Latest / PlanetGeo: The Geology Podcast / The New Climate War: Dr. Michael Mann, Distinguished Professor and Author

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The New Climate War: Dr. Michael Mann, Distinguished Professor and Author · PlanetGeo: The Geology Podcast

• 0:03
  SPEAKER_02: Welcome to Planet Geo, the podcast where we talk about our amazing planet, how it works, and why it matters to you.
• 0:14
  SPEAKER_02: Hey Jesse, how you doing today?
• 0:16
  SPEAKER_02: Well, Chris, I'm pretty good, except I'm looking at you right now on Zoom.
• 0:19
  SPEAKER_02: So if it wasn't for that, I'd be better.
• 0:21
  SPEAKER_01: But I I don't even know what to say because you're looking at a really good looking guy right here.
• 0:25
  SPEAKER_01: So says maybe your wife agrees with that?
• 0:28
  SPEAKER_02: Maybe.
• 0:29
  SPEAKER_02: I'm not entirely sure.
• 0:30
  SPEAKER_01: Nah, she doesn't.
• 0:31
  SPEAKER_01: She doesn't.
• 0:31
  SPEAKER_01: It's all right.
• 0:32
  SPEAKER_02: All right, but in all seriousness, I'm really excited about today.
• 0:35
  SPEAKER_02: This is uh this is a good episode.
• 0:37
  SPEAKER_01: It is.
• 0:38
  SPEAKER_01: Today we get to interview renowned climate scientist, Dr.
• 0:41
  SPEAKER_01: Michael Mann, the author of the New Climate War, a book that's out.
• 0:46
  SPEAKER_01: Um, Jesse, you and I both read it.
• 0:48
  SPEAKER_01: What do you think?
• 0:49
  SPEAKER_02: Oh man, really interesting to read.
• 0:51
  SPEAKER_02: Really fun book.
• 0:52
  SPEAKER_02: We talk about it a lot in this interview, and we we cover cover a lot of bases outside of the book as well.
• 0:58
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah, I think so.
• 0:59
  SPEAKER_02: You know, Mike, he's a distinguished professor of atmospheric science at Penn State, where I am, although I've never actually met him in person because of you know COVID.
• 1:06
  SPEAKER_01: Wait a minute.
• 1:07
  SPEAKER_01: Are you distinguished too or not?
• 1:08
  SPEAKER_01: I am you're not no.
• 1:10
  SPEAKER_02: I am, let's say, the minnow in the pond, and he is the big fish in the pond, so I stay far away.
• 1:16
  SPEAKER_02: No, yeah, I'm excited to actually you know meet him in person, but you know, I've only been here a year and a half, and most of that year's been in COVID.
• 1:22
  SPEAKER_02: So anyway, he's the director of the Penn State Earth System Science Center.
• 1:26
  SPEAKER_02: Man, his CV is intimidating.
• 1:28
  SPEAKER_01: What are the what are a couple highlights for him?
• 1:30
  SPEAKER_01: Give me give a give us a couple highlights.
• 1:32
  SPEAKER_02: I'll give you a couple of the of the good ones.
• 1:34
  SPEAKER_02: Well, first of all, Bloomberg News nominated him as one of the world's 50 most influential people in 2013.
• 1:42
  SPEAKER_02: So, you know, that's not nothing, I guess.
• 1:45
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
• 1:46
  SPEAKER_01: Um I haven't even gotten that for the city of Hudsonville.
• 1:48
  SPEAKER_02: So yeah.
• 1:50
  SPEAKER_02: You might not deserve it.
• 1:52
  SPEAKER_02: That's true.
• 1:53
  SPEAKER_02: He won the Climate Communication Prize from the American Geophysical Union in 2018.
• 1:57
  SPEAKER_02: He received the World Sustainability Award in from the MDPI Sustainability Foundation in 2020.
• 2:03
  SPEAKER_02: And to top it all off, he was just elected to the United States National Academy of Sciences in 2020, which is basically the top honor you can receive as a you know academic.
• 2:13
  SPEAKER_01: It's like a Grammy, right?
• 2:14
  SPEAKER_02: Uh it might not be quite as big as a Grammy, but it's in our field.
• 2:18
  SPEAKER_01: I think it's bigger than a Grammy.
• 2:19
  SPEAKER_01: I totally disagree.
• 2:20
  SPEAKER_01: I think you're full of crap.
• 2:21
  SPEAKER_01: That is bigger than a Grammy.
• 2:22
  SPEAKER_02: I'll take that over a Grammy.
• 2:24
  SPEAKER_02: All right, all right.
• 2:24
  SPEAKER_02: I would.
• 2:25
  SPEAKER_02: Well, let's say he's distinguished and he's a really excellent communicator.
• 2:28
  SPEAKER_02: And it was such a fun conversation.
• 2:29
  SPEAKER_01: It was a very fun conversation.
• 2:31
  SPEAKER_01: He's well spoken, and it's always fun to talk to people that know what they're talking about.
• 2:38
  SPEAKER_02: You know, the nice blend of intense expert, but also can step back and explain it to a couple idiots like you and me.
• 2:45
  SPEAKER_02: So that's always nice to feel to see as well.
• 2:48
  SPEAKER_02: Well, with that, let's get into the interview.
