Climate 201: Climate Doomism (II)
Physical Attraction
In the last episode, we briefly introduced "climate change doomers" and some of their misleading claims. In this episode, I talk about despair, and why we cannot give in to it.
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Climate 201: Climate Doomism (I)
Physical Attraction
We're going there. In this episode, I discuss why civilization is not going to imminently collapse due to climate change, explain why doomism is a new form of denialism, and debunk some of its most misleading claims.
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UNLOCKED: Book Club: Tim Wu's The Attention Merchants
Physical Attraction
A new episode released from behind the Patreon paywall. This episode, we'll review and discuss some of the issues raised by Tim Wu's The Attention Merchants, a book that details the history of the advertising industry.
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Climate 201 NETS XI: Direct Air Capture, p2 and NETS conclusion
Physical Attraction
In this episode, we will continue our analysis of Direct Air Capture and conclude the series on negative emissions - crucial component of decarbonisation, or a techno-utopian distraction from the real problems we face? [Don't expect an actual answer]
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Climate 201 NETS X: Direct Air Capture, part 1
Physical Attraction
Direct Air Capture - machines that suck carbon dioxide out of the atmosphere. Could this be the solution to a scaleable negative emissions industry? We'll discuss the pros and cons of the technology in this episode.
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BONUS: Black Mirror IRL pilot - Be Right Back
Physical Attraction
Hi all! This is a slightly special bonus episode. Some years ago I had plans for another series "Black Mirror IRL", which was going to be a series of episodes looking into the technologies mentioned and featured in the Netflix Series Black Mirror. Is anyone working on these technologies in real life? What would their potential social implications be if they were developed? How scientifically feasible would it actually be to develop something like this? The plan would be to explore one technology alongside each episode of the show. However, time has passed and I've moved onto other...
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Climate 201: NETS VII: Ecosystem Restoration and Mangroves
Physical Attraction
What are "nature-based solutions" to climate change? Can we restore the ecosystems that we've destroyed? And how can restoring mangroves help us to suck carbon dioxide out of the atmosphere?
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Climate 201, NETS IX: Ocean Iron Fertilization
Physical Attraction
"Give me a tanker full of iron, and I'll give you a new Ice Age." It might sound like something Hank Scorpio would say, but this episode will deal with the very real idea of stimulating plankton blooms to remove CO2 from the atmosphere - ocean iron fertilization.
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Climate 201: NETS VIII: Enhanced Weathering
Physical Attraction
How could grinding up rocks and sprinkling the dust over vast areas help to combat climate change? In this episode, we deal with "enhanced weathering" as a potential source of negative emissions.
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Climate201 NETS VI: Planting Trees and Afforestation
Physical Attraction
Mention carbon capture, and the refrain you'll often hear is "why invent a machine that captures CO2? We already have one - it's called a tree." But is large-scale afforestation as a negative emissions solution so simple? We dig into its potential in this episode of our series on negative emissions.
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Hello, and welcome to this episode of Physical Attraction. In this episode, I interview Karin Kuhlemann on the subject of population.
We touched on this briefly during the TEOTWAWKI specials, particularly in relation to the ancient ideas of Malthus - that famine might "correct" natural excesses of human population in due course. In that case, a technological fix in the form of agricultural and green revolutions allowed the Earth to support many times more people. But how sustainable is this? And, if you decide that the world is overpopulated, and there aren't enough natural resources to allow everyone to live fulfilling lives, what could we do to change this situation? Whenever I read any article about the environment, people in the comments section are often quick to blame "overpopulation" rather than "overconsumption", but seldom suggest any solutions that aren't utterly terrifying.
So all this means we have an interesting interview in store today. Karin Kuhlemann is a PhD candidate at the UCL Department of Political Theory and a practicing lawyer specialised in public, financial services and regulatory law. In the course of her PhD, she's published several articles in both the academic and popular press, and they're all well-worth reading: in this interview we particularly refer to "Any size population will do? The fallacy of aiming for stabilization of human numbers", but you can find several of them at http://ucl.academia.edu/KarinKuhlemann.
Thanks for listening to this episode of Physical Attraction. I think this topic is a truly important one to debate, even though it's incredibly complex and prone to all kinds of misunderstandings and moral hazards, emphasising one argument over another too much. Sometimes, dealing with humanity's problems isn't always easy: it requires difficult conversations. But if you'd like to be part of that conversation, there are plenty of ways you can get in touch to discuss this or any of our episodes - you can contact us via the form at www.physicspodcast.com, you can contact us on Twitter @physicspod or Facebook at the Physical Attraction page.
Soon, we'll be launching our series on nuclear fusion. I'm going through some very busy weeks at the start of this year, so it's possible that I might have to duck out for the odd week, but rest assured - there are enough scripts written for us to keep doing shows way into 2019, and I'm not done writing yet. So stick around, and we'll explore all kinds of things in the world of physics and beyond!
Until next time, be kind to each other.