Two-sentence takeaway.

It’s not easy taking the Earth’s temperature, but it can be done. That, however, is just the start of the story.

A natural wonder.

In the early 2000s, a giant storm blew up over a hockey stick.

It followed the publication of a graph in 1998 that tracked Northern hemisphere temperatures over a 1,000 year period, showing a nine century period of stability before shooting up.

Resembling a grounded hockey stick, the graph grabbed the attention of both the scientific community and the public at large.

The reason? It was terrifyingly direct image of what many people feared: humans were causing global temperatures to rise. Rapidly.

But was it right?

For a time it was full body contact science. Integrity was doubted. Reputations smeared. 1998 seemed like an abnormally hot year. (Which it was, at the time.) There was an air of cloak and dagger. Climategate was right around the corner.

This post isn’t about whether the hockey stick graph was right—it was, albeit a little rough around the edges—it’s in the phenomenal body of work that goes into making any sort of claim about planetary warming.

Because even today, many ask, not unreasonably, how do you reliably take the temperature of the Earth?

What’s the big idea?

Measuring Earth’s temperature faces two big challenges:

1. Short-termism. We only started measuring this stuff recently. How do we know we’re not missing bigger trends?

2. Margin of error. We’re often talking about tenths of a degree, globally. Earth is a big place. How can we possibly be sure that such precise figures are right?

Nether of these are trivial issues.

Short-termism

The climate has changed before

Climate talk often refers to changes ‘since the Industrial Revolution’, i.e. since about the mid-1700s.

This is hardly surprising because that’s when we started changing the global climate.1 It’s an issue because 250 years is the blink of a geological eye. Too soon, some say, to reach a sensible conclusion about what’s going on.

If you zoom out, even just a bit, you’ll see lots of variation.

Take, for example, the Roman Warm Period (~250 BC to ~400 AD) or Medieval Warm Period (~950-1250), which each saw temperatures about 0.5°C to 1°C above the long-term average. Or the Little Ice Age (~1300-1850), which was about 1°C to 2°C cooler on average than the present day.

Unless science has really screwed up—which it hasn’t—it’s obvious that humans weren’t responsible for those differences.

If you zoom out further, say a few megaannum2, the temperature record gets even wackier.

During glacial periods, when much of North America, Europe and Asia were covered in ice, global temperatures were 4-5°C cooler than today. During ancient interglacial periods—i.e. the bits between ice ages, like now—temperatures were about 1-2°C warmer.

If you look even further back, you’ll find global temperatures hitting 4-6°C higher than the present day. You can even find rapid change – around 55 million years ago, during the deceptively clinically-sounding Paleocene–Eocene Thermal Maximum (PETM), when the Earth warmed by about 5-8°C over a few thousand years.3

All this raises triggers alarm bells for some. The climate has changed before. It will change again, and continue to do so right until the moment when our atmosphere is stripped from its moorings about a billion years from now. (All true.)

So, is the last two centuries of warming just part of a longer trend?

Hang on a second.

Who said it was warming?

Focusing on the recent temperature record

During parts of the 20th century, temperatures in some places appeared to plateau or even decline. This fact—and it is a fact—has caused quite a stir in both the scientific and political community from time to time.

“If you look back years ago in the 1920s and the 1930s, they said global cooling will kill the world. We have to do something. Then they said global warming will kill the world, but then it started getting cooler. So now they just call it climate change because that way they can’t miss. Climate change because if it goes higher or lower, whatever the hell happens, there’s climate change.” (Anonymous, 2025.4)

It didn’t add up. The idea of global warming only started to reach public consciousness in the 1970s, and then suddenly the whole concept was in disarray. If there was indeed cooling, shouldn’t we question everything?

The short answer: no, for two reasons:

1. Looking back, with the benefit of hindsight, the record is clear. The cooling, such that it was, actually illustrates that science was working correctly, to record changes in temperature—up or down.

2. Since 2000, the temperature has been going up. Way up. If it was a hockey stick in 1998, it’s now starting to look a bit more like something the Grim Reaper might enjoy.

It is still possible to find a guy who argues that 1998 (or 1934) is, despite the evidence, the warmest year on record. Increasingly though, that’s the same guy who would stay in the jungle even after the war is over. For most people the battle has moved on.

However, even if you accept that there does seem to be a bias toward warming—which you should—that’s just the start of the story. Because today scientists talk not in terms of degrees or even half-degrees. They are calculating the temperature to tenths of a degrees. How is that possible?!

Margin of error

Richard Lindzen is a scientist that speaks to the problem of accurately measuring change. He regularly asks the question: how do you take a global temperature?

If you’re thinking—as many people do—‘by taking an average’, you’re off the mark, at least in the sense that most people use the word ‘average’.

