Speaker 1: Welcome to zero. I am Kshatrati. This week global warming
Speaker 1: or global weirding. So here in London it's been raining
Speaker 1: for what feels like months, which is maybe what you
Speaker 1: think London should be like, but let me tell you
Speaker 1: this is next level. England has had one of the
Speaker 1: wettest years since people started keeping track of such things
Speaker 1: back in eighteen thirty six, and all around the world
Speaker 1: the weather has been anomalous and disruptive. We are, after all,
Speaker 1: living through the hottest year there has ever been on record.
Speaker 1: There's been flooding in Dubai, Haile in Texas, extreme heat
Speaker 1: in India. In Delhi, where my in laws live, it's
Speaker 1: been forty four degrees celsius one hundred and eleven fahrenheit
Speaker 1: this week. I'm sure you can go into some examples
Speaker 1: of crazy weather where you live. As the summer gets
Speaker 1: underway in the northern Hemisphere, all of us at Bloomergreen
Speaker 1: are bracing for new extreme weather events. My colleague Eric
Speaker 1: Rosston has covered climate change for more than two decades
Speaker 1: and he's had many, many conversations with climate scientists about
Speaker 1: the unprecedented times we live in. Today, we're going to
Speaker 1: bring you a conversation he recently had with Catherine Heho,
Speaker 1: a climate scientist at Texas Tech University. She focuses on
Speaker 1: assessing the regional impacts of climate change on people and
Speaker 1: the environment. We'll hear Eric's conversation with her in a moment,
Speaker 1: but first I wanted to catch up with him to
Speaker 1: find out how he is thinking about this moment.
Speaker 2: Welcome Eric, Hi, Thanks for having me.
Speaker 1: Now, you've been writing about climate change for a long time.
Speaker 1: How do you convey to somebody now the true weight
Speaker 1: of all that is happening in the hottest year?
Speaker 2: So, in the time that I've been doing this since
Speaker 2: like two thousand and one, all but one of the
Speaker 2: years of this century or is one of the hottest
Speaker 2: years ever. The way you ask the question is sort
Speaker 2: of overwhelming. It's like, how do you explain the scale
Speaker 2: of things that are going on? And I think I don't.
Speaker 1: You talk to climate scientists often, and you've been doing
Speaker 1: that for years as part of the job, but they
Speaker 1: see things getting worse and they understand it better than
Speaker 1: anybody else because they kind of see it coming and
Speaker 1: it becomes true. So, in doing these interviews over the years,
Speaker 1: have you seen a change in their attitude on how
Speaker 1: they think about climate impacts.
Speaker 2: I think you in the last two or three years
Speaker 2: when one of the big UN climate reports came out,
Speaker 2: did a column on the evolving language that scientists have
Speaker 2: used since the nineteen nineties, and scientists are very conservative
Speaker 2: in the way they speak, and these UN climate reports
Speaker 2: are the most conservative statements that scientists make about climate change,
Speaker 2: because not only all the scientists, but two hundred different
Speaker 2: countries have to agree agree to it. And so if
Speaker 2: you just look at the top line statements, they evolve
Speaker 2: from the early nineteen nineties from well we're looking at it,
Speaker 2: you know, to like a famous mid nineties statement, we
Speaker 2: can detect a human discernible human impact on the climate,
Speaker 2: you know, to these days, which to like translate it
Speaker 2: into conversational speech is it's here, and it's nuts in
Speaker 2: some ways, it's worse than we thought, and what is
Speaker 2: anybody doing about it? I think in two thousand and
Speaker 2: seven they called warming it's unequivocal. This time what's unequivocal
Speaker 2: was human contribution to the warming, which Catherine Heho, you know,
Speaker 2: has described as more than one hundred percent. The reason
Speaker 2: it's possible that we're responsible for more than one hundred
Speaker 2: percent of warming. Is that we put up all the
Speaker 2: warming gases, but then some of our pollution has a
Speaker 2: cooling effect on the atmosphere, so we actually net out
Speaker 2: a certain amount of our warming, and that's how we're
Speaker 2: responsible for that much of it.
