11 Unsolved Problems in Climate Change

Minor erratum: permafrost thaws, it doesn't melt! D'oh!

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Some stock footage courtesy of Getty.
Edited by Luke Negus.

What are the unanswered questions about climate change? What don't we know about the climate crisis? What do IPCC scientists say we don't know? Where could I do research on climate change? In this video I look at a report written by IPCC scientists about our gaps in understanding of climate change.

Huge thanks to my supporters on Patreon:
Norm Zemke, I want to roll down a hill into a river of beans, Whitefang, David Mann, Jilbin George, Ben Thayer, Eric A Gentzler, Glen Monks, Daniel Chen, Gary Stark, dryfrog, Marcus Bosshard, Peter Reid, bitreign33 .

Bastian Pranzas, Lucas Johnston, Jeffry ., Marius Kießling, Jon Arlov, Pawel Piwek, Matze, Artem Plotnikov, Paul H and Linda L, Dan Sherman, Andy Hartley.

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[theresalwayssomethingtobui]

Hydrologist here, specialised in the soil moisture part: I agree with the middle child idea. Drought, salinisation, drinking water... It's baffeling how strong people's opinions are on agriculture yet how little they want to do for a resource that's mostly invisible... I work in groundwater research and I think it is overlooked because a lot happens under the ground and you can't touch it until it's pumpedout.

[OpenTanyao]

Council member from the Netherlands here. When trying to implement legislation on climate adaptation, the main character of most measures is water again.

All these topics are so interconnected, and so very very important!

[knpark]

Dear people who are fortunate enough to never study in grad schools: when experts say something is a "gap" in research and/or understanding, it means that those experts are partially or mostly certain about what they don't know. This is because they know of many similar topics to said gap already answered by someone else. A "gap" in research is more like a pothole on a highway and not a gaping maw with a sign that reads "hic sunt dracones." Sure, such potholes sometimes turn out to be the tip of a massive sinkhole, and major gaps in climate change research worthy of a report to the European Commission can be like such sinkholes. But even in those cases, those sinkholes will not "sunt dracones." Just like how this video started with, climate science is a *mature science.*

[HedgeWitch-styy]

Geoengineering scares the hell out of me. Our track record of unintended consequences would suggest it would be highly risky.

[BobQuigley]

Possible video topic? Misguided efforts both sincere and fraudulent. IMO an example is building huge structures with wood. SMR vs large nuclear plants. Hydrogen as large scale replacement for flammable fossils vs niche areas where it would work. Surely there's many many more...

[ericlotze]

“Put that thing back where it came from or so help me, so help me!” But for hydrocarbons?

[trenomas]

Regenerative agriculture solutions are not a complex bio-supply chain. The existing political framework supports exploitative land management. Adjusting that framework will naturally provide opportunities for smallholding farms and native land practice.

The key to keep in mind is that regenerative solutions are modular. They don't need complex scaling. They need replication.

[gljames]

We need to plant way more trees, especially in cities that are at risk from urban heating.

[walker]

Having YouTube scrobble bar chapters in YouTube videos is a nice thing to have if you feel like adding them.

[Conus]

Glad to see nature based solutions finally getting more attention

[Altobrun]

Great video Simon. Something to add from the Canadian perspective for prospective environmental scientists. Canada is extremely lacking in grad students interested in atmospheric science and computational hydrology/climatology. Incoming grad students overwhelmingly want to do field work and our original core of modellers from the 80's are retiring without nearly enough people trained to replace them.

My background is in computational climatology and remote sensing and I've been told at conferences I'll be 'Canada's most employable post-doc' when I graduate because of how in demand the fields are.

[dylancope]

Really excellent video. As a machine learning phd student I really hope to use my skills for helping find solutions to the climate crisis. This was a really inspiring presentation.

[xthischinchilla]

Such a useful video! I'm a climatology student in search of a master thesis topic right now and i will definitely look into that report

[thaddeushamlet]

The fact I keep getting road and suburb expansion ads on climate videos saddens as much as it annoys.

[BobQuigley]

Another gem. Of course the amoc situation is most worrisome in that once data verifies collapse is in progress it's too late to mitigate. Nothing good can come from it's collapse. Thanks for your work! Consider hooking up with Nate Hagen's Great Simplification. His recent video was with Potsdam Institute climate physicist Level Caesar. She spent good amount of time on amoc. You+Nate more GHT amplify the message and bring more viewers into the conversation

[bartroberts]

AIP has a great timeline of climate science going back 200 years to Fourier, through Foote, Tyndall, Arrhenius, Hogbom, Callendar, Plass, Lamb, Keeling, Revelle, Smagorinsky, Broeckner, Alley.. We long ago passed the point of refutation of the basics of the CO2 thermostat of global temperature.

[harry]

always top content, one of the best voices on these topics

[toyotaprius]

12 Forceful reacquisition of all fossil fuel capital

[FarisSalman]

I'm doing social interdisciplinary research for my dissertation and it overlaps with a few of the small topics among the doors: land use, land governance, and social intervention.
To put in a way that is analogous with your content, the last 8, 9, 10 are interlinked in a way that I can only say "It's all important and there is no way prioritizing only a door makes sense"
It's basically OH MY GOD 😮 and OH MY GOD 😱 at the same time.

[manuelcampagna]

Excuse me, Dr Simon, the colour of carbon atoms is black, not red.