Episodes

In this Climate Chat episode, Leon Simons and I will discuss the new paper by James Hansen, et al, titled "Global Warming Has Accelerated: Are the United Nations and the Public Well-Informed?" In the paper, Hansen discusses how the recent IMO regulations on ship emissions were a significant contributor to the recent acceleration in global warming. The paper more broadly shows that aerosols are a significant factor in climate change and their impact is underestimated by the United Nations Intergo...

In this Climate Chat episode, we will discuss climate denial (and denial in general) with Tad DeLay, author of "Future of Denial: The Ideologies of Climate Change." Tad will discuss how it is not just conservatives that are in denial of climate change. Tad DeLay is a philosopher, religion scholar, and interdisciplinary critical theorist. He teaches in Baltimore. He is the author of four books. The latest title Future of Denial: The Ideologies of Climate Change (Verso, 2024) examines new types of...

In this Climate Chat episode, we will discuss emissions reduction with Jonathan Foley, Executive Director of Project Drawdown. With a new administration scaling back clean energy, how can the US and the rest of the world make significant greenhouse gas emission reductions? Also, can emission reductions alone maintain a safe climate for our children? Dr. Jonathan Foley is a renowned climate scientist, sustainability expert, educator, and public speaker. He is also executive director of Project Dr...

In this Climate Chat episode, we will discuss the recently published climate risk report from the University of Exeter's Institute and Faculty of Actuaries. The report is titled: "Planetary Solvency – finding our balance with nature: Global risk management for human prosperity." The report lays out how most previous analyses of have seriously underestimated climate risk and, therefore, policymakers are ill informed. Link to the report: https://actuaries.org.uk/document-library/thought-leadership...

In this Climate Chat episode, returning guest, climate scientist David Keith joins us to discuss new research on the projected death tolls from implementing vs. *not* implementing solar geoengineering (a.k.a., Solar Radiation Management or Sunlight Reflection Methods - SRM). David was co-author of a new paper in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences titled "Impact of solar geoengineering on temperature-attributable mortality." Link to paper: https://www.pnas.org/doi/10.1073/pnas.24...

In this Climate Chat episode, we speak with NASA climate scientist George Tselioudis about his recent research paper on cloud feedbacks in the climate system titled "Oceanic cloud trends during the satellite era and their radiative signatures." Dr. Tselioudis is a researcher at the NASA Goddard Institute for Space Studies where he heads a research team that analyzes observations and model simulations to investigate cloud, radiation, and precipitation changes with climate and the resulting radiat...

In this Climate Chat episode, returning guest climate scientist Leon Simons will discuss the 2023/2024 accelerated global warming and what the data suggests will lead us to in the future. Leon Simons is a climate scientist based in the Netherlands. He was a co-author with James Hansen on last year's "Global Warming in the Pipeline" paper that discussed the recent acceleration in global warming. Leon's work has focused recently on changes in aerosol emissions from ships and the impact of those ch...

In this Climate Chat discussion, we will review the major climate change issues, research findings, and events of 2024. ---------------- Follow Dan Miller on X/Twitter: @danmiller999 Follow Dan Miller on Bluesky: @danmiller999.bsky.social and @climatechat.bsky.social To join the Zoom discussion, visit Dan's Clubhouse room. The Clubhouse link is provided in Dan's Twitter feed. You can also leave a question in the YouTube Live chat. Please begin your question with "Question:" to make it easy for o...

In this Climate Chat discussion, we speak with climate scientist Gabriel Pontes about his recent paper in Nature Geoscience titled "Weakening of the Atlantic Meridional Overturning Circulation driven by subarctic freshening since the mid-twentieth century." Gabriel's research shows that the AMOC is weakening faster than previous climate models show, including models used by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC). The faster weakening is caused by a number of factors including fresh...

In our third interview with climate scientist Kevin Anderson, we will cover why climate scientists need to be more frank and honest about emissions scenarios, why the rich cutting their emissions is key to staying below 2ºC of warming, the need for solar geo-engineering, COP29, and other subjects. Kevin Anderson holds the Zennström professorship at Uppsala University and is chair of energy and climate change at the School of Mechanical, Aerospace and Civil Engineering (MACE) at the University of...

In this Climate Chat episode, we will discuss how the Rebound Effect (a.k.a Jevons' Paradox) is impacting and will impact computer/data center/AI energy usage. While computer efficiency has improved by a factor of 10 TRILLION in past 80 years, computer energy use has only increased over that period and is expected to grow multiple-fold over the next 6 years as data center and AI energy use soars. We will discuss how improving the energy efficiency of computers will make the problem worse, not be...

In this Climate Chat episode, we will discuss the COP29 climate conference in Baku, Azerbaijan with Dan Kammen, a Professor of Energy in the Energy and Resources Group at the University of California at Berkeley. We will also discuss the climate implications of the next Trump administration and other topics. Dr. Daniel M. Kammen is a Professor at the University of California, Berkeley, with parallel appointments in the Energy and Resources Group where he serves as Chair, the Goldman School of Pu...

