, illuminating the sky. And

12:47

in that few minutes, that's when we

12:49

tend to see noctilucent clouds the best

12:52

because the lighting is hitting those clouds

12:54

above us, but not at us. So

12:56

it's easiest for us to see. Wow.

12:58

So they're usually like a bluish or silverish color

13:00

because of that lighting and because of what they're

13:03

made of. Okay.

13:05

So it's like, kind of like the green

13:07

flash or something where there's only a very

13:09

specific period of time where you can see

13:11

them. Yeah, yeah. Like

13:13

you might see these in other conditions, but

13:16

the main way people see them and especially

13:18

do wonderful photographs of them

13:20

is that sort of slightly

13:22

post sunset time. So also there's something to

13:24

look at besides the sunset sometimes, if you're

13:26

looking at that, like maybe stick around for

13:28

the cloud show. Yeah. You know? Yeah.

13:31

Stick around folks for the cloud

13:33

show. Double feature. Yeah. Double

13:35

feature after the kids go

13:37

to bed, the noctilescence. Oh,

13:42

rated NC-17 for noctilucent

13:44

clouds. 17 of

13:46

them. Really great. Yeah.

13:50

That worked out. Anyway. The voluptuous clouds.

13:55

And the other thing about cloud altitude is

13:57

that, you know, most of them are adderable.

14:00

below 43,000 feet. And

14:02

so commercial airlines usually try to fly above

14:04

them. Unless they're

14:06

really reaching that upper limit, it's

14:09

convenient for the planes that we build to

14:11

go above clouds. And then they

14:13

fly faster and farther. There's less air resistance,

14:15

it's thinner air above the clouds. Right,

14:18

and then we get to see God's

14:20

lawn. Yeah, like my

14:22

other favorite cloud art is a huge Georgia

14:24

O'Keefe painting at the Art Institute of Chicago,

14:27

which is just based on her experience as

14:29

being in a plane above clouds. So it's

14:31

just a huge painting of stylized clouds from

14:33

above. And it's really cool. It's one of

14:35

the more remarkable human experiences. And we usually

14:37

just have a ginger ale and wait for

14:39

the flight to be over, you know? I

14:43

think it has, thanks, but it's amazing. Ginger

14:46

ale is such a universal thing, I guess to have

14:48

on planes. But yeah, I mean, it's

14:50

a, I don't love- The drink of the sky,

14:52

yeah. Yeah, I don't love

14:54

flying, cause like turbulence gives me

14:56

a tummy ache. And I

14:58

am a delicate little flower who loves the

15:01

ground. You're

15:03

like a ground cloud, which is fog, by the way.

15:05

Fog is that. Fog

15:08

is heavy clouds that fell

15:10

down. But yeah, I mean,

15:13

I do really enjoy looking at clouds like

15:15

from the plane. I mean, especially like when

15:17

there's like, you're in a plane kind of

15:19

during sunset, and then you get that kind

15:21

of like weird, like the

15:24

pink clouds or sunrise, you

15:26

know, it's really, really pretty, very

15:28

cool. But then there is like the

15:30

like part of my brain that is

15:33

still essentially there upon like

15:36

a just turned mammal

15:39

reptile is going like, no, no,

15:41

we gotta go down. Oh, we're

15:43

not supposed to be here. Tongue

15:46

flicking out in there. Cleaning

15:50

its eyes with its tongue like, no,

15:52

get us down. This

15:55

is how I soothe just huge tongue

15:57

sweeps. But

16:00

I yeah that is the danger and

16:02

the beauty you could say of being in

16:05

a plane because yeah I hate turbulence, but

16:07

but once you're just cruising it's suddenly yeah

16:09

very heavenly above the clouds You're like you

16:12

defeated the clouds now you get to look down

16:14

on them. It's good. I feel smug Another

16:17

number here. This is the most

16:20

amazing to me cloud formation thing

16:22

the number is one micrometer Mmm,

16:25

that sounds little is that tiny? Yeah,

16:28

that is a fraction of a meter. It's

16:30

one millionth of one meter or One

16:33

ten thousandth of a centimeter if

16:36

you're trying to understand so very tiny little Yeah,

16:39

one micrometer is the minimum

16:41

radius of an object at

16:43

the center of a cloud

16:45

droplet Which

16:48

I think is a mini take away number one Earth's

16:54

clouds are essentially just water,

16:56

but they cannot form without

16:58

a second ingredient In

17:02

order for the water that is almost

17:04

all of clouds to come

17:07

together It needs something to attach

17:09

to land on and this is

17:11

called a cloud condensation nucleus Hmm,

17:14

and it's not like a molecule

17:16

nucleus, but it's Something

17:19

relatively flat either liquid or

17:21

almost more often solid that's

17:23

extraordinarily tiny The most

17:26

common examples are smoke from buyers ocean

17:29

spray tiny specks of soil Just

17:32

like stuff from the ground usually

17:34

that gets swept up into the air is The

17:37

necessary second thing for the water in the

17:39

air to form cloud droplets So

17:41

you have like this tiny plate

17:44

made out of like sand or?

17:47

Yeah salt or something like some kind of

17:49

like Stuff

17:51

yeah, and then the cloud kind

17:53

of like it's like a seed

17:55

where the cloud forms around it

17:58

Yes, yeah, and once sources, the

18:01

NOAA, National Oceanic and Atmospheric

18:03

Administration, part of the US

18:05

government, and they say

18:07

that dirt, dust, salt crystals, something

18:10

like that is at the core

18:12

of every cloud droplet. And

18:14

then at the same time, it's

18:16

so tiny and so almost infinitesimal

18:20

that we still consider cloud droplets to be just

18:22

water. It's kind of there and not there at

18:24

the same time. Okay,

18:26

so it's like, so this nucleus is

18:29

at the center of every droplet in

18:31

a cloud. Yeah, and

18:33

it has to be there. Otherwise,

18:36

the water vapor in the air

18:38

doesn't condense into something. It just

18:40

remains just distributed in the air.

