ClimateGenn hosted by Nick Breeze

In this episode of Shaping The Future, I am talking to DR Wolfgang Knorr - a climate scientist with over 25 years working for many agencies and laboratories around the world. Currently, Wolfgang is a Senior Research Scientist at Lund University measuring CO2 fluxes from terrestrial vegetation and human activities among other things. This conversation is to discuss the concerns that he and his colleagues have about the use or misuse of the term Net Zero and their concern that collectively we are setting ourselves up for failure in tackling the climate crisis. The safest pathway to the future means a radical transformation of our societies and yet the net-zero narrative is one of incremental changes and technology that does not exist. In this critical moment when we are expected to do what is necessary, we have instead collectively chosen to ignore the risks and lock in a business-as-usual approach. A link to the article we are discussed is included here: https://theconversation.com/climate-scientists-concept-of-net-zero-is-a-dangerous-trap-157368 Thank you for listening to Shaping The Future - there are many more episodes coming. Please do subscribe on any major podcast channel to hear more. https://climateseries.com/climate-change-podcast

Welcome to Shaping The Future - in this special Earth Day Episode I am discussing the exciting prospect of how we can turn the global agricultural large-scale carbon source into a potential carbon sink. This would mean bringing back our soils that have lost an estimated 50 billion tonnes of carbon since the beginning of the industrial revolution. Agriculture accounts for over 20% of our global carbon footprint so this is a big subject. I am speaking to Julien Gervreau, Vice President of Sustainability at Jackson Family Wines, a company that has committed to the UN-backed pledge to Race To Zero emissions by 2050, if not then much sooner. International Wineries For Climate Action (IWCA) One business with the best intentions amounts to very little when we are talking about the scale of the climate issue. Jackson has joined forces with Familia Torres in Spain, and Symington Family Estates in Portugal as well as a growing number of other wineries committed to going beyond carbon neutral and turning agriculture green. Here we discuss how the wine industry, which amounts to only 1.8% of global agriculture, can play an important role in driving a new trend of regenerative farming that is better for the biosphere and better for us as consumers. Find out more about International Wineries For Climate Action on their website by click here: https://www.iwcawine.org/ More about the podcast: https://climateseries.com/climate-change-podcast Support this channel on Patreon: https://patreon.com/genncc

Welcome to Shaping The Future. In this episode, I am speaking with Dr Sebastian Rosier about his work studying the tipping points in Antarctica’s Pine Island Glacier. Antarctica is of course absolutely huge and the Pine Island Glacier is just one part of it. If Pine Island collapsed into the ocean it would raise sea-levels by several metres which would be catastrophic for many coastal areas around the world. Sebastian discusses his view of whether we have crossed this tipping point that is part of this complex system being impacted by the billions of tonnes of carbon pollution we pump into the atmosphere each year. This all highlights that this is the decade we must get to work restoring the biosphere if we are avoid the consequences of extreme global heating. Thanks for listening to Shaping The Future - subscribe to the climate series on any podcast channel or Youtube. The next episode will be on Earth Day, 22nd April, discussing how regenerative agriculture has the potential to begin restoring the estimated 50 billion tonnes of carbon lost from our soils since the beginning of the industrial revolution. Taken to scale we have the potential to flip the soils from their current carbon source to carbon sink and sequester more carbon than we currently emit annually. The UN tells us to raise our ambition, so why not start with thinking big. Visit: https://climateseries.com/climate-change-podcast Visit: https://genn.cc Visit: https://patreon.com/genncc