The science of temperature

Scientists get data from all over the place. For the more recent past, they turn to conventional weather stations dotted about on land, in the sea and even space. For deep history, they look at things like ice cores, tree rings, sediments and corals.5

This is all well and good—more data is generally better than less—but there’s a “but”.

People like headlines. It would be more accurate, and in many respects more helpful, to talk about local and regional temperature variations.6 But localism doesn’t translate easily to a global issue, which is why scientists and (particularly) politicians are drawn to big picture figures like 1.5°C or 2°C.

So how do you take the temperature of the Earth?

As Lindzen explains, calculating a planet’s temperature isn’t exactly an average. It’s not like scientists just sum all temperatures recorded and then divide that number by the number of weather stations used to record them.

What actually happens is that scientists look at the anomalies of temperature change across a given time period (e.g. 1950-1980), and then average those anomalies. This makes sense, because you can spot trends in the Himalayas and in the Sahara. If it’s a degree or two warmer on average in both spots, then you have what looks like the start of a global trend, even though there might be a huge temperature difference between the top of Mount Everest and the hottest parts of the desert.

This approach isn’t without its difficulties. For example, you have to account for temperature changes due to factors that are more to do with the measurement location than the climate itself.

A good illustration comes from temperature records in and around cities, due to something called the urban heat island effect. As cities grow, they warm the land around them, which causes a real headache if your measuring stick used to be in the country and is now in a Starbucks. And, even if you do account for things like the urban heat island effect, you’ll still find lots of variation in the data.

Lindzen, for example, takes issue with misleadingly smooth lines on graphs that show global warming. He points out that those graphs rarely show the specific data points that are used to create that smooth line. If they did, you’d see data points scattered across a range in the order 7°C (20°F), almost an order of magnitude greater than the observed warming indicated by a singular trend line.

What’s more, if you choose any given period of time, some records indicate that there are almost as many stations cooling as warming. As Lindzen notes, this isn’t error, it’s just the observed range.

Speaking of margin of interpretation, take a look at historical climate data. Ice cores and tree rings can be tough to work with, so it’s no wonder the historical record has been the subject of debate.

None of this is a great look if you’re trying to be specific about the existence of temperature change, or the need to avoid a specific threshold (e.g. 1.5°C or 2°C). And there’s no real way around it. The data are not infallible.

However, scientists aren’t afraid of a little data.

Improvement over time — to today

Today’s climate scientists have now had decades of experience working with hard data (and tough critics). They also have a lot more data than ever before.

All of that means that science is getting much smarter at accounting for glitches that muddy the waters. So much so that in recent years, the trends have—notwithstanding the ever-growing volume of data—become increasingly stark.

As Lindzen himself concedes, the variability is great, but there does seem to be a warming trend.7 Put differently, it remains hard, but it is absolutely possible to take the temperature of the Earth.

Why you should care.

It’s entirely understandable for someone who is new to the subject to be wary of the concept of taking the Earth’s temperature. It feels like, and is, a massive undertaking.

But the size of the undertaking doesn’t mean humans can’t solve it. They can, and they have. You can still argue that periods of the 20th century saw cooling, because that’s correct. You can still argue that 1934 was exceptionally hot, because it was. But what you can’t do is claim that there isn’t a trend upwards and to the right.

It’s not climate change because scientists can’t decide whether it’s cooling or warming. It’s climate change because that’s a better description of what’s happening. (To be clear, it is warming.)

Job done?

No. Not even close.

Wrapping things up in a bow

Just because you can take the Earth’s temperature is nowhere near the end of the story. There are two very large, giant, questions to answer.

1. Are humans responsible for the current trends in global temperatures?

2. If they are, what should we do about it?

The bad news is that this post doesn’t answer these questions.

The good news is that other posts do. Posts like those on volcanoes, the sun, and cosmic movements. These ask whether natural causes might be a reason for temperatures going up. Other posts count address the second question, like whether we really should put hard-won resources into climate change over other things.

Spoiler alert: the answer to question (1) is easier than the answer to question (2).

An important footnote

One thing that scientists like Richard Lindzen and others point out is that a global temperature masks local and regional variation. Whether or not you take issue with Lindzen’s stance more generally, he is (and others are) correct on this point.

The reality of climate change is that it doesn’t affect all places equally. Some places are seeing much greater warming, and some are seeing far less (occasionally even cooling). On this, all camps agree. This is both a scientific fact, and a challenge when it comes to making hard decisions about what to do about climate change. (Another topic, for another post, at another time.)

Curios.

Most of the time the public is used to hearing about climate change in Celsius (e.g. 1.5°C or 2°C). But that’s not the only game in town.

Why not use Fahrenheit, which is common parlance in the United States, and which would give higher numbers (1.5°C ≈ 2.7°F; 2°C ≈ 3.6°F)? That would also fit the hockey stick image—the 2000s kerfuffle was about North American hockey!