In this Climate Chat episode, we will discuss the challenge of governing solar geoengineering (also called Solar Radiation Management or Sunlight Reflection Methods) with Shuchi Talati who is the Founder & Executive Director of The Alliance for Just Deliberation on Solar Geoengineering. Dr. Shuchi Talati is a climate technology governance expert and founder of The Alliance for Just Deliberation on Solar Geoengineering (DSG), a nonprofit organization working towards just and inclusive deliberatio...

In this Climate Chat episode, we will discuss the U.S. election and the potential impact it will have on climate action -- both good and bad -- and the actions we can take. Climate scientist Leon Simons will take us through recent climate change data including ocean warming data that shows a fundamental change in the past two years. Climate change is based on physics and it doesn't care about politics, but climate change will have an increasing impact on politics -- and all of us -- in this deca...

In this Climate Chat episode, we speak with Aaron Thierry about how climate scientists can play a bigger role in driving action on climate change by becoming more involved in climate activism. Dr. Aaron Thierry has background as an ecological scientist, science communicator and environmental campaigner. Having received his original PhD in ecology from the University of Sheffield, he went on to a position as a postdoc on a project researching climate feedbacks in the Arctic. Aaron subsequently le...

In this Climate Chat episode, we will discuss how to electrify everything with inventor, author, and 2007 MacArthur "Genius" recipient Saul Griffith. The purpose of electrifying everything is to transition away from fossil fuels. Saul Griffith is an engineer and inventor. As Founder and Chief Scientist at Otherlab, an independent R&D lab, he helps government agencies and Fortune 500 companies understand energy infrastructure and deep decarbonization. He’s been a principal investigator and projec...

In this Climate Chat episode, we will discuss the benefits and risks of cooling the Earth by implementing solar geoengineering (a.k.a, Solar Radiation Management or Sunlight Reflection Methods - SRM) with Cornell climate scientist Daniele Visioni. Daniele Visioni obtained his Ph.D. in Atmospheric Chemistry and Physics from the University of L’Aquila, in Italy, in 2018. He moved to Cornell in the same year, where he started as a Postdoctoral Associate in the Sibley School of Mechanical and Aerosp...

In this Climate Chat episode, we will discuss the link between climate change and extreme weather including hurricanes, droughts and floods with UCLA climate scientist Daniel Swain. Daniel also hosts the Weather West blog. Dr. Daniel Swain is a climate scientist in the Institute of the Environment and Sustainability at the University of California, Los Angeles, and holds concurrent appointments as a Research Fellow in the Capacity Center for Climate and Weather Extremes at the National Center fo...

In this Climate Chat episode, we will discuss the need for governance of both research and deployment of solar geoengineering, aka, Solar Radiation Management (SRM) with Cynthia Scharf who is senior advisor to the International Center for Future Generations, a European think tank, where she leads their work on climate intervention technologies. Cynthia was previously the senior strategy director for the Carnegie Climate Governance (C2G) Initiative, which sought to advance policy discussions and ...

In this Climate Chat episode, we will discuss the role of aerosols in the recent rapid acceleration of global warming as well as how aerosols have impacted warming since the industrial revolution. My guests for this discussion is climate scientist Leon Simons and Prof. Eliot Jacobson Leon Simons is a climate scientist based in the Netherlands. He was a co-author with James Hansen on last year's "Global Warming in the Pipeline" paper that discussed the recent acceleration in global warming. Leon'...

In this Climate Chat episode, we talk with Prime Coalition's Keri Browder about what Prime is doing to invest in more risky climate solution companies and how Prime's Project Frame is trying to make it easier for all investors to invest in effective climate solution companies. As Prime Coalition’s Director of Impact Accountability and Director of Project Frame, Keri Browder creates opportunities for investors to share tools and best practices that catalyze, deepen, and accelerate diverse solutio...

In this Climate Chat episode, we talk with Make Sunsets co-founder Luke Iseman about his approach to "cooling the Earth" by launching balloons into the stratosphere with tiny amounts of sulfur in them. While purposefully putting sulfur into the stratosphere at large scale (called solar geoengineering or solar radiation management (SRM)) is proposed as way to offset global warming, many in the SRM community are opposed to Make Sunsets' "rouge" approach. Before co-founding Make Sunsets, Luke found...

In this Climate Chat episode, we interview climate scientist Katharine Hayhoe about how to engage the public and policymakers on climate action. We will discuss her book, "Saving Us," and talk about the state of climate and the actions needed to maintain a safe climate for future generations. Katharine Hayhoe is an atmospheric scientist whose research focuses on understanding what climate change means for people and the places where we live. She is the Chief Scientist for The Nature Conservancy ...

In this Climate Chat episode, we discuss Jevons Paradox and the related Rebound Effect. Jevons Paradox says the the more efficiently a resource is used, the more that resource will be used in total. This presents a challenge for climate solutions because it says that improving the energy efficiency of products will not necessarily result in lower energy use (in total) and may actually increase energy use! The Rebound Effect says that increases in efficiency do not result in the expected energy s...