Speaker 1: This is the part that terrifies me. It's humans running
Speaker 1: an experiment on the planet and we don't really know
Speaker 1: what will happen. Fortunately, we have climate scientists like Catherine
Speaker 1: and Haho who can explain what the hell is happening,
Speaker 1: so let's hear from her.
Speaker 3: We often refer to climate change as global warming, but
Speaker 3: these days I think it's much more appropriate to call
Speaker 3: it global weirding, because wherever we live, our weather is
Speaker 3: getting weirder. So think of it like this. We all
Speaker 3: have a pair of weather dice, and we have a
Speaker 3: chance of rolling a double six, a heat wave, a storm,
Speaker 3: a flood, a wildfire, or more at any given time.
Speaker 3: And if we live in Texas, where I live, we
Speaker 3: already have three sixes on our dice because Texas naturally
Speaker 3: gets more extreme weather than any other state. As climate changes,
Speaker 3: as the ocean and the atmosphere are heating up, it's
Speaker 3: supercharging our climate system essentially adding more sixes and even
Speaker 3: nowadays some sevens and even an eight to our dice.
Speaker 3: Events we've never seen before that are stronger, more deadly,
Speaker 3: more dangerous than anything we've experienced. And so all around
Speaker 3: the world we have these weather dice, and we still
Speaker 3: can roll a one or two or three, but the
Speaker 3: chances of rolling a six or a seven or an
Speaker 3: eight eight are increasing year by year the more heat
Speaker 3: trapping gases we produce. And so when we get a
Speaker 3: year like we had last year and the year that
Speaker 3: we're looking at like we're going to have today, when
Speaker 3: every single time you open your news up there is
Speaker 3: a new disaster, a killer heat wave in Southeast Asia,
Speaker 3: record breaking floods in Brazil, biggest wildfire and record in Texas,
Speaker 3: biggest hurricane season predicted in the North Atlantic this summer,
Speaker 3: we think what's happening, Well, that's climate change loading the
Speaker 3: weather dice against us, and again, our future is in
Speaker 3: our hands. The more carbon pollution we produce, the thicker
Speaker 3: the blanket we wrap around our planet, the more high
Speaker 3: numbers are going to start showing up on our dice.
Speaker 2: And are there events that have occurred in the last year,
Speaker 2: I mean near or far from you that have struck
Speaker 2: you as particularly novel or concerning.
Speaker 3: So because of Texas's geographic location, and because it has
Speaker 3: high population density and high infrastructure density, it already gets
Speaker 3: more billion dollar weather in climate disasters than any other
Speaker 3: state in the country. As I said, Texas already has
Speaker 3: three sixes on its weather dice. So as climate changes
Speaker 3: loading the weather dice against us, what do you expect
Speaker 3: to happen to Texas? We expect it to be the
Speaker 3: poster child of how extreme weather is affecting us today.
Speaker 3: And that's exactly what's happening. We are seeing record breaking hurricanes.
Speaker 3: We are seeing massive increases in extreme precipitation. It's more
Speaker 3: often to flood than not these days when it rains,
Speaker 3: we are seeing that. We saw the biggest wildfe on
Speaker 3: record in January. We are seeing incredible extreme heat. I
Speaker 3: was just talking about my newsletter the other day. I've
Speaker 3: lived here for seventeen years, and the last two summers
Speaker 3: we have all in my family gotten heatstroke, some multiple times,
Speaker 3: and we've been drinking more. We've been cutting our time outside.
Speaker 3: I mean, the heat is different. I can feel it,
Speaker 3: and if you look at the stats, you can tell
Speaker 3: it's different at the cutting edge of climate science as
Speaker 3: a field called attribution, where as scientists we can now
Speaker 3: put a number on how much more likely climate change
Speaker 3: made a given event or how much worse it made it.