The simple reason is that Celsius is part of the metric system, which is the system used in science. (Almost all physical measurements in science use the International System of Units (SI), of which Celsius is a part.)

Celsius also plays nicely with Kelvin, another, even more scientific temperature scale.8 A change of 1°C equals a change of 1 K, which is easier than the Kelvin to Fahrenheit conversion.

Still, if you’re going for humanizing climate change, there’s still an argument to be made for using Fahrenheit. The inventor of that scale—Daniel Gabriel Fahrenheit (1686–1736)—created it in 1724 to reflect everyday temperatures. Lots of things, like weather and the human body fit neatly between 0° and 100°, so it’s counterintuitively intuitive. OK, you’re not convinced, but—like Evel Knievel—it was the attempt that mattered.

Further reading.

• Any number of popular science books on climate change. They’re pretty good on this stuff.

Two sentence takeaway

Formidable scientist whose early contributions to atmospheric science are now overshadowed by his contrarian views on climate change. Never afraid to speak his mind.

About the man.

By his late fifties, Richard S. Lindzen had become almost completely bald.

It’s not clear whether his low-maintenance dome is simply the result of being a man of a certain age, or because his brain just needed more space.

The man is smart. Wicked smart.

In the 1960s, Lindzen was front and center in some seriously impressive discoveries about how our atmosphere works. The type of discoveries that have descriptions that use familiar words, but in totally baffling combinations. Like: “negative equivalent depths in classical tidal theory.” Impenetrable.

Not content with Earthbound physics, Lindzen then turned his hand, successfully, to explaining phenomena in Venus’ atmosphere that had stumped everyone else.

He worked at prestigious institutions like Harvard and MIT, and collected honors and awards like they were going out of style.

That could have been the end of the story—a brilliant scientist; a pioneer in climate dynamics. But it’s not, because Lindzen decided, for his second act, to challenge what had by then become widespread concern about climate change.

Why does he matter?

Did you read the introduction? He’s kind of a big deal.

Oh, you want the controversial bit?

OK, but first some points of agreement. Lindzen accepts greenhouse gases warm the planet. He agrees CO₂ levels are rising because of humans, and that the planet has warmed a bit as a result. He also thinks climate models are okay, for research.

So far, so agreed.

He does, however, have a few more things to say. Three big things in fact.

1. Earth is less sensitive than we think

Lindzen thinks Earth is more resilient to changes in greenhouse gas levels than other scientists. He believes, in contrast to mainstream thinkers, that climate feedbacks are negative or neutral, not positive.1

That’s a technical way of saying that Earth will figure out a way to sweat, if it needs to, rather than die of heatstroke. Lindzen even co-authored an elegant, if seemingly flawed, 2001 paper to describe this idea. His “iris hypothesis” describes clouds working a bit like a camera aperture for heat: too much and they’ll part to let heat out.

2. Models and data are unreliable

Climate models are hugely complex. They’re also tuned to fit past data, rather than being genuine predictors of what’s coming next. Given that that past data is unreliable, then naturally we should be skeptical of modelling the future.

At least, that’s what Lindzen says.

He’s right that models are necessarily wrong—because all models are. But his critics say that they are good enough for large-scale trends, and in fact—the critics continue—models have been pretty good at matching observed trends since the 1980s.

3. Science has become politicized

Like Fred Singer before him, Lindzen sees corruption in climate science by politics, bad funding incentives and groupthink. Contrarian scientists are ostracized or defunded, so unbiased science becomes impossible.

This is a common refrain from scientists that think climate science has gone off the rails and become alarmist. He opposes rapid decarbonization, which puts him in good company with folks like Bjørn Lomborg, arguing it’s economically harmful.

In the end, Lindzen’s views sit in stark contrast to a huge body of scientific work, which is explored in other posts. In short, he accepts the physics, questions the detail, and rejects the alarm.

Is he funny?

Think dry, professorial wit, and you’ll be on the right lines. Also think sarcasm—he’s particularly pointed when responding to those he perceives to be unduly alarmist.

He’s not exactly affable, but is personable—particularly behind closed doors. His public persona is more combative, because his formidable intellect does not suffer fools gladly. He’s not exactly happy to have a battle of wits with those who are unarmed, but if he does, he usually wins.

All the time delivering his message in an articulate, mischievous, hint-of-Boston way.

None of this necessarily makes him right, but it does make for compelling listening.

Why you should care.

Lindzen’s intellectual heft brings credibility to alternative thinking on climate change.

As a distinguished academic, prolific writer, and a former lead author of a key science chapter for the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) he was—at least until 2001—right in the thick of climate science.

And he’s engaging.

It’s hardly surprising then that when he speaks, people tend to listen. Today, mostly by those who share his concerns about climate alarmism.

