Latest / The Smart Cookies podcast / Joe Rogan keeps claiming the EARTH is cooling down. I talk to an actual CLIMATE scientist to dispel the BS. With David Armstrong McKay

Transcript

Joe Rogan keeps claiming the EARTH is cooling down. I talk to an actual CLIMATE scientist to dispel the BS. With David Armstrong McKay · The Smart Cookies podcast

• 0:04
  Dr. David Armstrong -McKay is a climate biosphere
• 0:07
  scientist, communicator and advocate working
• 0:10
  to understand and enhance Earth's system and
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  socio -ecological resilience for an age of climate
• 0:15
  and ecological crisis currently with the University
• 0:19
  of Exeter, if I'm not mistaken. David, welcome
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  to the program. Yep, thank you very much for
• 0:24
  having me on. And at the moment, I'm now at the
• 0:26
  University of Sussex, as well as being an associate
• 0:29
  to Exeter. Oh, okay, okay, so I didn't completely
• 0:32
  fuck it up. Alright, good to know. I apologize
• 0:36
  for having to open our conversation with this,
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  but it's literally been the stuff of many headlines
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  recently, and it's got to do with podcaster Joe
• 0:45
  Rogan, somewhat of a scientist himself, apparently,
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  who has in the last couple of months repeatedly
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  and confidently stated that Earth is in fact
• 0:55
  cooling down. Citing an article from the Washington
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  Post, I'm sure you're familiar with it, that
• 1:05
  featured a study tracking the Earth's climate
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  in the past, I believe, 485 million years. So
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  here comes my bombshell of a question. Is it
• 1:15
  possible that Dr. Rogan here is right and we
• 1:20
  are actually doing just fine? No. There is some
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  interesting context to how this has been misinterpreted.
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  It comes from a really interesting study to do
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  with looking at the long -term history of geological
• 1:34
  timescales of how climate has varied. And it
• 1:37
  is true that on really long timescales, Earth
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  is in a relatively cool state. It's what we call
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  in paleoclimate science, which is where I did
• 1:46
  a lot of my training, it's what we call an icehouse
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  state, because there are ice sheets at both poles.
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  And that's sort of somewhat unusual if you go
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  back 500 million years. Earth is more often a
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  bit warmer and with less ice. But if you zoom
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  in on the actual last couple of million years,
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  and particularly actually if you're looking at
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  the last few thousand years, we are definitely
• 2:08
  warming. And we're warming at a rate which is
• 2:10
  really rapid, kind of more rapid than anything
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  we've really seen in the geological record. Just
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  this past couple of years, so in 2023, there
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  was a big warming spike. uh and then 2024 uh
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  was the first year where it was above 1 .5 degrees
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  for the first time probably in hundreds of thousands
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  of years uh so in that context we are definitely
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  warming up right now and it's actually really
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  important but it's to do with the rate it's the
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  rate of change which is the issue if it was going
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  slower if it was just kind of like the gradual
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  change of temperatures that we see over geological
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  time scales we could probably adapt to that but
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  the real problem is that it's going too fast
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  we're already not adapting to the level of climate
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  change we've seen even just over the past couple
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  of decades. Devil's advocate. I totally find
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  this whole argument, quote unquote, horrifying.
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  But like you said at the beginning, there were
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  periods when there were no ice sheets and the
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  earth was still here. Plants were still here.
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  I presume animals were still here. So what's
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  the problem? Yeah. So the problem is, is to do
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  with us being able to adapt to it and also all
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  the other life forms as well. We live on a planet
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  now where everything is adapted. to having ice
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  sheets at the poles, to the level of temperatures
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  we expect, to the rainfall we expect. Some of
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  those past time periods were radically different.
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  And if you just plot everything that lives now,
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  if you plot all humans, their cities, infrastructure
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  and stuff, and all of the animals and plants
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  we have now, if you just put it straight into
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  a warmer planet. like a hothouse state from tens,
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  hundreds of millions of years ago, everything
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  would be screwed. It's that kind of, it's the,
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  what we're adapted to, the level of change, the
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  rate of change, that is the issue. And sure,
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  we could get to a state where, you know, you
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  lose a lot of the ice sheets at the poles, everything
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  has to migrate and, you know, life will carry
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  on. But there could be a lot of extinctions and
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  a lot of things that go extinct are the things
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  we rely upon. We're far more reliant upon nature
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  than we often tend to think in the modern age.
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  We still have to eat food. We still grow trees
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  for timber. We're still very reliant on rainfall,
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  of course. All these things were dependent on
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  and were adapted to where they are at the moment.
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  And if they change rapidly, things start to fall
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  apart quite quickly. You're telling me that climate
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  change actually exists. Is that what you're saying?
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  That is true. There is, of course, natural climate
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  change. I knew there was something you were trying
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  to tell me. I'm very smart. It does happen. What
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  we're doing now is that we're turbocharging it.
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  We're making it much faster. And it's heading
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  in a direction that humans haven't experienced
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  ever before. If you go past 1 .5 degrees, you're
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  really going to levels that we haven't seen for
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  the last 3 million years. And that's a long time.
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  That's something that modern humans or any type
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  of human species haven't really seen before.
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  And that will be a new reality we have to live
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  with and adapting. All right, now that we've
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  sorted this minor issue, the follow -up question
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  has to be, how bad is our current predicament
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  right now here in 2025? And the reason I'm asking
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  is that when you start snooping around for answers
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  like I did, I noticed they kind of... depend
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  a little bit on who you ask some people are saying
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  our situation is completely hopeless and that
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  we should all pretty much start doom prepping
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  while others people like data scientists most
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  famously uh hannah ritchie recently seem cautiously
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  optimistic that we can turn this around one thing
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  is pretty certain though i believe we will breach
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  the 1 .5 degree celsius limit within a couple
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  of years which can be really good on the other
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  hand my understanding is that the current trajectory
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  of warming of kind of limited mitigation will
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  make us avoid the worst case scenario, kind of
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  expanded coal use, I believe, which would entail
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  an absolutely cataclysmic four degrees of warming
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  above pre -industrial levels by 2100. So where
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  are we actually? So at the moment, and it's actually,
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  you know, it's quite difficult to measure the
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  temperature of a whole planet. So there's a little
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  bit of disagreement as to exactly where. current
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  warming levels are especially if you're trying
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  to think about in terms of where kind of like
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  the average the long -term average is because
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  that's what's actually important that's what
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  the yeah the paris agreement all these climate
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  treaties are to do with this long -term right
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  so like one year of uh crossing this threshold
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  of 1 .5 degrees celsius that doesn't really mean
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  anything because it's it's not it's just one
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  year right it's just one year But it means that
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  we're getting close. And the best estimate at
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  the moment for how much the long -term average
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  is, we're probably around 1 .4 degrees of warming.
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  Wow, that's pretty close. I thought it was 1
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  .2. Yeah, it was only like a couple of years
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  ago. It's this recent warming spike has really
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  kind of like accelerated the schedule a bit.
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  And it doesn't mean that we're at 1 .5, having
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  one year above it. But it's kind of like it's,
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  you know, we've... We're so long above that.
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  If you count the number of months above 1 .5
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  degrees, it's sort of difficult to get that unless
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  you're getting quite close to that limit. So
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  we're probably going to see 1 .5 degrees, that
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  sort of long -term average, probably around 2030,
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  give or take a few years. It's hard to be exactly
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  sure. Yeah, exactly. And it's because there's
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  all this, we are pushing the average up over
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  the long term, but there's sort of natural variability
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  on top of that. So some years are a bit warmer,
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  some years are a bit cooler. There's some kind
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  of like noise in the system, which makes it difficult
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  to say precisely when we're going to hit it.
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  But basically, within a few years, we are probably
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  going to see 1 .5 being passed. How much further
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  we get from there? That depends on emissions.
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  That depends on what we do in terms of climate
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  policy at the global level. At the moment, we're
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  on a trajectory towards around about 2 .7 degrees
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  by 2100. That's with current policies that are
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  actually in place. And I should actually say
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  as well, that's 2 .7 is the best estimate. But
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  because we're not 100 % sure how... uh sensitive
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  the climate system is to co2 there's a bit of
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  uncertainty there uh but we could actually see
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  anywhere between 2 .2 and 3 .4 degrees of warming
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  for that uh trajectory so that's kind of like
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  there's quite a big range around it we could
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  you know if we're lucky maybe with current policies
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  it could only be 2 .2 which would be pretty bad
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  but it's not as bad as 3 .4 which is equally
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  likely and that would actually be quite difficult.
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  That would be, you know, it's hard to say what
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  exactly catastrophic warming means, what the
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  word catastrophic means. You know, I don't think
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  that would be an easy thing to adapt to by any
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  means at all. And you mentioned that some of
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  the worst case scenarios have been ruled out.
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  And that is true that some of the scenarios I
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  used when we're doing climate modeling, there's
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  one that's been called RCP 8 .5, and they sort
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  of technical jargon, or climate modeling, and
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  that did just sort of assume that we would burn
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  all fossil fuels. And that would have led to
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  something like, you're right, something like
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  four or five degrees, which would have been very
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  much a catastrophic outcome. And that has been
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  avoided. That's good. But that doesn't mean that
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  2 .7 is... good to end up at either and that's
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  because we have what we call a kind of non -linear
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  acceleration in climate impacts. It's not that
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  you know every fraction of a degree more, it's
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  just the same fraction worse in terms of impacts.
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  Every fraction you get more than what we have
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  now from beyond 1 .5, every fraction is a bit
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  worse than the last fraction. It accelerates
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  in terms of how bad it gets. So you know going
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  to three degrees say is not twice as bad as 1
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  .5. It would be a lot a lot worse than 1 .5 is
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  even two degrees when we're sort of comparing
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  1 .5 and two degrees you know there is a big
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  difference between those uh life is kind of we
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  would be able to adapt moderately well at 1 .5
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  degrees if we got our sorted out but two degrees
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  beyond two degrees the ipcc says basically it's
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  difficult to adapt to that you know beyond that
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  it kind of gets tricky to do um to change our
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  current way of life to fit that level of warming
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  By the way, the 1 .5 degrees Celsius that was
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  kind of agreed upon in the Paris Accord, that's
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  pretty much dead in the water, right? We can't
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  make that in four years. Come on. Unless something
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  very dramatic happens, then yeah. Like aliens
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  come and just they give us... Yeah, asteroids,
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  nuclear war, something like that. Okay. All good
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  stuff. Basically, we are going to get to 1 .5.
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  The question is how much further we go beyond
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  it. And also now there's discussion of overshoot.
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  So if later in the century we might be able to,
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  you know, there's a lot of talk about carbon
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  dioxide removal. So this kind of negative emission
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  technologies, we might be able to start pulling
• 11:01
  out CO2 from the sky. And also actually nature
• 11:05
  will do that to some extent as well. Like plants
• 11:08
  on land and the ocean, they are pulling carbon
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  out of the sky. they're really helping us, otherwise
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  the situation would be a lot worse. Hopefully
• 11:16
  the combination of those things might mean that
• 11:18
  CO2 will fall in the future. That means that
• 11:21
  maybe warming will peak and start coming back
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  down a bit, back towards 1 .5. That's sort of
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  the good future that we would like to aim for,
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  but we don't actually know how much carbon dioxide
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  can be removed with these technologies because
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  a lot of them haven't been invented yet. This
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  number 1 .5, this is... purely a symbolic number,
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  right? Or does it carry any sort of scientific
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  weight? Yes, that's a really interesting point.
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  There's been, again, a lot of discussion over
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  what this means. Originally, it is just from
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  international diplomacy. It's from climate negotiation.