Speaker 3: So with Hurricane Harvey, for example, which hit Texas in
Speaker 3: twenty seventeen, we now know not only how much more
Speaker 3: rain fell because of climate change supersizing that hurricane, we
Speaker 3: can even draw a map and show which houses flooded
Speaker 3: that would not have flooded if the same hurricane it
Speaker 3: happened one hundred years ago, and put a price tag
Speaker 3: on how much more expensive the damages were. So Hurricane Harvey,
Speaker 3: even though it happened now over six years ago, was
Speaker 3: really a game changer in understanding and quantifying the direct
Speaker 3: impacts of human activities on these extreme events. So since then,
Speaker 3: World Weather Attribution, led by freddie Otto, has turned into
Speaker 3: a rapid response unit where you could have the Brazilian
Speaker 3: floods you know, just the other week, and they've already
Speaker 3: published the attribution study showing that those specific floods were
Speaker 3: at least twice as likely due to climate change. But
Speaker 3: if I had to pick one event so far that
Speaker 3: has really showed how far off the charts we are.
Speaker 3: It would be the massive heat wave and associated wildfires
Speaker 3: that occurred along the western coast of North America from
Speaker 3: British Columbia down into Washington and Oregon State in the
Speaker 3: summer of twenty twenty one. It happened in June, and
Speaker 3: according to attribution studies, it was so far off the
Speaker 3: tail of the distribution that it was at least one
Speaker 3: hundred and fifty times more likely. That is a lot
Speaker 3: of dice waiting. We're talking about. Those dice were weighted
Speaker 3: to basically balance on the tip of the dice. That
Speaker 3: heat wave was like throwing two dice and having both
Speaker 3: of them balanced on the corner, not even falling. That's
Speaker 3: how rare that event was. And the impacts were stunning,
Speaker 3: you know, millions of marine creatures literally boiled to death
Speaker 3: in the ocean. The town of Lytton and British Columbia
Speaker 3: set the all time I'M high temperature record for Canada
Speaker 3: one day, the second day, the third day, and then
Speaker 3: on the fourth day, a wildfire, which of course was
Speaker 3: exacerbated by the record hot and dry conditions, swept through
Speaker 3: and burned about ninety five percent of the town down.
Speaker 3: So that to me is the marker so far, but
Speaker 3: I know for sure that it won't remain that way.
Speaker 3: We are going to see events that are even more
Speaker 3: extreme that pass that likelihood, because again, the more heat
Speaker 3: trapping gases we produce, the thicker the blanket of carbon
Speaker 3: pollution we wrap around the planet, the more higher numbers
Speaker 3: we're going to have on our dice.
Speaker 2: And the you know, like the cocktail party contrarian will say,
Speaker 2: you haven't done an attribution study on all of these
Speaker 2: things that have happened this year.
Speaker 3: Well, we're getting to the point where it's almost possible
Speaker 3: to do that. So if you go to the World
Speaker 3: Weather Attribution website, you'll see that they are picking up
Speaker 3: a lot of events from around the world. And to
Speaker 3: me personally, the event this past year that stood out
Speaker 3: the most as a scientist was not one that was
Speaker 3: on most people's radars. I didn't see a lot of
Speaker 3: news reports about the drought in Syria in Iran, but
Speaker 3: when they did the attribution analysis, what they showed is
Speaker 3: that this drought, which was I think a category four
Speaker 3: and of five severe drought, would not even have been
Speaker 3: a drought if it weren't for human induced climate change.
Speaker 3: It would have been in the low ones, which is
Speaker 3: just sort of a slightly drier than average, it would
Speaker 3: not even have classified as a drought. So that was
Speaker 3: an example where climate change took a small anomaly, a
Speaker 3: small precipitation deficit, and it turned it into a massive,
Speaker 3: severe drought in a part of the world that has
Speaker 3: very you know, a lot of water shortages, a lot
Speaker 3: of civil and political instability, a lot of poverty, all
Speaker 3: of which are exacerbated by that water shortfall. So that
Speaker 3: to me really stood out this past year, and it
Speaker 3: didn't even make headlines because of all the other headlines
Speaker 3: that we already have about the other weather disasters happening
Speaker 3: around the world. A disaster is a function of three things,
Speaker 3: not just one. First of all, you have to have
Speaker 3: the hazard itself, the drought, the wildfire, the heat wave,
Speaker 3: the hurricane or cyclone or typhoon. But then whether it's
Speaker 3: a disaster or not depends on exposure. So if the
Speaker 3: hurricane never makes landfall, if it doesn't you know, if
Speaker 3: it doesn't hit a large city right on the coast
Speaker 3: with people and infrastructure, it isn't a disaster. And then
Speaker 3: if it does make landfall, how vulnerable or how prepared
Speaker 3: are those people. If the same hurricane hits Haiti, the
Speaker 3: poorest country in the Americas, versus the Carolinas, you know,
Speaker 3: relative well developed country, it could be the same hurricane,
Speaker 3: the same strength, with the same rainfall and the same
Speaker 3: wind speeds, but there could be orders of magnitude difference
Speaker 3: in the impacts because of the vulnerability of the system.