Today, he remains a foundational figure in atmospheric science, but his views on climate change are fiercely criticized by other climate scientists—including former friends—who present him as an outlier, unsupported by the evidence.2

Curios.

Scientists aren’t meant to bet. At least, not professionally. It feels…unsciency.

But in 2000s things were heating up in the scientific community (pun intended). Scientists were riled up, and stakes were made.

A British climate expert—James Annan—had had enough of doubts about global warming. He challenged the doubters to a duel—by way of a $10,000 bet—after hearing Lindzen claim global temperatures would fall in the first two decades of the new century. If the temperature went down, Annan would lose. If it went up, he’d win.

Lindzen and Annan couldn’t agree terms—Lindzen reportedly wanted one-sided odds.3 The idea stuck, though, and Annan did eventually make a bet with other contrarian scientists.

It was an interesting time to make the bet, because—for a few reasons—the end of the 20th century (particularly 1998) was hot, or so it seemed at the time. Still, Annan won: global temperatures did rise.

How he rates.

Reality Check: The climate is changing, but don’t be alarmed

He accepts the climate is changing, and even accepts humans have a hand in it. But he doesn’t accept that this is necessarily a big problem.

Memeworthiness: 3/10

He is an engaging speaker, but perhaps a little past his combative heyday in the 2000s. Still active however, and fighting his fight.

Outlook: 7/10

Like other contrarians, he’s not convinced that the world is facing an existential crisis. In fact he views bad policies in response to climate as the bigger threat to humanity.

Mainstream media love: 3/10

A mixed bag. He’s still recognized for his early atmospheric efforts, but gets little to no mainstream airplay, except in the context of showing how brilliant people can get things wrong.

If you want more.

• Lindzen (and others): The Dynamics of Atmospheric Tides (1967)—foundational work in atmospheric science; Does the Earth Have an Adaptive Infrared Iris? (Bulletin of the American Meteorological Society, 2001).

Two-sentence takeaway.

Electric cars were the talk of the town in 1900, and they are again today. If they replace the venerable combustion engine, the planet will should be better off.

What are we talking about?

The birth of the electric car

Henry Ford was an electric car guy.

Yes, he also happens to be responsible for the mass production of gas cars. But he had a soft spot for electricity.

He bought one for his wife at great cost.1 In 1914, he said, on the record, that he had figured how to produce a viable, low-cost EV. At the time he planned to order 100,000 batteries from his friend Thomas Edison to do so, a staggering number.

This should be no surprise.

In the early days, electric vehicles were simply better than gas cars. They were faster, matched them on range, could start without breaking your arm, and didn’t suffocate passersby in clouds of acrid smoke.2

By the end of the 1910s, however, the electric dream was over. The virtues of serenity, reliability and simplicity were lost in bad batteries, poor infrastructure and the appeal of cheap, mass produced, gasoline motors.

The death, and rebirth of the electric car

By the 1930s, electric vehicles were largely extinct in the wild. Aside from the odd milk float or ill-fated venture, electric vehicles would stay missing for the next 80 years.3

Today, though, electric vehicles are making a comeback. Like Shirley Temple’s long hiatus after childhood stardom and eventual return as a beloved ambassador, electric vehicles are in their second age. Different, certainly. More effective, in many ways.

In 1900, electric cars were a luxury for the privileged few. Today, they are increasingly mass market. Their sales track the sheerline of a Victorian bath. Market domination at the beginning. Then a long flatline as EVs disappear from the road. Eventually, an upwards curve as sales take off again in the new Millennium.

That leaves two big questions:

1. How much of the market will electric cars eventually recapture?

2. Are electric cars actually good for the climate, or indeed any good at all?

In some respects the first question is the less interesting one, as it depends on the answer to the second. So we’ll focus on that—the second question—in this post.

What’s the problem?

Criticisms of electric cars fall into three buckets:

1. They aren’t as good as gas cars.

2. They don’t help the planet.

3. They’re not good value.

1. They’re not good cars

They don’t go very far. They take an age to charge. They don’t work in winter. Never mind trying to tow anything of note. And there’s a special place in hell for public chargers that don’t charge, right next to internet pop-up banners.

All of these criticisms are more or less true, depending on a person’s driving needs. Driving from Aberdeen, Scotland, to Zennor, Cornwall, towing a large boat? In less than a day? An EV is not for you. Live in a condo without access to a home charger? You’ll get unhealthily intimate with charging apps.

The thing is though—and this has been said many times in many places—EVs can be the perfect tool for the job. All the good things about electric cars that were good a century ago—silence, speed, reliability—are still good today.

But just as the good things about EVs have remained constant, so too have the bad things, like battery woes and poor charging infrastructure. (Today’s manufacturers have also added a few new negatives, like hopeless human factor engineering in the form of giant touchscreens—although to be fair most new cars suffer from that vice. And the vice of piano black plastic.)4

Let’s start with batteries.

