This episode explores Ernest Scheyder's 2024 book "The War Below - Lithium Copper and the Globl Battle to Power Our Lives," which in turn digs into how difficult it would be to try and access critical minerals in the United States given the opposition to new mines that would be inevitable.      

This episode digs into "On the Move - The Overheating Earth and the Uprooting of America."  It's part of a larger conversation about the likelihood that a warming world will displace hundreds of millions if not billions of people.  The secondary geopolitical and other implications are hard to get our heads around.    

Paul Gilding wrote a great book in 2011 where he envisioned that by 2018 we'd hit a societal tipping point that would motivate dramatic efforts to tackle climate change. It may have been the first serious look at the ideas of an "inevitable policy response"  and "positive tipping points."  The book includes a detailed "1 Degree War Plan" that lays out what would be required to stop global warming in its tracks.   

This podcast episode pulls together an entire collection of reports focused on the topic of under-estimated climate risk, going back to 1987.  There will be other episodes going into detail on individual sources - this one provides a big picture overview which is why it's a longer episode.   

This episode explores how the Climatographers are using NotebookLM, which includes production of this Podcast series.  But it does a lot of other things as well which anyone focused on climate change can take advantage of!  

Alex Epstein is an "energy humanist" who believes that we need to burn more fossil fuels in order to improve the human condition.  And he had a big impact in the discussions leading up to the signing of the "Big Beautiful Bill" that radically rolled back efforts to reduce U.S. GHG emissions.  This episode explores his views and his influential role.  

Geoengineering is a hot topic in climate circles.  There are all kinds of such proposals in play, but now there is a completely new idea to contend with. Can we stop Antarctic glaciers from sliding into the sea and causing sea level rise?  That's the question some scientists are now exploring, and we explore it in this episode of Climate Roulette. 

"Climate Sensitivity" is the most important "known unknown" when it comes to climate change.  As greenhouse gas concentrations increase in the atmosphere, how will average global temperature respond?  Scientists have been discussing this question for decades, but we just don't really know the answer. 

"Abundance" has been everywhere when it comes to podcasts and social media for the last couple of months. Particularly with respect to permitting reform, it's being characterized as key to climate progress. But what IS "abundance," and what does it really imply with respect to climate outcomes?       

As is the case with so many things, it depends on how you ask the question, and what you mean by "cheaper?" The Levelized Cost of Energy (LCOE) is often used to compare the costs of different generation resources, and to show the renewables are in fact the cheapest generation resource. But it turns out that LCOE is pretty misleading when it comes to the bigger picture of what actually gets added to the grid.