Summary: "The future will be radically different from the present. It will either be radically different because we have significantly - we've grasped the nettle and we'd be prepared to make the sorts of changes that would initially be quite challenging socially and politically, to reduce our carbon dioxide emissions. Or... A little bit further down the line, we will be faced with huge social and political repercussions because of a very significantly changing climate." -Dr. Kevin Anderson That is Dr. Kevin Anderson. As one of the world's top climate scientists, he says the hard facts about climate change are not getting out, and never made it to the Paris climate talks. It's a shocking, revealing interview. Then we travel to Australia, where host Vivien Langford of the Beyond Zero Emissions show talks in studio with David Spratt, author of Code Red, plus a union icon and psychologist - on the eve of the Paris talks. More frank talk. I'm Alex Smith. Buckle up, this is Radio Ecoshock. Download or listen to this Radio Ecoshock show in CD Quality (56 MB) or Lo-Fi (14 MB) Or listen on Soundcloud right now! KEVIN ANDERSON: CLIMATE SCIENCE M.I.A. During the Paris climate talks, one leading scientist says the fundamentals of the whole process is "wildly optimistic". It starts with climate models that assume too much, spills into unreal scientific advice, and ends with rosy media reports saying we can keep on growing without wrecking the climate. Our Western lifestyles won't be greatly inconvenienced, they say. The odd-man out at the party is Kevin Anderson. He's a well-known Professor of Energy and Climate Change at the University of Manchester. Anderson is also the Deputy director of the Tyndall Centre for Climate Change Research, a leading scientific institute not only in Britain, but in the world. Download or listen to this Radio Ecoshock interview with Kevin Anderson in CD Quality or Lo-Fi My previous show on Kevin Anderson, July 22nd 2015, "What they won't tell you about the climate catastrophe" is blogged with links here. But I call Kevin this time about a new article he published in the journal Nature Geoscience. The title is "Duality in Climate Science". The paper is available here, in free full-text. A useful article form phys.org is here. Here’s the link to a great piece in Skeptical Science on Kevin's new paper. THE FAMOUS PICKETTY WEIGHS IN ON WHO THE BIG EMITTERS ARE During our interview, Kevin mentioned a new paper by Chancel and Picketty, on how a few million top consumers are responsible for the majority of climate change emissions. Find that here. The full title and citation on the Chancel/Picketty climate paper is: Carbon and inequality: from Kyoto to Paris Trends in the global inequality of carbon emissions (1998-2013) & prospects for an equitable adaptation fund Lucas Chancel, Iddri & Paris School of Economics Thomas Piketty, Paris School of Economics 3rd, November 2015. PARDON MY RANT After reports from The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, the IPCC, the assembled government leaders gather in Paris. Their stated goal is to keep global mean temperature rise below 2 degrees Centigrade, from pre-industrial levels. Dr. James Hansen says it's "crazy" to say 2 degrees C would be safe. Kevin Anderson agrees with Hanson. As I wrote in my blog about Anderson's 2012 speech: "In fact, says Anderson, we are almost guaranteed to reach 4 degrees of warming, as early as 2050, and may soar far beyond that - beyond the point which agriculture, the ecosystem, and industrial civilization can survive." Here is another thing that drives me crazy, and Anderson describes it in this new paper. The question set to be answered is: "what do we need to do to have a 66% chance or better of staying below 2 degrees C". Imagine we are playing Russian Roulette. We have a pistol with three chambers, one of which contains a bullet. The stakes are not just our own lives, but those of all our descendants, and possibly most life on Earth. Who in thei
