If you were a benevolent dictator and there was no personal recourse to your decision, what is one thing you would personally do to improve human and planetary futures? I don't even know how to answer that question. I guess the first thing I would do is resign as dictator. Even a benevolent one. I would abdicate. We are so politically polarized right now that we can hardly stand to be in the same room with each other. Social media doesn't help this problem. I think it's made it worse, adding fuel to the fire. If I could find a way to turn down the temperature in especially political discourse, I would try to do that.
On this episode, Climate Scientist Steve Vavrus joins Nate to discuss the Arctic and its critical impact on climate science. Why are the effects of warming so extreme in the Arctic, and what are the implications for weather events and average temperatures on the rest of the planet? Do runaway arctic feedback loops mean disaster ‘Blue Ocean’ scenarios?
Steve explains why the answers to these questions aren’t as simple as they may seem and talks about the challenges and hopes he sees for the future of humans and global climate.
About Steve Vavrus:
Steve Vavrus is a Senior Scientist in the Nelson Institute Center for Climatic Research at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. He uses computer climate models and observational data to understand how our climate is changing across the world, including in Wisconsin. Extreme weather events are an important theme of his research, particularly how they might be affected by climate change. Steve is co-director of the Wisconsin Initiative on Climate Change Impacts (WICCI) and has been a long-time member of its Climate Working Group. Steve received Ph.D. and Master's degrees in meteorology at the University of Wisconsin and a Bachelor's degree in meteorology at Purdue University.
For Show Notes and Transcript visit: https://www.thegreatsimplification.com/episode/35-steve-vavrus