bluedot 2019 | Tamsin Edwards: Polar Thinking

[Music] thank you very much everyone number one how not all climate skeptics are angry or selfish all wrong the phone rang sitting at my desk in the university of bristol 8 years ago in fact exactly 8 years ago today I picked up the phone hello may I speak to dr. Edwards please speaking I replied this is Barry he said damn I knew I should have taken my phone number off the university public website after starting to comment about climate science online Barry was a climate skeptic what some would call a denier he'd been challenging me that day on Twitter about the validity of sea level rise predictions the line to draw between climate science and policy and the motivations of climate scientists was he going to start ranting at me maybe even threaten me I'd heard of the toxic emails sent to colleagues in the u.s. I suddenly felt a little vulnerable even at the end of a phone line my professional space intruded on as a junior scientist still on temporary contracts I felt unprepared for this would I say something wrong we would end up splashed across the skeptic blogs perhaps even sent to a sympathetic newspaper I felt nervous even a little shaky Barry sounded mild-mannered I pictured a well-meaning a slightly awkward uncle in a crumpled jacket he was respectful even deferential and he explained that he thought just picking up the phone and having a conversation be better than continuing with a back-and-forth on Twitter I think he said it would be nice to meet sometime and talk some more if I wanted to that we probably had more in common on science than I thought that his interest really was in defending climate science against error and misuse after we talked for a few minutes I put down the phone and thought he sounds nice over the following years Barry and I did meet in person several times and struck up a bit of a friendship we talked a little about our own lives but mostly about the online climate debate as it was called until recently he had been a chemist once and prodded me about claims he thought were not robust at least a few times I found he was right I lightly teased him about his incredible verbosity both online and in person Barry makes his points over and over like a paintball gun to the point of apparent obsessional compulsiveness online that can come across as aggressive or hectoring in person he just sounds like a nerd Barry's stuck up for me against skeptics that were genuinely aggressive and stuck up for climate science when outside criticisms were unfounded we're not so much in touch anymore perhaps we've said everything we wanted to say to each other and there were times I found his criticism or his manner frustrating or unproductive but Barry was the first of many climate contrarians I met or talked with that engaged in civil dialogue at least some of the time and made some reasonable criticisms of my field another was Jonathan a professor of physics and the main person who now adds my new accomplished accomplishments to my Wikipedia page Paul another academic who made fair criticisms about statistical analysis and thought exchanges like ours could possibly extinguish climate skepticism Josh not his real name the harsh cartoonist who is lamped lampooned many of my colleagues in person we sweet and gentle he took a shine to me and drew a cartoon of me as a magical Tinkerbell saving climate science and Shawn whose last name I do not know whose dry humor on Twitter always made me smile recently knowing Raziel he suggested to his sister looking for a new craft project that she makes somethings for me more about that later these conversations showed me that climate sceptics are not always angry or selfish they're not also they're also not always necessarily wrong if you listen to the ones with thoughtful reflections or suggestions about the science even if they sometimes word them rather strongly you and the skeptics that do start angry and wrong often cool down on a listen if you listen and acknowledge the position they're coming from each skeptic is different each conversation and each can surprise you - how climate change is both human and natural I do still have anonymous climate skeptics often from overseas replying to something I've said on Twitter with some variation on the idea that climate change is completely natural yes sometimes they are angry and they're definitely wrong occasionally I also hear people argue the opposite that every single change we see in our climate and weather is our fault but the truth is somewhere between the two even if the balance does change through time the natural influences acting on our climate are always changing in the distant past it was only these our orbit around the Sun is never fixed unlike the clockwork models of our solar system it slowly alternates between circular and elliptical our axis tilted a little more a little less pointing towards one star or another the North Star is only temporarily so these subtle shifts occur over tens of thousands of years and they affect our seasons and how much of the sun's energy falls on each part of the earth at a particular time in the year acting as a quiet peacemaker for the planet stepping in and out