Quite aside from the environmental harm caused by the mining needed for their constituent parts (more on that later), EV batteries are heavy and anemic.

To illustrate, compare the gas tank of a Ford F-150 pickup—one of the most popular vehicles on the road—which can hold more than 130 liters of gasoline. You’d need somewhere between 4 and 7 tonnes of batteries to get the energy store in an EV. Given the payload capacity of an F-150 is a little over a tonne, something’s gotta give.

In truth, that last comparison was misleading, because a gas engine is far less efficient in converting fuel to motive force than an EV (a topic to which we’ll return later). In the real world, a much smaller battery would do. 130 liters of gas is the (rough) theoretical equivalent of 1,100 kWh, but in practice it’s the same as about 300 kWh. Still, a 300 kWh battery pack will tip the scales at somewhere between 1 and 2 tonnes depending on battery chemistry, so Dearborn still has a problem.5

In defense of batteries, there’s a huge amount of R&D going on to make batteries carry more oomph per pound. With that investment, it’s likely that the energy density disparity between gas and batteries will reduce over time. (Something explored in other posts.)

Even today, if your daily drive is less than 40% of the car’s stated range—to account for weather and other variables—and you have access to reliable charging, then you’re onto a winner.

Oh. Charging.

The Achilles heel of electric vehicles.

The truth is that if you disregard charging, EVs are just as good, if not better than gas cars.6 The trouble is, that the word “if” is doing a lot of work in that sentence.

There are no two ways about it: charging electric cars can be a nightmare. It’s not really the manufacturer’s fault. Many EVs could charge today very rapidly—like cup of coffee rapidly—but they don’t because the real world isn’t set up for it. With the exception of Tesla circa. 2012-2024, most car makers have been reluctant to get into the charging game. Instead, they’ve relied on government and private sector investment. An error perhaps, because charging remains one of the hardest things to get right when it comes convincing people to switch to electric.

Slow chargers. Unresponsive chargers. Chargers that tease and then ultimately disappoint. Charging queues. Sad charging etiquette.

Verdict on quality

Electric cars are good cars, in many cases better than conventional alternatives, but they are still let down by bad infrastructure.7

2. They’re no better than gas cars for the planet

During manufacture

If you strip down a gas car and an EV, you’ll end up with very similar parts bins. The wheels are the same. So is the stuff that makes them stop. And the chassis material, and the interior. Even the little 12V electrical system that keeps that damn touchscreen running would be in both.

In fact, the only bits that are really different are the traction components. So when a claim is made that an EV is not environmentally friendly, the claim is really about what makes the thing go. Which is where we’ll focus.

Let’s start with weight (or mass if you’re a pedant). The drivetrain and fuel system in a gas F-150 is about half a tonne. The electric equivalent is about double that. The difference would be greater but the EV gets a little help from not having to lug about big transmission components like drivetrains and burly axles.

Mass is a good starting point because, generally speaking, it takes more energy to build something heavy than it does to build something light.

(Very) roughly speaking, 1 gigajoule (GJ) of energy is equivalent to the number of calories you’d get from eating half a cow. (Other posts go into more detail about energy. This post will stick to cows. It’s not an SI measure, but it’ll do the job.)

Interestingly, the energy needed to assemble and build an F-150’s drivetrain—about 40GJ or a herd of 20 cows—is the about the same whether it’s an EV or gas.

There is, however, a catch.

That 40GJ figure doesn’t count the full environmental and social cost of things like the mining of raw materials. If you do that, the energy cost of both conventional and EV traction bits increases, but EVs suffer far more.

This is mainly because EV batteries need materials like cobalt, nickel and lithium, which are a bugger to get for a host of reasons. Mining can be more or less brutal, but it’s never an easy watch. Even if you ignore local impacts to water and ecosystems—which you shouldn’t—the energy cost of producing an F-150 drivetrain, given full accounting, could exceed 90GJ. Or 50 cows.

There’s a huge variation in these numbers, because not all mining practices are made equal, but there’s no doubt that an EV’s environmental footprint is much bigger than a gas car before it leaves the showroom. How much bigger? Twice the size wouldn’t be out of the question.

Whether or not gas cars retain that advantage after they hit the road depends on two things: a) how the vehicle is used, and b) the source of electron motivation.

During operation

There are lots of studies that get into the weeds, but here’s what it boils down to:

1. The payback distance—the number of kilometers before an EV is “better” for the planet than a gas car—varies widely. As a rule of thumb, somewhere between 20,000-50,000km wouldn’t be too far off.8

2. Given #1, an EV driven infrequently may not pay off its comparative debt before its battery reaches the end of its automotive life (say, 10 years). Said differently, that low-mileage, one careful owner, stunner may look good, but it’s got its work cut out to be good for the Earth.