Speaker 3: So what that means is there's a lot that we
Speaker 3: can do to mitigate our impacts on climate to prevent
Speaker 3: these hazards from getting worse. But there's also a lot
Speaker 3: we can do right here, right now, especially at the
Speaker 3: local scale, to reduce our vulnerability, to build resilience, to
Speaker 3: ensure people are prepared. Our future truly is in our hands,
Speaker 3: and it's in our hands in multiple ways, at multiple scales.
Speaker 3: And so that's why climate action includes not just reducing
Speaker 3: our emissions of heat trapping gases, but also building resilience
Speaker 3: to the impacts that are already here today.
Speaker 1: After the break, Eric and Catherine discuss something called compound
Speaker 1: events weather events that stack up on top of each
Speaker 1: other with no one effects. By the way, if you've
Speaker 1: been enjoying this episode, please take a moment to rate
Speaker 1: and review the show on Apple Podcasts or Spotify. It
Speaker 1: really helps other listeners find it.
Speaker 2: You know, I was thinking about conversations I had a
Speaker 2: long time ago, fifteen years ago maybe, and a colleague saying,
Speaker 2: you know, I think ten years from now is going
Speaker 2: to be really interesting because you know, the signal is
Speaker 2: going to come out of the noise. And I've only
Speaker 2: been realizing recently that like compound events is how we're
Speaker 2: actually is how this is actually going to go down.
Speaker 2: Compound events, which is something today nobody's heard of, is
Speaker 2: actually in three to ten years going to be how
Speaker 2: we define climate change. And so this is long. This
Speaker 2: is a long preamble to saying like when I was
Speaker 2: talking to my colleague ten or fifteen years ago, I
Speaker 2: felt like I knew what the narrative was going to be,
Speaker 2: and that narrative has largely come true because the science
Speaker 2: was largely correct. But like with the rise of compound events,
Speaker 2: I don't understand what the narrative is anymore, right, Am
Speaker 2: I just not reading the right things? Or is there
Speaker 2: just more uncertainty about what the next phase looks like.
Speaker 3: So nearly eight years ago, Bob Copp and I wrote
Speaker 3: a chapter for the fourth US National Climate Assessment on
Speaker 3: potential surprises. We talked about tipping points in the climate system,
Speaker 3: we talked about impacts that we know that we don't know,
Speaker 3: and we talked about the risk of compound events, and
Speaker 3: we showed that as these weather dice are getting loaded
Speaker 3: against us, we do expect compound events to increase. Where
Speaker 3: either the definition for compound events is either you have
Speaker 3: sequential events in the same place. So for example, in California,
Speaker 3: you could have a terrible wildfire season that destroys a
Speaker 3: lot of the vegetation, and then it could be followed
Speaker 3: by very severe and strong atmospheric river that with no
Speaker 3: roots to anchor the slopes and heavy rainfall falling, the
Speaker 3: risk of landslides is much greater than it would have
Speaker 3: been if you only had the wildfire or you only
Speaker 3: had the atmospheric river by itself. So that's the first
Speaker 3: type of compound event, where they occur sequentially in the
Speaker 3: same place. But then the second type of compound event
Speaker 3: is where you have events that occur at the same
Speaker 3: time in different parts of the same region or the
Speaker 3: same country. So take the United States for example, or
Speaker 3: take all of North America, there's only so many firefighters.
