The Exchanges

Q Tell us a bit about IPCC, which is, uh, I think for many people, the Bible of this industry, right?

A So as part of my work at CPR, I was, um, uh, so, so, so, you know, I, I both publish and I do policy work, right? So as part of the policy work, we get invited to sit on government committees and so on and so forth. But a core belief of our group is that we have to be, our work and our, Policy positions need to be based on rigorous work, and therefore publication is an important part of that. So in that context, I got engaged with the IPCC, the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change. So it's a really strange beast, right? So it's, it's three working groups, science, impacts, and what are called response strategies. How do you respond to it? And I was in the third of these, and I did it twice. Each cycle takes seven years. So the way it works is you don't come up with new information, but you, your group is meant to be the authoritative compilation of existing information. So I was tasked this last time around with the unbelievably impossible task of compiling all the information for chapter 13, one of 17 chapters, and my chapter was called National and Subnational Policies and Institutions. So all the policies and all the institutions needed to address climate change. And we had to pull that together over the COVID period through zoom calls, you know, with, with authors all over the world. And it's a very, very complex process because governments take this really seriously, …

AI assessment note: “it's three working groups, science, impacts, and what are called response strategies.”

Q Would you say that's the easiest low hanging fruit?

A Um, it, it is definitely one of the things to, to put in place. I don't know whether we know enough to know exactly, you know, which is the best lever to pull. We have to pull three or four, but I know we have to change the incentives for the distribution companies. Right now, the distribution companies see Renewable energy, uh, by individuals or by small, uh, entities as actually a threat to them. But the second thing I think is really interesting and gets to the core problem I told you about, uh, uh, earlier, right? Which is when, which is providing electricity. We're in a loop right now of providing bad quality electricity to poor people who say, well, why on earth should I pay? I don't even get electricity when I really need it. And because they don't pay, Then they get even less service, right? We need to be actually invoking a very different conversation around electricity, which is not electricity for the sake of electricity, but electricity as a service. And this goes all the way back to somebody, Sunita will know a guy called Dr. Mulya Reddy, who's sort of the father of this way of thinking about electricity as a service. So the way we've been thinking about in our organization is, what have you talked about Not providing electricity for the sake of electrons, but you're providing ways of increasing the productive capabilities of people in rural areas. So you're thinki…

AI assessment note: “I don't know whether we know enough to know exactly, you know, which is the best lever”

Q Is it also because of less climate dialogue in India?

A Well, I don't think that's actually the reason. I mean, there's been systematic efforts that has been documented now at disinformation campaigns, right, by fossil fuel companies. That's a more likely, uh, explanation. But just going back to this Vostok stuff, so you have, so you know the carbon dioxide, you know the temperature when the snowfall fell, you can map them. And you see this one-to-one relationship. Every spike in carbon dioxide, spike in temperature. So we know the two are really closely associated. Okay. Now, what have we done more recently? These incredibly complex climate models that have been refined over time, and you'll see this in the IPCC. They say, all right, let's run the climate model as if the science of climate change was fake, was false. And you see the temperature record. So they, you know, and they map it to the previous temperature. They calibrate against the previous temperature. And it basically looks like it's more or less It doesn't change, right? Then they say, now let's apply it to what we think is the science of climate change and look at what it looks like, right? And it edges upwards. And then they map real data on top of it. And the real data and the models are a near perfect match. So we've become, become pretty good at actually representing the science.

AI assessment note: “Well, I don't think that's actually the reason... But just going back to this”

Q questions about it. Uh, I really want to know why does carbon dioxide, for example, stay in the atmosphere for 300 years, whereas methane is only around for 15 years, all of that. But people also do say that the kind of radiation that carbon dioxide is blocking is near peak and more carbon in the atmosphere might not significantly Uh, mean more heat. Is there any logic to that?

A Look, I, so I'm, I'm going to let medic weigh in as the, as the sort of engineer in the bunch. My own take on this is I, the, the science of this is so incredibly complicated, right? For example, there were arguments put out about clouds and what effect the clouds would have. And when you add up all of those things and you, so, so, so as a lay person, I don't think any of us can apply our own mind to the collective of the problem because there's so many dimensions of it, right? So there's the oceans and the atmosphere and the interface between them. 90% of the excess heat is sitting in the oceans. There's the ocean cycles, right? There's the various gases. You said carbon dioxide, methane, different lifetimes, and I couldn't honestly tell you exactly what the atmospheric chemistry is of why there are these different durations. This is the kind of area where you have to look at professional scientists and say, give us a good Synthesis and give us evidence, right? As to why you're coming up with the conclusions that you have and the IPCC. So I've been in that process, right? Every chapter, my chapter had 1200 comments times three in three towns of review. So the best that we have is critical scientific review. Is it perfect? Absolutely not. But it catches a lot of errors, right? And you're now at the stage where very, very few people will disagree And most of the, and some of the…

AI assessment note: “I couldn't honestly tell you exactly what the atmospheric chemistry is”