Leon Simons: "Aerosol Demasking & Global Heating"
The Great Simplification with Nate Hagens
Nate Hagens
4.8 • 553 Ratings
🗓️ 17 January 2024
⏱️ 85 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
On this episode, Nate is joined by climate researcher Leon Simons to unpack recent trends in global heating during 2023 and potential explanations and subsequent projections for the coming year. While the connection between human emitted greenhouse gasses and global warming is scientifically agreed upon, the other complexities and feedbacks of our climate system are still just beginning to be understood. Today, Leon theorizes on the intensity of aerosol masking from particulates such as sulfur, based on the connection between recent changes in marine fuel sulfur requirements and corresponding climate data. How will the global trend towards aerosol reductions affect near and long term global heating? What does this catch-22 mean for potential future climate action and policy? How should we be thinking about creating a more simplified global system in response to the unknown unknowns of our potential future climate?
About Leon Simons
Leon Simons is a climate researcher and science communicator at the Club of Rome Netherlands and is studying the effects of reduction in sulfur emissions on regional and global radiation changes and its impact on global heating. Most recently he was a co-author of the paper Global Warming in the Pipeline with renowned climate scientist James Hansen. Leon is also the founder of Magic Ventures BV, which works to make clean cooking technologies accessible to people everywhere.
For Show Notes and More: https://www.thegreatsimplification.com/episode/105-leon-simons
Watch on YouTube: https://youtu.be/RPAnoSt6FnY
Slides referenced in this episode
15:43 - Slide 3
23:24 - Slide 3
24:30 - Slide 4
30:46 - Slide 5
32:29 - Slide 6
36:38 - Slide 7
39:55 - Slide 7
42:29 - Slide 8
50:55 - Slide 10
Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | You're listening to the Great Simplification. |
| 0:05.5 | I'm Nate Higgins. |
| 0:06.7 | On this show, we describe how energy, the economy, the environment, and human behavior all fit together and what it might mean for our future. |
| 0:15.7 | By sharing insights from global thinkers, we hope to inform and inspire more humans to play emergent roles in the coming |
| 0:23.5 | great simplification. I'd like to welcome climate scientist Leon Simons to the program. Leon most |
| 0:34.3 | recently was a co-author of James Hansen et al's paper Global Warming in the Pipeline. |
| 0:40.3 | Leon is also a board member of the Dutch chapter of Club of Rome. |
| 0:44.3 | Most specifically, what we're going to talk about today is Leon's contribution to this paper, |
| 0:50.3 | which is breaking out the emissions and the aerosol contribution from human activities. |
| 0:59.0 | Aerosols and emissions have been going up in tandem, but the aerosols are masking the expected warming from the thermal impact of a higher energy imbalance. |
| 1:13.1 | Leon looked at how global ships now have new regulations to reduce the sulfur particulate |
| 1:20.1 | emissions, and when that happened in the global shipping routes measured by satellites, |
| 1:27.2 | the ocean temperatures went up. |
| 1:28.9 | They were absorbing more heat because there was less aerosol masking. |
| 1:33.6 | So this is a difficult conversation because the implications are that we're about to have |
| 1:38.3 | more warming in the pipeline than expected. |
| 1:41.0 | And also because Leon is a scientist a scientist and had scientific answers, which were |
| 1:48.8 | quite dense. And yet, it's a very important hypothesis to put out there on how human particulate |
| 1:58.6 | aerosols have been masking the warming so far. |
| 2:03.0 | Please welcome Leon Simons. |
| 2:22.0 | Leon Simons, good-midac. |
| 2:24.2 | How are you today? |
... |
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