of the great Ice Ages every hundred thousand years even the Sun itself is in constant sunspots those [ __ ] fingerprints that appear on the Sun surface with an 11-year cycle and also vary over much longer timescales are the mark of a son that is temporarily stronger more energy means a warmer planet in around 1640 the sunspots stopped virtually absent for two generations Europe already cooled by volcanic eruptions and just Papa New Guinea 's Long Island that were dimming the Sun plunged more deeply into the winters during those years two centuries later the astronomers Annie and Edward Monda looked back at the data and wrote about that strange absence and the period now takes their name the maunder minimum these puppeteers of the orbital and solar cycles are still pulling on the strings of our planet even if they mostly fade into the background now and compared compared with the attention-seeking activities of humans volcanic eruptions like the Mount Pinatubo eruption of 1991 emit the gas sulfur dioxide which combines with oxygen and water in the atmosphere to make tiny droplets that hang in the air and reflect some of the sun's rays away Pinatubo temporarily reversed around 40% of global warming since the pre-industrial era era but only for a few months sunspots still come and go some of the warming in the first half of the 20th century was caused by an increase in the Sun strength a long deep minimum in the 11-year solar sunspot cycle from 2007 to 2009 cools the upper atmosphere and may have helped cool our winters in Europe last month there were signs that we had begun to descend into the neck solar minimum and that it will also be long and deep and the tic-tock tic-tock of the orbital cycles continues but we've now prevented the next ice age we were do with our unintended increase of the global thermostat greenhouse gases like carbon dioxide and methane are not inherently bad without the greenhouse effect protecting us this would be a cold and different planet around minus 19 degrees Celsius instead of 15 plus 15 the problem today is one of balance too much of a good thing carbon dioxide has waxed and waned with the ice ages over at least the last 800,000 years but the extra amount we have let slip into the air has taken us to a level probably not seen in two or three million years the molecules of co2 absorb heat energy from the earth which makes them wriggle and flex more until they let go their parcel of energy in a random direction that direction is often back down to earth which heats us up a little more strangely our coal burning as having a cooling effect as well as a warming just not as strong burning coal can release sulfur dioxide that same volcanic gas making particles that reflect the sun's rays but it's not enough to offset its industrial partner in crime co2 it only compensates about 30 percent of the warming so climate change is both human and natural and human influences on the climate are both warming and cooling but our best s for that balance right now is that all the warming since 1950 has been caused by humans three polar thinking this is a good news/bad news story so much of our energy is spent on categorizing into opposites Breck's tree mists and Ramona's deplorable z' and snowflakes liberal elitists and right-wing bigots good and evil are you with us or against us are you on the right side of history climate change is all our fault or it's all natural humanity is screwed or else there's nothing to worry about climate sceptics are selfish climate scientists are catastrophists black and white polar thinking of course the truth is more often than we admit somewhere in between fifty shades of monochrome greys might feel less safe less clear less defendable but we know really that there is a spectrum of possibilities that climate change can be part natural part human caused even more important I think is the ability to hold two apparently contradictory possibilities in mind at the same time my father was an art therapist and in the book of his lectures ornithology for the birds illustrated with the monochrome drawings of Thomas Buick he describes himself as comfortable with ambiguity we know that good intentions can lie behind bad behavior and bad behind good and the future will be both both worse and better than we imagined opposites absurdities parallel universes this is a different kind of polar thinking we published two polar science we published two polar science studies in February one that I led about Antarctica and another I contributed to about both Greenland and Antarctica so what's the news we want to know impatiently are things worse than we thought or better is everything all right or is everything on fire good news or bad news date 31st of October 2017 subject receipt of nature manuscript 2017 - ten - one four four six seven dear dr. Edwards thank you for submitting your manuscript entitled reconciled model projections for the Antarctic contribution to sea-level rise we will be in touch again as soon as we have reached a decision second of November 2017 - Susie thought was IBS but felt bit different cramps after food totally lost appetite think it was stress our study is good news in a way because we find that rapid