Climate Change Mashup

About This Episode

Climate Change has been one of the hottest topics of the year – pun intended. This week on StarTalk All-Stars we bring you a mashup of the best discussions, conversations, and debates on climate change. To start, Bill Nye and Chuck Nice talk with climate scientist Radley Horton about renewable energy, the limitations of computer modeling, the changing statistics of extreme weather events, and the disinformation campaign of climate change deniers. Next, astrobiologist David Grinspoon, Chuck Nice, and science journalist Andrew Revkin discuss whether we’ve hit the point of no return, finding the right balance between optimism and pessimism when thinking about climate change, cooperating on a global scale, and applying a cosmic perspective to the issue. After that, primatologist Natalia Reagan, Tim Alexander, biological anthropologist Todd Disotell, and paleoanthropologist Ian Tattersall explore the changing climate during the time of early humans, the emerging diseases due to warmer climate, and the underpinnings of having life dependent on stable geography. Lastly, Seth Shostak, Eugene Mirman, and climate scientist Ken Caldeira examine the impact of climate change on the biodiversity of coral reefs, the good and bad of carbon capture and storage, the acidification of the oceans, and how the development of “awesome batteries” would greatly diminish our energy problem.

NOTE: All-Access subscribers can listen to this entire episode commercial-free here: Climate Change Mashup.