Chaos, Covid, & Climate Change with Professor Tim Palmer (#267)

Into the Impossible With Brian Keating

Brian Keating

Science, Physics, Natural Sciences

4.7 • 1.1K Ratings

🗓️ 18 October 2022

⏱️ 112 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

In his acclaimed latest book, The Primacy of Doubt: From Quantum Physics to Climate Change, How the Science of Uncertainty Can Help Us Understand Our Chaotic World, Professor Timothy Palmer argues that embracing the mathematics of uncertainty is vital to understanding ourselves and the universe around us. Whether we want to predict climate change or market crashes, understand how the brain is able to outpace supercomputers or find a theory that links quantum and cosmological physics, Palmer shows how his vision of mathematical uncertainty provides new insights into some of the deepest problems in science. The result is a revolution—one that shows that power begins by embracing what we don’t know. The Primacy of Doubt on Amazon: https://www.amazon.com/Primacy-Doubt-Quantum-Uncertainty-Understand/dp/1541619714 Timothy Palmer is the Royal Society Research Professor in Climate Physics, and a Senior Fellow at the Oxford Martin Institute at the University of Oxford. He is a mathematical physicist who has spent most of his career working on the dynamics and predictability of weather and climate. He pioneered the development of probabilistic ensemble forecasting techniques for weather and climate prediction, techniques that are now standard in weather and climate forecasting around the world. In 2021 Professor Palmer was awarded an honorary fellowship of the Institute of Physics. Professor Palmer was involved in the first five IPCC assessment reports, and was co-chair of the international scientific steering group of the World Climate Research Programme project (CLIVAR) on climate variability and predictability. Watch the video with slides here: https://youtu.be/q1cPyE9rAD4 Connect with me: 🏄‍♂️ Twitter: https://twitter.com/DrBrianKeating 📸 Instagram: https://instagram.com/DrBrianKeating 🔔 Subscribe: https://www.youtube.com/DrBrianKeating?sub_confirmation=1 📝 Join my mailing list; just click here http://briankeating.com/list ✍️ Detailed Blog posts here: https://briankeating.com/blog.php 🎙️ Listen on audio-only platforms: https://briankeating.com/podcast Subscribe to the Jordan Harbinger Show www.jordanharbinger.com/podcasts for amazing content from Apple’s best podcast of 2018! Can you do me a favor? Please leave a rating and review of my Podcast: 🎧 On Apple devices, click here, https://apple.co/39UaHlB scroll down to the ratings and leave a 5 star rating and review The INTO THE IMPOSSIBLE Podcast. 🎙️On Spotify it’s here: https://open.spotify.com/show/2G3PRMUhxGQkyQzLiiCqlf?si=8656119458df4555 🎧 On Audible it’s here : https://www.audible.com/pd/Into-the-Impossible-With-Brian-Keating-Podcast/B08K56PXJX?action_code=ASSGB149080119000H&share_location=pdp&shareTest=TestShar Other ways to rate here: https://briankeating.com/podcast - Support the podcast on Patreon https://www.patreon.com/drbriankeating or become a Member on YouTube- https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCmXH_moPhfkqCk6S3b9RWuw/join Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Transcript

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0:00.0	By a concern for climate change, what I'm really arguing for is dedicated absolute top of the range
0:11.2	supercomputing which these days is
0:13.2	exoscale 10 to the 18 flops per second floating point operations
0:17.5	per second dedicated to climate change and that's not happening at the moment
0:21.8	anywhere around the world.
0:23.0	If I'm talking to a climate skeptic,
0:26.0	I would say, look, you surely are as interested
0:31.0	as I am or as a climate, you know, somebody that's very concerned about climate change,
0:36.7	to know the truth, you know, how bad is it going to get? Solving the laws of physics is the only way we have to deal with this we can answer this question.
0:46.6	There's no laboratory experiment we can do to emulate climate change.
0:59.1	Hello friends and welcome to one of the most wide-ranging discussions I've ever had on this podcast and it's with one of the most poly mathematical, most wide ranging of all intellects that I've really had the honor to speak to and it's Dr. Tim Palmer of Oxford University who was introduced to me by his
1:16.6	friend and collaborator and multi-time past guest on the show Sabina Haasenfelder.
1:21.8	They are collaborators and around the time that Sabina came
1:25.7	on the podcast to discuss her most recent book, Existential Physics. She then referred me kindly to Tim,
1:32.0	and we got in touch about Tim's book book which you're going to hear about today called The Primacy of Doubt.
1:37.6	From quantum physics to climate change, how the science of uncertainty can help us understand our chaotic world. And we delve into all the
1:46.2	greatest hits from Chaos Theory, the Butterfly Effect, Climate Change, Meteorological Fore forecasts, and why there are almost always wrong, except
1:56.5	here in San Diego, where the easiest job is to be a weather person. And what I found so fascinating about Tim is that he doesn't stop at just
2:06.1	quote unquote his Nobel Laureate laurels, he is a Nobel Laureate in that he was the lead author on the IPCC International Intergovernmental
2:16.9	Panel on Climate Change way back when when he won it with renowned scientist Al Gore.
2:22.4	I don't think Al Gore is a scientist. I don't even know if he would call himself a scientist. We get into a little bit about it and why some of the dire predictions don't come true. What Chaos Theory can really tell you about science in general, but about climate specifically.
2:36.4	And we also got into the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic and how Tim claims we need a large Hadron collider type effort but for climate change and why that is.
	...

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