Episode 28: Climate models

Remember when the airwaves were full of people questioning the idea of man-made climate change? You don’t hear much from them any more - in large part becuase the evidence that our CO2 emissions are altering the climate has become so overwhelming.

After a recap on how we know that carbon warms the climate, Tom and Stuart use this episode of The Studies Show to discuss climate predictions—er, I mean, projections—and how accurate they’ve been. They ask whether the media always gets it right when discussing climate (spoiler: no), and whether we should be optimistic or panicked about what’s happening to the environment.

The Studies Show is sponsored by Works in Progress magazine. Ever wondered what people mean when they talk about “progress studies”? Works in Progress is what they mean. It’s a magazine bursting with fascinating articles on how science and technology have improved our lives - and how they could be even better in future. There’s a whole new February 2024 issue out now - read it at this link.

Show notes

* 2023: the hottest year on record, with surprising and anomalous melting of ice in Antarctica

* NASA on how the presence of CO2 in the atmosphere raises the Earth’s temperature

* Carbon Brief explains how scientists estimate climate sensitivity, and discusses the complexities of the latest climate models

* The most recent IPCC report, from March 2023

* The IEA’s forecast of solar power, with the incredible and very optimistic graph mentioned in the episode:

* Tom’s unfortunately-titled Unherd article on the unlikely but much-discussed “RCP 8.5” scenario

* Zeke Hausfather’s study on matching up the projections of climate models with what actually happened years and decades later

* Response from the sceptics (they still exist!)

* Website offering responses to all the most common claims by climate change sceptics (e.g. “the Earth hasn’t warmed since 1998”; “CO2 is plant food”)

* Toby Ord on how, whereas climate change could be extremely bad, it’s tricky to argue that it’s a truly “existential” risk

Credits and acknowledgements

The Studies Show is produced by Julian Mayers at Yada Yada Productions. We’re grateful to Karsten Haustein for talking to us for this episode (any errors are our own).