• 2:51
  SPEAKER_02: Okay.
• 2:51
  SPEAKER_02: And uh, Professor Michael Mann, welcome to Planet Geo.
• 2:55
  SPEAKER_02: Thanks for joining us here.
• 2:56
  SPEAKER_02: Thanks.
• 2:56
  SPEAKER_02: It's great to be with you guys.
• 2:58
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah, we're we're very excited about this conversation.
• 3:00
  SPEAKER_02: Chris and I, we've been talking about this for a long time.
• 3:03
  SPEAKER_02: For a long time.
• 3:03
  SPEAKER_02: Yes, we have.
• 3:04
  SPEAKER_02: And it's great.
• 3:05
  SPEAKER_02: We're really excited to talk to chat to you about this.
• 3:07
  SPEAKER_02: So, Chris, let's let's take it away, man.
• 3:09
  SPEAKER_01: Okay, Dr.
• 3:10
  SPEAKER_01: Mann, can we get started with this?
• 3:11
  SPEAKER_01: I'd like to ask you, like on a personal level, was there a moment when you fell in love with the geosciences or climate science?
• 3:18
  SPEAKER_01: Was there like an aha moment for you?
• 3:19
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, you know, it's a great question.
• 3:21
  SPEAKER_00: Um, I mean, I fell in love with science very early on, from the earliest days that I can remember.
• 3:26
  SPEAKER_00: And so I was always intrigued about sort of the natural world and understanding it.
• 3:32
  SPEAKER_00: And that's what led me sort of down a path of math and science and uh, you know, double majored um at UC Berkeley in applied math and physics.
• 3:42
  SPEAKER_00: Went off to graduate school, uh, Yale University to do theoretical physics.
• 3:46
  SPEAKER_00: And that's sort of where I did have uh, you know, I suppose you could call it a aha moment.
• 3:51
  SPEAKER_00: You would either view it as, you know, me finding my way or losing my uh you know my direction, depending on what side of the fence you're on.
• 4:01
  SPEAKER_00: I was in physics, doing research in physics, and I just wasn't excited about the problems that I was being given to work on.
• 4:10
  SPEAKER_00: And so I literally opened up the catalog.
• 4:12
  SPEAKER_00: This is after I had passed all of my exams.
• 4:15
  SPEAKER_00: I was all what they call all but dissertation in physics at Yale University.
• 4:20
  SPEAKER_00: And I had this sort of crisis of scientific uh or intellectual identity, I suppose you could say.
• 4:26
  SPEAKER_00: Opened up the catalog of science and applied science at Yale University and started flipping through the pages to see what else was going on on campus, um, you know, what other researchers were doing research that sounded interesting to me and where I could use the math and the physics that I had acquired to work on a problem of, you know, that seemed to get at some of the larger questions.
• 4:51
  SPEAKER_00: And I saw that there was a professor in the Department of Geology and Geophysics who was using mathematical modeling and physical modeling to model Earth's climate system.
• 5:02
  SPEAKER_00: And that sounded fascinating to me.
• 5:04
  SPEAKER_00: So I went and talked with him.
• 5:06
  SPEAKER_00: His name was Barry Saltzman, uh, unfortunately, no longer with us.
• 5:10
  SPEAKER_00: He started out in the field of dynamical meteorology.
• 5:13
  SPEAKER_00: And then as uh he sort of went on in his career, he got more interested in the ice ages and understanding the coming and going of the ice ages and climate model.
• 5:21
  SPEAKER_00: Oh, very cool.
• 5:22
  SPEAKER_00: It's interesting stuff.
• 5:23
  SPEAKER_00: And I went and talked with him.
• 5:25
  SPEAKER_00: We hit it off.
• 5:26
  SPEAKER_00: Uh, one thing led to another.
• 5:27
  SPEAKER_00: And uh a couple years later, after taking a whole new set of classes to get up to speed on geoscience, I was doing my PhD instead in the Department of Geology and Geophysics with Barry Saltzman.
• 5:41
  SPEAKER_00: And that's sort of what led me down that path.
• 5:43
  SPEAKER_01: That's amazing.
• 5:44
  SPEAKER_01: How much time did that cost you?
• 5:46
  SPEAKER_00: So much time I hardly even noticed.
• 5:48
  SPEAKER_01: Uh from what I mean is from the standpoint of um, like you were gonna be done with your dissertation.
• 5:54
  SPEAKER_00: I I started in uh fall of 89 and uh finished my PhD research in 96.
• 6:02
  SPEAKER_00: So I guess all of seven years from the time I finished my research and started my postdoc.
• 6:08
  SPEAKER_00: Although for reasons I won't go into that mostly have to do with just filing deadlines and such, I didn't actually get the piece of paper, the PhD, until 98.
• 6:17
  SPEAKER_00: So I was operating without a license for a year and a half there.
• 6:22
  SPEAKER_02: Okay, so so you you started in deep physics, deep math, and then transitioned very successfully to a different PhD in a completely different field.
• 6:29
  SPEAKER_02: So let's just get it out there in front that you are academically way ahead of Chris and I as far as raw voltage up there.
• 6:36
  SPEAKER_00: No, I'm just aimless and uh had trouble finding my way.