3. The payback period is heavily impacted by the cleanliness of power used to charge the vehicle. If charging power comes from a coal plant, as opposed to renewable energy, the payback period will increase.

4. However, even if a car is charged using lignite (a dirty coal), it will—with enough miles under its belt—beat its gas counterpart, simply by being more efficient.

5. For an average driver, the payback period will be in the region of 2-3 years from new. After that, an EV wins, by a large margin.

It’s quite possible to imagine a scenario in which an individual EV doesn’t do enough to live up to its green hype, but averages suggest that those scenarios are the exception, not the norm. In a decade, a typical car travels more than 200,000km in the US, and almost two-thirds of that distance in Europe. On either side of the pond, the average EV will easily do enough to justify its environmental credentials.

We’re not quite done.

To get the full picture, you can’t just compare manufacture and operation. You also have to factor in disposal.

At end-of-life

Gas cars are surprisingly recyclable. Perhaps this should be obvious, because a good chunk of their heft comes from metals and glass (both highly recyclable). The plastics are worse, by a margin, and the tires (rubber) are worse again. All told, 75-85% of a gas car can, in theory, be recycled.9 Could be better, but not bad.

With one exception, EVs share the same recycling positives and negatives. EVs might have a few more hard-to-recycle composites in them from efforts to save curb weight, but not so much as you’d notice.

The exception is—you guessed it—the battery. Not only is it a pain to produce, it’s also hard to recycle. It might not be as bad as you think—battery recyclability ranges from 50-90% depending on chemistry—but it’s still a problem, and at the low end of that range for the most part. Worse, batteries degrade (more on that shortly). Even though they can be repurposed for things like home storage—China leads the way on that front by the way—their useful life is still shorter than you’d like.

Overall, about 60-80% of an electric car can be recycled. Efforts are underway to improve those percentages—principally focused on the battery—but EVs remain at a disadvantage.

Let’s say for arguments’ sake that all 90 or so million cars produced worldwide each year were all suddenly electric instead of gas. That’s about 130 million tonnes of vehicles. In that scenario, you’d end up with something like 20 million tonnes of extra non-recyclable waste.10 That’s about 500,000 large humpback whales, or seven times the current population of that particular cetacean.

And it wouldn’t be a good kind of extra waste. It would be like a gigantic version of the nasty white stuff that erupts from old batteries that have been locked in a drawer for too long.

This extra waste isn’t really an argument to avoid electrification, because the additional end-of-life treatment required—if managed correctly—doesn’t get near to offsetting the environmental benefits of EVs during operation. However—and this is a big however—there’s lots of room for improvement when it comes to batteries.

In fact, the real challenge isn’t that end-of-life issues erase the benefit of electrification—it’s that it shifts the environmental burden from tailpipes to supply chains and waste management. (We’ll come back to batteries, supply chains and waste in other posts.)

Verdict on environmentalism

In any normal world, an EV is more environmentally friendly than a gas car, and the electric advantage should increase over time. You can manufacture an argument that an EV might not be good for the planet, but you have to apply some out-of-the-box thinking to do so.

3. They’re not good value

Even if you are persuaded that EVs can be good cars, and better for the planet than alternatives, EVs still have their work cut out for them. That’s because of three big issues around value:

1. They cost too much upfront.

2. They’re bad investments.

3. They transfer wealth to undesirables. (Wait to pass judgment on this one.)

They cost too much when new

When first introduced, electric cars were like today’s private jets. Exclusive, rare, decadent. People care how much they cost, but if you’re seriously in the market for one, a high price won’t necessarily put you off.

Today, electric cars are intended for the masses. Granted, during their 2010s rebirth lots of new releases were beachhead models, as manufacturers tried to establish presence in the new market. But, fairly quickly, cheaper options followed.

The problem is, however, that for a long time “cheap” remained a relative term. The same car in electric guise might suffer from a 30-60% premium over its gas-powered stablemate. Incentives might reduce the difference, but rarely extinguished it. Sales conversations could be an uphill battle.

Nevertheless, sales were made. Enough, with political support, to force encourage manufacturers to persist. In recent times, the number and variety of electric models has exploded, and in certain places, the real-world price has plummeted.11

Still, the sales ramp has been inconsistent in certain places and spectacular in others, and the story is not finished when it comes to price.

They’re bad investments

The story is also unfinished when it comes to total cost of ownership.

Generally speaking, new EVs depreciate faster than comparable gas cars. This is largely because second hand buyers worry—not unreasonably—about battery degradation, replacement costs and obsolescence. Financial incentives offered when new can also distort the picture.

In numerical terms, the difference in depreciation between gas and electric can be anything from 0-20%, with outliers at both ends.

A win for gas cars?

On depreciation, certainly. However, depreciation is only one thing to think about when it comes to total cost of ownership.