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  Originally, there was this target of two degrees,
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  but then a lot of the, particularly the small
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  island states... in, you know, the kind of tropical
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  and subtropical island states, they kind of thought
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  this was, you know, two degrees is unacceptable,
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  that would probably lead to enough sea level
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  rise to, you know, see those countries disappear
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  by the end of the century or beyond that. And
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  they didn't want that. So obviously, there was
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  a lot of lobbying. And that's where this 1 .5
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  number came in, and actually got baked in by
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  Paris Agreement, and actually took a lot of scientists
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  by surprise. uh but when you know we were asked
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  to do a lot of research to kind of look at the
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  difference between 1 .5 and 2 and we found well
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  yeah 1 .5 is a lot better than two you can adapt
• 12:36
  1 .5 to and beyond is getting pretty difficult
• 12:40
  um so that's where that came in but you're right
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  it's not really it's not a solid threshold it's
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  not like you hit 1 .5 and there's a chain reaction
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  and everything you know the whole climate system
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  blows up I do have some colleagues who do try
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  and actually use some of our research to do with
• 12:58
  tipping points to present 1 .5 degrees, kind
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  of reframe it as a physical climate threshold,
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  one that's sort of hardwired into the planetary
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  fabric. But to be honest, I don't really see
• 13:11
  our research actually really making that case.
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  You know, we have all these big, we'll talk about
• 13:17
  a bit more about tipping points in a bit, I'm
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  sure. But there are these uncertainty ranges
• 13:21
  about thresholds. If you sort of look at it statistically,
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  it's all just to do with every fraction of a
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  degree more makes things, you know, makes it
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  more likely these things happen, makes it more
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  likely you lock in some of these big climate
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  impacts. But there's no kind of like particular
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  level where it's like a massive jump up. So,
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  yeah, 1 .5 is kind of like it's a line in the
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  sand that the global community informed by climate
• 13:43
  science has drawn to say beyond this, things
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  get too bad and we need to try and keep behind
• 13:50
  this line. And if we go beyond this line, we
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  need to try and get back. If we pull off a miracle
• 13:56
  and the whole fossil fuel insanity stops immediately
• 13:59
  somehow, does the planet keep on warming for
• 14:03
  a while or does everything just stop immediately
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  after that? Our best estimate is that after some
• 14:09
  amount of a little bit of lag in the system,
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  but after around 10 years or so, warming should
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  stop. And overall warming, as soon as if you
• 14:19
  were to snap fingers and greenhouse gas emissions
• 14:22
  stop, we would expect, roughly speaking, no extra
• 14:25
  warming. It just takes a little bit of time to
• 14:27
  be able to tell that for sure, given some of
• 14:30
  that noise in the system. That's assuming we
• 14:34
  stop emissions right now. And it does make some,
• 14:36
  you know, this is using climate models, which
• 14:38
  again have some uncertainty. Some models see
• 14:41
  a bit of cooling, actually. Some models see a
• 14:43
  bit of warming. So it kind of depends on, you
• 14:45
  know, which is better representing reality. But
• 14:48
  basically, yeah, the overall story is if we stop
• 14:50
  emissions, we expect warming to stop either soon
• 14:53
  or pretty soon. Another interesting thing I've
• 14:56
  noticed while lurking on social media is a bit
• 14:59
  of a split between... climate scientists themselves
• 15:02
  with one camp, people like the eminent James
• 15:05
  Hansen, one of the pioneers in this field, claiming
• 15:08
  that the rate of warming is speeding up and it's
• 15:11
  speeding up dramatically. The other folks like
• 15:14
  Professor Michael Mann, equally as eminent, say
• 15:17
  that the existing models are generally accurate
• 15:20
  and things are going on according to... To plan,
• 15:23
  so to speak. That's a bad phrase. So yes, the
• 15:26
  planet is warming up rapidly, but the warming
• 15:28
  isn't wildly abnormal or different from our forecasts.
• 15:33
  What's your assessment? Yes, on this, I think
• 15:36
  both of them have some good points. And I think
• 15:40
  there is actually just an honest scientific disagreement
• 15:43
  here that we just haven't quite got enough evidence
• 15:45
  to settle it. Generally, Michael Mann is correct.
• 15:51
  Climate models have been remarkably accurate
• 15:52
  at the global level. If you go back to some of
• 15:55
  the IPCC reports from around the year 2000, they
• 15:59
  make some projections using climate models, which
• 16:01
  at that point were a bit more basic than now.
• 16:03
  But actually, they do a remarkably good job at
• 16:05
  projecting warming. We're roughly tracking what
• 16:07
  they said would happen by this point. If you
• 16:11
  get into kind of like regional details, it starts
• 16:13
  to get a bit more kind of because the models
• 16:15
  are not so good at that level. But globally,
• 16:18
  they're doing a good job. Equally, actually,
• 16:21
  what the models show is that on the emission
• 16:23
  trajectory that we're kind of following, the
• 16:25
  kind of like middle of the road one, we would
• 16:27
  actually expect in these climate models some
• 16:30
  acceleration of warming at the moment. And that's
• 16:33
  because we're gradually cutting out aerosols.
• 16:35
  So we're both emitting greenhouse gases that
• 16:38
  cause warming, but we're also emitting aerosols,
• 16:40
  which on the whole, they tend to reflect a bit
• 16:43
  of radiation coming into the... So that's actually
• 16:45
  pollution, right? Yeah, basically air pollution
• 16:48
  reflects some of the energy coming into the planet.
• 16:50
  That's masked some amount of warming, something
• 16:52
  between like... Okay, so let me get this straight.
• 16:54
  So actually like tackling pollution makes the
• 16:58
  planet warmer. So it's in this case, not such
• 17:01
  a desirable outcome. Yeah, exactly. It's what
• 17:05
  James Hansen calls the Faustian bargain that
• 17:08
  effectively by cleaning up pollution, which is
• 17:11
  good because it means fewer people die, like
• 17:12
  millions of people die from this air pollution
• 17:15
  every year. um by cleaning that up you're actually
• 17:18
  unmasking some of that warming which again you
• 17:21
  know globally that also does cause suffering
• 17:24
  and kill people so it's kind of like this difficult
• 17:26
  trade -off but in the long run we know that we
• 17:29
  do need to stop emitting greenhouse gases because
• 17:31
  it gets worse and every fraction of degree is
• 17:33
  ever even worse uh so it's kind of like we do
• 17:36
  have to cut these things out but it does have
• 17:38
  an unfortunate effect of slightly accelerating
• 17:40
  warming and on this question of whether it is
• 17:43
  accelerating that michael mann is You know, saying,
• 17:46
  well, we don't really have the evidence for it.
• 17:47
  Again, that's to do with what I mentioned earlier
• 17:49
  to do with there being a certain amount of noise
• 17:51
  in the climate system. There's some variability,
• 17:54
  natural variability on top of this like linear
• 17:56
  or nonlinear trend that we're forcing the system
• 17:59
  with. And that makes it actually kind of hard
• 18:01
  to tell. It looks like it's accelerating. But
• 18:04
  if you want to be really sure, if you're doing
• 18:05
  statistical tests, if you're trying to be kind
• 18:07
  of like scientific and empirical about it, it
• 18:10
  can be hard to be sure that that trend is real.
• 18:13
  uh you have to come up ideally you wait 100 years
• 18:15
  and see what happens and go ah yeah that's one
• 18:17
  of the cases when you're actually in the middle
• 18:19
  of it it can be statistically hard to be sure
• 18:22
  so that's where some of this disagreement comes
• 18:24
  from but basically climate models are broadly
• 18:26
  right but they also do expect some level of acceleration
• 18:30
  the level of acceleration that Jim Hansen is
• 18:33
  projecting is not actually that different from
• 18:35
  what the IPCC class models are suggesting should
• 18:38
  be happening So I think probably there is, you
• 18:41
  know, there probably is some acceleration going
• 18:43
  on, but it's kind of too early to be sure. Theoretically,
• 18:47
  it is possible that warming is accelerating and
• 18:50
  we won't know until, what, a couple of years
• 18:52
  from now, at least. Which is a little bit scary.
• 18:55
  If you're being completely scientifically objective,
• 18:57
  you'll wait a few decades and write a nice paper
• 19:00
  about it. But, you know, we are actually humans
• 19:02
  who are alive now, we would like to know. But
• 19:04
  yeah, I mean, it's understandable as well why
• 19:06
  people are hesitant about it. In the early 2000s,
• 19:09
  there was something that was called the kind
• 19:12
  of global warming hiatus or the global warming
• 19:14
  pause, but basically kind of like warming kind
• 19:16
  of plateaued or seemed to plateau for a while.
• 19:19
  There was a lot of research about it. A lot of
• 19:21
  skeptics sort of took it up and said, well, it
• 19:23
  stops and we don't need to worry about things.
• 19:26
  And then there was a big warming jump because
• 19:27
  global warming tends to go in steps. It's kind
• 19:30
  of a bit of a staircase because of this natural
• 19:32
  variability on top of this long term trend. And
• 19:36
  so that's made scientists like Michael Bang and
• 19:39
  many others hesitant. We were kind of a little
• 19:43
  bit burned by people over -interpreting that
• 19:45
  pause or the supposed pause in the early 2000s.
• 19:49
  So it's kind of like, well, maybe we should be
• 19:51
  a bit careful about over -hyping some of the
• 19:53
  steps as well. The thing that's really important
• 19:55
  is that underlying long -term trend, which is
• 19:59
  only going upwards. I mentioned doom preppers
• 20:02
  earlier. And again, scanning through social media,
• 20:05
  always a pretty unwise idea, by the way. Climate
• 20:08
  doomism seems to have taken hold. And a lot of
• 20:11
  people, including a lot of very educated people,
• 20:14
  actually, seem to have just given up and are
• 20:16
  urging others to give up any sort of climate
• 20:19
  action too, making the job of climate change
• 20:22
  denialists even easier. Why do you think this
• 20:26
  is happening when we should kind of be fighting
• 20:29
  the hardest? Yeah, I mean, this gets into some
• 20:32
  interesting psychology. I guess there's some
• 20:35
  interesting politics as well. But you must see
• 20:37
  this, right? Yeah, yeah. And it somewhat relates
• 20:40
  to my own field of research. So I particularly
• 20:42
  work on tipping points and feedbacks and stuff
• 20:45
  like that, where a lot of this sort of fatalistic
• 20:49
  attitudes tend to kind of like, they pick up
• 20:51
  on it and kind of amplify it. And it's something
• 20:54
  I do actually push back against because... um
• 20:57
  yeah i've seen a lot of people take research
• 20:59
  to do with tipping points and be like well because
• 21:01
  a bunch of them uh have their thresholds their
• 21:03
  best estimates around 1 .5 that means when we
• 21:05
  get to 1 .5 they will go they will they will
• 21:08
  tip quite quickly and that triggers some sort
• 21:11
  of tipping cascade where they they trigger some
• 21:13
  of the other tipping points that locks in a bunch
• 21:15
  of warming and there's nothing more we can do
• 21:16
  and that's not actually what our research shows
• 21:20
  uh there's no although we have those best estimate
• 21:23
  thresholds for when they're kind of getting likely
• 21:25
  that doesn't mean that they all suddenly tip
• 21:27
  at 1 .5 they don't necessarily go quickly some
• 21:30
  of these things take decades some of them take
• 21:32
  centuries or longer to be locked in especially
• 21:34
  stuff like ice sheets even when you tip those
• 21:37
  um when they commit them to long -term collapse
• 21:40
  they're big and they're slow they take a while
• 21:43
  to melt it's just that you've locked them in
• 21:45
  uh and they don't necessarily lock in a huge
• 21:47
  amount of warming either so like losing the greenland
• 21:50
  ice sheet uh that's one of the tipping systems
• 21:52
  we study uh that would lock in seven meters or
• 21:56
  up to seven meters of sea level rise which would
• 21:58
  obviously be devastating to coastal cities but
• 22:01
  it would take a thousand plus years to happen
• 22:03
  it doesn't actually add that much warming to
• 22:06
  the climate system um so it's kind of like we
• 22:10
  don't hit 1 .5 degrees and suddenly all these
• 22:12
  things explode and we lock in a much warmer planet.
• 22:15
  It's much more kind of like as warming goes up,
• 22:18
  you're making these things more likely. You hit
• 22:20
  one, you lock in some of these impacts, but you
• 22:22
  can still prevent extra fractions of warming
• 22:26
  and that makes further tipping points less likely.
