655 - Are We At A Tipping Point For Climate Change?
Public Health On Call
The Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health
4.6 • 644 Ratings
🗓️ 28 August 2023
⏱️ 18 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
Massive deadly fires, bleached coral reefs, extreme heat, ocean temps topping 100 degrees….have we reached a tipping point in climate change? Johns Hopkins planetary scientist Dr. Ben Zaitchik returns to the podcast to talk with Stephanie Desmon about recent headline-grabbing climate events and whether or not they signal a critical threshold for the health of the planet. They discuss how we can collectively approach mitigation and planning for climate change and why it can be short-sighted to see climate change as an existential crisis for humans.
Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | Welcome to Public Health On Call, a podcast from the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health, |
| 0:05.9 | where we bring evidence, experience, and perspective to make sense of today's leading health challenges. |
| 0:16.3 | If you have questions or ideas for us, please send an email to public health question at jhhhu.edu. |
| 0:23.8 | That's public health question at jhhu.edu for future podcast episodes. |
| 0:31.9 | This is Lindsay Smith Rogers. |
| 0:34.4 | The headlines are filled with what sound like accelerations of climate change, |
| 0:38.8 | massive deadly wildfires, bleached coral reefs, extreme heat, ocean temperatures over 100 degrees. |
| 0:45.7 | Are we reaching a tipping point from which there's no return? Stephanie Desmond talks to Ben |
| 0:51.3 | Sightchick, a planetary scientist at Johns Hopkins, |
| 0:59.5 | about what we can do now to mitigate and plan for certain climate thresholds that appear to be fast approaching. |
| 1:02.0 | They also discuss whether climate change is truly an existential crisis or if it's something else. |
| 1:08.9 | Let's listen. |
| 1:11.1 | Ben Zichick, thanks so much for joining me. |
| 1:13.8 | Thanks for having me. |
| 1:15.1 | So there's a lot of climate news that we're hearing these days, |
| 1:20.6 | from the fires in Maui to the Antarctic sea ice melting. |
| 1:27.0 | Talk to me about sort of the current situation and what |
| 1:29.6 | you see in the near future. Yeah, so the current situation, unfortunately, is consistent with |
| 1:35.6 | what we expect to see. As the planet warms, it's not just about temperature ramping up slowly |
| 1:42.0 | on the average. It's about seeing regional extremes increase |
| 1:46.2 | and seeing how the projection of a global signal of climate change ends up changing the weather, |
| 1:52.6 | ecosystem response, and other dynamics in the place where you live. So we're seeing a lot of that. |
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