Challenging Climate

Mark Maslin is a professor of Earth System Science at University College London and a Royal Society Wolfson Research Merit scholar. Mark is a leading scientist in past global and regional climatic change and its links to human evolution, and has written dozens of popular science articles and popular books, including The Human Planet: How We Created the Anthropocene (with Simon Lewis) – just out in paperback. 

In this episode, we spoke with Mark about the link between human evolution and climate change, and the debate surrounding the Anthropocene epoch. In discussing human evolution, we touch on topics such as the development of bipedalism and human intelligence. Mark explains the extent of human impact on the Earth, hence creating the Anthropocene. We also cover the political debate on defining the Anthropocene and the evolution of international and national politics surrounding climate change. 

Links:

• Mark’s profile, including his recent publications 
• The paper by Mark Maslin and Simon Lewis on defining the Anthropocene 
• Another paper by Mark Maslin and Simon Lewis on how the Anthropocene began with species exchange 
• That Lancet study
• The Anthropocene working group

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In this episode Jesse and Pete interview each other and look back on the first 10 episodes of Challenging Climate. They discuss their backgrounds, research, and Jesse's new job as Executive Secretary of the Climate Overshoot Commission. They also reflect on how the podcast has been going and look ahead to the future.

Jesse Reynolds is an expert in international environmental policy. He researches and advises on how rules, procedures, and institutions can help manage environmental opportunities and challenges, particularly those involving emerging technologies.

Pete Irvine is a lecturer (assistant professor) at UCL Earth Sciences where he teaches climate science and researches the climate response to solar geoengineering as well as its broader implications.

Links:

• Climate Overshoot Commission website
• Jesse's book: The Governance of Solar Geoengineering
• Irvine et al. (2019), "Halving warming with idealized solar geoengineering moderates key climate hazards"

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Wake Smith is a Senior Fellow at the Mossavar-Rahmani Center for Business and Government at Harvard Kennedy School, writing scholarly articles on the feasibility, costs and governance of stratospheric aerosol geoengineering. Wake also teaches an undergraduate course on climate intervention at Yale University, the syllabus of which forms the basis of his new book “Pandora’s Toolbox – The Hopes and Hazards of Climate Intervention.” Prior to his academic career, Smith served in several executive roles in the commercial aviation industry, including as the President of the flight training division of Boeing and the COO of Atlas Air.  

We spoke with Wake about his new book and why he believes that our ancestors will demand climate intervention. We cover the climate context, and the tools in Pandora’s toolbox: carbon dioxide removal and solar radiation management. Wake explains why high-flying jets offer a feasible means of deploying stratospheric aerosol geoengineering, and why the scenario of a billionaire “Greenfinger” implementing this is unlikely. We also touch on the international governance challenges that solar radiation management poses. 
 
Links: 

• Wake’s Book: “Pandora’s Toolbox: The Hopes and Hazards of Climate Intervention” 
• Wake’s personal website 
• Article by Wake on “The cost of stratospheric aerosol injection through 2100” 

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Sir David King is the founder and chair of the Centre for Climate Repair at Cambridge University and the Climate Crisis Advisory Group. Previously he held the positions of the UK's permanent Special Representative for Climate Change. He was also the Government's Chief Scientific Advisor from 2000 to 2007, during which time he raised awareness of the need for governments to act on climate change and was instrumental in creating the Energy Technologies Institute.

We speak with Sir David about science advice for the government and communication with the public, foresight, the domestic and international politics of climate change, his relatively new endeavors -- the Centre for Climate Repair at Cambridge and the Climate Crisis Advisory Group, opportunities to reduce greenhouse gas emissions, and the importance of carbon dioxide removal.

Links:

• Centre for Climate Repair at Cambridge https://www.climaterepair.cam.ac.uk/
• Climate Crisis Advisory Group https://www.ccag.earth/
• "Infectious diseases: preparing for the future" report https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/infectious-diseases-preparing-for-the-future
• "Future flooding" report https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/future-flooding

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We speak with Jan Minx, Head of Applied Sustainability Science at the Mercator Research Institute on Global Commons and Climate Change, and a visiting Professor of Climate Change and Public Policy at The Priestley Centre at the University of Leeds. Jan has published widely on climate and sustainability issues and has a keen interest in evidence synthesis which he developed through his work with the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change. Jan was a coordinating lead author on the latest IPCC assessment report on mitigation and in this episode, he shares his take-aways from the report. We discuss the roles of individual choice, technological development, and carbon dioxide removal in meeting our climate goals. Jan also explains how thinking systematically about evidence synthesis can lead to better reviews of the literature and better research overall.

Links:

• Jan’s Profile 
• IPCC Working Group 3 report on mitigation 
• The chapter that Jan was a coordinating lead author on: Chapter 2 - emissions trends and drivers 
• The chapter that addresses demand-side options: Chapter 5 - Demand, services and social aspects 
• Figure SPM6 from Summary for Policymakers that shows demand-side mitigation options 
• Carbon Brief article that maps CO2 imports and exports 
• The 2015 systematic review study which provides an overview of impacts attribution, covered in the IPCC’s 5th report 
• The machine learning effort to provide a more comprehensive overview of impacts attribution that Jan was involved in 
• The paper by Gunnar Luderer on the feasibility frontier of climate ambition in economic models of climate change in integrated assessment models 

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We speak with Dr. Gavin Schmidt, climate scientist, director of the Goddard Institute for Space Studies and co-founder of the RealClimate climate science blog. Gavin’s research focuses on understanding the past, present and future of the climate system and the impacts of the various drivers of climate change. In this episode we take a deep dive on the science of climate change covering how it is observed, detected and attributed. Along the way Gavin debunks several climate skeptic talking points and discusses the changing challenges of climate communication.