• 22:29
  You can't make them, you can't eliminate the
• 22:31
  chance of them happening, but they become less
• 22:33
  likely. It's all kind of a more of a probability
• 22:36
  game where everything's a bit more fuzzy than
• 22:38
  this sort of like. Big hard line in the climate
• 22:41
  system, everything explodes beyond it. So that's
• 22:44
  where some of the fatalism has come from, misinterpretation
• 22:46
  of that. And I do think that some people misuse
• 22:50
  some of this research as well. So I think people
• 22:52
  do, some people do take tipping points and kind
• 22:54
  of to try and make action, you know, kind of
• 22:58
  make the case for action. There can be a tendency
• 23:00
  by some to kind of like over -egg it, to kind
• 23:02
  of like hypo... exaggerate it to some extent
• 23:06
  make it hyperbolic be like well this worst case
• 23:08
  scenario kind of present it as the most likely
• 23:11
  scenario instead to try and kind of like get
• 23:14
  people to act which is understandable but I don't
• 23:16
  think it's actually it's not actually that useful
• 23:19
  because it scares you know maybe make some people
• 23:21
  more likely to act other people would just make
• 23:24
  some panic and give up in the way that you're
• 23:26
  describing and I think also there's some kind
• 23:28
  of like odd comfort in that sort of giving up
• 23:31
  as well if you if you take up a fatalistic attitude
• 23:34
  it's simple all of these things i keep on talking
• 23:37
  about uncertainties and probabilities it's all
• 23:40
  very complicated and very difficult to kind of
• 23:42
  be certain about anything in the future and it
• 23:44
  could be a lot simpler just to go well fuck it
• 23:46
  i think everything is screwed that that makes
• 23:49
  life easier in a way because it makes it life
• 23:51
  it makes it simpler to understand and it also
• 23:53
  excuses you from having to do something about
• 23:56
  it if everything's kind of more of a middle of
• 23:58
  the road thing where it's kind of like things
• 24:00
  are getting bad but there's always something
• 24:02
  you can do about it but you don't know exactly
• 24:04
  how bad things are or what's going to happen
• 24:06
  that's a much more difficult place to be psychologically
• 24:10
  and it also means that really you never get to
• 24:13
  stop doing stuff you always have to be kind of
• 24:15
  trying to think to do something about it yeah
• 24:18
  i think you're right i just saw a short documentary
• 24:20
  on youtube about a german guy who who just said
• 24:25
  like, oh, fuck it, I can't do this anymore. And
• 24:27
  he bought like a little plot of land and a rifle
• 24:29
  and seemed super happy about it, even though
• 24:33
  he obviously still believes everything is coming
• 24:36
  to an end, which is kind of ironic. Some people
• 24:39
  do go out and do good things and live good lives
• 24:44
  after that sort of thing. But the main thing
• 24:46
  is not to... Not to spread the idea that it really
• 24:50
  is kind of like game over, because I also get
• 24:53
  a lot of people coming to me with quite a lot
• 24:54
  of psychological distress about this. For some
• 24:58
  people, it's a comforting message. For other
• 24:59
  people, it's definitely not. And yeah, I think
• 25:03
  there just needs to be some level of care around
• 25:06
  it and some level of kind of just making sure
• 25:08
  we are sticking to what we know, but also kind
• 25:11
  of accepting the things that we don't know and
• 25:13
  what we're not so certain about and trying to
• 25:16
  live with some of those complexities. Yeah, I
• 25:19
  think the problem manifests itself. I mean, the
• 25:21
  biggest problem here, I think, is that when these
• 25:24
  sort of, like, collapsologists start collecting
• 25:29
  acolytes and proselytizing and stuff, turning
• 25:33
  it into a slight cult, that's where things get
• 25:38
  a little bit uncomfortable. It's okay if you
• 25:39
  decided that, but I think sapping the will of
• 25:42
  other people to fight climate change is a bit
• 25:44
  dark. Yeah, I know there's definitely some odd
• 25:47
  dynamics that happens in these circles. I'm sort
• 25:48
  of familiar with some of them. I've interacted
• 25:50
  with some of these people. And, you know, I kind
• 25:53
  of I empathize with some of the people who get
• 25:55
  into these things. But also I know that, you
• 26:00
  know, some of the particularly some of the leaders
• 26:01
  of these groups, they use a lot of research in
• 26:04
  a very dodgy way. um that it just doesn't reflect
• 26:08
  what we actually know about it particularly to
• 26:10
  do with you know i've seen a lot of stuff to
• 26:11
  do with tipping points and arcing methane and
• 26:14
  stuff like this getting really kind of yeah just
• 26:16
  being basically wrong uh and then being very
• 26:19
  defensive when we point out well actually that's
• 26:21
  not we don't know that or we know that's not
• 26:24
  true um and that's yeah where it gets into some
• 26:27
  interesting spaces uh but overall i mean it's
• 26:30
  having said all this i don't want to under I
• 26:34
  don't want to make it sound like we don't need
• 26:36
  to worry about these things. All the science
• 26:38
  we currently have is enough. It's enough to justify
• 26:43
  really kind of immediate and strong climate action.
• 26:46
  We don't need any of these hyperbolic scenarios
• 26:48
  in order to kind of justify doing something.
• 26:52
  So it's kind of like going further than that.
• 26:55
  It's just, it's neither useful or honest, really.
• 26:59
  You mentioned tipping points. So kind of like
• 27:03
  critical thresholds that when crossed cause irreversible
• 27:07
  changes to the climate, right? Stuff like you
• 27:09
  already mentioned, ice sheets, disintegration,
• 27:11
  the weakening of the Atlantic Meridional Overturning
• 27:14
  Circulation or AMOC, the Amazon forest dieback
• 27:18
  and so forth. Now, I heard you say in a recent
• 27:20
  interview that we are dangerously close to crossing
• 27:24
  four or even five of these. Yikes. Now you said...
• 27:28
  this might happen in like a hundred or a thousand
• 27:31
  years to be fully locked in. Still kind of a
• 27:35
  little bit frightening. So I'm afraid of you
• 27:38
  elaborating further, lest I become a doomer myself,
• 27:41
  but I don't believe they will disappear if we
• 27:43
  just refuse to talk about them. Yeah, so I study
• 27:48
  these things called tipping points, amongst other
• 27:51
  things. to define what i'm meaning by this this
• 27:55
  is when you know you get part of the climate
• 27:56
  system so say an ice sheet or one of a large
• 28:00
  forest like the amazon or boreal forest something
• 28:03
  like that and you know beyond some level of warming
• 28:06
  or some other thing that's kind of like some
• 28:08
  pressure something that's forcing change on them
• 28:11
  you cross some level in that beyond which you
• 28:13
  get a self -sustaining change in that part of
• 28:17
  the climate system so there's some warming level
• 28:20
  where we think you go beyond it And the ice sheet
• 28:23
  is committed not only to lose some of its mass,
• 28:26
  but it completely collapses. And it could be
• 28:29
  helpful actually to describe how that works a
• 28:31
  little bit. Ice sheets are actually really, because
• 28:33
  they're really tall. uh you know the Greenland
• 28:36
  ice sheet is several kilometers tall the top
• 28:38
  of it's very cold it's like going up a mountain
• 28:40
  it's very cold as the further you go up into
• 28:42
  the atmosphere but as the ice sheet is losing
• 28:44
  mass in response to global warming so you're
• 28:47
  getting the melt water at size it's kind of flowing
• 28:49
  outwards and losing height the top of it is dropping
• 28:52
  down into warmer air and actually helps amplify
• 28:55
  the amount of melt and the warming over Greenland
• 28:59
  more than you would have had just from global
• 29:00
  warming alone so you get this sort of what we
• 29:03
  call a positive or an amplifying feedback making
• 29:06
  the warming and the ice loss worse and there's
• 29:10
  some level beyond which you drop the ice sheet
• 29:13
  into a low enough part of the atmosphere where
• 29:15
  even if you were to stop global warming or even
• 29:17
  potentially to start reverse it that meltdown
• 29:20
  would still carry on because it's now just reached
• 29:23
  part of the atmosphere where temperatures are
• 29:24
  high enough that you will just get melt enough
• 29:27
  melt to kind of lose the ice sheet and gradually
• 29:30
  you know after that point you know whatever no
• 29:32
  matter what you do it will keep on going it will
• 29:34
  keep on collapsing in that case it would take
• 29:37
  probably over a thousand years to happen but
• 29:40
  locking in a huge amount of really bad impacts
• 29:43
  the seven meters of sea level rise would mean
• 29:46
  you have to move pretty much all major coastal
• 29:48
  cities but there are other ones that could happen
• 29:50
  much faster So thinking about the Amazon rainforest,
• 29:55
  you could get dieback across large parts of that,
• 29:57
  we think, within a few decades. Or even if we're
• 30:01
  looking at one part of the particular part of
• 30:02
  the Atlantic circulation, in some way we call
• 30:05
  the subpolar gyre, which is kind of like just
• 30:07
  to the south of Greenland, we reckon that could
• 30:10
  potentially see convection collapse within only
• 30:13
  10 years. and that would have a pretty much immediate
• 30:16
  kind of like uh impacts on across europe that
• 30:20
  would be you know relevant within all of our
• 30:22
  life uh spans um so there's yeah the issue with
• 30:26
  tipping points is this kind of locking in of
• 30:28
  these serious impacts because you get these self
• 30:30
  -sustaining changes that we can't easily stop
• 30:33
  uh and it means that even if we were to kind
• 30:35
  of like do something like low warming stop it
• 30:37
  try and reverse it with magical future technologies
• 30:40
  they would just keep on going and that's the
• 30:42
  big issue Wasn't that the plot of a movie, The
• 30:45
  Day After Tomorrow? But that kind of happens
• 30:48
  in a couple of days. Yeah, so that's... An exaggeration
• 30:52
  of how the AMOC you mentioned, the Atlantic Regional
• 30:56
  Overturning Circulation, our best estimates for
• 30:58
  that is actually it would happen over the course
• 31:00
  of decades, maybe a hundred years, but it would
• 31:02
  have really serious implications. Almost immediately
• 31:06
  or in a couple of years. So what would happen
• 31:09
  is that you see those changes start to accelerate.
• 31:11
  So if I go back to the ice sheets as an example,
• 31:13
  people could say, well, I don't really care about...
• 31:16
  you know, seven meters of sea level rise in over
• 31:18
  a thousand years time, because that's a very
• 31:21
  long time away. We can adapt to that. But the
• 31:23
  trouble is, is that even within the next couple
• 31:25
  of decades, that could really accelerate sea
• 31:27
  level rise. You know, by 2100, you could be adding
• 31:29
  on to, you're heading towards adding on to an
• 31:32
  extra meter of sea level rise, maybe, if you
• 31:34
  look at kind of instabilities in both of, both
• 31:37
  poles ice sheets. And that really accelerates
• 31:40
  sea level rise within, you know, the timeframe
• 31:42
  we're actually kind of like having to deal with
• 31:43
  it. If you double the sea level rise rate, that
• 31:47
  causes a lot of problems in the near term, even
• 31:50
  if the full implications are far in the future.
• 31:53
  And it's the same with AMOC collapse as well.
• 31:55
  You would start to see cooling and drying, actually,
• 31:58
  importantly. You start to see drying in Europe
• 32:00
  and shifts in the monsoon belts around the equator.
• 32:04
  And you would start to see those impacts well
• 32:07
  before the AMOC has fully collapsed. it will
• 32:10
  still have an issue, cause an issue much sooner.
• 32:13
  So we can't just say, well, you know, it takes
• 32:15
  decades, centuries, we'll just deal with it then.
• 32:18
  It will cause, again, going back to rates of
• 32:21
  change, the rate of change would accelerate very
• 32:24
  soon within the next few decades. The timescale,
• 32:27
  we actually have to be kind of planning things
• 32:29
  and doing something about it. But if I understood
• 32:31
  you correctly, we don't know exactly when. Yeah,
• 32:35
  so looking at the temperature thresholds, The
• 32:39
  statement you were talking about for me, that's
• 32:41
  to do with our best estimates for some of these
• 32:43
  systems. So Greenland ice sheet, the West Antarctic
• 32:46
  ice sheet, like tropical coral reefs and abrupt
• 32:50
  fall in permafrost around kind of like the Arctic
• 32:52
  Circle. Those we had best estimates of around
• 32:56
  about 1 .5 degrees being their kind of tipping
• 32:58
  threshold. But again, they sit in a wide range.