• 6:41
  SPEAKER_02: But um Well, we'll try and keep the discussion kind of focused here.
• 6:44
  SPEAKER_02: And you know, the reason we're having you on right now is because you just published a new book, which is called The New Climate War, which Chris and I just read, and it's an awesome read.
• 6:52
  SPEAKER_02: So anybody out there listening, pick it up.
• 6:54
  SPEAKER_02: It's a it's an excellent read.
• 6:55
  SPEAKER_02: Thank you.
• 6:55
  SPEAKER_02: But the title is The New Climate War, which obviously implies there was an old climate war, which I infer from your book was sort of between climate change believers or climate change scientists and deniers of climate change.
• 7:10
  SPEAKER_02: So I guess can we start out by just get us over that first war?
• 7:14
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah can you give us like a bulletproof explanation that anyone can understand about how CO2 affects climate?
• 7:22
  SPEAKER_00: Sure.
• 7:22
  SPEAKER_00: So thanks.
• 7:23
  SPEAKER_00: I mean, you know, there is as now uh wide a consensus about the basics of human-caused climate change as there are, you know, when it comes to the theory of gravity, as I like to point out.
• 7:35
  SPEAKER_00: I mean, there really is uh such a solid foundation that is based on now centuries literally of research.
• 7:43
  SPEAKER_00: And the bottom line is actually pretty simple.
• 7:46
  SPEAKER_00: You know, certain gases uh in our atmosphere, like carbon dioxide, have this heat absorbing quality, which makes them so-called greenhouse gases.
• 7:57
  SPEAKER_00: They warm the planet.
• 7:58
  SPEAKER_00: We wouldn't be able to explain why Venus is a greenhouse planet, as hot as it is, if we didn't understand the greenhouse effect.
• 8:08
  SPEAKER_00: We wouldn't be able to explain why Mars is a frozen planet without our understanding of the greenhouse effect.
• 8:13
  SPEAKER_00: So we wouldn't be able to explain the climates of other planets in our solar system if this weren't true.
• 8:19
  SPEAKER_00: I mean, so it's really basic physics that says that certain gases in our atmosphere, like carbon dioxide, have this warming capacity.
• 8:28
  SPEAKER_00: They keep the sort of they absorb some of the heat that's trying to escape from Earth and they send it back down.
• 8:34
  SPEAKER_00: That warms up the surface of the planet and makes it warmer than it would otherwise be.
• 8:39
  SPEAKER_00: What I like to say to uh climate change deniers, um, if you don't believe the greenhouse effect, then the challenge is for you to explain how there is even life on Earth, because we would be a frozen, lifeless planet if it were not for the greenhouse effect.
• 8:54
  SPEAKER_00: That's how fundamental it is.
• 8:55
  SPEAKER_00: And unfortunately, there's so much ideology and politics that's gotten caught up in the conversation that people lose sight of the fact that this is really fundamental science that's indisputable.
• 9:07
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, right.
• 9:08
  SPEAKER_01: It is because that's what we know, right, Dr.
• 9:10
  SPEAKER_01: Mann.
• 9:10
  SPEAKER_01: I mean, we know how the greenhouse effect works.
• 9:12
  SPEAKER_01: This isn't open for debate, right?
• 9:15
  SPEAKER_00: Not in uh the scientific classrooms, hopefully, or lecture halls, or scientific meetings or journal articles, but unfortunately, in the halls of Congress, at least in the past, it was unfortunately still debated.
• 9:29
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, this brings me to the point of you said in your book that the deniers are polling in the single digits now.
• 9:36
  SPEAKER_01: And at least where we come from, it's much higher than that.
• 9:41
  SPEAKER_01: You know, for instance, I'm in the airport last year going to visit my son, and I'm sitting at the bar with my wife, and some guy, for whatever reason, starts talking about climate change and how it's just a load of crap.
• 9:53
  SPEAKER_00: We've all been there, we've all been there situations.
• 9:55
  SPEAKER_00: Right.
• 9:56
  SPEAKER_01: And so, you know, how do you address that?
• 9:59
  SPEAKER_01: Like, what's your response?
• 10:00
  SPEAKER_01: Is your response the greenhouse effect and and the science behind it?
• 10:05
  SPEAKER_01: Or is it the evidence?
• 10:08
  SPEAKER_01: How do you respond to that?
• 10:09
  SPEAKER_00: It's a great question.
• 10:10
  SPEAKER_00: And I wish there were a simple answer, but it's more complicated than that because you know, as you allude to, it's really uh ideology and identity politics now that are getting in the way.
• 10:23
  SPEAKER_00: And you know, if you do look at the polling, um, the percentage of the public, and you know, there are areas where there is obviously more resistance to the science.
• 10:32
  SPEAKER_00: It varies as our politics varies from one place to the next.
• 10:36
  SPEAKER_00: But overall, it really is this small fringe of individuals who do deny the reality of climate change.
• 10:45
  SPEAKER_00: But it feels like there's a far greater presence of denialism, in part because of the echo chamber, the conservative media, and the efforts that they have made to convince us that it's much more widespread.
• 10:57
  SPEAKER_00: And part of why they want us to think it's more widespread.
