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In Episode 187 of Hidden Forces, Demetri Kofinas speaks with Steven Koonin, author of \\u201cUnsettled: What Climate Science Tells Us, What It Doesn\\u2019t, and Why It Matters.\\u201d Dr. Koonin serves as Director of NYU\'s Center for Urban Science and Progress. He previously served as Undersecretary for Science in the U.S. Department of Energy under Barack Obama and as Chief Scientist at BP, where he was a strong advocate for research into renewable energies and alternative fuel sources.

The science of climate change has become, like almost everything else, a matter of political identity in 21st century America. A recent Pew Research study found that Democrats are more than three times as likely as Republicans to say that dealing with climate change should be a top priority. And yet, if you ask people independent of party affiliation for their views on climate change and why they believe what they believe, most of them will struggle to give you a coherent answer. In fact, very few people, and this goes for politicians, journalists, and even academics, have actually read the reports put out by organizations like the IPCC and others responsible for doing the actual research that we all cite when we talk about \\u201cthe science.\\u201d And to be honest, can you blame them? Afterall, why would anyone want to spend a minute of their time learning about exactly why we are so screwed? About how we\\u2019ve destroyed the planet and \\u201cbroken the climate?\\u201d\\xa0

We\\u2019ve read all the headlines. \\u201cClimate Catastrophe.\\u201d \\u201cClimate Disaster.\\u201d \\u201cThe earth is burning!\\u201d But how true is this, exactly? Are we really facing a \\u201cClimate Apocalypse?\\u201d Is climate science really \\u201cmore reliable than physics,\\u201d something that journalist David Wallace-Wells said in a recent appearance on the Joe Rogan Podcast. Not according to my guest, but more importantly, not according to the science, which, to borrow from the book\\u2019s title, is very much \\u201cUnsettled.\\u201d

Before you react to that very provocative book title, you should know that no one is saying climate change is a hoax or that anthropogenic warming isn\\u2019t real. The purpose of this conversation is not to surreptitiously undermine the consensus view or to troll those who believe strongly in it. Rather, it is simply meant to help inform those of you who either haven\\u2019t read the reports or are simply skeptical about just how bad the situation is and what\\u2019s required from us in order to solve it. This is a subject that deeply concerns all of us, but the doom and gloom narrative surrounding it has arguably become counterproductive in helping us actually address the problem.

Steven and Demetri spend two hours\\u2014between the first half and the overtime\\u2014working their way through the data, what it says, and what the models predict about not only future warming, but also the incidences of droughts, forest fires, hurricanes, rising sea levels, climate-induced migration, and pandemics driven by a warming planet.\\xa0

In the subscriber overtime, they focus most of their attention on the incentives that account for these widely divergent narratives on climate, the importance of morals and values in thinking about how to structure climate policy, and the missing components of costs and tradeoffs that we all need to think about when coming to decisions on how best to adapt our societies and ourselves to the changing climate.

Kofinas and Koonin also discuss geoengineering, including carbon extraction and the use of aerosols to dampen the sun\\u2019s rays, as well as alternative sources of energy like wind, solar, and nuclear, and their respective roles as alternatives to fossil fuels in the coming decades.

You can access the episode overtime, as well as the transcript and rundown to this week\\u2019s episode through the Hidden Forces Patreon Page. All subscribers gain access to our overtime feed, which can be easily added to your favorite podcast application.

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Producer & Host: Demetri Kofinas

Editor & Engineer: Stylianos Nicolaou

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Episode Recorded on 04/12/2021