collapse of the Antarctic Ice Sheet is much less likely than previously suggested but as you might expect from the words collapse and less likely being in the same sentence it is not a simple story it is a story of weighing up the evidence and holding two apparently contradictory possible possible futures in mind with collapse or without it is a story with layers of good and bad news in March 2016 a high-profile study by Rob de canto and Dave Pollard predicted that Antarctica could contribute over a meter to global sea level rise by the end of the century this would double the projections for total sea level rise by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change they had added a new idea into their computer model of Antarctica called ice cliff instability rapid unstoppable ice loss caused by the continuous collapse of unstable ice cliffs along the coasts they ran 64 possible versions of their model of Antarctica and tested how well they simulated the Antarctic contribution to sea level in the past during the last interglacial period between the ice ages around 125,000 years ago and also the mid Pliocene around 3 million years ago and rejected any that failed those tests the sea level of the Pliocene is not very well known so they tried two possible ranges 5 to 15 meters or 10 to 20 meters that second choice led to their highest predictions for the future a mean sea level contribution of over one meter by 2100 under very high greenhouse gas emissions and this prediction has been debated in the science community ever since I started plotting the data just a few days after it was published during a research visit to Grenoble I immediately noticed the results were very sensitive to that choice of Pliocene range I was gripped did people realize how precarious those one-meter results were could we improve the study to make it more robust rob de canto kindly began to run new simulations so that I could do the analysis that I wanted 12th of December 2017 dear dr. Edwards we are writing to let you know that Nature has received your manuscript entitled reconciled model projections for the Antarctic contribution to sea-level rise and the editor will be in contact in due course 19th of December 2017 hello mum unfortunately this IBS has been intimately quite bad did I tell you it was very painful when I went to Hastings I was pretty incapacitated the GP is doing various checks but things it probably is just IBS and told me to increase the laxative dose and drink more water that summer I talked at the art therapy summer school my father directed for over 30 years on the course theme of Ice and Fire it was the first time I felt able to bring together my work in science and my family background in art I told stories of contradictions in the natural world that ice floes and harbors life and that fire can protect that ice can burn 10th of January 2018 hi mum thank you for the lovely bath salts I've been having to bath some days so that will be lovely right now I'm feeling great I started taking tramadol last night and it has got rid of most of the pain my muscles are also more relaxed and I think even the number of cramps has gone down I slept a bit better last night tonight I had a whole bowl of rice krispies 19th of January 2018 - Greg and Maddy hey guys I found the reason for the stomach cramps that were troubling me the night of the Christmas drinks bit of a bad news good news one a tumour in my colon probably was cancer but they expect it to have been cured as it looked very soft contained found at last Friday and operated next morning I feel really happy to have it sorted and recovery is also going really well I'm in hospital a few more days than two months of work to recover hi Tamsin gosh that really is bad news good news blimey by February 2017 Rob had sent me the last bit of data and I made good progress on the analysis during another Grenoble trip that spring I could now use statistical methods called emulation to mimic their computer model and fill in the gaps between their 64 simulations we had 10,000 with my co-authors we started to look at the sensitivity of the results to different assumptions what happened if we tested how well the model simulated the recent past as well as the Pliocene and the last interglacial was the higher range for the Pliocene justified Story 1 we predicted the Antarctic contribution to sea-level rise distant she would most likely be less than half a meter so less than half that of the original study this is still definitely bad news and we also couldn't rule out much higher values but we found that the balance of probability leaned towards much so lower sea level rise than before 13th of March 2018 subject fold Fox 1 hooking me up to chemo drugs for my first cycle short version very tired but otherwise a pretty good first 24 hours except magnums now tastes horrendous 14th of March 2018 dear dr. Edwards we are writing to let you know that Nature has received your manuscript in titled reconciling model projections for the Antarctic contribution to sea-level rise and the editor will be in contact in due course now for the clever part we could switch off the ice cliff instability in our emulator could it still pass those