Sir David King: "Global Heating: The Science and the Response"
The Great Simplification with Nate Hagens
Nate Hagens
4.8 • 553 Ratings
🗓️ 25 October 2023
⏱️ 110 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
On this episode, Nate is joined by climate scientist and policy ambassador Sir David King to unpack the current situation regarding Earth's climate system and human response (or lack thereof) to the accelerating heating of the atmosphere. While there are many uncertainties this field still grapples with, the fundamentals of the rising average global temperature as a response to increasing man-made greenhouse emissions are widely recognized by the global scientific community. Yet - especially in the United States - climate change remains a contentious issue, making it an even tougher political topic with no easy solutions. What is the basic science behind our understanding of the atmosphere? Will we resort to geoengineering to avert the worst climate outcomes - and which plans look the most promising? What are the implications of global heating for the coming decades and beyond?
About Sir. David King
Sir David King is an Emeritus Professor of Physical Chemistry at the University of Cambridge. He is the Chair of the Climate Crisis Advisory Group, Founder of the Centre for Climate Repair at Cambridge, and an Affiliate Partner of SYSTEMIQ Limited. He was the UK Government Chief Scientific Adviser from 2000-2007 and the Foreign Secretary's Special Representative on Climate Change from 2013-2017. He also spearheaded a collaborative program called Mission Innovation, which involved 25 countries and the EU to create a publicly funded £23bn pa research and development international exercise aimed at delivering all technologies needed to complete the transition into a fossil-fuel-free world economy. He has been a Fellow of the Royal Society since 1991 and a Foreign Fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences since 2002. Sir Dave was knighted in 2003 and made "Officier dans l'ordre national de la Légion d'Honneur" in 2009. Recently, he was also named The American Association for the Advancement of Science 2022 Hamburg Awardee for Science Diplomacy.
Watch on YouTube: https://youtu.be/u7jETRJrkmk
Show Notes & Links to Learn More: https://www.thegreatsimplification.com/episode/95-sir-david-king
Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | You're listening to The Great Simplification with Nate Higgins. |
| 0:06.0 | That's me. |
| 0:07.8 | On this show, we try to explore and simplify what's happening with energy, the economy, the |
| 0:14.3 | environment, and our society. |
| 0:17.6 | Together with scientists, experts, and leaders, this show is about understanding the bird's-eye |
| 0:23.2 | view of how everything fits together, where we go from here and what we can do about it as a |
| 0:29.1 | society and as individuals. |
| 0:33.3 | Joining me today is Sir David King, who is an emeritus professor of chemistry at the University |
| 0:41.4 | of Cambridge in England. |
| 0:43.1 | He's also the chair of the Climate Crisis Advisory Group and the founder of the Center for |
| 0:49.2 | Climate Repair at Cambridge. |
| 0:51.5 | Previously, Sir David King was the chief science advisor to the British government, |
| 0:57.1 | as well as the Foreign Secretary's special representative on climate change. On this channel, |
| 1:04.1 | we're trying to integrate and explain how all the parts and processes fit together of the |
| 1:10.2 | human predicament. We had in the past month |
| 1:13.2 | alone, Sean Sutherland talking about plastics, Robert Sapolsky talking about brain and behavior, |
| 1:19.8 | Luke Graman talking about interest rates, peak cheap oil currencies and financial risks. And last week, |
| 1:26.8 | Chuck Watson talking about geopolitics and the risk |
| 1:31.0 | for nuclear war. A lot of people are hyper focused right now on the warming Earth and the impact |
| 1:39.3 | of global heating on the oceans and the biosphere. A lot of people still are not. And we are becoming |
| 1:47.2 | increasingly compartmentalized and tribal in the things that we care about. It all fits together. |
| 1:54.2 | This was a deep dive with a physical scientist who's been working on climate his entire life and is in deeply |
... |
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