• 33:01
  So going back to the Greenland ice sheet, the
• 33:03
  minimum estimate for tipping threshold for that.
• 33:07
  was 0 .8 degrees which were well beyond that
• 33:10
  happens that happens sometime around the year
• 33:13
  2000 but the upper the maximum estimate is three
• 33:17
  degrees so what i'm saying is that even if we
• 33:20
  stop warming at 1 .5 degrees it could be that
• 33:23
  tipping in green and ice sheet started a while
• 33:25
  ago but because it's such a slow system we haven't
• 33:28
  noticed it yet but it could also be that tipping
• 33:30
  might not start until well beyond 1 .5 degrees
• 33:33
  we can't be exactly sure all we know is that
• 33:36
  The further we go up warming, the more fractions
• 33:39
  of warming you add, the more likely it gets.
• 33:42
  And we were doing a best estimate of saying,
• 33:44
  well, beyond 1 .5 degrees, these things are more
• 33:46
  likely than not. But that's still to do with
• 33:50
  probabilities and chance. And if you add them
• 33:54
  all up, it doesn't mean that all of them suddenly
• 33:56
  go up 1 .5 degrees. Again, it's just the more
• 33:59
  warming happens, the more bad things we're risking
• 34:02
  locking in. When one of these... kind of go,
• 34:06
  don't they have a domino effect on the others?
• 34:08
  Yeah, so there is a potential for what we call
• 34:11
  a tipping cascade. In general, so some of my
• 34:14
  colleagues have been doing research on this and
• 34:16
  they look at how, because everything in the Earth
• 34:19
  system, in the climate system is interacting
• 34:21
  and everything is connected to each other. And
• 34:23
  some of these interactions are stronger than
• 34:25
  others. And in general, it seems that most of
• 34:28
  these interactions mean that if you destabilize
• 34:29
  one tipping system, you tend to destabilize ones
• 34:32
  that are connected to it. So, for example, the
• 34:34
  Greenland ice sheet, if that starts to collapse
• 34:37
  and accelerates meltwater coming off, which is
• 34:40
  fresh water coming into the North Atlantic, that
• 34:43
  can disrupt that Atlantic circulation we're talking
• 34:45
  about. That's all to do with how salty and dense
• 34:48
  the water is there. So Greenland ice sheet collapse
• 34:51
  could make AMOC collapse more likely. But there
• 34:55
  are some converse scenarios where if for some
• 34:57
  reason the AMOC were to collapse first. maybe
• 35:00
  we've misestimated or maybe it happens at this
• 35:03
  lower estimate and Greenland Ice Sheet happens
• 35:04
  at its upper estimate. AMOC collapse, because
• 35:07
  that causes cooling in the North Atlantic, that
• 35:10
  could actually protect and stabilize the Greenland
• 35:12
  Ice Sheet. So this is where some of the complexities
• 35:14
  start coming in and being like, yeah, we could
• 35:16
  get domino effect between some parts of it, but
• 35:19
  it kind of depends on the timing of it. A lot
• 35:23
  of models that we have at the moment aren't really
• 35:25
  set up very well to be able to deal with this.
• 35:27
  A lot of the Earth system models have come up
• 35:30
  really leaps and bounds in the last couple of
• 35:31
  decades. But most of them still don't have, you
• 35:34
  know, if you have ice sheets melting in a climate
• 35:37
  model, they don't all have the effect of the
• 35:40
  melt water coming off that ice sheet on the ocean
• 35:42
  around it. because that's really difficult to
• 35:44
  do it's really difficult to program that into
• 35:47
  the model it's not like an oversight it's just
• 35:49
  difficult and that means it's kind of hard for
• 35:51
  us to say exactly how some of these interactions
• 35:54
  work we think they're destabilizing on the whole
• 35:56
  that's you know seems pretty likely but exactly
• 35:59
  how much you know to say this tipping point causes
• 36:03
  that tipping point that's still actually quite
• 36:06
  difficult to say for sure we can just sort of
• 36:07
  say well probably it's a bad idea and all of
• 36:10
  this adds up to well that means that we should
• 36:13
  take precaution and limit warming as low as possible
• 36:15
  because we know these things are plausible. Which
• 36:19
  one of these would have the most dramatic and
• 36:21
  the most immediate effect on our civilization?
• 36:25
  Well, yeah. Dramatic and immediate are kind of
• 36:27
  like opposite poles on this sort of thing. I'm
• 36:31
  not making it easy. Yeah. AMOG collapse would
• 36:33
  be really dramatic in terms of like parts of
• 36:35
  Europe be kind of multiple degrees cooler, really
• 36:38
  dry. uh you know some studies looking at uh agriculture
• 36:41
  basically um in the uk at least uh wouldn't be
• 36:45
  able to grow crops anymore uh without huge amounts
• 36:47
  of irrigation because it dries out so much uh
• 36:51
  and you know it shifts all the monsoon bills
• 36:53
  actually it's where a lot of people would have
• 36:54
  to be living if they're doing rainfall agriculture
• 36:56
  you know that would amok clubs would really redraw
• 36:59
  the global map of where people live and can grow
• 37:01
  food uh and similarly uh ice sheet clouds that
• 37:05
  would redraw the world's coastlines if you have
• 37:07
  in the uh west antarctic ice sheet as well you
• 37:10
  know up to 10 meters of sea level rise uh would
• 37:13
  redraw the global maps but these things would
• 37:15
  take you know might take a century green and
• 37:18
  ice sheet and west antarctic ice sheet may take
• 37:19
  thousands or more years these are quite long
• 37:23
  -term things the shorter term things the things
• 37:26
  that could really hit us this century tend to
• 37:28
  be somewhat less dramatic but they could still
• 37:31
  have really serious consequences so i mentioned
• 37:33
  that thing to the subpolar jar collapse that's
• 37:35
  kind of like a mini amok in in terms of its effects
• 37:38
  that's maybe like half as bad but that could
• 37:40
  happen within you a decade or so uh amazon dieback
• 37:44
  a lot of that could happen here if it started
• 37:46
  soon a lot of that could happen within this century
• 37:49
  and that would cause apart from losing a huge
• 37:51
  amount of biodiversity obviously uh in terms
• 37:54
  of you know direct uh human impacts it would
• 37:57
  cause a lot of extra warming through south america
• 38:00
  you would lose a lot of rainfall both in the
• 38:02
  kind of the brazilian amazon region uh but also
• 38:05
  down further south into the southern cone of
• 38:07
  south america would lose a lot of rainfall because
• 38:09
  it's effectively kind of like powers an atmospheric
• 38:12
  river and that would happen you know a lot quicker
• 38:14
  than some of these other things um and also there's
• 38:18
  coral reefs we'll already at the point where
• 38:20
  we are seeing regional die -off of coral reefs.
• 38:23
  And a lot of people depend on those. Something
• 38:25
  like half a billion people are dependent in some
• 38:28
  way in their livelihoods on coral reefs, either
• 38:30
  for fishing or because of coastal protection
• 38:33
  or tourism as well. And so that's a lot of people
• 38:36
  who, you know, within the next couple of decades,
• 38:38
  their livelihoods might be gone. And half a billion
• 38:40
  people, that's a lot. So I think it's kind of...
• 38:44
  Saying which one is the most dramatic and scary
• 38:47
  and immediate one is quite difficult to say because
• 38:49
  it's all kind of horrible in different ways.
• 38:52
  But probably actually one of the ones I'd be
• 38:54
  more worried about is Amazon dieback at the moment
• 38:57
  because it has that combination of it's not just
• 38:59
  climate change causing it, it's deforestation
• 39:01
  as well. And in many ways, it's the deforestation
• 39:03
  which is actually closer to pushing it over the
• 39:06
  edge. And to be honest, just losing large amounts
• 39:09
  of the Amazon would be just tragic in its own
• 39:12
  right as well. Would it also release huge amounts
• 39:15
  of CO2 into the atmosphere? Yeah, so it would
• 39:18
  release quite a bit. There are various numbers
• 39:22
  floating around us exactly how much, some of
• 39:24
  which are a bit off. But in general, we would
• 39:26
  expect it to be releasing something like the
• 39:28
  equivalent of six or seven years worth of current
• 39:31
  human emissions, which would be a lot. That's
• 39:34
  not really unwelcome. But it's also not kind
• 39:37
  of like as similar with permafrost as well. would
• 39:41
  amplify emissions make the situation worse it
• 39:44
  would make it really difficult to keep to climate
• 39:46
  targets uh but overall human emissions still
• 39:50
  stay the main dominant driver of warming it just
• 39:53
  makes it you know that x percent x worse on top
• 39:57
  of it you mentioned europe before uh when you're
• 40:01
  talking about a mock is it true that europe is
• 40:04
  warming up twice as fast as the other continents
• 40:07
  and why is that happening yeah so this is um
• 40:11
  Europe is one of the, I think it might actually
• 40:13
  be the fastest warming continent. And partly
• 40:17
  because it's next to the Arctic Circle as well.
• 40:19
  So it depends, the further north you go, the
• 40:22
  stronger that effect is. There's this thing called
• 40:24
  polar amplification, or particular Arctic amplification
• 40:28
  at the moment, which is a big factor in that
• 40:31
  is as the amount of snow and ice is declining.
• 40:35
  um you know that's a very reflective surface
• 40:37
  actually reflects a lot of the sunlight and that
• 40:39
  means the thermal radiation as well coming in
• 40:41
  from the sun because it's bright it reflects
• 40:43
  a lot of if you expose much darker ocean the
• 40:48
  arctic ocean below it and soils around the kind
• 40:50
  of arctic fringe they absorb a lot more energy
• 40:53
  so as you lose snow and ice because of global
• 40:56
  warming you actually getting an amplification
• 40:59
  of warming in those regions. And so there are
• 41:02
  parts of the Arctic that are warming three or
• 41:03
  four times the global average as well. That means
• 41:07
  all of the impacts of climate change are that
• 41:09
  much worse in those regions. And Europe kind
• 41:12
  of sits at the edge of that. We're getting some
• 41:14
  of that effect as well. And there's some other
• 41:16
  aspects on top of that too. All right. We talked
• 41:20
  about how bad things are at the moment. Let's
• 41:22
  turn the page and spend some time discussing
• 41:25
  possible. So what do we have to do first in the
• 41:31
  fight against climate change? I mean, the big
• 41:34
  thing I always highlight is that we do have a
• 41:36
  global agreement that all governments signed
• 41:39
  up to in the form of the Paris Agreement, which
• 41:41
  is to keep warming as low as possible. A bit
• 41:44
  of a paper tiger, I'm afraid. Yeah. Well, I mean...
• 41:47
  It's still impressive that it happened, and it's
• 41:49
  still something that we can try to hold governments
• 41:52
  to. But isn't every COP just like a massive disappointment?
• 41:56
  There's all these wild expectations year after
• 41:58
  year, and then they can't even agree on... phrasing
• 42:03
  stamping out fossil fuels into the final text
• 42:06
  in like 2024. I mean, it's pretty ridiculous.
• 42:08
  Yeah, I mean, it took nearly three decades for
• 42:10
  the declarations to include fossil fuels in them.
• 42:14
  And it's like phasing out. It's not even... They
• 42:18
  use all these... Yeah, there was a debate over
• 42:21
  phasing out or phasing down. Exactly, yeah. Yeah,
• 42:23
  I'm not a huge fan of the COP process. Although
• 42:27
  one thing that is important about it is that
• 42:29
  it is one of the few... forums in which every
• 42:33
  country in the world gets an equal sitting, equal
• 42:35
  table, or roughly equal. There's a lot of issues
• 42:38
  to do with some nations having bigger lobbying
• 42:40
  power. There's a lot of lobbyists there as well.
• 42:42
  Apparently there's more fossil fuel lobbyists
• 42:45
  than actual state representatives. As a forum,
• 42:50
  it's really flawed, but it at least exists. That
• 42:55
  is something in its defense. It is some sort
• 42:58
  of global democratic forum. The cup is half full.