tests Story 2 we found that the ice cliff instability is not needed to reproduce the past so it might not happen in the future at least we don't have strong evidence to support it no ice cliff instability means much smaller sea level contributions a most likely value of only 15 centimeters but this is still bad news if Antarctica contributes this much to sea level rise this century it's more than the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change predicted in 2013 and certainly high enough that we need to adapt two story lines are shown here as two red curves further to the right means higher sea level rise the taller the curve the higher the probability of that sea level rise Story 1 the sea level contribution with ice cliff instability this is bad the curve extends up to high numbers but overall it is lower than the de Kanto and Pollard predictions shown here in blue the other storyline too is the sea level contribution without ice cliff instability this is much better than the first curve but worse than the IPCC predictions of 2013 shown here in gray two different possible futures to hold in mind at the same time ninth of July 2018 dear dr. Edwards we are writing to let you know that nature has received your manuscript entitled reconciling model projections for the Antarctic contribution to sea-level rise and the editor will be in contact in due course 20th of August 2018 subject full Fox 12 a very long time since my last update and this morning I'm at the UCL H Macmillan Cancer Centre for my last chemo cycle chemo fatigue is utterly exhausting no matter how much you sleep you rarely feel rested and it affects my cognitive abilities and emotions for me it has been slurring missing and swapping words when I speak pain in my eyes and eye sockets and general body aches feeling I can't make it up the stairs or put tights and shoes on sleeping for 12 hours but feeling rested for only one or one and a half hours after nearly walking in front of cars for getting more and more seriously than usual swaying staggering and stumbling as I walk dropping things more often brain becoming completely blank as I stare at paint pans burning on the hob or try to remember basic things feeling panicky and vulnerable especially if the fatigue gets worse while I'm alone outside the house feels like being a six-year-old suddenly losing sight of their parent in a busy supermarket getting extremely upset if I go to bed too late or wake too early taking one or two naps and rests most days including on the floor of someone's office at Jodrell Bank on a row of chairs during a meeting in China and on a low wall in the Eden Project I'm lucky that I don't feel embarrassed asking for or doing these things 23rd of September 2018 dear dr. Edwards we are writing to let you know that Nature has received your manuscript entitled reconciling model projections for the Antarctic contribution to sea-level rise and the editor will be in contact in due course 6th of December 2018 dear dr. Edwards we are writing to let you know that Nature has received your manuscript entitled revisiting Antarctic ice loss due to marine ice cliff instability and the editor will be in contact in due course the second polar science study led by Nick College is more about the bad news meltwater from the Antarctic and Greenland ice sheets might affect ocean circulation in a way that makes temperatures in some parts of the world more variable and more difficult to predict but could there still be a grain of good the study is another piece of evidence that strengthens our understanding of the world and the risks we face and how much difference it would make to reduce our future emissions fourth of January 2019 dear Tamsin we are delighted to accept your manuscript entitled revisiting Antarctic ice lost due to marine ice cliff instability for publication in nature thank you for choosing to publish your work with us and for your patience during the long review process 24th of January 2019 - Georgia I'm feeling much stronger healthier more clear-headed 29th of January 2019 - Tamsin cancer survival can be a life-changing opportunity for good despite the physical damage done by chemo looking at the changes I've made to my life I'm actually glad I developed cancer - Michael I agree that if I have no recurrence I'd rather have had it I can't unravel our Antarctic study from my own year of bad news good news the lead-up to my diagnosis in January last year the treatment the slow recovery I blamed my first symptoms on stress when first submitting the paper while changing jobs I resubmitted just as I started to get so ill than I missed days of work and cancelled Christmas plans I resubmitted the day after starting chemotherapy my oncologist dr. Xu mentioned it in my medical notes I resubmitted on the day of my ninth chemo infusion through a growing haze of fatigue I resubmitted three weeks after finishing chemo the day before term started as I fought to get my brain back and finally in December a week after leaving taking leave for exhaustion the paper was accepted after the Christmas break as I started to grow stronger as I searched for a link to my dad's book I catch my breath at this quote from a review rejection