18:43

Just like humidity. Yeah,

18:45

yeah. So so clouds

18:47

do need a second ingredient to form

18:49

the droplets and the ingredient is so

18:52

negligible, we kind of act like it's

18:54

not there and just describe clouds as

18:56

water. It's a very strange concept

18:58

that I really like. So

19:00

like after say like fire or

19:02

something or like a volcanic eruption,

19:05

would you get a lot of

19:07

cloud formation because now there's more

19:09

stuff in the atmosphere and so

19:11

there's more chance that there's going

19:13

to be these teeny tiny particles

19:15

of carbon

19:17

or earth or whatever? Exactly.

19:20

Yeah. Yeah, it just needs to be

19:22

a what they call flatter surface that

19:25

is at least one micrometer and also

19:27

usually not a lot bigger than that

19:29

because also it would just fall

19:31

out of the air if it was too big. So

19:33

right, right. Yeah, that is necessary

19:36

for clouds. And this also

19:38

helps explain some of the more specific clouds in

19:40

the world, such as contrails

19:42

from aircraft. Back

19:45

to aircraft. The contrails are

19:47

clouds. There are conspiracy theories that it's

19:49

some sort of program to control people's

19:51

minds, but it's just clouds

19:53

because of this thing, because of how

19:55

clouds form. Right. So like

19:58

it's it's made out of. What

20:00

is the plane giving off that is

20:02

like the seed of these clouds? According

20:05

to Imperial College, London, it's because

20:07

when jet fuel burns, that

20:10

does leave behind more water, but it also

20:12

leaves behind tiny particles of soot. Mm.

20:15

Okay. And they are really, really small,

20:17

but that's the exact thing for clouds.

20:19

So in this space that the jet

20:21

engine was in, it's all of the

20:23

perfect things for a cloud all packed

20:25

together. So that's why there's a clear

20:27

contrail of cloud. I've

20:29

recently read like a conspiracy

20:31

series that all the clouds

20:33

have been replaced by contrails,

20:36

which is interesting because I thought, I

20:38

think I'd see some like clouds, but

20:41

that could also be like a government

20:43

projection. Like they're using a big projector

20:45

to like project fake clouds over

20:48

the contrail. So we don't notice that

20:50

all the clouds are contrails now. Someone

20:53

understand why contrails would be sort of

20:55

a conspiracy because it looks, I mean,

20:57

first of all, something like if there's

20:59

like a thing behind a plane, you're like,

21:02

that's plane farts. That can't be good for

21:04

me because like plane has fuel. And if

21:06

it's farting something out that that has to

21:08

be toxic. And also it's just

21:10

like this big thing in the sky or it's like

21:12

that's mankind shouldn't be

21:14

able to just do a new kind

21:17

of cloud. That doesn't make any sense.

21:20

Yeah, it's just us

21:22

putting clouds behind the paths of our

21:24

flying machines. But that's the more God

21:26

like stuff for sure. And it does

21:29

contribute to cloud cover in a climate

21:31

change way. It's not good for the

21:33

Earth. Yeah. Also

21:35

planes do produce emissions

21:37

like from from the

21:39

like that. That is a real thing. It's just

21:41

that the contrails

21:43

is not just it's not just

21:46

like pollution. It

21:48

is it's a cloud

21:50

forming around maybe like the like you

21:52

said, these micro particles that could be

21:54

considered pollution. But like the emissions, the

21:57

contrails are not just like the emissions from the

21:59

plane. Yes, that's right.

22:01

Yeah, it's like a separate cloud

22:04

phenomenon that's related. Yes.

22:06

And yeah, good news, not mind control. It's

22:09

almost cuter. It's just a cloud, in a sense,

22:12

you know? Not mind

22:14

control, just innocent

22:16

clouds. This

22:19

cloud condensation nucleus, it also helps

22:21

explain acid rain because

22:24

acid rain results when sulfur dioxide

22:26

and nitrogen oxides and other pollutants

22:28

like that are emitted. And

22:31

either from the ground or into the

22:34

air, then those can bond with water

22:36

or bound with things that become cloud

22:38

condensation nuclei. So what

22:40

you're saying is if

22:42

you could create microscopic plates made

22:44

out of chocolate and put them

22:46

in the air, we could get

22:48

chocolate rain? Oh, yeah.

22:50

Phasondi, yes. Yeah, but

22:53

I would like to get creative

22:55

with instead of having acid rain,

22:57

maybe we could have rain. Yeah,

23:00

I don't know, lemonade flavor. Ah, but then

23:02

it'd look like pea, so maybe not that.

23:04

But you get what I'm saying, right? If

23:07

we can make acid rain, why can't we make? Pennies

23:09

from heaven. Fun rain

23:12

or rain that's good or

23:15

something. Some

23:17

city like Boston or Chicago would do green

23:19

rain for St. Patrick's Day if they got

23:21

it together, you know? Yeah. For

23:23

the Irish that do it, yeah. Even

23:27

though it would look extremely polluted, it's

23:30

like, it's fun. We're Irish. Oh, we don't

23:32

care. Yeah. Nah,

23:34

yeah. Oddly, the next number

23:36

is two million tons. And

23:40

two million tons is an estimate

23:43

of the annual amount of bacteria

23:45

lofted by air currents into clouds.

23:49

Yummy. Two million.

23:51

And they also estimate tens of millions

23:53

of tons of fungal spores and

23:56

some unknown amount of algae. You

23:58

know, probably get brought up. with these specks

24:01

of something that become cloud condensation nuclei

24:03

and get lifted into clouds. They're probably

24:05

full of either living or

24:07

dead tiny life forms from the

24:10

earth. It's like a

24:12

sky kombucha. Cloud

24:17

bucha, sure. Cloud bucha,

24:19

sounds good, delicious. See, no, you're trying

24:21

to make me think clouds are gross,

24:23

but it just makes me want to

24:25

eat the clouds even more. Get all

24:27

those good probiotics. Usually

24:30

before researching, thought of clouds as just water.

