#333 — Sanity Check on Climate Change

Making Sense with Sam Harris

Waking Up with Sam Harris

Samharris, Currentevents, Politics, Ethics, Religion, Neuroscience, Science, Society & Culture, Philosophy

4.6 • 29.1K Ratings

🗓️ 5 September 2023

⏱️ 68 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

Sam Harris speaks with Chris Field about climate change and its consequences. They discuss skepticism about climate change, the accuracy of climate models, the magnitude of temperature increases, how global temperatures are measured, the historical record of climate variation, the range of possibilities in the coming decades, feedback mechanisms, wildfires, water vapor, air pollution, solar geo-engineering, the biggest challenge to taking action on climate change, the costs of transitioning to a carbon-neutral economy, renewable sources of energy, nuclear power, carbon capture, hydrogen, the developing world, China and India, carbon taxes and other incentives, and other topics.

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Transcript

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0:00.0	Welcome to the Making Sense podcast, this is Sam Harris.
0:26.2	Today I'm speaking with Chris Field, Chris is the director of the Stanford Woods Institute
0:32.1	for the Environment and the Melvin and Joan Lane Professor for interdisciplinary environmental
0:36.7	studies at Stanford University.
0:39.8	Prior to his appointment at the Stanford Woods Institute, Chris was a staff member at
0:44.2	the Carnegie Institution for Science and founding director of Carnegie's Department of Global
0:50.0	Ecology.
0:51.6	Chris's research has focused on climate change.
0:54.6	He is a very influential scientist in the field, widely cited.
1:00.4	He's especially focused on solutions that improve our lives now and decrease the amount of
1:05.4	future warming.
1:06.4	He's been deeply involved in the national and international efforts to advance our
1:10.2	understanding of global ecology and climate change.
1:13.9	Chris has also overseen many of the efforts of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change,
1:18.9	as you'll hear.
1:20.4	He's also been elected to the U.S. National Academy of Sciences, the American Academy of
1:24.8	Arts and Sciences.
1:25.8	He's received the Max Planck Research Award among others.
1:30.9	And he holds a bachelor's degree in biology from Harvard and a PhD in biology from Stanford.
1:36.0	Anyway, I wanted to get Chris in the podcast because I wanted a sanity check, frankly,
1:42.7	about climate change.
1:43.7	It had been a couple of years since I had done a podcast on the topic.
	...

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