• 43:00
  Yes. Yeah. But yeah, you know, countries, states,
• 43:05
  corporations, they're not doing enough. I was
• 43:08
  talking about, you know, on track for 2 .7 degrees
• 43:10
  at the moment. There's a certain amount of backsliding.
• 43:12
  We're not kind of like advancing right now. And,
• 43:16
  you know, the target of keeping, you know, the
• 43:18
  Paris Agreement wanted to keep, you know, the
• 43:21
  main thing is to well below two degrees aiming
• 43:23
  for 1 .5. Well, aiming for 1 .5, you know, probably
• 43:26
  can't happen now unless we overshoot and get
• 43:28
  back to it by the end of the century. well below
• 43:30
  two degrees is a bit of a fuzzy thing. But that's
• 43:33
  still actually possible if there are rapid emission
• 43:36
  cuts. And, you know, the the state's action around
• 43:40
  the Paris Agreement is obviously kind of underwhelming.
• 43:44
  But it does actually give us a tool where it's
• 43:45
  kind of like citizens and movements of people
• 43:50
  to hold them to it because they did sign this
• 43:52
  thing they did all state yes climate change is
• 43:54
  very serious and we need to do something about
• 43:56
  it and these are the goals and you know to some
• 43:58
  extent we can hold them to account for their
• 44:01
  failures that's the kind of remaining power of
• 44:03
  paris agreement and 1 .5 and well below 2 is
• 44:06
  that we can hold them to account for their failures
• 44:08
  and also Some of the global South countries can
• 44:12
  be like, well, you promised to do these things
• 44:13
  and you didn't. So now you owe us some loss and
• 44:16
  damage because we're at the front line of facing
• 44:19
  some of these climate impacts that are reducing,
• 44:22
  causing suffering in our countries, reducing
• 44:25
  economic growth, things like this. So in terms
• 44:28
  of what we need to do about it, obviously, it
• 44:30
  just always continues to be cut greenhouse gas
• 44:32
  emissions as fast as possible. That's primarily
• 44:34
  fossil fuels, just phasing. uh some of the debate
• 44:38
  around phasing out but you know getting rid of
• 44:40
  fossil fuel emissions as soon as possible is
• 44:42
  the main thing there also needs to be uh changes
• 44:46
  transformations to how we grow and eat food you
• 44:49
  know there's a lot of food being wasted there's
• 44:51
  a lot of forests being cut down for it uh there's
• 44:54
  issues to do with kind of like uh methane emissions
• 44:56
  as well from cattle yeah there needs to be a
• 44:59
  transformation in the food system as well but
• 45:01
  the main thing just remains eliminating fossil
• 45:04
  fuels as quickly as possible That has to be the
• 45:07
  thing. And it just has to be something we just
• 45:09
  keep on plugging away at. Obviously, politicians
• 45:11
  are not doing enough to some extent. I have to
• 45:13
  take my scientist hat off here and speak as a
• 45:16
  citizen. But politicians, I don't think, are
• 45:18
  doing enough of this. And it's the job of citizens
• 45:21
  and political movements to hold them to account,
• 45:24
  to push on that, to try and do as much as possible.
• 45:28
  And something else that could help is that, you
• 45:30
  know, particularly at Exeter, a lot of my colleagues
• 45:32
  there. they focus on something called positive
• 45:36
  tipping points. This idea that because there
• 45:39
  are tipping points in the climate system, we
• 45:41
  know there are some of these dynamics there in
• 45:44
  physical, natural systems. There's also some
• 45:46
  evidence for them being in social systems as
• 45:49
  well. Often they are negative. They can be things
• 45:53
  that are bad, bad transitions. But there's this
• 45:55
  idea that maybe there are positive ones or things
• 45:58
  that we think are positive where we can like...
• 46:00
  So an example might be solar power becoming really
• 46:03
  cheap at some threshold. It basically became
• 46:05
  so cheap that even if you took away all the subsidies
• 46:07
  from it, it would just continue to grow and dominate
• 46:10
  the energy system. There's been some more debate
• 46:15
  around it because social tipping dynamics are
• 46:18
  a lot messier. People have agency. Even if there's
• 46:21
  some sort of solar power tipping point going
• 46:23
  on, you could get... a government coming in,
• 46:26
  for example, that just makes laws against it.
• 46:28
  We've seen some of the stuff in the US at the
• 46:29
  moment to do with basically trying to stop all
• 46:33
  wind power development because of arbitrary reasons.
• 46:37
  Yeah, social tipping dynamics are messier and
• 46:40
  maybe kind of a bit more kind of uncertain than
• 46:43
  the physical side. But that is something that
• 46:46
  maybe we could try and accelerate things in a
• 46:50
  way that they start becoming self -sustaining
• 46:52
  in terms of the things we want to see. kind of
• 46:56
  the transformations within society and economics,
• 46:58
  maybe some of those could start going really
• 47:01
  quickly as well. And that could help reach the
• 47:04
  sort of pace we need. Yeah, it's one thing for
• 47:07
  the states at COP or whatever to write and sign
• 47:09
  a document. But it's another thing to implement
• 47:13
  what they're saying, because we see it totally
• 47:16
  didn't happen with the Paris Accords. And apparently
• 47:18
  you can just withdraw from the Paris Accords
• 47:21
  after you've already signed it, which America
• 47:23
  has done twice now. And you mentioned the current
• 47:26
  administration, who doesn't even believe in climate
• 47:28
  change. I believe the motto is drill, baby, drill,
• 47:32
  which is just a nightmare. There's rollbacks.
• 47:36
  Obviously, it's most dramatic in the US at the
• 47:39
  moment. But sitting here in the UK, the previous
• 47:45
  party of government, the Conservatives, have
• 47:48
  basically just abandoned a lot of their... the
• 47:52
  sort of previous kind of cross -party consensus
• 47:54
  on doing something. And across a lot of countries,
• 47:57
  there's a bit of a rollback going on. And that's
• 48:00
  where I think it really comes down to people
• 48:04
  and movements to try and hold them to account.
• 48:09
  We can't just expect states and corporations
• 48:13
  to sort of stick to the pledges they've made
• 48:15
  and the treaties they've signed without there
• 48:18
  being pressure as well. Because, yeah, obviously
• 48:21
  a lot of them are going back on their word. And
• 48:24
  that means that people have to push back on it
• 48:27
  as much as possible. You said that the number
• 48:29
  one thing is obviously that we need to reduce
• 48:30
  and eliminate fossil fuel emissions. Globally
• 48:34
  speaking, is anything happening there? Is there
• 48:37
  any sort of noticeable reductions? Yes, fossil
• 48:40
  fuel emissions. Have we reached the peak yet?
• 48:43
  Not quite yet. It's slowing down. But every year
• 48:47
  there is a little bit more. There's something
• 48:49
  called the global carbon budget, which is actually
• 48:51
  published at the sidelines of COP every year.
• 48:54
  And, you know, hope, you never know, maybe this
• 48:56
  year there has been a peak, but probably not.
• 48:59
  But it's kind of like the increase every year
• 49:02
  has been slowing down. It's sort of heading towards
• 49:04
  plateauing. But the trouble is, is that even
• 49:07
  if we just plateau fossil fuel emissions for
• 49:09
  the next few decades, they're still horrible.
• 49:11
  That's still heading towards, you know, that
• 49:12
  2 .7 degrees future basically. predicated on
• 49:16
  that, we needed to peak and start falling quite
• 49:18
  rapidly. And that's, you know, we haven't seen
• 49:22
  that happen in the data yet. we have seen you
• 49:25
  know the counterpoint to that is that there is
• 49:26
  a huge boom in the amount of solar power being
• 49:29
  installed it's sort of a running kind of joke
• 49:31
  in renewable energy circles of kind of like looking
• 49:34
  at the projections that various global institutions
• 49:36
  make every year of how they think solar power
• 49:39
  wind power whatever is going to do over the next
• 49:41
  few decades and every single year they've been
• 49:43
  wrong they always underestimate uh the acceleration
• 49:47
  and uh solar power so that's kind of like the
• 49:49
  positive thing that's the sort of thing that
• 49:51
  you mentioned hannah ritchie earlier our world
• 49:54
  and data that's the sort of thing that they highlight
• 49:55
  being like what is this huge boom in solar power
• 49:57
  and that is that is good it's just at the moment
• 50:00
  we are continuing to see fossil fuel emissions
• 50:02
  growing at the same time as renewable energies
• 50:04
  um so we need to get to the point where the latter
• 50:08
  is starting to eat into the former rather than
• 50:11
  just adding on And that can happen. It's not
• 50:14
  a case of it's impossible to stop growing fossil
• 50:17
  fuels. It's just not there yet. And that's what
• 50:20
  we need to push on. And that's to do with actually
• 50:22
  kind of like trying to legally limit fossil fuel
• 50:26
  development as well as one proposal. And it's
• 50:28
  also stuff to do with sufficiency, that it will
• 50:31
  be a lot easier to completely replace global
• 50:34
  energy with renewable energy if we're not using
• 50:38
  quite as much and if the amount we're using isn't.
• 50:40
  constantly growing at a huge rate if there's
• 50:43
  some level of sufficiency going on in there as
• 50:45
  well of trying to just be more efficient maybe
• 50:47
  some things we don't need then that makes it
• 50:50
  easier to replace it all with renewable energy
• 50:52
  with the advent of ai and these huge data centers
• 50:56
  being built left and right now it doesn't seem
• 50:59
  like it's going to go that way but hopefully
• 51:00
  i'm wrong yeah i mean that the ai definitely
• 51:03
  doesn't uh help i mean that you There's a lot
• 51:07
  that can be said on that technology, which would
• 51:10
  take a whole other podcast to do. There are some
• 51:13
  things which are useful for me to do in machine
• 51:15
  learning. If you actually disaggregate it into
• 51:16
  how it works and the different types, machine
• 51:19
  learning could be useful for climate science.
• 51:20
  It could be useful for some of the energy transition
• 51:22
  stuff. But in general, a lot of stuff, particularly
• 51:25
  to do with these huge data centers going up to
• 51:28
  power chatbots that can't really tell the difference
• 51:33
  between truth and lies. uh and you know some
• 51:35
  of the big ones that are the ones i've built
• 51:37
  for grok uh in texas where they had to install
• 51:39
  loads of gas um gas burning turbines all around
• 51:43
  it which are kind of like air pollution uh surrounding
• 51:45
  communities just to power grok which is uh not
• 51:49
  that useful a thing so all those things are not
• 51:51
  helping the energy transition um but you know
• 51:56
  we just have to keep on pushing on it uh and
• 51:59
  you know maybe maybe a lot of that stuff is a
• 52:01
  big bubble and will be falling away in the next
• 52:03
  few years you never know from me from your mouth
• 52:06
  to god's ears as we say in Slovenia um the new
• 52:10
  shiny toy in the possible solutions department
• 52:12
  seems to be geoengineering so some sort of a
• 52:15
  techno fix like whitening the Arctic ice to reflect
• 52:19
  the sunlight back into space, or injecting aerosols,
• 52:22
  we talked about aerosols before, into the atmosphere
• 52:25
  again, which would supposedly have a similar
• 52:27
  effect. However, a lot of smart people are saying
• 52:30
  this kind of tampering with the climate could
• 52:32
  have unforeseen and potentially dangerous consequences.
• 52:36
  What's your take here? Yeah, so this is a complicated
• 52:40
  one, and especially because I know people who
• 52:43
  take strong positions across both sides on this
• 52:46
  one as well, including a lot of climate scientists
• 52:49
  who I think have justifiable concerns about it,
• 52:52
  given that we don't really fully understand how
• 52:54
  the climate system works. Our climate models
• 52:56
  have improved a lot, but they're still not great
• 52:59
  in many things. I mentioned stuff to do with
• 53:01
  a lot of interactions between different parts
• 53:03
  of the climate are missing. And that makes it
• 53:06
  quite hard to actually project how well it could
• 53:08
  work. In theory, if you take a model, you do
• 53:11
  say the stratospheric aerosol injection method
• 53:16
  you just mentioned, you can limit global warming
• 53:20
  in them. It has some potential issues to do with
• 53:23
  changing where precipitation is. So rainfall,
• 53:26
  it kind of changes rainfall patterns around the
• 53:28
  world in ways that maybe countries that suddenly
• 53:30
  get less rainfall would not like. And you can't.
