ClimateGenn hosted by Nick Breeze

In this episode of Shaping The Future, I am speaking with Glaciologist, Dr Heidi Sevestre, about the changing state of the Arctic, the outlook for the Russian Chairmanship of the Arctic Council, of which Heidi herself is an advisor, and how thawing permafrost could be past the threshold of irreversibility. Heidi combines the spirit of the modern polar explorer with the weight of important scientific work. She is also an excellent communicator and will be speaking at the ChangeNow climate summit later this month in the company of Sir David Attenborough and world-renowned scientist, Johan Rockström, who will be premiering their new documentary, Breaking Boundaries, as part of the virtual summit. Heidi also gives her perspective on why we literally must fight hard to limit global average warming to 1.5ºC, giving a rare insight into how someone who wanted to be a glaciologist from a very young age actually feels about the rate of loss of the world's glaciers. Thank you for listening to Shaping The Future - please subscribe and share the podcast as we have many more episodes on the way exploring the change needed to avert the worst impacts of climate change. Links: https://climateseries.com/climate-change-podcast More interviews and transcripts: https://genn.cc Change Now Summit: https://www.changenow.world

This can also be seen as a video edit with previously unseen footage from the last voyage in late 2020: https://youtu.be/lGgcUSJbAqE The transcript will also be posted on https://genn.cc and https://climateseries.com/climate-change-podcast This is part 1 in series of three posts on methane releases from the East Siberian Arctic Shelf recorded in 2021.  This is the first in a miniseries discussing the ongoing work in the Russian Arctic talking to Dr Igor Semiletov, one of the lead scientists who has been studying the region for over twenty years.    Old deep thermogenic pool   In assessing whether the potential for increased climate warming is a significant risk, scientists look at the size of the carbon pool and also the origin of the methane.   In many cases where methane is produced from biogenic sources, such as animals and plants, it is created by microbes and although has the same global warming potential, it is created very slowly and is often broken down to CO2 before it reaches the atmosphere.    The other source is thermogenic methane that occurs due to the decay of organic matter at high pressure and temperature. For these conditions to occur, the sediments where they are found are older and deeper.  In terms of the East Siberian Arctic Shelf, many scientists have believed that the methane emissions are from biogenic sources. This means they would be slower to form and overall a lesser risk to the global climate. This article has been created using extracts from recent interviews with Dr Semiletov. In part 2 I speak to Professor Orjan Gustafsson from the Department of Environmental Science at Stockholm University. Orjan has been visiting the East Siberian Shelf for many years working alongside an international group of scientists including the Russians. He discusses how research into the escaping methane and thawing permafrost in the East Siberian Arctic Shelf should be greatly expanded considering the magnitude and changing stability of the carbon pool. He also suggests that this research could have enormous ramifications for how carbon budgets that inform policy, are calculated.

In this episode of Shaping The Future, I am speaking with the Director of Development and Communications at EarthLanka, Saffran Mihnar. Saffran is an advocate for climate solutions focused on communication, campaigning, and policy negotiations. In this discussion, we discuss the struggles ahead for any journey towards zero or even net emissions. The UN Conference of the Parties (or COP) process is over a quarter of a century old and has achieved little by way of reducing global emissions but as a regular participant, Saffran offers a voice that speaks to people like me as to why we have to redouble our efforts and start on a real journey to try and save the global commons. A big part of this journey is about climate justice for those in the least developed and developing nations. Consumption in rich countries is currently a death sentence, first for the poorest on Earth and eventually the majority of us. We discuss why aligning our personal and human interests with those of the wider world and ecology is, in the long run, good for all of us. Thanks for listening to Shaping The Future. There are many more episodes being produced so please do subscribe to be a part of the conversation. Find out more at: https://climateseries.com/climate-change-podcast Also at: https://genn.cc

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