Last episode, we talked about how we got to where we are now with climate change, but do we even know what’s going on with climate change right now? In this episode we’ll talk about what tipping points we’re approaching, how and why we’re still struggling to gain momentum toward action on climate change, and what difference it would make if carbon dioxide was a brown smelly substance.

To figure all of this out, we talked to a mathematician, Emily Shuckburgh, an engineer Hugh Hunt and a psychologist, Sander van der Linden. 

Along the way, we discuss solutions like geoengineering, creating a fake news ‘vaccine’ and opportunities for businesses to be more transparent about how their activities contribute to climate change. If you’re curious to find out more specific ideas about how we can build a greener future, check out Cambridge Zero’s Green Recovery Report here: https://www.zero.cam.ac.uk/green-recovery-report 

This episode was produced by Nick Saffell, James Dolan, and Naomi Clements-Brod. 

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In this episode:

0:00 - Intro

3:21 - How healthy is the planet at the moment?

4:35 - Are we approaching any tipping points?

6:45 - Do people understand the risk of climate change?

9:10 - Would a better understanding of the numbers help?

10:55 - What if co2 was a brown, smelly substance, would we treat it differently?

14:55 - Recap

17:30 - So how is fake news affecting action around climate change?

23:30 - We found solutions to the CFC problem and the whole in Ozone layer.

24:15 - Where do we think the responsibility lies?

26:15 - How can technology contribute to solving climate change?

29:50 - Can individuals make a difference?

31:15 - Recap

34:40 - What about societal level change?

37:45 - What are some of the more risky ways in which we could tackle climate change?

42:50 - Reasons to be optimistic?

Guest Bios:

Professor Sander van der Linden (@Sander_vdLinden)

Sander van der Linden is Professor of Social Psychology in Society in the Department of Psychology at the University of Cambridge and Director of the Cambridge Social Decision-Making Lab. His research interests center around the psychology of human judgment, communication, and decision-making, including social norms and networks, attitudes and polarization, reasoning about evidence, and the public understanding of risk and uncertainty. He is especially interested in a) the social influence process and how people gain resistance to persuasion through inoculation and b) how people form (mis)perceptions of the social world, including the emergence of social norms in shaping human cooperation and conflict in real-world collective action problems such as climate change and the spread of fake news and misinformation. 

His research is regularly featured in the popular media, including outlets such as the New York Times, the BBC, CNN, The Economist, NPR, the Washington Post and Time Magazine.

For recent profiles on Dr van der Linden's research see here, here, and here as well as this PNAS and BPS feature. He is currently writing a book: THE TRUTH VACCINE (WW Norton/4th Estate/HarperCollins). A popular TED-ED video that centers around his research on how to spot disinformation can be viewed here.

https://www.psychol.cam.ac.uk/people/sander-van-der-linden

Dr Hugh Hunt (@Hughhunt) 

His principal interests are in dynamics and vibration, gyroscopes and boomerangs. His most recent research is in the fields of renewable energy and geo-engineering, including the SPICE project - technology for cooling the Earth by 2 degrees C if CO2 emissions targets are not met. Other research includes the control of vibration from underground railways, bells and clocks and wind turbines. He does television work and was Lead Engineer in three award-winning documentaries ("Dambusters: building the bouncing bomb", "Digging the Great Escape" and "Escape from Colditz") which have been broadcast around the world. 

http://www2.eng.cam.ac.uk/~hemh1/ 

Dr Emily Shuckburgh @emilyshuckburgh @CambridgeZero 

Dr Emily Shuckburgh is Director of Cambridge Zero at the University of Cambridge and Reader in Environmental Data Science at the Department of Computer Science and Technology. 

She leads the UKRI Centre for Doctoral Training on the Application of AI to the study of Environmental Risks (AI4ER). Until April 2019 she led a UK national research programme on the Southern Ocean and its role in climate (ORCHESTRA), and was deputy head of the Polar Oceans Team and head of the Data Science Group at British Antarctic Survey. In the past she has worked at École Normale Supérieure in Paris and at MIT.

She is a fellow of the Royal Meteorological Society and co-chair of their Climate Science Communications Group. She has also acted as an advisor to the UK Government on behalf of the Natural Environment Research Council. In 2016 she was awarded an OBE for services to science and the public communication of science. She is co-author with HRH The Prince of Wales and Tony Juniper of the Ladybird Book on Climate Change.