• 53:34
  none of these things can recreate past climate
• 53:36
  you're effectively engineering a new different
• 53:39
  climate there's no going back but in theory you
• 53:42
  can halt global warming or reduce it and that
• 53:45
  could in theory prevent some of these tipping
• 53:47
  points but where it gets complicated and messy
• 53:50
  is to do with what i mentioned to do with the
• 53:53
  threshold being uncertain we don't know exactly
• 53:55
  when these tipping points are going to happen
• 53:56
  and also some of the stuff to do in these models
• 54:00
  where you can't try and prevent a specific tipping
• 54:02
  point. So for example, the West Antarctic ice
• 54:04
  sheet or something like that, what you might
• 54:07
  do in terms of geoengineering to prevent one
• 54:10
  tipping point might make another one more likely.
• 54:13
  And especially because our models are kind of
• 54:15
  limited, particularly actually limited in terms
• 54:17
  of stuff to do with rainfall. The whole water
• 54:20
  cycle side of things is a lot more uncertain.
• 54:22
  A lot of models disagree on that. You don't want
• 54:25
  to be in a situation where to try and prevent
• 54:27
  ice sheets tipping, you accidentally dry out
• 54:30
  half of the Amazon rainforest. Because that's,
• 54:33
  you know, it's difficult to try and optimize
• 54:36
  things for everything. And particularly if you
• 54:38
  throw in kind of all the political stuff as well.
• 54:41
  On the other hand, I do understand where geoengineering
• 54:45
  researchers are coming from. I do know some of
• 54:47
  them and they are coming at this in good faith.
• 54:49
  They do think it's kind of like. they see there
• 54:52
  are risks and problems with geoengineering but
• 54:55
  they sort of think it's worthwhile researching
• 54:57
  it just in case and it's a case of kind of the
• 55:00
  case they presented to do kind of like a risk
• 55:02
  risk trade -off it's kind of like we can't just
• 55:03
  look at the risks of geoengineering in isolation
• 55:06
  because we also have the risks of unabated climate
• 55:10
  change as well it's kind of you have to trade
• 55:12
  off the risks of further warming versus the risks
• 55:15
  of geoengineering And that becomes a lot more
• 55:18
  difficult to do, and they advocate doing further
• 55:21
  research on it. Personally, I am skeptical of
• 55:27
  both the technological and especially the political
• 55:31
  feasibility of these things. On the technological
• 55:33
  side, the aerosol injection is probably the most
• 55:37
  likely to work, but even that requires fleets
• 55:40
  of planes running constantly for... uh decades
• 55:43
  which is is it would be a big expensive operation
• 55:45
  for decades wow yeah so i i thought it's just
• 55:48
  like a one big cannon and they're just shooting
• 55:50
  yeah and this is the issue that um if you did
• 55:55
  it in a situation of you know we did nothing
• 55:58
  about emissions they just kept on growing but
• 56:00
  you also did your engineering they would be gradually
• 56:02
  i'm asking more and more warming and if for some
• 56:05
  reason that program stopped because of geopolitical
• 56:08
  tension or wars or something like that, you would
• 56:12
  suddenly unmask a lot of warming. And that could
• 56:14
  be much more catastrophic than just having done
• 56:16
  it anyway. That's something called termination
• 56:18
  shock. The counter to that is, well, we would
• 56:22
  only do it in sensible ways. We have a bit of
• 56:25
  overshoot over 1 .5. We just use geoengineering
• 56:29
  to kind of mask, kind of shave off. They call
• 56:32
  it peak shaving. So you keep the world at 1 .5
• 56:34
  degrees. whilst you're inventing the negative
• 56:37
  emission technologies to do that overshoot and
• 56:40
  then you stop doing geoengineering uh when you're
• 56:43
  you know you've removed some of those emissions
• 56:44
  uh the trouble is is that that still means doing
• 56:47
  it for decades uh and a big question with all
• 56:51
  of these sort of things who's going to pay for
• 56:52
  it how do we get in in a world where we have
• 56:56
  you know geopolitical tensions and fragmentation
• 56:59
  already that we can't even agree to do something
• 57:01
  about climate change. I have an easy solution
• 57:03
  for that. How about billionaires? Apparently,
• 57:06
  one billionaire has the carbon footprint of a
• 57:11
  million average citizens. I've read somewhere.
• 57:15
  There is discussion of it being a unilateral
• 57:19
  thing. A big corporation or a very rich philanthropist
• 57:22
  could just go ahead and do it. The trouble is...
• 57:25
  Depending on how you do it, it really could have,
• 57:28
  it's all the trade -offs to do with like, okay,
• 57:30
  you do that to reduce global warming, but it's
• 57:32
  not an even reduction of global warming. And
• 57:35
  it changes rainfall patterns as well. So what
• 57:38
  do you do if, thinking of states unilaterally
• 57:42
  do it as well, what if China does it, but the
• 57:45
  way it happens, it kind of like screws up the
• 57:48
  Indian summer monsoon. What's India going to
• 57:51
  say about that? What are they going to do about
• 57:53
  it? It's all these kind of like. geopolitical
• 57:56
  trade -offs that make it kind of like if we thought
• 57:59
  trying to stop emissions was difficult at a global
• 58:03
  diplomatic level then doing sensible geoengineering
• 58:06
  would be very difficult as well not impossible
• 58:09
  but i tend to i struggle to see it within current
• 58:12
  political circumstances and that's for something
• 58:15
  that's the more technological uh technologically
• 58:17
  feasible you know we have planes we can probably
• 58:19
  do some sort of spraying thing on them and have
• 58:23
  that within you some level of years uh but some
• 58:27
  of the other things like to do if you mention
• 58:28
  uh whitening the arctic a lot of those things
• 58:31
  yeah the technology is just sort of a bit goofy
• 58:34
  to be honest or kind of like oh yeah we'll just
• 58:37
  spread glass beads over the entire arctic like
• 58:39
  spring well and then having um little windmills
• 58:43
  that pump water up onto the sea ice to thicken
• 58:45
  the sea ice uh and you know each one can cover
• 58:48
  a few football pitches worth or something like
• 58:49
  that um but the arctic ocean is really big and
• 58:53
  it's really difficult to work in and get to like
• 58:56
  spreading millions of these things across the
• 58:59
  arctic would be not a minor thing uh and i sort
• 59:03
  of struggle to see how that's yeah how that's
• 59:07
  likely to be feasible and again who pays for
• 59:08
  it it's difficult to get anyone to pay for anything
• 59:11
  even if there's a clear benefit uh to doing so
• 59:14
  so who's going to pay for all these things unless
• 59:17
  there's some sort of global ordered you know
• 59:19
  carbon market or something like that but even
• 59:22
  that has had its issues so yeah in general i'm
• 59:26
  sort of i am i understand why people are researching
• 59:29
  it i can see the the points being made on it
• 59:31
  is the difficulties of training off one risk
• 59:34
  against the other but in general i just remain
• 59:36
  a bit skeptical at the moment of it being you
• 59:39
  know feasible in the current situation we have
• 59:42
  climate change is just like one of the issues
• 59:45
  that we are that our civilization is currently
• 59:48
  facing there's deforestation like you said there's
• 59:51
  loss of biodiversity microplastics how are we
• 59:55
  doing on these other fronts how are we doing
• 59:57
  holistically on the whole environmental department
• 1:00:00
  because even if we fix climate change uh there's
• 1:00:04
  other there's other dangers yeah there's lots
• 1:00:08
  of talks of like treaties like the ocean treaty
• 1:00:11
  the the plastics treaty totally fell through
• 1:00:13
  uh but but and like a lot of uh countries have
• 1:00:17
  reforestation programs and so forth but it's
• 1:00:20
  kind of i don't know impossible to find out how
• 1:00:21
  we're doing globally on tackling these yeah i
• 1:00:25
  mean it's one of those things that on there are
• 1:00:27
  some good things at local scales uh that are
• 1:00:30
  worth sort of looking at and celebrating but
• 1:00:31
  on the global scale yeah similar to climate possibly
• 1:00:35
  even less less good than some of the global climate
• 1:00:39
  uh progress so there's been a bunch of biodiversity
• 1:00:41
  treaties um there was one that signed in aichi
• 1:00:46
  a number of years ago uh they set a number of
• 1:00:49
  targets i'm pretty sure it was that all of those
• 1:00:53
  targets were missed on biodiversity uh there
• 1:00:56
  is a new new stuff to do of kind of protecting
• 1:00:59
  30 of the biosphere by 2030 sort of 30 by 30.
• 1:01:04
  uh but again stuff on that is really slow um
• 1:01:08
  a lot of countries are not really you know they're
• 1:01:10
  promising states are promising to protect things
• 1:01:14
  and you know either they're just not doing it
• 1:01:15
  or they're putting in um paper protections you're
• 1:01:18
  just declaring somewhere and a national reserve
• 1:01:21
  a nature reserve and not actually doing anything
• 1:01:24
  on the ground there um and then yeah you know
• 1:01:28
  you noted there the global plastics treaty uh
• 1:01:31
  on the pollution side of things there are global
• 1:01:33
  pollution treaties and we have to celebrate some
• 1:01:35
  of those uh particularly the montreal protocol
• 1:01:37
  which is what uh stopped the emission of cfcs
• 1:01:40
  back in the um outside in the late 1980s announced
• 1:01:44
  to do the ozone hole and the ozone hole has gradually
• 1:01:47
  been mending it's still not fixed yet there are
• 1:01:50
  still some places that are doing sort of sneaky
• 1:01:53
  emissions of cfcs but actually on the whole that
• 1:01:55
  was a problem that was spotted negotiated and
• 1:02:01
  to some degree dealt with. So that's something,
• 1:02:04
  you know, on the pollution front, that was a
• 1:02:06
  good thing. And air pollution, we've mentioned
• 1:02:09
  before, that is being cleaned up. That's good
• 1:02:11
  too, with the trade -off of it making global
• 1:02:14
  warming a bit worse as well. So we have to, you
• 1:02:17
  know, those things we have to celebrate. We also
• 1:02:19
  have to celebrate where there's been great work
• 1:02:21
  on the ground to do with kind of protecting biodiversity.
• 1:02:27
  But yeah, at a global scale, there are a number
• 1:02:29
  of those things that are like climate change.
• 1:02:31
  There's a lot of talk, but not enough action.
• 1:02:34
  And we do have to remember to push on those as
• 1:02:36
  well. And that's something that, you know, with
• 1:02:37
  tipping points, particularly the, I was involved
• 1:02:39
  in the global tipping points report, where we
• 1:02:41
  do look beyond just warming as well. Warming
• 1:02:43
  is one of the, you know, climate change, global
• 1:02:45
  warming is one of the main drivers of these things.
• 1:02:48
  But there are, you know, the Amazon has deforestation.
• 1:02:50
  If you look at things like coral reefs or mangroves,
• 1:02:53
  there's pollution as well, just direct habitat
• 1:02:55
  loss. We have to consider all these things if
• 1:02:59
  we want to make sure we deal with all these issues
• 1:03:04
  at the same time. In the end, let us circle back
• 1:03:07
  to our friend, fellow scientist Joe Rogan, and
• 1:03:10
  the issue of climate denialism. Whenever there's
• 1:03:13
  a bit of news on the deteriorating state of the
• 1:03:17
  climate, the comments underneath the article
• 1:03:19
  seem to be full of hateful spite, usually to
• 1:03:23
  the tune of something like... Oh, yes, I'm sure
• 1:03:25
  another tax will fix this. Even Joe Rogan said
• 1:03:30
  climate change is just a big money -making scheme,
• 1:03:34
  neglecting, of course, the actual money -making
• 1:03:37
  scheme that has been going on for the past 80
• 1:03:39
  years, which is the fossil fuel industry. And
• 1:03:42
  yet we can all observe pretty much with our naked
• 1:03:44
  eyes now, or maybe just those of us who are a
• 1:03:47
  bit older, that the normal weather of our childhoods
• 1:03:50
  is pretty much irreversibly gone. Every summer
• 1:03:53
  seems... a bit crazier than the previous one,
• 1:03:55
  you know, like with all breaking records, floods,
• 1:03:59
  wildfires all over the place. How do they say
• 1:04:02
  this is the coldest summer of the rest of your
• 1:04:05
  lives? A bit dramatically, but probably they're
• 1:04:07
  right. It's just going to go downhill from here
• 1:04:09
  if we don't act on it dramatically. But still,
• 1:04:12
  it isn't enough to convince a lot of people out
• 1:04:16
  there. Why do you think climate denialists exist
• 1:04:19
  in 2025? And what's the best way to make them?
