Challenging Climate

Chris Stark is the Chief Executive of the UK‘s Climate Change Committee. Previously, he worked as the Director of Energy and Climate Change in the Scottish Government. In this episode, Chris breaks down the role of the CCC in UK’s climate policy. We then take a close look at how UK has done so far in cutting emissions, what else needs to be done, and the challenges that lie ahead. We end off with a discussion of where geoengineering techniques like SAI sit on the UKCCC’s radar.

Links: 

• Chris Stark’s profile 
• Episode chapter markers 

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Ken Caldeira is a senior scientist at the Carnegie Institution for Science and is also a senior scientist at Breakthrough Energy. Ken has a wide-spectrum approach to analyzing the world’s climate systems - with particular interests in modeling the Earth system and the energy transition, and in using experiments and observation to study our changing coasts and coral reefs. 

In this episode, Ken takes us through his fascinating journey into environmental and climate science. We dive deep into navigating political influences on environmental research, the technical and social feasibility of the energy transition, and his views on wider underrepresented climate issues.  

Links: 

• Ken Caldeira’s profile  
• Ken’s Google Scholar profile 
• Episode chapter markers 

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Andrew Revkin is one of the world's leading science and environmental journalists, with over 30 years' experience thinking and writing about climate change and sustainability. He has written at The New York Times and ProPublica, and his current outlet is “Sustain What?” at Substack. He is also the founding director of the new Initiative on Communication and Sustainability at Columbia University's Earth Institute. 

In this episode, Revkin shares his remarkable journalistic experiences, such as reporting from the Arctic, and how media and the climate discussion have evolved throughout his career. Our discussion is dynamic and wide-ranging, from extreme weather, to narrative capture, to tackling questions posed in previous episodes like climate doomism and ‘Is 1.5ºC still alive?’ 

Links: 

• Profile 
• Revkin's Substack, 'Sustain What?' 
• His 2003 Q&A from the Arctic sea ice
• His dispatches from 2005 Montreal 
• His blog 'Dot Earth' at NYT 
• His 2016 Anthropocene article, An Anthropocene Journey 

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Dr Daniel Harrison is an oceanographer at Southern Cross University in Australia. His research focuses on how engineering intervention in marine systems can be used to improve ecological, environmental, or societal outcomes. In this episode, we explore Daniel’s work in applying Marine Cloud Brightening (MCB) to protect the Great Barrier Reef against global warming. We find out what MCB is, discuss how it can be implemented responsibly and effectively to save the Great Barrier Reef, and other potential applications.  
 
Links: 

• Daniel's profile  
• UNESCO: Great Barrier Reef is added to the 'In Danger' list 
• Reef Restoration and Adaptation Program (RRAP) 
• Daniel's talk on C2G Youtube, on Governance of Marine Cloud Brightening 
• Daniel’s podcast interview on 100 climate conversations 

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Dr Erica Thompson is a Senior Policy Fellow in Ethics of Modelling and Simulation at the LSE Data Science Institute. Erica's research involves the appropriate use of mathematical and computational modelling to inform real-world decision-making. In this episode, we discuss Erica’s recent book, Escape from Model Land and tackle issues such as bias, disillusioning science communication to help us get out of the ‘Model Land’ worldview and into the real world. 

Links: 

• Erica Thompson’s profile  
• Erica’s website 
• Check out Erica’s book, Escape from Model Land  

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Luke Iseman is the founder of Make Sunsets, a recently launched startup that is selling “cooling credits” on the promise that they will release sulphur dioxide into the stratosphere using weather balloons. In this episode, we discuss Make Sunset’s mission to “substantially lower global temperatures,” the details of their offering, the technical challenges for verifying their cooling credits, and the potential political repercussions of their efforts

Links: 

Make Sunsets official website: https://makesunsets.com/ 

Make Sunsets contested cooling calculations: https://makesunsets.com/blogs/news/calculating-cooling 