24:32

I don't know, it's just

24:34

water. There's so much stuff up there

24:36

and not in a pollution way necessarily.

24:39

There's just stuff in clouds.

24:41

Yeah. I just hope you're not going to tell me

24:43

there's poop in the clouds. On

24:46

a micro level probably, yeah.

24:49

There's just a lot of micro everything up

24:51

in our clouds. Well,

24:54

I don't want

24:56

there to be poop clouds or pee pee

24:58

clouds, Alex. Yeah,

25:00

there's nano poop up there or something. Oh,

25:03

boy. The life forms

25:05

in particular, there's some debate

25:07

and study about what that means for

25:10

life on earth and our sources, Chemical

25:12

and Engineering News as well as BBC

25:14

Science Focus Magazine. There are

25:16

some pretty elaborate theories about this being

25:18

a huge deal, like that

25:21

some microscopic life forms are glad

25:23

to be swept up into clouds

25:25

and can thrive up there and

25:27

might even do a process called

25:30

bioprecipitation as a way of spreading from place to

25:32

place. Oh, that's exciting. It would

25:35

be really cool and could be what's going

25:37

on. Then there are also scientists who say

25:39

that this is just kind of

25:41

a big accident. Just stuff on the earth

25:43

becomes cloud condensation nuclei and there might be

25:45

bacteria on it. That's kind of it. Being

25:48

beamed up these little bacteria like, no,

25:50

no, no, no. Right.

25:53

Like We as larger life forms

25:55

do not get swept up into

25:57

clouds by accident. We're pretty fixed.

26:00

The Ground in a comfortable life.

26:02

Yeah yeah we can't really be

26:05

evaporated up. Yeah it's interesting because

26:07

the formation of lies actually has

26:09

a similar need as the formation

26:11

of a cloud which is you

26:14

need a plate you need like

26:16

a surface to canal like adhere

26:18

to well that is relatively calm

26:20

so that up for very delicate

26:22

protein change and form without it

26:25

getting like smashed. So like idea

26:27

of a primordial soup is complicated

26:29

by might be compromised by another

26:31

molecule just smashing. Into it. Ah

26:34

like a bowling ball. so if

26:36

you want like of protein tends

26:38

to form there's like this idea

26:40

of like a primordial baklava where

26:42

you have like sort of thin

26:45

layers of some tennis surface and

26:47

then protein shit like enough stuff

26:49

getting in there but then like

26:51

somehow the the chaos being com

26:54

the little bit biased, microscopic traffic

26:56

pumps or something and so that

26:58

you could have these said these

27:00

proteins inform but I'd be. Interested

27:03

in weather like there could be some

27:05

way in which. This. Cloud

27:08

bacterial distribution system could have because

27:10

like you know like if you

27:12

had life forming on certain parts

27:14

of the planet like what is

27:16

some of that was like evaporated

27:18

up and then rained down somewhere

27:20

and then distributed that waiting that

27:22

be very interesting. Primordial.

27:25

Baklava. Yeah. When

27:27

the carry that around a like. It

27:29

sounds tasty with the side of

27:31

sky com butcher. Year

27:34

it comes to Sky

27:36

Computers Apatow Jones. That.

27:38

Stability you describe either they

27:40

life forms are loving it.

27:43

Or. either very just upset and

27:46

this is essentially a danger

27:48

that happened to them yes

27:50

there's a quote from microbiology

27:52

cindy morris of france's national

27:54

institute of economic research she

27:56

says the bacteria in clouds

27:58

might be quote severely stressed

28:00

out passive passengers?" And

28:03

it could be both answers, right? Like there

28:06

might be some life forms where they're like,

28:08

great, I'm going to bio precipitate and propagate

28:10

myself. And other life forms are like, oh

28:12

no, goodbye everyone. I'm in a cloud

28:15

now. Yeah,

28:17

some are loving it, some aren't. Yeah, I mean,

28:20

that would be, it sounds like that's a really

28:22

interesting avenue of research. And I understand that when

28:24

you say that the bacteria are

28:27

stressed that you mean like they are not

28:30

in optimal conditions, so they're not healthy and

28:33

they're not thriving. But it is

28:35

really funny to think of like a little bacteria just

28:37

going like, oh my gosh, darn it. I didn't want

28:39

to be in a cloud today. This is the last

28:41

thing I need. It's

28:45

like our bit about an upset reptile

28:48

cleaning its eyes in the plant. Yeah,

28:50

like, yeah, thanks. I'm

28:52

a ground life form guys. And

28:57

another thing about life forms, there's another

28:59

mini takeaway here because mini takeaway number

29:01

two, clouds

29:06

protect life on earth as we know it.

29:10

This is like not just the water

29:12

cycle thing of there being water around

29:14

it, but unlikely humans and most other

29:17

organisms could continue living on earth

29:19

if we stopped having clouds. Is

29:22

it necessary for what we've set up here? Is

29:25

it just because it'd be really boring

29:27

if we couldn't look up and see

29:30

like bunny shapes and like

29:32

that one looks like a tree and

29:34

that one looks like a giraffe. Right,

29:37

clouds are necessary visual advertising for various

29:39

species. If we didn't have that, we'd

29:42

stop even caring about bunnies and giraffes.

29:44

We'd be like whatever. Exactly. Yeah, not

29:46

reminded. So why is the

29:48

sun just too mean? Like

29:50

would it just kind of beat

29:52

us with its incredible,

29:55

incredible power? Yes,

29:57

that's the answer. Yeah. Oh,

29:59

okay. The most thrilling quote here

30:01

is meteorologist James Ladue of the

30:04

US NIST, National Institute of Standards

30:06

and Technology. He very

30:08

colorfully says, quote, clouds keep us from

30:10

being cooked alive. Oh,

30:13

we're really like cooking up

30:15

a nice stew today on this

30:17

episode. We've got Cloud Kombucha, we've

30:20

got Primordial Baklava, we've got Cooked

30:23

Life on Earth, All Life on Earth,

30:26

Cooked in sort of a giant casserole,

30:28

a huge spherical casserole. Yeah,

30:30

no, that's- Maybe we got a stew going

30:32

to quote Carl Weathers on Arrested Development.