• 11:00
  SPEAKER_00: And the polling on this is fascinating because the percentage of the public, as you said, is in the single digits when it comes to people who actually deny climate change.
• 11:08
  SPEAKER_00: But if you ask people what percentage of the public doesn't accept the science, they'll give you numbers in the 30s.
• 11:16
  SPEAKER_00: So there is this sense that denial is far more pervasive than it is.
• 11:21
  SPEAKER_00: And that is pernicious because if we feel that there's a lot of resistance out there, it is going to inhibit us from engaging in those conversations.
• 11:31
  SPEAKER_00: And I think that's part of the reason for this megaphone in the conservative media to uh, you know, to convince us that there's more controversy, there's more resistance to the science than there really is.
• 11:43
  SPEAKER_00: That having been said, you know, as you encountered at that airport, there really are individuals who still are there.
• 11:49
  SPEAKER_00: We could spend a lot of time and effort trying to convince them, but the fact is, those individuals who are still sort of resolute in their denial of the basics are so entrenched in general.
• 12:03
  SPEAKER_00: It's not about the science, it's not about logic.
• 12:06
  SPEAKER_00: And if really we are only talking about 8, 9% of the public, the argument would be we don't actually have to move them.
• 12:13
  SPEAKER_00: Right.
• 12:13
  SPEAKER_00: We need to bring along everybody else, but we do need to confront the fact that they still are putting misinformation out there.
• 12:21
  SPEAKER_00: There are people who are caught in the crossfire and misled by the rhetoric that comes from sort of the denialists.
• 12:29
  SPEAKER_00: And so there are times when we need to confront that.
• 12:32
  SPEAKER_00: Um, but you know, I would say to most people, don't spend a whole lot of time arguing it out with this guy at the airport who tells you climate change is a hoax.
• 12:41
  SPEAKER_02: Well, that's that's a hard ask for uh Chris Bullis.
• 12:44
  SPEAKER_02: I mean, Chris Bullis is never going to back down from a nice conversation over a beer at the airport.
• 12:48
  SPEAKER_02: But I'm not, yeah.
• 12:50
  SPEAKER_01: It was it actually turned out well.
• 12:52
  SPEAKER_01: It really did.
• 12:53
  SPEAKER_00: Well, it did.
• 12:53
  SPEAKER_00: Well, you know, and that's that's a good point.
• 12:55
  SPEAKER_00: The the flip side of that is give the person a chance.
• 12:59
  SPEAKER_00: Don't dismiss them out of hand because maybe there's a misunderstanding there.
• 13:02
  SPEAKER_00: Maybe there is an opportunity in what I say is so try it.
• 13:06
  SPEAKER_00: And if you feel, if you find very quickly that you're getting nowhere, and this person just wants to keep you occupied with their plethora of questions.
• 13:14
  SPEAKER_00: Um, and every time you address them, they just come up with it.
• 13:17
  SPEAKER_00: It's like the heads of the high hydra, you cut one off, another grows in its place.
• 13:22
  SPEAKER_00: If you feel like that's what's going on, then maybe you want to sort of save that emotional energy.
• 13:28
  SPEAKER_02: Okay, so back to the book, The New Climate War.
• 13:31
  SPEAKER_02: Your thesis kind of seems like what I felt takeaway was everybody just take a deep breath and let's get to work on this problem.
• 13:37
  SPEAKER_02: It was kind of what I felt about it.
• 13:38
  SPEAKER_02: And you use this really beautiful phrase, and this is now quoting you there is urgency, but there is also agency.
• 13:45
  SPEAKER_02: Can you unpack that for us a little bit, that quote?
• 13:47
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, thanks.
• 13:48
  SPEAKER_00: Um, it's something I've been saying for some time now, because I I feel that alliteration and rhyme is always useful in a pithy uh quote.
• 13:56
  SPEAKER_00: And so there's a little bit of poetry to it, but um, it really does capture what we're talking about here.
• 14:02
  SPEAKER_00: There's urgency.
• 14:03
  SPEAKER_00: There's no question that we have to act in a concerted fashion, quickly and dramatically, if we are to keep warming below truly catastrophic levels.
• 14:14
  SPEAKER_00: So there's no question, there's a huge challenge, and we shouldn't claim otherwise, because that's just those are the facts.
• 14:22
  SPEAKER_00: So that's the urgency, but there is agency.
• 14:24
  SPEAKER_00: It is not too late to act.
• 14:26
  SPEAKER_00: And one of the things I talk about in the book, when I talk about the tactics uh used by the inactivists, the forces of inaction, who are no longer denying climate change as real, that's the old climate war.
• 14:38
  SPEAKER_00: That doesn't cut it because people know something's happening.
• 14:41
  SPEAKER_00: So they've turned to this other array of insidious tactics, as I said before, to keep us from acting.
• 14:47
  SPEAKER_00: And one of them, ironically, is to promote doom and despair.
• 14:51
  SPEAKER_00: If you really believe it's too late to do anything about the problem, it potentially leads you down that same path of inaction as outright denial.
• 15:01
  SPEAKER_00: And as I like to point out, the the inactivists, they don't care about the path you take.
• 15:07
  SPEAKER_00: They just care about the destination.
• 15:09
  SPEAKER_00: They want you disengaged.