If you factor in maintenance and fuel costs, EVs regain ground.

Maintenance is relatively simple to understand: EVs have fewer moving parts, so fewer points of failure. Faulty batteries are hideously expensive (or hideously flammable), but failures are few and far between.

Fuel costs are a little more tricky. Gas cars are really good at generating noise, heat and vibration. For many, that’s what make them interesting. The experience of a high capacity engine at full throttle is visceral.

All of that theater comes at a cost. Unless you’re near Formula 1, Newton’s Second Law means that only about a quarter of the energy from the gas tank is converted into motive force at the wheels.12 In stark contrast, EVs can translate almost all of the energy from excited electrons into motion—or at least 70-80% of it. In practice, that means EVs are about four times more efficient than gas cars, which translates to big savings at the plug.

In the end, it’s possible to play with numbers to make gas or electric “win” on total cost of ownership. The reality is that if you buy a new EV and sell it quickly, you’re probably worse off vis‑à‑vis the gas experience. If, on the other hand, you hold onto it and use it enough, you’ll come out on top.

They transfer wealth to undesirables

Depending on how you count it, around half of the top ten EV manufacturers are from China. Depending on your level of xenophobia, that’s a bad thing.

The concern stems from a valid worry that concentration of power tends to lead to bad outcomes. For EVs, that finds footing in that China controls a large share of the world’s lithium, cobalt, and rare earths (the latter being required for various EV parts).

Beyond the headline car manufacturers, Chinese companies produce a huge fraction of the world’s battery cells.

This inevitably leads to fears that China might leverage its dominance to beat the West at its own game.

Undesirable? Perhaps, depending on a number of variables, including who you are.

What’s interesting about this stuff?

Almost everything.

Cars are an iconic symbol of freedom, adventure and status. They’re also a huge part of the economy, and a big source of emissions—about 7-9% of global greenhouse gases, depending on your math.13 That’s bigger than shipping and aviation.

All of this makes them a prime target for electron-powered disruption.

It also means they are at the noisy meeting point of science, culture, psychology and economics. In the end, electric cars should win, but “should” is a moving target when emotions play into rational thought. Also, they’re still too expensive, relatively speaking.

Curios.

Name something that an EV can’t do that a gas car can’t. Here’s a clue:

Granted, the moon buggy (or Lunar Roving Vehicle (LRV) to give it its proper title), isn’t exactly a typical use case. In fact it’s out of this world—all three LRVs that made it to the Moon are still there, out of commission.

Coincidentally, “out of commission” is what some critics suggest all cars should be.

This whole post has been about switching from gas to electric. (A common theme when it comes to climate change.) It hasn’t at all touched on whether there is a third, fourth or fifth option. Like, why are cars so ridiculously complex and expensive compared to yesteryear? And why are many increasingly bloated? Isn’t there a better transport option? These are all timely and important questions, but—frankly—this post is already too long, so you’ll have to wait for other posts to deal with those. (And you have all the footnotes to read now.)

Further reading.

• The Electric Vehicle Revolution: The Past, Present and Future of EVs (2023), Kevin Wilson.

• Electric cars are better for the climate than petrol or diesel (2023), Hannah Ritchie

• Why Its So Hard (and Expensive) to Make Cars (2025), Savage Geese, YouTube (see below).

Two sentence takeaway

Overblown is how Lomborg might describe the economic threat of climate change. Reckless is how his critics might describe Lomborg’s use of numbers.

About the man.

A little salty. A little spice. A lot of appeal.

With a shock of blonde hair and a charisma to match, Bjørn Lomborg is unmistakable in climate circles. But his fame isn’t just because of his Danish charm.

His work is rather remarkable too.

Lomborg, a Danish academic and author, has a bibliography that would make most authors turn green. However, Lomborg’s 15 or so books haven’t exactly turned him green. At least, not in a mainstream way.

Almost all of his books run counter to the conventional narrative that climate change is an existential risk. Unlike others taking a contrarian position, however, Lomborg’s view is built on some serious economic chops. So there’s lots to talk about.

Why does he matter?

Lomborg first became headline news at the turn of the century, after the English publication of The Skeptical Environmentalist (2001).1 Enthusiastically received in many quarters, Lomborg’s two principal ideas from that book—that things aren’t so bad, and that we’ve got our priorities wrong on climate change—track through much of his work.

Today, Lomborg heads up the Copenhagen Consensus Center (CCC), a think tank that—you guessed it—examines the cost-effectiveness of global policies. As its most basic level, the CCC asks: Are we paying too much to get the results we want?

This is a valid, and critical, question.

If we put our money in the wrong place, it’s hardly surprising people get mad. For Lomborg, the economic impact of climate change has been grossly overblown. And the policies slated to address climate change are inefficient, and ineffective.