30:34

Yeah. Rest in peace. All

30:36

right, peace. Yes, that, I

30:38

like not being cooked alive, so thank

30:40

you, Clouds. It's great,

30:43

yeah. And Clouds play a role in

30:45

climate change in general, but we need

30:47

some of them for the current Earth

30:49

temperature we are used to. It's

30:52

just like how carbon, like

30:54

greenhouse gases like carbon dioxide,

30:56

it's not that we

30:58

can survive without carbon dioxide. We

31:00

do need it. Plants

31:03

need it. It's an important thing. It's just

31:05

that when the balance is a skew, there's

31:08

problems. Yeah,

31:12

exactly. And scientists

31:14

recently kind of modeled this out. There's

31:17

a study that has also gotten a lot of

31:19

pushback. We don't know that this is the direction

31:21

things are going. But there was

31:23

one study in the journal Nature in 2019. They

31:27

predicted, hey, if the

31:29

current rise in global temperatures

31:31

continues, that could interrupt

31:33

or prevent a lot of our current

31:36

cloud formation, especially over oceans. We

31:38

might just have a lot less clouds on the Earth. This

31:42

study has been criticized as maybe being

31:44

too simplistic or focused on not enough

31:46

kinds of data. Also, some

31:48

media misreported it as no more clouds,

31:50

which is not what they're predicting either.

31:55

Here's just like a hot tip. If you

31:57

read like a news article that like is

31:59

referencing some kind of scientific research and it

32:01

sounds like just bonkers.

32:04

Do look at the actual study because

32:07

usually and you have to read like

32:09

the whole thing just you can look at the abstract

32:11

and discussion even just but sometimes when you

32:14

like actually look at the thing it's not

32:16

like no more clouds and just like there

32:18

would be like a 10% reduction in

32:21

the amount of nimbus spectacularis or whatever.

32:23

I don't know cloud names. Nimbus

32:27

is one. Yeah, yeah. Nimbus,

32:31

yeah. So people really overly ran with

32:33

this and also some people object to

32:35

it completely but in

32:37

the process they said, hey, if we stopped

32:39

having oceanic cloud cover and a lot of

32:41

the world is oceans so if we lost

32:43

a lot of our clouds what

32:46

would happen and they predicted that if

32:48

we stopped having those oceanic clouds that

32:51

would cause a massive further increase in temperatures

32:53

on the Earth. By about 8 degrees

32:56

Celsius. Which is

32:58

far too many. That's not good. Yeah, it's

33:00

a little bit too many. That

33:03

would be pretty devastating. Yeah,

33:05

because we're deeply concerned about a much smaller

33:07

rise in temperatures. So 8 would do

33:10

that thing James LaDuce says it would cook most of

33:12

the life on Earth. Yeah, we don't want to be

33:14

cooked. In

33:17

a lot of science fiction there's this

33:19

idea of like creating clouds, creating cloud

33:21

cover, scientists being able

33:23

to control the weather. That

33:26

was sort of the premise in

33:28

Cap Cradle was like using some

33:30

like seeding. Right? By

33:32

Kurt Vonnegut, yes. Yeah, yeah, yeah. I know.

33:35

Do you know this author Alex named Kurt Vonnegut?

33:39

Have you ever heard of this author? What

33:42

am I some kind of Kurt Vonner male?

33:44

No, not at all. Kurt Vonnegut has podcasts. We

33:48

have a lot of fun. Anyway.

33:50

I drew you guys in Kurt

33:52

Vonnegut. Remember that? You're

33:55

like, can you draw me as a Kurt Vonnegut? You

33:57

did. Yeah. Me and

33:59

everybody. Michael Swaim. It's

34:01

on hiatus because we're sort of out of material, but we

34:03

made a podcast called... He ran

34:05

out of books. Yeah, he's not a rat anymore. When's

34:08

he gonna come out with more books? But

34:10

we made a podcast called Kurt Vonneguy's

34:12

and our buddies Randall Maynard and Katie Golden

34:15

made the loco and drew a picture

34:17

of us and kind of the Vonnegut

34:19

heart style, which is so cool. Yeah.

34:22

It's one of my favorite forms of ever being drawn

34:24

is in Kurt Vonnegut style. It's so great. I'm

34:27

glad you liked it. But yeah, and

34:29

then also I think like, what is it? Snowpiercer

34:31

is this idea of them trying to like reverse

34:33

global warming by like, but

34:36

they did it too strong and now it's a

34:40

nice age and

34:43

everyone's a cannibal. There's

34:45

a PC game called Sid Meier's Alpha Centauri

34:47

and one action you can do in the

34:50

game is either put up a big mirror

34:52

to direct more light at the planet or

34:54

put up like a cloud cover to have

34:56

less light come into the planet. So like

34:58

control the climate. Yeah. We

35:01

can and probably should mention every piece

35:03

of media that has had some kind

35:05

of altering the weather theme in it.

35:07

But no, I mean, my point is

35:09

if we were in a situation where

35:11

we didn't have enough clouds, has there

35:13

ever been any like research on like,

35:15

how would you make a cloud or

35:17

how would you encourage cloud to form?

35:21

Yes. And that's that's our last number and

35:23

it ties into the thing because there's

35:25

more to it. What the

35:27

last number is between five and 15 percent.

35:31

That is a real thing between five and 15 percent. That's

35:34

the estimated increase in local precipitation.

35:37

If humans do a real technique called

35:40

cloud seeding. Yeah, man,

35:42

I got it. I got to emphasize. I do not.