This was recorded as a collaboration between my podcast Shaping The Future, Cambridge Zero and the Cambridge Festival. Below is more information. Includes excerpt with Dr Rowan Williams, Former Archbishop of Canterbury, on his thoughts on geoengineering research. New Patreon Page: You can now support this channel via Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/genncc - Patreon backers will access content earlier and much more of it. For more information on the podcast visit: https://climateseries.com/climate-change-podcast Topic: Professor David Keith speaks about why solar geoengineering must be researched to see if it can secure a safe climate of 1.5ºC as a high-value benefit to humanity. David Keith: David Keith is the foremost expert on solar geoengineering in the world having been involved in research for over 30 years. As well as being an adviser to Bill Gates, he is also on the Scope Ex team that is planning to carry out preliminary research this year to test the viability of aerosol particle injection into the stratosphere to cool the Earth. This research has attracted widespread criticism from many prominent environmentalists and activists who say the unknown risks of geoengineering are too great. In this interview with climate journalist, Nick Breeze, Keith counters claims that are presented and places solar geoengineering in the context of emissions reduction and carbon dioxide removal as a viable pathway to stabilising the climate. DK: ”Carbon dioxide removal looks easier because people aren't looking seriously at who pays and what the environmental consequences are. I think now we will be starting to look at what deep emissions cuts look like, we will begin to see how hard it is going to be... Carbon Dioxide Removal is not there yet, it is not happening at large scale so it is easy to imagine this technological thing that allows us to do something in the future helps. I think the moral hazard is absolutely real." DK: ”Solar geoengineering could be effective if you put reflective aerosols in the upper atmosphere. If it was ever done, it ought to be done in a way that was very even, north to south, south to west and technically that is doable... The evidence from all climate models and from other analogues is that if one did it in combination with emissions cuts that the climate risk could be reduced in ways that they could not be reduced by emissions cuts alone." DK: ”We could, with solar geoengineering, keep temperatures under 1.5ºC with confidence and we could prevent the loss of the major ice sheets and keep the Arctic more the way it is. I think that is pretty high-value thing!"

In this episode of Shaping The Future, I am speaking to philosopher, author and climate activist Professor Rupert Read. Rupert has organised the ‘Philosophy Public Lecture Series 2021: Bad News is Good News? The Upside of Down’ The series seeks to ask if there is any silver lining from the tragedy of Covid and what can be learned in the context of living through ecological break-down. Here we discuss some of the underlying themes and also what exactly is meant by the term ‘transformational adaptation’. Other participants include the author of The Great Derangement, Amitav Ghosh, as well Richard Horton, Editor of the Lancet, and Sophie Scott-Brown, Nick Brooks and Joanne Clark. To register for the series you can get tickets for free from the University of East Anglia website which I have linked to here. Thanks for listening to Shaping The Future. Do subscribe on any major podcast channel to stay up to date. Event details: Tue 9 February 2021 | 18:15 - 20:15 | Online Silver Linings From the Ecological Emergency - Amitav Ghosh (Author, The Great Derangement) in conversation with Rupert Read (UEA) Tue 23 February 2021 | 18:15 - 20:15 | Online Silver Linings From the National Scandal of Covid-19 - Richard Horton (Editor of the Lancet) Tue 9 March 2021 | 18:15 - 20:15 | Online Making the Most of Our Flawed Education System, At a Time of Global Crisis - Sophie Scott-Brown (UEA) Tue 23 March 2021 | 18:15 - 20:15 | Online Can We Adapt Transformatively To Climate Decline? - Round table discussion: Nick Brooks, Joanne Clarke and Rupert Read (all UEA) UEA Registration: https://store.uea.ac.uk/product-catalogue/faculty-of-arts-and-humanities/philosophy-public-lecture-series-2021-bad-news-is-good-news-the-upside-of-down

In this episode of Shaping The Future, I am speaking to climate scientist Professor James Renwick, about the scale of the risks posed by the melting of the East and West Antarctic ice sheets due to human emissions from our relentless burning of fossil fuels. Sea-level rise is the most obvious impact that will destroy cities around the world but there are also other less obvious impacts on agriculture and population displacement that can also lead to conflict if we choose to continue to do nothing. James is based at Victoria University in New Zealand specialising in large-scale climate variations and was awarded the Prime Ministers Science prize by Jacinda Ardern in 2018. Thanks for listening to Shaping The Future. In the next episode, I will be speaking to Philosopher Rupert Read about the University of East Anglia’s forthcoming Philosophy Public Lecture Series 2021: Bad News is Good News? The Upside of Down. Related article: https://www.wgtn.ac.nz/international/rethink-usa/rethink-sustainability More on this podcast: https://climateseries.com/climate-change-podcast