• 15:11
  SPEAKER_00: And they don't care if it's because you don't accept the scientific evidence that there's a problem, or you think it's too late to solve the problem.
• 15:18
  SPEAKER_00: And what's ironic is that a lot of really good folks, you know, people with the best of intentions, good-hearted individuals who would otherwise actually beyond the front lines demanding action, have come to believe, in part because of the messaging that has been weaponized, they've come to believe that it's too late to do anything.
• 15:38
  SPEAKER_00: And I'll tell you, I describe that in the book, and I give some examples of that.
• 15:42
  SPEAKER_00: And people say, yeah, but it's it's just doesn't make sense.
• 15:46
  SPEAKER_00: Um, is that really true?
• 15:48
  SPEAKER_00: And just a few weeks ago, I thought there was one of the best examples that I've ever seen of this phenomenon.
• 15:54
  SPEAKER_00: Of doomism, this is?
• 15:55
  SPEAKER_00: Uh yeah, of doomism and how it's been weaponized by the forces of inaction to actually, you know, lead to disengagement among activists, among people who would be out there demanding action.
• 16:05
  SPEAKER_00: And that's what's so pernicious about it, right?
• 16:08
  SPEAKER_00: Is it actually going after political progressives, trying to deactivate them by convincing them there's nothing they can do.
• 16:15
  SPEAKER_00: There was an op-ed in the Washington Post about a month ago by uh Mitch Daniels, you may recognize the name, was the former governor of Indiana.
• 16:25
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah, sure.
• 16:26
  SPEAKER_00: Conservative Republican, has in the past denied the science of climate change.
• 16:31
  SPEAKER_00: And this op-ed was sort of about uh the coronavirus challenge, but he's also talking about climate change as sort of an analogy.
• 16:40
  SPEAKER_00: And one of the arguments that he makes is um he actually says this.
• 16:44
  SPEAKER_00: He says, you know, if those climate models are to be trusted, they tell us it's too late to do anything, anyways.
• 16:52
  SPEAKER_00: So here we had a former climate change denier literally using this sort of doom mongering to rob us of agency, right?
• 17:03
  SPEAKER_00: And that's what's so pernicious about it.
• 17:05
  SPEAKER_00: It robs us of agency.
• 17:08
  SPEAKER_01: So, Mike, what's their end game?
• 17:10
  SPEAKER_01: I don't understand.
• 17:10
  SPEAKER_01: So if they buy the that climate change is real, why would they try to?
• 17:15
  SPEAKER_01: You're saying that doomism is deliberate sabotage.
• 17:18
  SPEAKER_01: Why?
• 17:19
  SPEAKER_01: I don't understand.
• 17:20
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, and we have to be careful.
• 17:21
  SPEAKER_00: People who fall prey to it are actually victims.
• 17:23
  SPEAKER_00: They're not, you know, the villains.
• 17:25
  SPEAKER_00: But there are some who are actually using that to lead these folks down this path of disengagement.
• 17:31
  SPEAKER_00: And I gave an example of where an argument like that was being used by somebody opposed to climate action.
• 17:36
  SPEAKER_00: If you buy the premise, and this is the premise of the book, once again, that they don't care about the path you take.
• 17:42
  SPEAKER_00: They don't care if you don't believe climate change is real, or you don't believe that renewable energy is the solution, or you don't believe that we can do anything about it.
• 17:52
  SPEAKER_00: You know, in any of those scenarios, the only common feature is that it's going to lead to disengagement.
• 17:59
  SPEAKER_00: It's it's not going to get you out there motivated, demanding action by policymakers.
• 18:05
  SPEAKER_00: And that's all they care about.
• 18:07
  SPEAKER_00: They don't care about how you get there.
• 18:09
  SPEAKER_00: And so their arguments, as you're alluding to, are internally inconsistent.
• 18:14
  SPEAKER_00: There's no intellectual consistency.
• 18:16
  SPEAKER_00: No, there's not because it isn't an intellectual argument.
• 18:19
  SPEAKER_00: It it is an ideological position in search of an argument.
• 18:24
  SPEAKER_01: I'm still struggling with the motive.
• 18:26
  SPEAKER_01: If they believe climate change is happening, then what's the motive?
• 18:31
  SPEAKER_01: Is it is it economics?
• 18:32
  SPEAKER_00: Oh, what's their their motive?
• 18:34
  SPEAKER_00: Now I understand what you're getting at.
• 18:37
  SPEAKER_00: Are they really, is it possible that they recognize climate change is real but don't want to do anything about it?
• 18:44
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, there are some who are that cynical.
• 18:46
  SPEAKER_00: Again, these are the folks, the same folks, you know, uh they were lobbyists for the tobacco industry for years telling us that there's no harm from smoking cigarettes when their own internal research told them that it was deadly, and they hid that research.
• 19:02
  SPEAKER_00: So these are not individuals operating in good faith.
• 19:06
  SPEAKER_00: They're operating uh to advance the agenda of a special interest.
• 19:11
  SPEAKER_02: So, on that note of kind of solving problems here, you talk in your book, or at least you allude to in your book, several different parts of this thing, whether it be nuclear or carbon taxes, quote unquote taxes, or cap and trade, renewables, sequestration.