Luke’s blog post from just before he launched this effort, “Geoengineering Now”: https://www.dirtnail.com/2022/04/04/geoengineering-now/ 

Some reactions to Make Sunsets: 

Ted Parson’s essay on Make Sunsets, “A Dangerous Disruption”: https://legal-planet.org/2023/01/02/a-dangerous-disruption/ 

David Keith on why not to commercialize geoengineering: https://twitter.com/DKeithClimate/status/1608085360927457281 

Gwynne Dyer’s comment in Stuff: https://www.stuff.co.nz/opinion/130909204/balloon-goes-up-on-geoengineering-sulfur-scam 

Another podcast interview with Luke Iseman by Reviewer 2 Does Geoengineering: https://open.spotify.com/episode/2Fr15fdX20qyyfVX8VCF3Q 

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Our year-end special celebrates the one-year anniversary of the Challenging Climate podcast. In this episode, Pete and Jesse reflect on the past 25 episodes, whether we achieved our vision for the podcast thus far, how we’ve navigated controversial guest speakers and learning to balance diversity of thought. 

Looking forward into 2023, we discuss new topics we want to explore, and old topics we hope to dive into at greater depths and different angles. Have any ideas for future topics or guest speakers? 

Drop us an email at [email protected] 

Links:

• Check out our twitter
• Pete Irvine's website
• Jesse Reynold's website
• Sustainability by numbers, a substack by Hannah Ritchie
• Pandora's Toolbox, by Wake Smith

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Dr Patrick Brown is the Co-director of the Climate & Energy group at the Breakthrough Institute and Adjunct lecturer in Energy Policy & Climate at Johns Hopkins University. In this episode, we discuss Patrick’s expertise on the economic impacts of extreme weather, and unpack trends and attributable risk. We then venture into a broader scope based on his essay, ‘The obvious climate strategy nobody will talk about’, which carries the rest of the discussion into climate targets and bias in climate communication. 

Links: 

• Patrick Brown’s profile 
• Patrick’s essay in Foreign Policy: The obvious climate strategy nobody will talk about 
• His paper in PLOS, 'Approximate calculations of the net economic impact of global warming mitigation targets...' 
• Another article on heat deaths versus cold deaths 

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Our guests are Dr Glen Peters, the research director for the Climate Mitigation group at Center for International Climate Research (CICERO), and Dr Linda Steg, Professor of Environmental Psychology at the University of Groningen.  

In light of the recent COP27 hosted in Sharm el Sheikh, we pose the question: is the 1.5 Celsius goal still alive? In this episode, we dissect this complex question from the model-driven approach of Peters’ research, as well as from the angle of societal and behavioural change — Steg’s expertise. Covering climate anxiety, venture capitalists and CDR, this episode’s got it all. 

Links: 

• Glen’s profile  
• Linda’s profile  
• Interview with Laurence Tubiana on 1.5ºC overshoot

Glen's articles:

• 'Can we really limit global warming to "well below" two degrees centigrade?'

Linda's articles:

• 'Limiting climate change requires research on climate action' 
• 'Motivating Society-wide Pro-environmental Change'
• 'A Spiral on (in)action'

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Dr Luke Kemp is a Research Associate at the Centre for the Study of Existential Risk, University of Cambridge. He has a PhD in international relations from the ANU and previous experience as a senior economist at Vivid Economics. In this episode, Luke sheds light on a surprisingly understudied and overlooked topic – catastrophic climate risk. This episode explores catastrophic and extinction risk, why the topic is understudied, and how we can weigh out the catastrophic risks of climate change and solar geo-engineering. 

 Links: 

• Luke Kemp’s profile 
• Check out Luke’s paper, Climate Endgame: Exploring catastrophic climate change scenarios
• Luke's paper on the risky perspective shift in temperature rises: Focus of the IPCC Assessment Reports has shifted to lower temperatures  
• Cambridge release, Climate change: potential to end humanity is “dangerously underexplored”  
• Additional reading: Catastrophic climate risks should be neither understated nor overstated (Burgess et al., 2022)

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