35:45

I go into this thing completely blind. Alex

35:48

does all the nuts. It's just Alex does

35:50

such a good job at leading me down

35:52

the garden path that we

35:54

can segue so naturally. And

35:58

you're my good buddy. So, you know, I like Nirvana. And

36:00

that partly led me to bring this into the show. And

36:03

I don't use contrails to

36:05

read your mind. Instead

36:10

of a tiny rain cloud over me, it's a

36:12

tiny contrail plane just doing circles, spirals

36:15

in my eyes, just spirals. Ignore. Ignore

36:17

me. Ignore me. So

36:23

cloud seeding, this is real. And

36:26

it's a scientific process developed in the 1940s. It's

36:30

also gaining renewed popularity in the western US

36:32

to fight drought. The

36:34

way it works is people fly up to the

36:36

sky in airplanes. And they

36:38

fly up to an existing cloud. There has to

36:40

already be a cloud. We can't make that really.

36:43

But from the airplane, they spray

36:45

a compound called silver iodide. And

36:49

the silver iodide causes a reaction where some

36:51

cloud droplets freeze together and turn into snowflakes

36:53

and precipitate. They're usually rain by the time

36:56

they hit the ground. But

36:58

when we do this, we can increase the amount

37:00

of precipitation from a cloud. If we don't seed

37:02

the cloud, some of that water would just stay

37:04

up there. So we get 5% to 15% more rain.

37:08

Modest increase. That's interesting. I

37:11

mean, silver iodide,

37:14

is this OK? Can I drink

37:16

this and be OK? We

37:21

think it is OK. And we think it doesn't

37:24

change the water or change the rain. And

37:27

when people were developing this technology, that was one

37:29

of their two big fears. They were concerned that

37:31

they would create poison rain. And

37:34

they were also concerned that the

37:36

human intervention into clouds would cause

37:38

weather disasters all over the

37:40

world. Like somehow that would

37:42

wreck the whole climate and the whole weather. And

37:44

it doesn't really seem to. It seems to just

37:47

be OK. It's like a

37:49

Jurassic Park situation, but with clouds.

37:52

That movie would be so vibes. Like if you

37:54

had a cloud park, Nimbus

37:57

Park. They're

37:59

all. taking off their sunglasses in shock when a

38:02

cloud just starts to look more like a

38:04

dinosaur. That's it. Oh

38:06

my God, it's

38:09

a cloud. And

38:12

then it keeps shifting and the music goes away. Like,

38:14

oh, I guess, I guess that's temporary. Okay.

38:18

Yeah. Yeah. No,

38:20

I mean, I think that there's always this fear that,

38:22

and it's a justified fear that if we start tampering

38:25

with things like the weather

38:27

that it will become

38:30

sort of a runaway trolley and we

38:32

just, it'll start kind of having

38:34

problems. That was like the whole, I mean, I

38:36

guess I don't want to spoil the book if

38:38

someone wants to read it, but yeah, like Reed

38:40

Kask cradle kind of has an element of that.

38:43

And we spoil it on the Kurt Vannighese podcast.

38:45

We always do the whole book. So yeah. Yeah.

38:48

But you know, it's, it's, I think

38:50

like, and obviously I think that human

38:53

intervention has time and time again, proved

38:55

to often be disastrous in terms of

38:58

upsetting the delicate balance of,

39:00

of nature. So it's an

39:02

understandable fear, but it is interesting that

39:05

we essentially seem to, at

39:07

least for now, be able to get away

39:09

with seeding clouds and it doesn't screw things

39:11

up too much. I don't know though. Maybe

39:13

we'll find out later that it does. It's

39:16

just a surprisingly chill technology compared to

39:18

what it could have been. Yeah. Cause

39:21

cause we've been doing it on and off since the 1940s. And

39:24

if something really bad was going to happen, we'd

39:26

probably know by now. We can't promise

39:29

us fine, but yeah, you'd think so.

39:32

And the other last chill thing

39:34

about it is that this now

39:36

pretty much gets used for peaceful,

39:38

temporary rainfall increases, like for agriculture,

39:40

for droughts. It was first

39:43

developed as United States military technology. Of

39:45

course it was. What are we going to

39:47

do? Even on the Ruskies?

39:50

Like what, what was the idea? Like communism

39:54

very famously can't stand high

39:56

humidity. It was

39:58

like battlefield technology. The idea

40:00

was if we're going to be in a

40:03

combat area, we can either

40:05

form more clear clouds, right?

40:07

Like if we can get the cloud to rain itself

40:09

out, then we can have clear sky if we want.

40:13

They also thought maybe we can make clouds

40:15

bigger by doing something to them. And then

40:17

if like cover would help, we can have

40:20

that. The idea was can we control the

40:22

weather on the day of a battle by

40:24

using our air forces? Can

40:27

we make a cloud really big and

40:29

in the shape of a scary face

40:31

so they are too afraid to fight

40:33

us? That's so goofy. Man, like...

40:36

Yeah, and I'm in a SDR over the

40:38

Nazis. Yeah, yeah. I

40:41

have this like my pet conspiracy theory

40:43

is there's a lot of like scientists

40:45

who will pitch ideas for research that

40:47

they know is going to be more,

40:49

have better use for a non-military

40:52

kind of like situation, but

40:54

they know that to get funds,

40:56

they should go to the military because they've

40:58

got deep pockets. So they're like, oh yeah,

41:01

this cloud, sure, it could

41:04

fight some Russians. Yeah, you'd

41:06

stick some bullets

41:08

in this baby and you've got yourself a

41:10

weapon. Yeah,

41:14

that was kind of the mindset. And

41:17

they basically didn't follow through on that

41:19

because it just doesn't quite do that. No,

41:22

of course not. Of course it wouldn't. It's not a

41:24

thing. Of course it wouldn't work. What do you mean?