• 19:25
  SPEAKER_02: I guess I'm curious from a personal level, what do you think is the path forward here?
• 19:29
  SPEAKER_02: I mean, you allude to the free market solutions to climate change, which I personally like uh quite a lot, um, and pricing in carbon.
• 19:36
  SPEAKER_02: So, like, can you paint us a picture of your vision to solving this problem?
• 19:40
  SPEAKER_00: I consciously in the book avoid being overly prescriptive here, because my real position on this is that we do need to have a conversation, a debate.
• 19:50
  SPEAKER_00: I'm not going to come in here and tell you I have the prescription because I don't see that as my role.
• 19:56
  SPEAKER_00: Even if I think I do, I see my role as doing my best to make sure that that debate, that conversation is informed by an objective assessment of the risks, the challenges, and you know, the merit of different approaches.
• 20:12
  SPEAKER_02: And so Well, I must can I interject to just say I really appreciate that perspective because the three of us are all educators and we love a good soapbox to stand on and say that we're right and we know everything about everything.
• 20:22
  SPEAKER_02: So I really appreciate you taking a step back there.
• 20:26
  SPEAKER_00: Well, yeah, you know, and I and I've taken some pains, I've resisted being overly prescriptive because my feeling is that that it's almost abusing the platform that I have.
• 20:35
  SPEAKER_00: When, you know, what I would like to think that I and other sort of climate messengers are doing is informing what is a worthy debate.
• 20:45
  SPEAKER_00: What we shouldn't be debating in the halls of Congress is whether climate change is real.
• 20:49
  SPEAKER_00: And by and large, we're not debating that anymore, thanks to the fact that we're moving on and we're making some progress.
• 20:55
  SPEAKER_00: The worthy debate is what we do about it.
• 20:58
  SPEAKER_00: Now, personally, I'm skeptical, for example, about the role of nuclear and the role of geoengineering.
• 21:05
  SPEAKER_00: And I in the book, I talk about the reasons why.
• 21:08
  SPEAKER_00: And I would point out that my prescription is quite different from that advanced by Bill Gates in his new book that came out shortly after ours, where he puts forward uh what I would argue is a more technocratic sort of vision of the path forward.
• 21:26
  SPEAKER_00: So I talk about the pluses and minuses when it comes to nuclear energy.
• 21:31
  SPEAKER_00: I talk about geoengineering and carbon sequestration.
• 21:34
  SPEAKER_00: I try to lay it all out there.
• 21:37
  SPEAKER_00: I don't hide my views about each of these.
• 21:41
  SPEAKER_00: But where I come down is let's have that debate.
• 21:44
  SPEAKER_00: Let's have the debate about the role of these different, you know, uh prescriptions, different solutions going forward.
• 21:51
  SPEAKER_00: And in the end, I think it's going to involve market mechanisms.
• 21:54
  SPEAKER_00: And I think we need to think about supply side and demand side mechanisms, and I lay Out there and technology does play a role and innovation does play a role, but the idea that we should wait for some miracle is misplaced, is misguided because we do have the technology now to start down that path.
• 22:14
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
• 22:14
  SPEAKER_01: So, Mike, what happens if we don't act?
• 22:18
  SPEAKER_01: What are the consequences?
• 22:19
  SPEAKER_00: So that's a really I'm glad you asked that question because this often comes up, and there's so much confusion when it comes to basic questions like, are we effed?
• 22:30
  SPEAKER_00: You look at some of the doomest messaging in particular.
• 22:34
  SPEAKER_00: It's often premised on misstatement, a misinterpretation, a mischaracterization of the science.
• 22:42
  SPEAKER_00: Many of the doomest narratives you uh encounter, this idea that all life will be extinct within a decade, and there's nothing we can do about it.
• 22:50
  SPEAKER_00: Um, and there are some prominent individuals out there making that claim.
• 22:55
  SPEAKER_00: Um, and there, to varying degrees, there are sort of these very pessimistic narratives out there.
• 23:03
  SPEAKER_00: And many of them, if not all of them, are premised on this idea that we are experiencing runaway warming from methane that is being released from the Arctic.
• 23:14
  SPEAKER_00: This is a favorite claim that there is, you know, this huge methane bomb, methane that was frozen in the permafrost that's now melting and it's being released in massive amounts.
• 23:25
  SPEAKER_01: And that's a concern, Mike, because methane is a greenhouse stud, right?
• 23:30
  SPEAKER_01: I mean, it's it's really potent.
• 23:32
  SPEAKER_00: Exactly.
• 23:32
  SPEAKER_00: It's a more potent greenhouse gas, um, anywhere from 10 to 100 times as potent per molecule, depending on the time scale we're talking about.
• 23:41
  SPEAKER_00: But it's present in much lower concentrations as well.
• 23:44
  SPEAKER_00: And the best available science says indicates that there may be some what we call positive feedbacks, amplifying effects from methane that is released.
• 23:54
  SPEAKER_00: And those aren't to be ignored, but they are second order.
• 23:58
  SPEAKER_00: They're not the main part of the problem.
• 23:59
  SPEAKER_00: The main part of the problem by far is the carbon pollution we are putting into the atmosphere through fossil fuel burning.