• 1:04:23
  kind of see sense on this issue yeah i mean i
• 1:04:25
  think this is uh i mean it's sort of getting
• 1:04:27
  a bit uh away from my own uh research area so
• 1:04:30
  to some extent i have to but you must deal with
• 1:04:32
  it a lot yeah yeah infuriate you that you dedicated
• 1:04:36
  your life to this research and there's still
• 1:04:38
  people who just don't believe in it like you
• 1:04:40
  know yeah just say no the sky is not blue it's
• 1:04:43
  green yeah i mean it's taking off my scientist
• 1:04:46
  hat and sort of you know thinking more kind of
• 1:04:48
  like as a person and thinking about some of the
• 1:04:50
  stuff i've seen the experiences i've had talking
• 1:04:52
  to these people it's a lot to do with worldview
• 1:04:54
  it actually gets into i think stuff around the
• 1:04:57
  science communication as well there is kind of
• 1:05:00
  an assumption that if we just show people facts
• 1:05:03
  then you do that enough and it changes people
• 1:05:07
  mind we assume that people just kind of like
• 1:05:09
  you know the reason they oppose stuff is because
• 1:05:12
  they just don't know you know they don't know
• 1:05:13
  enough about it and that's something that we
• 1:05:16
  call the information deficit model uh it kind
• 1:05:19
  of relates to how we think about learning as
• 1:05:21
  well that people were just kind of like empty
• 1:05:23
  vessels and you just have to fill them up with
• 1:05:24
  facts and they do the right thing and there's
• 1:05:26
  been a lot of research to show that's not really
• 1:05:28
  how people work people have world views they
• 1:05:30
  understand and learn things through stories and
• 1:05:34
  narratives and that's a powerful thing if you
• 1:05:37
  have a worldview and a narrative that this you
• 1:05:41
  know climate change or similar issues doesn't
• 1:05:43
  fit into then no amount of facts being spewed
• 1:05:47
  at you by well -meaning science communicators
• 1:05:50
  is going to really get in. That's not to say
• 1:05:53
  that science communication doesn't need to happen.
• 1:05:55
  We do obviously need to be getting facts out
• 1:05:57
  there, but we have to understand that people
• 1:06:00
  aren't necessarily going to pick them up unless
• 1:06:01
  they're somehow made relevant. That's where people
• 1:06:06
  who kind of think about talking about stories
• 1:06:09
  and narratives, ways of fitting in with the way
• 1:06:13
  that these people have their worldviews. There
• 1:06:16
  has been work by an organisation here in the
• 1:06:19
  UK called Climate Outreach where they have a
• 1:06:22
  package of ways of talking about climate change
• 1:06:24
  that fit with centre -right voters or religious
• 1:06:28
  voters or things like that. Ways of talking to
• 1:06:30
  people with different worldviews that don't immediately
• 1:06:32
  switch them off. And that's not necessarily showing
• 1:06:35
  them a different set of facts. That's just knowing
• 1:06:37
  how people tick and how people understand things
• 1:06:40
  and how people learn. And that's kind of I think
• 1:06:45
  that's the main issue that is to do with people
• 1:06:47
  don't just pick up facts and do something about
• 1:06:49
  them. And that's something that, yeah, maybe
• 1:06:52
  people on climate action have kind of underestimated
• 1:06:57
  the degree to which people don't just respond
• 1:07:00
  to science. We need science is a necessary but
• 1:07:05
  insufficient condition for action on climate
• 1:07:08
  change. We need to have the science to tell us.
• 1:07:11
  some of what the issues are and kind of sketch
• 1:07:13
  it out. But it's also to do with people needing
• 1:07:16
  a vision of the future, something that's desirable,
• 1:07:19
  something that connects to their local small
• 1:07:22
  day -to -day struggles with the bigger picture
• 1:07:24
  that crosses that divide and goes, well, this
• 1:07:26
  is something that will make your life better.
• 1:07:30
  And also it's worth pointing out as well that
• 1:07:32
  there is a huge political machine against this
• 1:07:35
  as well. There's a lot of people who have made
• 1:07:37
  a lot of money off of fossil fuels. And they
• 1:07:41
  have been putting out bad faith attacks for decades.
• 1:07:44
  I'm pretty sure some of the skeptics you've been
• 1:07:48
  mentioning, I'm pretty sure a lot of them don't
• 1:07:52
  actually believe what they're saying. In the
• 1:07:54
  UK, a minor example is a guy called Jeremy Clarkson,
• 1:07:57
  who he spent years... The car guy. Yeah, the
• 1:08:00
  car guy. And when I was growing up at school,
• 1:08:02
  a lot of people quoting him on climate change.
• 1:08:04
  uh you had a climate skeptic position and then
• 1:08:07
  you know decades later he was like oh i didn't
• 1:08:08
  believe that i was just part of my character
• 1:08:10
  it's part of the act you know and you know people
• 1:08:12
  know not to believe that but i saw in my own
• 1:08:15
  eyes the influence that had um and so yeah i
• 1:08:19
  think a lot of this is coming across in bad faith
• 1:08:21
  um when people say these things aren't true and
• 1:08:25
  there's a lot of money and a lot of power and
• 1:08:27
  that's where it gets beyond science science can
• 1:08:30
  tell us some stuff but you can't expect science
• 1:08:34
  to do the work of challenging some of these powerful
• 1:08:36
  interests. That goes beyond science into political
• 1:08:39
  movements and activism and things like that that
• 1:08:42
  are needed to deal with it. Yeah, it's strange,
• 1:08:45
  but it seems that in conservative circles, acknowledging
• 1:08:49
  climate change is kind of synonymous with some
• 1:08:51
  sort of a devious Stalinist plot when the reality
• 1:08:54
  is just science. Why do you think that is? Because
• 1:08:57
  we need everybody on board for this, right? Yeah.
• 1:09:00
  And I think it's to do well for you. It just
• 1:09:01
  doesn't it doesn't fit into it. Whereas, you
• 1:09:03
  know, some of the same people who deny climate
• 1:09:06
  change is actually happening. They're quite happy
• 1:09:10
  to go and believe in that geoengineering and
• 1:09:12
  weather control and modification is already happening.
• 1:09:15
  And, you know, there's all these bills, especially
• 1:09:16
  in some of the Republican states in the US where
• 1:09:19
  they're banning geoengineering on the assumption
• 1:09:21
  that it's already happening and that all the
• 1:09:24
  strange weather things are actually to do with.
• 1:09:27
  There's an evil conspiracy to control the weather.
• 1:09:29
  But the thing is, that's what we're saying. There
• 1:09:32
  has been a conspiracy to hide the fact that burning
• 1:09:36
  fossil fuels has changed the weather. It's very
• 1:09:39
  difficult to get your mind around sometimes how
• 1:09:42
  someone can not believe in one form of climate
• 1:09:45
  change because of conspiracy, but invent an entirely
• 1:09:48
  different fake type of climate change with a
• 1:09:51
  conspiracy behind it. And it's to do with worldviews.
• 1:09:53
  They just have a worldview where... That makes
• 1:09:55
  sense. And then you cherry pick the facts to
• 1:09:57
  fit in with it. And unless we start kind of dealing
• 1:10:00
  with that, that's how people work in the world.
• 1:10:02
  That's how people understand the world. That's
• 1:10:05
  how people do politics. Yeah, that's just going
• 1:10:07
  to keep on happening. I do have a minor gripe.
• 1:10:10
  I wrote to many climate scientists and it's really
• 1:10:14
  hard to present company excluded, of course,
• 1:10:16
  because you politely answered my invitation.
• 1:10:20
  But I know you guys are busy, but it is hard
• 1:10:22
  to get a lot of you. on a podcast, I have to
• 1:10:26
  say. I didn't have this problem with astrophysicists
• 1:10:29
  and consciousness researchers and stuff like
• 1:10:32
  this. And then in their place, of course, some
• 1:10:35
  sort of a wacky but loud climate denialist is
• 1:10:38
  going to appear on Joe Rogan. Of course, this
• 1:10:40
  is like a really small podcast, but I'm speaking
• 1:10:42
  in general. I don't see many notable client scientists
• 1:10:46
  appearing on these big... podcasts on the new
• 1:10:49
  media and and trying to to reach out to new audiences
• 1:10:53
  like the other side is doing perhaps a bit of
• 1:10:56
  a problem yeah and that's an interesting one
• 1:10:58
  because there definitely are some people who
• 1:11:00
  do engage with that stuff um but i think also
• 1:11:03
  there is a reticence because you know we've historically
• 1:11:06
  had to be very careful um there are i would go
• 1:11:10
  back to the the powerful interests have been
• 1:11:12
  powerful interests who have been undermining
• 1:11:13
  and um you know um I forget the word for it.
• 1:11:18
  But, you know, there have been forces that have
• 1:11:21
  been trying to make climate scientists look bad,
• 1:11:24
  like they're liars, that encourage kind of like
• 1:11:27
  attacks on people's, you know, kind of positions.
• 1:11:31
  And it makes scientists quite reticent. And that's
• 1:11:34
  one of the reasons why you tend to stick with
• 1:11:36
  the IPCC so much, is that it's such a sort of
• 1:11:38
  big, robust, solid process that it kind of, yeah,
• 1:11:43
  it's, we don't want to go beyond. what we can
• 1:11:47
  say about things, lest it be sort of taken up
• 1:11:50
  in bad faith by people and misused. So there
• 1:11:53
  is kind of like an understandable reticence there.
• 1:11:56
  I'm not so familiar with the podcast space as
• 1:11:58
  to why people aren't necessarily taking it up
• 1:12:00
  there. But yeah, I do think it is important for
• 1:12:03
  scientists to be getting out there and having
• 1:12:05
  dialogues. That is an important part, I think,
• 1:12:07
  of science communication. But I guess we're just
• 1:12:10
  a little bit, you know... It needs to be good
• 1:12:13
  faith dialogues. I'm not sure to what extent
• 1:12:15
  going on Joe Rogan to debate him. I personally
• 1:12:17
  wouldn't want to do that because I just wouldn't
• 1:12:20
  enjoy it. But I know some other science community
• 1:12:22
  have done that. Archaeology is quite a different
• 1:12:27
  example. There's been a lot of debate to do with
• 1:12:29
  pseudo -archaeology and people making up weird
• 1:12:32
  stuff. Graham Hancock. Yeah, that sort of stuff.
• 1:12:35
  There's a guy called Flint Dibble. I'm team Flint.
• 1:12:41
  yeah yeah all the way that was great uh but to
• 1:12:44
  be honest i wouldn't be that keen to do that
• 1:12:47
  myself it doesn't sound like much fun it takes
• 1:12:50
  a certain um you know it takes a certain character
• 1:12:52
  to be able to do that and enjoy it and uh hold
• 1:12:56
  your own whereas i i you know this is nice this
• 1:12:58
  is a nice proper good fave dialogue about stuff
• 1:13:01
  and i think that's that's good i think uh ideally
• 1:13:03
  more scientists would be doing that sort of thing
• 1:13:06
  and talking in different venues that aren't just
• 1:13:09
  appearing on the evening news and giving a 30
• 1:13:13
  second soundbite on the new paper. I think it's
• 1:13:15
  good to be talking like this and even going out
• 1:13:20
  and talking to something we did during this climate
• 1:13:23
  strikes that are happening on Fridays for a few
• 1:13:25
  years. We went out and talked to them. We had
• 1:13:28
  a stall that these climate strikers could come
• 1:13:30
  and ask us on the street and have a... dialogue,
• 1:13:32
  a conversation with a climate scientist about
• 1:13:34
  their worries and their concerns and their questions.