of reductionism and fundamentalism made Michael Edwards a champion of soul a challenger of simplemindedness champion of Seoul a challenger of simple mindedness the anonymous climate skeptic that sends the kindest surprise gift to a climate scientist cancer survivors sharing their gratitude for a life-changing illness a penguin that lives in the north my future holds two opposites the cancer comes back or it doesn't I know the probability is roughly I catch myself making plans with and without more treatment two contradictory possibilities in mind on ice or on fire with collapse or without polar thinking for the future will be both better and worse than we imagined we're the storytelling ape storytelling is in our blood and our bones why do we need stories to imagine what if what if we did this or that what would we do if we faced a monster would we be brave or hide in the dark we test different scenarios like dreams both the fantastical and the mundane I often hear two stories about our future one is not always obvious not always told out loud is it is the story that our climate will always be the same we plan our lives our housing our power our jobs as if the future will be just like today only with a few more wrinkles that the weather outside and the floods at our door will be the same as when we were children and the wild fires and the wild Arctic sea ice that traps iron ships in the northern seas that global warming will be remembered as a footnote a cautionary tale a temporary and inconvenient untruth the other story is that our society will always be the same that nothing will be done about our omission the world will continue business as usual that global warming will be our end and our fearful destiny burning bright a hothouse hell ignited by selfishness greed inertia and denial that leads to our destruction the future will be neither of these our our climate will change more noticeably and perhaps more quickly than today our houses power cars and Industry will change as they are already starting to our conversations will change they already have this thermometer shows climate change by degree global warming says the pre-industrial era we are at the first step one degree the future will not stay here at the top is 4 degrees or 5 this is the world of business as usual in fact business worse than usual where we burn through fossil fuel reserves as if they were a box of matches but there's no longer such a thing as business as usual we have put some climate policies in place taking actions making progress this blue band shows the predicted warming in the year 2100 taking into account those policies around 3.3 degrees we also have pledges for what we intend to do including those for the Paris agreement these would take us a little lower three degrees you can watch these change over the coming months and years the future then is already better than we imagined it would be but still worse than we imagined it could be and each new policy and pledge will bring the future further down the scale towards those Paris agreement targets of 2 and 1.5 degrees there would still be very serious consequences at those levels of warming but climate change is not something that is simply one or lost it is an arc that we can choose to bend toward justice we will all be both heroes and villains and wake up the next day and be heroes again we will create our story word by word deed by deed I will end with a poem read by the author Nick Drake which he wrote after he sailed the Arctic seas the future dear mortals I know you're busy with your colorful lives you go quickly board and you detest moralizing I have no wish to waste the little time that remains on arguments and heated debates I wish I could entertain you with some magnificent propositions and hilarious jokes but the best I can do is this I haven't happened yet but I will I am the future but before I appear close your eyes and listen carefully I can't pretend it's going to be business as usual things are going to change please don't open your eyes not yet I'm not trying to frighten you all I ask is that you think of me not as a wish or a nightmare but as a story you have to tell yourselves not with an ending in which everybody lives happily ever after or a b-movie apocalypse but maybe starting with the line to be continued and see what happens next remember this I am NOT written in stone but in time so please don't shrug and say what can it's too late etc etc etc already I hear the sound of empty seats clapping as you head for the exits I feel like the comedian who died dear mortals you are such strange creatures with your greed and your kindness and your hearts like broken toys you carry fear with you everywhere like a tiny God in its box of shadows you love shopping and music good food festivals but you lie to yourselves because you're afraid of the dark but the truth is this you are in my hands and I am in yours we are in this together face-to-face eye-to-eye we are made for each other now those of you who are still here open your eyes and tell me what you see thank you very much [Applause]

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Length: 37min 52sec (2272 seconds)

Published: Thu Sep 26 2019