41:28

The other interesting thing about its background is

41:30

that there were two scientists at

41:33

General Electric who made the breakthrough of

41:35

silver iodide as the compound for

41:37

cloud seeding and the

41:39

scientists were named Vincent Schaeffer and

41:41

Bernard Vonnegut. Like

41:45

that was really the root

41:47

of Kurt Vonnegut's writing career was

41:49

his brother helping invent cloud seeding. There's

41:52

also an amazing non-fiction book about it

41:54

called The Brothers Vonnegut by writer Ginger

41:56

Strand like Bernard Vonnegut got Kurt one

41:58

of his day jobs by making him

42:01

a press guy at GE. The

42:03

book, Cat's Cradle, is particularly just kind

42:05

of describing his brother's work and life

42:07

in a science fiction way. And also,

42:10

Vonnegut's first ever published short story is

42:12

called Report on the Barnhouse Effects. And

42:15

it's an exaggerated sci-fi story where this

42:17

kind of scientist develops an ability to

42:19

move things and events in the world

42:22

with his mind. It's very

42:24

cool. It's neat. Yeah. I'd

42:27

like a book about someone who creates

42:29

military clouds, but then realizes he doesn't

42:31

want his clouds to fight in the

42:34

war. And so he has

42:36

to free his clouds and make sure

42:38

that no one could ever use his

42:40

clouds for hate. And

42:42

everyone's just like, right, clouds are for peace, of

42:44

course. He's like, no clouds are only for peace.

42:46

And they're like, right, clouds are pretty peaceful. No

42:48

one feels threatened. I am

42:50

become rain, man. Cloud

42:54

Nimer. Yeah, yeah. And

42:59

folks, that's a couple of takeaways and a

43:01

whole bunch of numbers. We're going to take

43:03

a quick break and then come back with

43:05

the amazing story of cloud names. Cloud

43:07

names. Hey,

43:18

folks, I'm taping this at an interesting

43:20

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43:23

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It makes what we do possible.

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And I hope you truly understand

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And we are back and with one

46:36

big last takeaway for the main episode

46:38

because takeaway number three, two

46:43

scientists parallel invented the names

46:46

for clouds and two

46:48

other important theories. Wait,

46:50

they came up with the same names for the

46:52

same types of clouds? It

46:55

was two scientists came up with

46:57

competing systems for naming the categories

46:59

of clouds and then one system

47:01

won out easily. Okay. Okay.

47:04

Because I was going to say that would be really

47:06

spooky and would lead more credence to the

47:08

clouds or mind control theory. Oh

47:13

yeah. These two scientists are

47:15

the British scientist Luke Howard in 1802 and

47:17

then the French scientist Jean-Baptiste

47:21

Lamarck in 1801. Yeah.

47:25

Another French versus English

47:28

showdown. Boy, they hate each other.

47:31

Always fighting. Yeah. And

47:34

then each of these guys also came up with

47:36

another major theory that was famous

47:38

and Lamarck's is a little more famous. Howard's

47:41

ideas are where we get the broad

47:44

names for categories and classifications of clouds.

47:48

It's interesting that no one else, or

47:51

maybe before then there were people naming types

47:53

of clouds, but why was this sort of

47:55

the point at which these

47:58

countries were like, yeah, we, better

48:00

step up our cloud game. One

48:02

of our key sources is the Science Museum in

48:04

London. There are digital resources about it. They

48:07

say that a few scientists had thought about

48:09

clouds in general and just no

48:12

one had influentially tried to categorize

48:14

them. The other

48:16

big influence was the taxonomic work of

48:18

Carl Linnaeus with biology. I

48:20

see, right? And so that that springboard,

48:23

Howard in particular, said, OK, Linnaeus

48:25

for clouds. And it

48:27

was just like real trendy to

48:29

get into categorization at this point.

48:32

Yeah, there's a lot like British Empire dudes being

48:34

like, I'm going to categorize and

48:36

a French Empire dude, you know, like Europeans

48:39

were like, if we can do

48:41

a Linnaeus, how about we do that with everything? Yeah,

48:43

just a bunch of undersex control

48:45

freaks wanting everything to have a

48:47

little name. Yeah,

48:52

probably true. I didn't check

48:54

with these two guys, but you know. And

48:57

starting with Luke Howard, who I had never heard of,

48:59

I think a lot of people have not heard of

49:01

him. He was born in 1772 in

49:04

London, worked as a pharmacist during the day

49:06

and then got way into weather and clouds

49:08

as a hobby. And

49:11

in 1802, he published essay on

49:13

the modification of clouds. He

49:16

proposed three categories of clouds, all

49:18

with Latin names. He

49:21

proposed the cirrus, which means

49:23

curl of hair. He

49:26

proposed the cumulus, which means

49:28

heap. Good so far. And

49:31

then he proposed the stratus, meaning

49:33

layer. And then

49:35

also some like subcategories that combine those.

49:37

And along the way, one of the

49:39

alternate names was Nimbus. So

49:41

he also proposed that name. It basically just means

49:44

a storm cloud or rain cloud directly in Latin.

49:47

Mm hmm. And

49:49

we really haven't changed it much since. That's pretty

49:51

much what we call them. You got your

49:54

clouds, you got your sort

49:56

of flat flattys. I

49:58

call them clumps and laddies. Clumps

50:00

and flattys. But you can call them

50:02

whatever you want. At

50:04

the same time, essentially, French

50:07

biologist Jean-Baptiste Lamarck proposed five

50:09

categories of cloud names all

50:11

in the French language in

50:13

France. And it

50:15

seems like Howard's system got more

50:17

popular because most of European

50:19

science was on board with Latin and

50:22

French was a little more niche. And

50:24

yeah, which is funny because I think niche

50:26

is a French word, right? Oh,

50:29

yeah. Sacre

50:32

bleu, it is. Anyway, I don't speak

50:34

that language. I don't use it. Paine

50:37

de jour. French

50:40

is known for moi, you know what

50:42

I mean? And

50:46

Howard also was in London. You

50:48

know, Lamarck was in France,

50:50

I was significant to, but the combination

50:52

of Latin from London. And

50:54

then also the fun thing where Howard

50:56

did not just name clouds. He made

50:58

beautiful watercolor paintings of clouds. So

51:01

it wasn't just his words on the page. He

51:03

had just nice art that he

51:05

made. He would go between the Lake District

51:08

of Northwestern England and London and make watercolors

51:10

of clouds as he went. And people loved

51:12

it. The key to

51:14

his success is that graphic design was his

51:16

passion. Yeah. He

51:19

was liked by the fine art

51:21

community on top of the science

51:24

community. Apparently the writer, Gerda, dedicated

51:26

a poem to Howard's Classifications of

51:28

Clouds. He was just more

51:30

popular at this than Lamarck was. Lamarck was

51:32

like, I'm French, these are my French clouds.