Welcome to Shaping Te Future - in this episode, I am talking with Saima Wazed who is one of the 25 experts advising the World Health Organisation’s panel on mental health and she is also the founder of the Not For Profit Shuchona Foundation. Recently Saima has also taken up the role of the Thematic Ambassador for the Climate Vulnerable Forum (CVF), which represents 48 countries and 1.2 billion people, who are on the frontlines of climate change. There is a widespread tendency among many of us to view the climate crisis as a future issue. Many people feel extreme anxiety about what the future holds and the lack of progress being made to change to a sustainable course. The Climate Vulnerable Forum represents countries where populations are experiencing extreme impacts today, losing loved ones, livelihoods and their homes. Saima highlights the parallels between the impact of extreme climate and the pressures that vulnerable people from all walks of life are faced with. The question we must ask is whether we can now start to use empathy as a tool to make the big leaps towards true sustainability beyond the confines of empty rhetoric? Thank you for listening to Shaping The Future - we have many more interviews to follow in this all-important year. Please subscribe on your preferred channel to catch each episode. Podcast: https://climateseries.com/climate-change-podcast https://www.facebook.com/ShuchonaFoundation/ Climate Vulnerable Forum: https://thecvf.org

In this special inserted episode of Shaping The Future, we are discussing the 15th National Oceanic & Atmospheric Administration (or NOAA) Arctic Report Card that was published this week giving a detailed overview of how climate is changing the Arctic. Zack helps to break down the complexity of this annual report and highlights some of the major impacts that climate change is bringing to the polar Arctic region. With melting sea ice, extreme wildfires and the expanding population of Bowhead whales, the Arctic is a region changing before our eyes and one that has direct implications for weather patterns at lower latitudes. What is happening in the Arctic is literally the bellwether for the accelerating climate trends we see throughout the biosphere. It is also a ringing reminder for why we need to drastically cut emissions immediately and reduce atmospheric concentrations of greenhouse gases. Zack also gives us his personal view on whether geoengineering should be considered as part of a wider strategy for cooling or refreezing the Arctic. Thank you for listening to Shaping The Future - the Arctic report card is linked to in the notes below. Subscribe to the podcast on any of the main podcasting channels. Download the Arctic Report Card: https://www.noaa.gov/media-release/sea-ice-loss-and-extreme-wildfires-mark-another-year-of-arctic-change Follow Zack on Twitter: @ZLabe (https://twitter.com/ZLabe) More about the podcast: https://climateseries.com/climate-change-podcast and follow Nick Breeze on Twitter: @NickGBreeze

In this episode of Shaping The Future, we discuss the abrupt cooling of the Arctic in the late summer months that is preventing the widely anticipated further collapse of summer sea ice, whilst intensifying heatwaves at lower latitudes. This new hypothesis was recently published by Professor Jennifer Francis from the Woodwell Climate Research Centre in Falmouth, Massachusetts and Dr Woo from Department of Atmospheric and Oceanic Sciences, and Institute of Atmospheric Sciences, Fudan University, in Shanghai. It is not often anyone ever mentions negative feedback mechanisms when it comes to sea ice but this is exactly what is being suggested. Jennifer Francis has also been involved in research that links sea ice loss to changes in jet stream patterns that impact our weather in the northern hemisphere, and this work further unpicks the complexity of how the Arctic climate system interacts with the rest of the world. Thank you for listening to this podcast. In the next episode, I will be speaking with Dr Saima Wazed, who is the thematic ambassador of the Climate Vulnerable Forum representing Bangladesh. Dr Wazed discusses how extreme climate events can render people immediately vulnerable from a mental health perspective as they struggle to come to terms with the losses that these incur from livelihoods to suffering the loss of loved ones or both. A link to Dr’s Woo and Francis scientific paper is provided in the notes below. Download: Why has no new record-minimum Arctic sea-ice extent occurred since September 2012? https://iopscience.iop.org/article/10.1088/1748-9326/abc047

In this episode of Shaping The Future, we are discussing the incoming Biden administration’s agenda on climate change and whether they can achieve it. Dan Lashof is the US Director of the World Resources Institute based in Washington and has a long history spanning decades working in environmental policy. In this interview, Dan discusses the need for an integrated action plan that tackles the pandemic, racial inequality, and the economy, with environmental policy being a key driver of change. He also outlines the damage caused by the outgoing Republican administration across over 100 environmental safeguards, while stressing that the challenge going forward will be in achieving a transformation of society within the timeframe that science tells us we have. The US is a key component in global climate action and the leadership they take now will set the pace for change going forward. The issues discussed here will be the basis of a struggle that will span the next few decades of this challenging century. Thank you for listening to Shaping The Future. In the next episode I am speaking to Professor Jennifer Francis about her recent research looking at Arctic sea ice and northern hemisphere warming mechanisms. Please do subscribe on the podcast on all major channels. Dan's post: https://www.wri.org/news/biden-climate-action-priorities https://climateseries.com/climate-change-podcast