• 24:07
  SPEAKER_00: So the best science tells us now that if we stop burning fossil fuels, the warming of the surface of the planet will stabilize fairly quickly.
• 24:17
  SPEAKER_00: So there's there's an immediate and direct impact of the actions that we take today.
• 24:21
  SPEAKER_00: And this idea that we've already experienced a runaway warming scenario is just wrong on the science.
• 24:29
  SPEAKER_00: There's no objective scientific evidence for that claim.
• 24:32
  SPEAKER_00: And yet it underpins most of those doomest narratives that you encounter.
• 24:37
  SPEAKER_00: When you actually follow it back, you'll find that they're justifying these sort of doomest outlooks based on a scenario that is not consistent with what the science has to say.
• 24:48
  SPEAKER_00: And that's that's why I find it so problematic.
• 24:50
  SPEAKER_00: It would be one thing if the science really did say it was too late to do anything to stop runaway warming.
• 24:57
  SPEAKER_00: If the science said that, scientists would be telling you that.
• 25:00
  SPEAKER_00: They would be, that's just the way it is.
• 25:02
  SPEAKER_01: Mike, why don't why don't I hear this?
• 25:04
  SPEAKER_01: What you're saying is very refreshing, and you don't hear this very often.
• 25:09
  SPEAKER_00: Well, we get trapped in, you know, these echo chambers, and those echo chambers can be the denialism that you encountered at the airport, but it can also be the doomism that you encounter in certain movements that'd be like the deep adaptation movement, if you've heard of that.
• 25:26
  SPEAKER_00: It's premised on these misrepresentations of the science.
• 25:31
  SPEAKER_00: And so what's troubling is that they're not supported by the science, and they lead us down the wrong path.
• 25:39
  SPEAKER_00: And in that sense, there's a parallel with denialism, which is it's not supported by the science and it leads us down the wrong path.
• 25:47
  SPEAKER_00: And so I don't want to equate denialists with uh doomists because the underlying dynamics are different.
• 25:54
  SPEAKER_00: And many of the doomists that we encounter really are the victims of these misleading narratives.
• 26:00
  SPEAKER_00: And maybe despair is a necessary stage of psychological evolution for them, and we need to help them through that stage.
• 26:09
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah, for some, that's that seems like despair is where they kind of exist.
• 26:12
  SPEAKER_02: I myself prefer optimism.
• 26:13
  SPEAKER_00: I I lean optimistic on most fronts, but and it can be a stay, it can be a stage on the way to and and and if you can help folks out of that, you can help put them back on that path of engagement.
• 26:24
  SPEAKER_00: We don't want to give up on them.
• 26:25
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah.
• 26:26
  SPEAKER_02: So, you know, on this path towards optimism and solutions, you you kind of have discussed in various media spaces the role of personal responsibility versus sort of systemic change or systematic change.
• 26:36
  SPEAKER_02: And I don't really want to get into that at the moment, but I'm curious if has the COVID-19 lockdowns has that taught us anything?
• 26:44
  SPEAKER_02: Has that clarified the path forward, like really briefly?
• 26:47
  SPEAKER_02: Can you summarize if it has and if so how?
• 26:49
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, thanks for that question.
• 26:50
  SPEAKER_00: And uh I spend um a little bit of time trying to unpack that question in sort of the closing chapter of the book.
• 26:57
  SPEAKER_00: And it's just it was just because of the chronology of when I started writing the book and when I was finishing it, it just ended up being profoundly informed by two events the massive bushfires in Australia when I was on sabbatical there last year, experiencing that and writing this book as it's going on.
• 27:17
  SPEAKER_00: And then there was really no time for recovery.
• 27:20
  SPEAKER_00: If you were in Australia, you went from the bushfires and the climate devastation to the pandemic.
• 27:26
  SPEAKER_00: You didn't get a break.
• 27:27
  SPEAKER_00: Um, and that had both of those events had a profound impact on the book and in the message of the book, because I think they do inform some of these very basic questions.
• 27:37
  SPEAKER_00: And we could spend an hour or more just talking about the lessons to draw from the pandemic and the lessons not to draw.
• 27:44
  SPEAKER_00: But I think some of them are pretty obvious, right?
• 27:47
  SPEAKER_00: You know, the pandemic has taught us some lessons about our fragility, the fragility of our this massive infrastructure that we've developed to support 8 billion people on this planet with finite food and water and space.
• 28:01
  SPEAKER_00: And a single, you know, a microscopic organism can turn all that upside down.
• 28:06
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, yeah, crazy.
• 28:08
  SPEAKER_00: And so I think it really gives us a sense of vulnerability, how vulnerable we are, how vulnerable our infrastructure is.
• 28:15
  SPEAKER_00: I think it's led to maybe the opportunity to start to ask some deeper questions about how we live sustainably on this planet.
• 28:24
  SPEAKER_00: Because there is actually an argument that uh these pandemics may be a manifestation of the detrimental impact that we are having on our environment, forcing sort of exotic organisms out of their, you know, the rainforests that they used to live in, and they're more likely to come into contact with human beings and spread these novel uh diseases.
• 28:45
  SPEAKER_00: Um, there are lessons about the dangers of anti-science, of ignoring what science has to say.