• 1:13:37
  And I think that was really important. Yeah.
• 1:13:40
  And also, I think it's a good idea to break it
• 1:13:43
  down because us normal people, we're not going
• 1:13:45
  to read the IPCC report. That's just not all
• 1:13:50
  that much fun. Yeah. So you need somebody to
• 1:13:55
  tell you, what does 1 .5 degrees mean? What does
• 1:13:58
  2 .7 degrees look like? Where are we right now?
• 1:14:01
  Where are we going, etc.? Anyway, I wanted to
• 1:14:05
  ask you this. Last year, The Guardian asked 380
• 1:14:07
  top climate scientists what they felt about the
• 1:14:10
  future. And the answers pretty much ranged from
• 1:14:13
  hopeless to broken. And I'm quoting here. Not
• 1:14:17
  exactly like a viewing of a lighthearted Seinfeld
• 1:14:20
  episode. Do you have hope for the future? Now,
• 1:14:24
  this gets into an interesting differentiation
• 1:14:26
  between hope and optimism. I wouldn't say I'm
• 1:14:30
  optimistic about the future. Defining optimism
• 1:14:34
  to mean the expectation that things will turn
• 1:14:36
  out well. I would probably tend to be like some
• 1:14:41
  of those scientists. You know, they're asking
• 1:14:43
  them what kind of average level of warming they're
• 1:14:45
  expecting by the end of the century. And actually,
• 1:14:47
  they pretty much landed on the current projections
• 1:14:50
  of around, you know, somewhere between 2 .5 and
• 1:14:53
  3 degrees with some people thinking a bit higher
• 1:14:55
  and lower. It actually matched the kind of the
• 1:14:57
  distribution of the current projections given
• 1:14:59
  current policies. So basically, like them, I'm
• 1:15:02
  somewhat pessimistic about a rapid strengthening
• 1:15:06
  of action. of what we currently have but there's
• 1:15:10
  a difference between optimism and hope hope is
• 1:15:13
  carrying even in very kind of like dark situations
• 1:15:16
  where nothing seems to be you know even when
• 1:15:19
  you feel despair hope is when you think you maintain
• 1:15:23
  that it is possible for things to be better it
• 1:15:26
  is possible for the good thing to happen it is
• 1:15:30
  possible that there could be rapid action or
• 1:15:32
  that even if we miss some of these targets we
• 1:15:35
  have these limits we have that even in that case,
• 1:15:39
  it will still be worthwhile doing something the
• 1:15:41
  best we can. And that's a hopeful position. It's
• 1:15:44
  sort of like people talk about critical hope
• 1:15:46
  being a thing. It's kind of like you're not expecting
• 1:15:49
  the good thing to happen, but you're maintaining
• 1:15:51
  that it is possible, even if it takes a long
• 1:15:54
  way to get there. And it's not the ideal way
• 1:15:58
  of getting there either. So yeah, I guess I would
• 1:16:00
  say that I maintain hope, even though I do sometimes
• 1:16:04
  feel despair. And I think there's, A lot of people
• 1:16:08
  who do feel like that as well. And I think that's
• 1:16:11
  quite a reasonable position. My hope is with
• 1:16:15
  young people. They seem pretty cool. Maybe they'll
• 1:16:18
  manage to do better. But I'm just thinking about...
• 1:16:21
  People coming together, it has to be to do with
• 1:16:25
  people, grassroots action from the bottom up
• 1:16:29
  that holds these power structures to account
• 1:16:32
  because clearly they're not doing it on their
• 1:16:34
  own. And that's where I would tend to put my
• 1:16:36
  hope as well. When we were discussing the IPCC
• 1:16:39
  reports and climate science communication and
• 1:16:43
  podcasts and so forth, I said, yeah, you know,
• 1:16:45
  things are too vague for most people right now.
• 1:16:47
  So you said we're currently headed to between
• 1:16:49
  2 .5 and 3 point degrees of warming. Yes, about
• 1:16:57
  the end of the century, 2100. Right, right. So
• 1:17:00
  what does the world, if we're being a bit in
• 1:17:03
  more plastic terms, what does the world... or
• 1:17:06
  our civilization in that scenario actually look
• 1:17:09
  like. So we don't leave it on these kind of more
• 1:17:11
  like abstract terms. Well, I might end up being
• 1:17:15
  a bit abstract here as well because we don't
• 1:17:16
  exactly know. We don't have models that tell
• 1:17:19
  us exactly how the world is going to look like.
• 1:17:21
  But we do know that even two degrees would be
• 1:17:25
  a much worse world than 1 .5 degrees. A world
• 1:17:28
  beyond two degrees would have... far more what
• 1:17:31
  we think of currently being climate extremes,
• 1:17:33
  like extreme heat waves and droughts and storms
• 1:17:37
  and things like that. Those effectively become
• 1:17:39
  the norm in those higher warming scenarios. They
• 1:17:43
  just become the new reality. And then you get
• 1:17:45
  the, you know, that becomes the average. What
• 1:17:47
  is currently extreme is now kind of the standard
• 1:17:50
  future. Then you get extremes on top of that.
• 1:17:53
  So the extremes and the kind of like higher,
• 1:17:56
  you know, heading towards three degree world
• 1:17:57
  would be something that we haven't even seen
• 1:17:59
  before. uh and it's a world in which i i can't
• 1:18:02
  see the level of kind of the way of life we currently
• 1:18:06
  have being uh sustained i mean arguably it can't
• 1:18:10
  be sustained as it currently is but definitely
• 1:18:12
  it'll be difficult to have the world as we understand
• 1:18:15
  it now the world as we know it with countries
• 1:18:17
  arranged as they are with um you know technologies
• 1:18:20
  and infrastructures pretty much everything would
• 1:18:22
  have to be rebuilt uh and you know something
• 1:18:25
  we can say from the ipcc is that beyond two degrees
• 1:18:28
  adaptation is difficult you can't just do the
• 1:18:31
  same thing you were doing but tweak it a bit
• 1:18:33
  to make it work in a new climate you basically
• 1:18:35
  have to do entirely different things you have
• 1:18:37
  to grow new crops you have to move to new places
• 1:18:39
  uh you have to rebuild all your infrastructure
• 1:18:41
  to cope with new temperature extremes that you
• 1:18:44
  didn't have before everything would have to be
• 1:18:46
  rebuilt uh and you know by that sort of temperature
• 1:18:49
  level as well you are committing probably to
• 1:18:52
  a lot of sea level rise so that's like eventually
• 1:18:54
  you know gradually cities and would have to be
• 1:18:57
  moving from the coast and farmland around coast
• 1:19:00
  would be gradually less and less viable it's
• 1:19:04
  a world in which everything changes what we can't
• 1:19:07
  say exactly is what that looks like we can just
• 1:19:10
  say that well it would probably be bad we'd rather
• 1:19:13
  keep what we have and do what we're doing better
• 1:19:17
  than having to do everything completely different
• 1:19:21
  yeah because like we said at the beginning and
• 1:19:23
  like people say uh often yeah but the world was
• 1:19:28
  much harder before so what's the problem but
• 1:19:30
  they forget to add that there was no people yeah
• 1:19:33
  we weren't there and also even just means to
• 1:19:36
  do like you know animals and plants and stuff
• 1:19:38
  moved moved in response to past climate changes
• 1:19:40
  now there's like a human civilization in the
• 1:19:43
  way is that not that easy you know there's stuff
• 1:19:46
  that's fixed it's hard to rebuild things it's
• 1:19:49
  hard for uh trees and animals to move with uh
• 1:19:52
  changing climate with everything the way it is
• 1:19:56
  and that means that basically we just that sort
• 1:19:58
  of world will require a radical transformation
• 1:20:00
  in order to make it you know what would require
• 1:20:03
  a radical transformation either way either we
• 1:20:05
  radically transform how we do things in order
• 1:20:09
  to cope with it the best we can even though probably
• 1:20:11
  it won't be great or that will be forced upon
• 1:20:14
  us and things just start to break down uh and
• 1:20:18
  all the tendencies that we see in the 21st century
• 1:20:21
  will just be amplified and locked in i talked
• 1:20:24
  to a lot of historians on this podcast and there's
• 1:20:27
  a lot of scenarios uh when the climate changed
• 1:20:31
  locally just a little bit and it caused like
• 1:20:34
  a bronze age collapse you know um so yeah there
• 1:20:38
  we have it we're gonna end this conversation
• 1:20:40
  we are more dependent on nature than we think
• 1:20:42
  um right yeah we think we've in the modern age
• 1:20:45
  we feel like we're you know there's this big
• 1:20:48
  separation between us and nature but it's still
• 1:20:50
  it's still everything it's still the air we breathe
• 1:20:52
  the water that comes out the tap the food that
• 1:20:54
  comes in the stuff we build stuff out of it's
• 1:20:57
  all we're still entirely dependent on nature
• 1:20:59
  and if things become you know the world will
• 1:21:02
  become very very different something we're not
• 1:21:04
  familiar with and that'll be yeah very very difficult
• 1:21:08
  to deal with not impossible but it's worth trying
• 1:21:11
  to avoid it Yeah, maybe the changes have to be
• 1:21:14
  made on a more fundamental systemic level there.
• 1:21:19
  Because right now, you go to the supermarket
• 1:21:21
  and it feels like an episode of Star Trek. The
• 1:21:24
  steak just appears there, like that little machine
• 1:21:27
  that they have. You're completely removed from
• 1:21:29
  the whole process of what went into that steak
• 1:21:32
  being there. Yeah, I think that's systemic changes.
• 1:21:35
  We have to transform. One way or another, things
• 1:21:38
  are going to be radically transformed. It's just
• 1:21:40
  we can either choose to do it ourselves in a
• 1:21:42
  way that makes things better for more people
• 1:21:45
  or it will be forced upon us and things will
• 1:21:49
  just sort of happen and fall apart. And that's
• 1:21:52
  kind of the choice we have ahead of us. And on
• 1:21:55
  that highly optimistic note, I am thanking you
• 1:21:58
  for this conversation, David. Thank you so much.
• 1:22:01
  Where can people follow your work? I tried to
• 1:22:03
  find your social media, but I realized you're
• 1:22:06
  probably too smart to have social media accounts.
• 1:22:08
  I do have some. um i don't really use twitter
• 1:22:12
  so much anymore but i still technically have
• 1:22:14
  an account um at dvd mckay uh on blue sky uh
• 1:22:18
  mastodon uh i'm uh at uh david a mckay uh and
• 1:22:23
  i have a website as well where i sort of you
• 1:22:25
  know i link to various uh blogs and stuff i write
• 1:22:27
  there's climate tipping points dot info where
• 1:22:29
  i write about some of these issues my personal
• 1:22:31
  website is david armstrong mckay .com that's
• 1:22:33
  more kind of academic uh but yeah you can find
• 1:22:35
  me all those places Do you have any sort of books
• 1:22:39
  coming up? Not yet. I have some ideas, but at
• 1:22:43
  the moment I'm a new lecturer as of this past
• 1:22:47
  year. So I've mostly been focusing on getting
• 1:22:50
  all my teaching good. And then I might have some
• 1:22:52
  time for some more book writing at some point
• 1:22:54
  later. Awesome. Thanks again for taking the time.
• 1:22:57
  Cool. Thank you for having me. Thank you very
• 1:22:59
  much for listening. Please subscribe to the podcast
• 1:23:01
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• 1:23:03
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• 1:23:05
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• 1:23:07
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• 1:23:10
  to, please support me on Patreon. This is a one
• 1:23:12
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• 1:23:14
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• 1:23:17
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• 1:23:20
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• 1:23:22
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• 1:23:25
  last, but certainly not least... I have to thank
• 1:23:57
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• 1:24:05
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• 1:24:08
  again, guys. It means a lot.