Global Heating: The Science and The Response
The Great Simplification #95 with Sir David King
Today, I am honored to be joined by climate scientist/policy ambassador Sir David King to help unpack the current situation regarding Earth’s climate system and the human response (or lack thereof) to the accelerating heating of the atmosphere. While many uncertainties remain in this complex science, the fundamentals of rising average global temperatures as a reaction to increasing man-made greenhouse emissions is now widely recognized by the global scientific community. Yet - especially in the United States - climate change remains a contentious issue, making it an even tougher political topic with no easy solutions. Among the many ‘responses’ we discuss are marine cloud brightening, and artificially creating ‘whale poop’.
Sir David King is an Emeritus Professor of Physical Chemistry at the University of Cambridge. He is the Chair of the Climate Crisis Advisory Group, Founder of the Centre for Climate Repair at Cambridge, and an Affiliate Partner of SYSTEMIQ Limited. He was the UK Government Chief Scientific Adviser from 2000-2007 and the Foreign Secretary's Special Representative on Climate Change from 2013-2017. He also spearheaded a collaborative program called Mission Innovation, which involved 25 countries and the EU to create a publicly funded £23bn pa research and development international exercise aimed at delivering all technologies needed to complete the transition into a fossil-fuel-free world economy. He has been a Fellow of the Royal Society since 1991 and a Foreign Fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences since 2002. Sir Dave was knighted in 2003 and made "Officier dans l'ordre national de la Légion d'Honneur" in 2009. Recently, he was also named The American Association for the Advancement of Science 2022 Hamburg Awardee for Science Diplomacy.
What is the basic science behind our understanding of heat and the atmosphere? Will we resort to geoengineering to avert the worst climate outcomes - and which plans look the most promising? What are the implications of global heating for the coming decades and beyond?
In case you missed it…
Last Friday, in a special episode, Chuck Watson returned for a critical assessment of the unfolding situation around Israel which adds to the escalating dangers of our current geopolitical landscape. As tensions rise, the potential risks that any military confrontation in the Middle East poses could spill over into energy, economic systems, and our social fabric - Chuck lends his deep expertise and decades of experience to triangulate this dynamic situation.
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Sir I just finished listening to this excellent podcast, twice! Thank you again for another thought provoking discussion.
I work in the area of maritime commercial shipping regulation. I wonder how many people know that most of the early weather data used to create the climate models were gathered by detailed measurements and observations written down by merchant ships? 4 times a day, all over the world, for over 150 years. This mountain of data is then mailed, now emailed) into the World Meteorological Organization to be incorporated into climate and weather models.
https://community.wmo.int/en/voluntary-observing-ship-vos-scheme
I say this because I was very intrigued by the prospect of experiments on seeding the deep ocean with ‘fake whale poop’. The shipping industry has an impressive record of participating in research and observation programs. I am sure some of our ship managers would be agreeable to participating. Most are ISO 14001 companies and this would benefit their environmental management system.
I have been aware of this research for a few years and was always intrigued by its prospects for large scale carbon sequestration and ocean ecology rejuvenation. I live in Bermuda and we have one of the leading deep ocean research facilities in the world. BIOS, https://bios.asu.edu/
The researchers here at BIOS have tried to do testing on this in the past only to have it be prohibited by the UK government (we are a dependent territory of the UK) because of claims it was ‘dumping’ the product in the ocean. And general discomfort with geo-engineering.
Couple that with a 200 mile radius EEZ that reaches most of the central Atlantic and Sargasso Sea, and a fleet of over 100 worldwide trading commercial merchant and passenger ships and I am sure we could be of help in furthering this research.
I have never understood the arguments against this research, we have no problem granting a mining license to strip mine a mountain, redirecting the course of rivers and destroying forest ecosystems that are visible from space, and yet we are prevented from doing research into solutions. This was some years ago so maybe the urgency has ratcheted up?
Anyway, I would be happy to put Sir King in touch with some sympathetic ship managers when the time is right?
Thanks again for a great conversation.