A Climate Scientist on What We're Facing and What We Need to Do

Episode 295 (Originally aired 12/21/2023)

Peter Kalmus is one of the country's most visible and engaged climate scientists. He is the author of "Being the Change: Live Well and Spark a Climate Revolution" and works at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory. Dr. Kalmus has advocated civil disobedience as a necessary means of spurring action to stop the climate catastrophe, and he wrote a scathing article about the UN’s recent COP 28 climate summit, which was dominated by the fossil fuel industry. He joins today to explain why, as a climate scientist, he wants people to understand the basic fact that we have no choice but to eliminate the fossil fuel industry as soon as possible.

"In fact, the laws of physics guarantee that it will get much too fucking hot if we keep burning fossil fuels. So, pardon my language, but I don't know what it's going to take. I'm really disappointed because I thought that at this level of heating, of obviousness, of disaster, that everyone would wake up and realize that none of our hopes and dreams will come to fruition if we don't have a habitable planet." — Peter Kalmus

[falsificationism]

Listened on Spotify, and it was REFRESHING to hear someone get real and simply report the reality without all the wishy-washy, unjustified optimism.

I think I'm even more of a doomer because I'm not merely concerned with global heating but also with pollution, plastics, land and water use, fertilizer runoff, etc. We're absolutely trashing the planet, and much of what we've done is beyond repair (at least within our lifetimes). With my lens, the primary problem is actually animal agriculture and fishing (most models severely discount methane, land use, clear-cutting of old-growth forests, etc.), but that's an argument for a different day...when we all agree that there's a problem.

[heatherscott]

Thank you Peter. So lovely to hear the perspective of a physicist. Politics and science are not a good mix in my experience. Few politicians understand science and that is dangerous.

[larrybedouin]

They bend their tongues like their bow for lies: but they are not valiant for the truth upon the earth; for they proceed from evil to evil, and they know not me, saith the LORD.