Links:

• Gavin's profile at NASA GISS.
• The RealClimate blog.
• The IPCC on humanity's unequivocal influence on the climate.
• The Oridivician (Not Oligocene) was the geological age that Gavin was referring to.
• The Smithsonian project to document 500 million years of global-mean temperature (Science).
• Gavin giving the Stephen Schneider Lecture in 2013: What should a climate scientist advocate for?

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We speak with Elizabeth Kolbert, a journalist of politics and the environment. She has been at The New Yorker for more than 20 years and is the author of Under a White Sky: The Nature of the Future, The Sixth Extinction: An Unnatural History (winner of the 2015 Pulitzer Prize for General Non-Fiction), and Field Notes from a Catastrophe: Man, Nature, and Climate Change. We dive into how the climate change discourse has changed, mass extinctions and new speciation, and international large-scale interventions in natural systems.

At The New Yorker: https://www.newyorker.com/contributors/elizabeth-kolbert
Twitter: https://twitter.com/ElizKolbert
Under a White Sky: https://www.penguinrandomhouse.com/books/617060/under-a-white-sky-by-elizabeth-kolbert/
The Sixth Extinction: https://us.macmillan.com/books/9781250062185/thesixthextinction
Field Notes from a Catastrophe: https://www.bloomsbury.com/us/field-notes-from-a-catastrophe-9781620409886/

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Robert Lempert is a principal researcher at the RAND Corporation and director of the Center for Longer Range Global Policy and the Future Human Condition. His research focuses on risk management and decision-making under conditions of deep uncertainty. He was also a coordinating lead author on Chapter 1 of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change’s (IPCC) latest report on climate impacts. We discuss how the IPCC works and how it has evolved in response to criticism, the key concepts needed to understand climate impacts, the challenges of adapting to climate change, decision-making under deep uncertainty, and the peculiar nature of climate scenarios.

Links:

• Profile at RAND: https://www.rand.org/about/people/l/lempert_robert_j.html
• The IPCC’s latest report on impacts, adaptation and vulnerability: https://www.ipcc.ch/report/sixth-assessment-report-working-group-ii/
• The chapter that Prof. Lempert led the writing of: https://report.ipcc.ch/ar6wg2/pdf/IPCC_AR6_WGII_FinalDraft_Chapter01.pdf
• Prof. Lempert’s book by RAND, “Shaping the Next One Hundred Years: New Methods for Quantitative, Long-Term Policy Analysis”: https://www.rand.org/pubs/monograph_reports/MR1626.html

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Zion Lights is an environmental activist and author. She founded Emergency Reactor, which calls for greater use of nuclear power, alongside renewables, in order to help eliminate greenhouse gas emissions.  Her books include "The Ultimate Guide to Green Parenting" and "Only a Moment." She was previously spokesperson for Extinction Rebellion. We discuss her transition from Extinction Rebellion to nuclear advocate, nuclear energy's roles in reducing emissions, its challenges to expansion, the politics of nuclear energy, ecomodernism, and the dark side of environmentalism. 

Links:

• Personal website: https://www.zionlights.co.uk/
• Emergency Reactor: https://www.emergencyreactor.org/
• electricityMap: https://electricitymap.org/
• Our World in Data on nuclear energy and its emissions and safety: https://ourworldindata.org/nuclear-energy#modern-renewables-and-nuclear-energy-are-not-only-safer-but-also-cleaner-than-fossil-fuels
• Hans Rosling on development: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jbkSRLYSojo
• Lights's appearance with Andrew Neil: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=H3kJwQBZOkM
• Extinction Rebellion statement on Lights: https://extinctionrebellion.uk/2020/09/16/statement-on-zion-lights-michael-shellenberger-and-the-breakthrough-institute/

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Roger Pielke Jr. is a political scientist who writes on a diverse range of policy and governance issues related to science, technology, environment, innovation and sports. He is most famous (or infamous?) for his work on climate change. We cover his Iron Law of climate policy, his views on the problems with business-as-usual climate scenarios, and the challenges of attributing extreme weather. We also touch on the extent of his relationships with climate change skeptics and the efforts to discredit him, including the congressional investigation into his funding.

Roger is a Professor at the Department of Environmental Studies at the University of Colorado in Boulder. He is the author of The Climate Fix: What Scientists and Politicians Won’t Tell you About Global Warming, The Honest Broker: Making Sense of Science in Policy and Politics, and The Rightful Place of Science: Disasters & Climate Change .

Links:
- the report detailing the campaign to discredit Pielke https://www.thegwpf.org/content/uploads/2021/11/Laframboise-Pielke.pdf [PDF]
- his chart in The Climate Fix showing the historical change in the proportion of carbon-free energy and how it will need to change in future https://theclimatefix.files.wordpress.com/2017/06/bp-2017-3.jpg
- the IPCC's latest report on the physical science of climate change https://www.ipcc.ch/report/ar6/wg1/
- two blog posts by Pielke on this recent report https://rogerpielkejr.substack.com/p/how-to-understand-the-new-ipcc-report and https://rogerpielkejr.substack.com/p/how-to-understand-the-new-ipcc-report-1e3
- Pielke's academic paper on scenarios with Justin Ritchie  https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S2214629620304655 and a popular article summarizing their work https://issues.org/climate-change-scenarios-lost-touch-reality-pielke-ritchie/
- The Climate Fix https://www.basicbooks.com/titles/roger-pielke/the-climate-fix/9780465025190/
- The Honest Broker https://www.cambridge.org/core/books/honest-broker/A41AD4D7D14077165807DBE057B5FAF9
- The Rightful Place of Science: Disasters & Climate Change https://cspo.org/publication/the-rightful-place-of-science-disasters-and-climate-change/

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