51:34

And people were like, fine,

51:37

sure. You

51:39

know, whatever. That French guy

51:41

in his clouds don't really care. Now the guy

51:43

who does the watercolors, that's something.

51:47

Yeah. And

51:49

yeah, I'm going to link the website

51:51

of the World Meteorological Organization. They run

51:53

the leading current Cloud Atlas. A

51:56

Cloud Atlas is a document of cloud shapes.

51:59

And there's... 10 main types that are all

52:02

basically just Howard's names brought to the

52:04

modern day. And then like we said

52:06

earlier, one of the subs of the

52:08

supplemental kinds was created by the Cloud

52:10

Appreciation Society. Good job,

52:12

guys. Well, I guess they. And

52:15

then and the last last thing about

52:17

these cloud namers is that Howard and

52:19

Lamarck each went on to do a

52:22

theory that is very, very significant today.

52:25

And both of those theories went through periods

52:27

of not really being appreciated under Big Now.

52:30

Lamarck was like known to me in school as

52:33

being wrong about evolution. That was the shorthand

52:35

I heard. Yeah. So

52:37

yeah, that that was a bit of an oopsie

52:39

goofer. And he

52:41

was like, mostly wrong. But also we

52:43

are checking in a new science called

52:45

epigenetics, whether in some specific ways he

52:48

might have been onto something. There

52:50

was a bit of an overcorrection because

52:52

like there was a whole like back

52:54

when it was like Darwinism versus Lamarckism.

52:56

There was this like like a big

52:58

fight over like how genetics work and

53:01

like people were really polarized over it.

53:03

And so when scientists kind

53:05

of congregated around Darwin, who was

53:07

on average more right, because

53:10

like it is not true that a

53:12

giraffe stretches its neck muscles and passes

53:14

on those the long neck

53:16

genes to its offspring that does not really work that

53:18

way. I think that

53:20

in because it became

53:23

so polarizing, people

53:25

would just really strongly reject anything

53:27

that had like a whiff of

53:29

Lamarckism. And so

53:32

it took a while to come around

53:34

to like, okay, yes, Darwin

53:36

Darwin's idea of natural selection is

53:38

correct. But maybe there's a little

53:41

bit of influence

53:43

of environment on genes

53:46

that can impact how you pass

53:48

on your genes to your offspring to

53:51

like propose this idea that the genetics had to

53:53

go through this like, no, no, no, seriously, we're

53:55

not saying like giraffes stretch their necks and that's

53:58

why they're longer. This is more complicated. It's complicated

54:00

than that and it's not goofy. It's like, it's

54:02

a real thing. So

54:04

yeah, it took some time. Yeah,

54:07

and he was such a central person

54:09

of the idea it got named Lamarkism,

54:11

which is an idea that when a

54:13

life form is alive and develops a

54:15

trait, it can pass that thing it

54:17

learned onto its offspring. Right.

54:20

This guy who's famous for that, he

54:22

also tried to name and categorize clouds

54:24

and basically lost a two man race

54:26

on that issue. Yeah, what

54:28

a loser. Luke

54:32

Howard, who I again had never heard of,

54:35

his other main scientific work was way ahead of

54:37

its time. Because Howard 1802 publishes

54:40

his cloud ideas that get pretty

54:43

popular. He's famous in his time for clouds.

54:45

In a book called cloud ideas. And

54:51

then he just loved weather. Like he was

54:53

in this for the love of the weather.

54:55

And so... That's so innocent. Just

54:58

living in London, he records

55:00

observations of London's weather, temperature,

55:02

air pressure, wind and precipitation

55:04

from 1806 through 1830. Wow.

55:10

Almost a quarter century of just noting

55:12

the weather every day because he is very

55:14

interested in it. And as

55:16

he did that, he decided he saw a pattern. And

55:19

in 1833, he published a work called the

55:21

climate of London. And

55:23

that work had two amazing ideas in it. One

55:26

is that the density of people and

55:29

structures in London was affecting local temperatures.

55:32

So it's kind of a forerunner of

55:35

ideas like urban heat islands and the

55:37

idea that our urban density changes the

55:39

climate on a long running basis

55:41

in a location. What

55:44

is an urban heat island? It's

55:46

that the pavement and buildings are absorbing

55:48

or reflecting the sun in a way that

55:51

makes the spot hotter. Yeah.

55:54

Like remember, remember when in elementary

55:56

school and there'd be asphalt and

55:58

you'd like stand up. on it

56:00

and you're like, wow, this is some hot asphalt. Yeah,

56:03

like on our asphalt show, we talked about, it's

56:05

just like a lot hotter to be there. And

56:08

so he long before most people were talking

56:10

or thinking about it was theorizing that. And

56:13

based on observations, he wasn't just guessing. And

56:16

his other thing that he proposed in

56:18

the climate of London, quote, the

56:20

real matter of surprise when we contemplate so

56:22

many sources of heat in the city is

56:25

that the effect on the thermometer is

56:27

not more considerable, end quote. And

56:30

then he described a rough idea of just climate change

56:33

and the human activity on the earth might

56:35

be changing the whole earth's climate. Yeah,

56:38

which for the time is like a pretty. Yeah,

56:40

1833. I

56:42

mean, this was a time where we're like,

56:44

what's happening to all the passenger pigeons? Anyways,

56:46

I'm gonna shoot me some more of me

56:48

passenger pigeons, which is like, you know, like

56:50

we could never run out of pigeons. What

56:52

do you mean? Shoot, shoot, shoot, shoot, shoot.

56:57

Right, we live in a world of infinite pigeon. That's fine.

57:00

Right, yeah. The clouds poop out

57:02

pigeons and I shoot them. So

57:05

yeah, the guy who coined all of

57:07

our current Latin based cloud names, he

57:10

also was a forerunner of a lot

57:12

of environmentalist theories and it's really cool.