• 28:52
  SPEAKER_00: And we could measure the toll, in this case, the pandemic, in hundreds of thousands of human lives that were lost, that didn't need to be lost.
• 29:02
  SPEAKER_00: If we had listened to what public health scientists were saying early on, but there was an ideologically motivated opposition to what the scientists were telling us.
• 29:13
  SPEAKER_00: And so it was this amazing microcosm.
• 29:16
  SPEAKER_00: It was like the climate crisis, but it played out not over decades, but over months.
• 29:23
  SPEAKER_00: And that allowed us to really see and understand the dangers of anti-science, the deadliness of anti-science.
• 29:31
  SPEAKER_00: I hope that's a message that we take to heart.
• 29:33
  SPEAKER_00: I think it is a message that we're taking to heart.
• 29:35
  SPEAKER_01: Do you think, Mike, that this mentality that's happened during this pandemic has hurt climate science?
• 29:41
  SPEAKER_00: We don't know yet.
• 29:42
  SPEAKER_00: We don't know ultimately what lessons we are going to draw.
• 29:46
  SPEAKER_00: There are the forces of inaction that are working hard.
• 29:49
  SPEAKER_00: They've tried to use this as an opportunity to double down in the waning months of the Trump administration.
• 29:55
  SPEAKER_00: They were actually trying to use the pandemic to direct resources and funding and more deregulation that would be favorable to the fossil fuel industry.
• 30:03
  SPEAKER_00: Of course, now we have this shift in the political winds, and there's much more talk about rebuilding green and sustainably.
• 30:12
  SPEAKER_00: So I am more optimistic now that we are taking the right lessons than I was under the current administration.
• 30:22
  SPEAKER_00: If you know Trump had been successful in getting a second term, I honestly, you know, don't know.
• 30:29
  SPEAKER_00: You know, I even said during the election that it could be game over for the climate, a second term of Trump, just because of the profound implications it would have, not just for the United States, but global diplomacy about the climate crisis.
• 30:45
  SPEAKER_00: And we've seen how impactful a shift in a positive shift in political winds, which I anticipated in the book.
• 30:52
  SPEAKER_00: You've read the book, you know that this is sort of where I thought we would be, because uh, you know, there was a sense that the political winds were shifting favorably.
• 31:00
  SPEAKER_00: And we didn't know exactly where the Congress was going to be, and we sort of squeaked by with a 50-50 Senate that can actually bring climate legislation to the floor.
• 31:10
  SPEAKER_02: So, Mike, this has been such a fun conversation, and the book is great, but we kind of always end our interviews with this question, which is what has been your best day as a geoscientist?
• 31:20
  SPEAKER_02: Slash climate scientist.
• 31:22
  SPEAKER_02: Slash climate scientist, yes, of course.
• 31:24
  SPEAKER_00: I would say it was it's a tough choice.
• 31:30
  SPEAKER_00: The election of Joe Biden and those two Senate races in Georgia, because they really did make the difference when you look at sort of the global picture here and where we are and whether the United States, the world's historical greatest carbon emitter, would be willing to lead or not.
• 31:51
  SPEAKER_00: If that had gone the other way, we probably wouldn't be in a position to meet this crisis.
• 31:56
  SPEAKER_00: And now we are.
• 31:58
  SPEAKER_00: And so I'd like to say it had something to do with, you know, the last time I got an article published in Nature or Science or By Election and any of these other things.
• 32:08
  SPEAKER_00: But no, because, you know, while science is what got me into this, I'm now sort of I'm all in when it comes to the larger sociopolitical challenge that we face.
• 32:22
  SPEAKER_00: And to me, the best day that I can remember was the day when I became convinced that we really have a fighting chance.
• 32:30
  SPEAKER_00: And that was when we did elect a climate champion, Joe Biden, as president, and followed that up by giving the Senate to Democrats who will be able to bring climate legislation to the floor for a vote over the next couple of years.
• 32:45
  SPEAKER_02: Wow.
• 32:46
  SPEAKER_02: Okay, there we go.
• 32:46
  SPEAKER_02: That's uh that's good stuff.
• 32:48
  SPEAKER_02: A lot better uh stuff than in my best days.
• 32:51
  SPEAKER_02: Thanks, Mike.
• 32:52
  SPEAKER_02: This has been such a pleasure.
• 32:53
  SPEAKER_02: Uh, we really appreciate you coming on Planet Geo, and uh yeah, it's been great to talk to you.
• 32:57
  SPEAKER_02: We could have continued it for hours, I'm sure.
• 32:59
  SPEAKER_00: But uh, I really enjoyed the conversation, guys.
• 33:02
  SPEAKER_00: Happy to come back and do it again sometime.
• 33:04
  SPEAKER_00: Appreciate it, appreciate it.
• 33:05
  SPEAKER_00: Thank you.
• 33:06
  SPEAKER_02: All right, that's a wrap.
• 33:08
  SPEAKER_02: Thanks for listening, everybody.
• 33:09
  SPEAKER_02: As usual, if you have any questions for us or Professor Man, feel free to reach out.
• 33:14
  SPEAKER_02: We are at Planet Geocast on Twitter, Instagram, and Facebook, and you can reach us by email at planetgeocast at gmail.com.
• 33:24
  SPEAKER_02: Thanks and have a good one.