Speaker 3: And it turns out that from Alaska through Canada to
Speaker 3: the United States, there is a well established practice of
Speaker 3: based on when the wildfire season starts and ends in
Speaker 3: each different place, crews of firefighters move around the continent
Speaker 3: to be in different places depending on when the season.
Speaker 3: Traditionally used to be well. Now, unfortunately the season is extended,
Speaker 3: it's much longer, and they have many more fires burning
Speaker 3: greater area in much of those places, and so there
Speaker 3: aren't enough firefighters to go around anymore. We just don't
Speaker 3: have the resources. You could say, the same resources about
Speaker 3: FEMA or the National Guard. And where this is really
Speaker 3: coming home to roost in terms of compound events is
Speaker 3: in insurance. So insurance companies have been tracking this for
Speaker 3: a long time and they've gotten to the point where
Speaker 3: there are some areas in the United States that have
Speaker 3: such high risk of compound events occurring sequentially or within
Speaker 3: the same state, that they're pulling out of areas in California,
Speaker 3: in Texas, in Florida, in Louisiana, or in other places.
Speaker 3: They're just jacking the prices through the roof to the
Speaker 3: point where somebody who owns like a normal home, you know,
Speaker 3: with a couple of young toddlers, their insurance could go
Speaker 3: from two thousand year to five thousand a year in
Speaker 3: just one year. And if people can't get insurance, then
Speaker 3: they can't get a mortgage because a mortgage requires you
Speaker 3: to have insurance. So we are seeing the insurance industry
Speaker 3: respond to these compound events, but we aren't really seeing
Speaker 3: anyone else respond at scale. And what that's going to
Speaker 3: require is it's going to require massively more resources to
Speaker 3: cope with the same types of disasters, whether it's floods, hurricanes,
Speaker 3: heat waves, droughts, or wildfires, because if you have many
Speaker 3: of them occurring at the same time, you can't just
Speaker 3: have these teams that you send out to help. You
Speaker 3: have to have a lot more people, and that means
Speaker 3: it's a lot more expensive, right. And then also we
Speaker 3: have compound events on the global supply chain, and so
Speaker 3: we can have, you know, the impact of a flood
Speaker 3: that knocks out a chip producer in Southeast Asia that
Speaker 3: can have repercussions on the availabilities of computers in North America.
Speaker 3: Our world is so interconnected, not just physically but economically
Speaker 3: and socially that these impacts, and we haven't even talked
Speaker 3: about refugee crises and migration, climate migration, they can have
Speaker 3: all of these cascador and knock on effects that I
Speaker 3: think we're only just beginning to understand.
Speaker 1: That was Eric Rosston speaking with Catherine Haho. It's such
Speaker 1: a treat to listen to a sign to speak so eloquently,
Speaker 1: and she always brings these amazing examples. Now before we go, Eric,
Speaker 1: there's a question that vis climate reporters get asked often,
Speaker 1: which is, given how much you know about climate change,
Speaker 1: much you have to read about climate impacts all around
Speaker 1: the world, are you optimistic? And I hate that question.
Speaker 2: I hate that question, but I.
Speaker 1: Also understand why we get asked that question. Of course,
Speaker 1: do you have a pet answer?
Speaker 2: My answer is, first of all, pessimist don't say they're pessimists,
Speaker 2: they say they're realists. But also the conversation presupposes that
Speaker 2: you're an observer. It's like this thing is happening before you.
Speaker 2: What do you think is going to happen? Like, if
Speaker 2: you're an optimist, do you think it's going to get better?
Speaker 2: If you're a pessimist, do you think it's going to
Speaker 2: get worse? But what I want to know is not
Speaker 2: if you're an optimist or a pessimist, what are you
Speaker 2: doing about it? You know what is within your power,
Speaker 2: and among the things that are within your power, what
Speaker 2: are you doing about it?
Speaker 1: Thank you, Eric, Thanks so much for having me. Thank
Speaker 1: you for listening to Zero. If you liked this episode,
Speaker 1: please take a moment to rate and review the show
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Speaker 1: Annamazarakis and Alisia Clinton. I am Akshatrati back so