57:15

What a tree hugger. Or a

57:17

cloud hugger, I guess he's more of a cloud hugger. Trees

57:20

you can hug more easily. So that's why he

57:22

settled for. Which is what, again, I'm

57:24

very frustrated because like when I was a kid,

57:27

I thought clouds would sort of have the consistency

57:29

of like teddy bear stuffing

57:31

that you could hug. But no, turns out

57:34

just a bunch of water vapor

57:36

and tiny microscopic plates of just

57:39

nuts. Yeah, there's so much

57:41

in there. Go enjoy the sky, everybody. That's the

57:43

final message. Let me check it out. Yeah.

57:45

Sorry if you got a clear day today. I

57:49

guess the show's not for you. I'm so

57:51

sorry if you have blue skies. You shouldn't

57:53

have listened to this show. It wasn't for

57:55

you. Yeah, you blew it. You blew it.

58:00

Go enjoy the blue skies angrily.

58:03

Able has

58:17

the main episode for this week. Welcome

58:19

to the outro with fun features for

58:21

you, such as help remembering this episode

58:23

with a run back through The Big

58:25

Takeaways. Takeaway

58:30

number one, Earth's clouds are

58:32

essentially just water, and cannot

58:34

form without a second ingredient.

58:37

Takeaway number two, clouds protect life on

58:39

Earth as we know it. Takeaway

58:43

number three, two scientists parallel

58:45

invented the categorization names of

58:47

clouds, and invented two

58:49

further theories on top of that. Plus

58:53

so many stats and numbers about

58:55

cloud formation, cloud appreciation, the highest

58:57

clouds and more. Those

59:03

are the takeaways. Also, I said that's the

59:05

main episode because there is more secretly incredibly

59:07

fascinating stuff available to you right now. If

59:10

you support this show at maximumfund.org. As

59:14

we said throughout Maximum Fun Drive, members

59:16

are the reason this podcast exists. So

59:18

members get a bonus show every week

59:20

where we explore one obviously incredibly fascinating

59:22

story related to the main episode. This

59:25

week's bonus topic is clouds on

59:27

other planets. Visit safpod.fun

59:29

for that bonus show for a library of

59:31

more than 15 dozen other

59:34

secretly incredibly fascinating bonus shows, and

59:36

a catalog of all sorts of Max Fun bonus

59:38

shows. It's special audio, it's just for members. Thank

59:41

you to everybody who backs this podcast

59:43

operation. Also one extra thing

59:45

about the bonus shows, we released one bonus

59:48

show about decaf coffee in the main public

59:50

feed for free at the start of the

59:52

Max Fun Drive, and I got a lot

59:54

of really nice messages just about that. Either

59:56

people enjoying it or being thankful for the

59:58

extra shows. So again, we do... bonus

1:00:00

show every week. If you support the show,

1:00:02

you get that whole second podcast every week.

1:00:05

I hope that's an exciting reward. If you help

1:00:07

make this show happen, you get more show. So

1:00:09

please check them out. They're really fun and you

1:00:11

can hear that bonus that we released for free

1:00:14

in the announcement post about our MaxFun

1:00:16

Drive activities. Additional

1:00:18

fun things, check out our

1:00:20

research sources on this episode's

1:00:22

page at maximumfun.org. Key sources

1:00:25

this week include a lot

1:00:27

of scientific material from the

1:00:29

USNOAA, the US EPA, space.com,

1:00:31

the Royal Museum's Greenwich, digital

1:00:34

resources from Imperial College London and

1:00:36

Chemical and Engineering News, and

1:00:39

a couple of joyful books, including

1:00:41

The Cloud Spotters Guide by Gavin

1:00:43

Prater-Pinney, founder of the Cloud Appreciation

1:00:45

Society, and I referred back to

1:00:47

The Brothers Vonnegut by Ginger Strand.

1:00:50

That page also features resources such as

1:00:52

native-land.ca. I'm using those to acknowledge that

1:00:55

I recorded this in Lenape Hoking, the

1:00:57

traditional land of the Muncie Lenape people

1:00:59

and the Wapinger people, as well as

1:01:02

the Mohican people, Skatagoke people, and others.

1:01:04

Also, Katie taped this in the country of Italy,

1:01:07

and I want to acknowledge that in my location,

1:01:09

in many other locations in the Americas and elsewhere,

1:01:12

native people are very much still

1:01:14

here. That feels worth doing

1:01:16

on each episode and join the free

1:01:18

CIFF Discord where we're sharing stories and

1:01:20

resources about native people and life. There

1:01:22

is a link in this episode's description

1:01:24

to join that Discord. We're

1:01:27

also talking about this episode on the

1:01:29

Discord, and hey, would you like a

1:01:31

tip on another episode? Because each week

1:01:33

I'm finding you something randomly incredibly

1:01:35

fascinating by running all the past

1:01:37

episode numbers through a random number

1:01:39

generator. This week's pick is

1:01:42

episode 72. That is about the topic

1:01:44

of TV dinners. Fun fact,

1:01:46

the idea for TV dinners came from

1:01:48

one company being stuck with an entire

1:01:51

freight train full of frozen turkey. So

1:01:54

I recommend that episode. I also recommend

1:01:56

my co-host Katie Golden's weekly podcast, Creature

1:01:58

Feature, about animals, science, and and more.

1:02:00

Our theme music is Unbroken, Unshaven by

1:02:02

the Budos Band. Our show logo is

1:02:05

by artist Sperton Durand. Special thanks to

1:02:07

Chris Souza for audio mastering on this

1:02:09

episode. Special thanks to the Beacon Music

1:02:11

Factory for taping support. Extra,

1:02:14

extra special thanks go to our members

1:02:16

and thank you to all our listeners.

1:02:18

I am thrilled to say we will

1:02:20

be back next week with more secretly

1:02:23

incredibly fascinating. So how

1:02:25

about that? Talk

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