Instead, we should give more attention to things like health and education, which will have a greater environmental impact than, say, putting up yet another windfarm.

It’s important to note that Lomborg accepts climate change is a thing, and a thing that needs to be fixed. So he’s less of a “skeptic” than he is often portrayed to be. That said, his claims do need a little unpicking, so to say. (We’ll return to this momentarily.)

Is he funny?

Lomborg’s Danish roots are clear he delivers his unorthodox take on climate change. Denmark values conversation over aggression, evidence over ideology. It follows that Lomborg’s messages are delivered in a smooth, reserved fashion—too smug for some—even when he’s being highly critical of mainstream thinking.

There’s no laugh out loud humor here, but there is a subtle, arid delivery that makes you want to listen.

Why you should care.

Lomborg is the front man for ideas that have gained a good amount of traction in recent times. Particularly as to whether humans should try and stop climate change, or just adapt to it. Or switch gears to other stuff entirely.

These are key points of difference. If Lomborg is right, then the world’s existing policies are charting a course that will cost us trillions and fail to fix the planet.2 On the other hand, if he’s wrong, then he’s adding significant intellectual heft to some dangerous “what if” ideas.

How likely is it that he’s wrong?

Lomborg’s sharpest critics often question whether the first part of his thesis—that things aren’t really so bad—is based on bad science, and there’s history here.

In 2002 Lomborg was taken to task by the delightfully named Udvalgene Vedrørende Videnskabelig Uredelighed (UVVU). UVVU has a somewhat more staid English translation: the Danish Committee on Scientific Dishonesty (DCSD).

In a lengthy, entertaining, and slightly wobbly case, the DSCD found that Lomborg’s most famous work at that time, The Skeptical Environmentalist, was scientifically dishonest. In his defense, the DCSD’s finding was later overturned on procedural grounds (hence the slightly wobbly case). Also, Lomborg has never claimed to be a climate scientist, and is not a ‘denier’ in the typical sense.3

Even if Lomborg has underplayed the science, his other concern that we’re going about climate change the wrong way—which is the one that receives the lion’s share of attention today—is still out there.

Put differently, climate scientists may correctly hold Lomborg to account for his scientific credentials, or lack thereof, but even if he’s got the science wrong, his economic ideas still need to be put under the microscope. Which they are, here.

Curios.

Lomborg has a thick skin. In his line of work, that’s a good thing.

He puts it down to an unusual family background. His father was a New-Age priest and a professional double bassist. Which is an interesting mix.

«Interesting mix» is an apt way to describe Lomborg. His contacts are high-profile and varied: Bill Gates, Joe Rogan, Jordan Peterson. He’s a left-leaning Scandinavian that regularly works with conservatives. He’s a gay vegetarian, who abstains from drinking, and driving. (Independently.)

Above all, you get the sense that he really, really, believes in numbers. The problem is, as even he concedes, numbers may not always capture reality.

How he rates.

Reality Check: It’s real, but not that bad.

Lomborg recognizes there’s a problem. He’s not a denier in that sense. But he’s definitely an outlier when it comes to doing something about it.

Memeworthiness: 6/10

He should be memeworthy. He looks like an aging rocker and is ready to start an intellectual battle of wits anytime. He continues to pick up press in recent times.

Outlook: 6/10

Lomborg doesn’t see the world as a bed of roses. Far from it: many of his ideas are about improving health and education, and reducing poverty. But his view of deprioritizing climate change relative to those issues gets him into trouble.

Mainstream media love: 5/10

Lomborg does show up in the mainstream media from time to time, but in recent years he’s also active on alternative media. There’s that mix again.

If you want more.

• On climate change, see Lomborg’s False Alarm: how climate change panic costs us trillions, hurts the poor, and fails to fix the planet, 2020, updated 2024 to include updated analysis.

• More broadly, see Best Things First (2023), which presents 12 policies for improving the lives of the world’s poorest populations.

Two-sentence takeaway.

Calculating the true cost of climate change is hard; it’s a heady mix of science, economics, politics and philosophy. The total you get says as much about you as it does about numbers.

Odd introduction.

Money makes the world go around.

This, a song from Cabaret in 1972, echoed across the ages, may be true. But most of time, there’s not enough to go around, particularly when a crisis pops up.

After seeing off the barter system more than 2000 years ago, money became a vital lubricant to keep economies moving. So people pay attention to where it’s going. Especially politicians.

When politicians hear the word “money”, the word “more” is never far away. More money. More growth. More more.

There’s a whole sub-genre dedicated to deciding whether “more money”, aka growth, is the right yardstick for success. That’s the subject of other posts.

This post is about «less».

Specifically, if you’re a politician and you’re cash-constrained—which is really all politicians—where do you place your bets? More specifically, should climate policies really get the cream? Or should we put our eggs into different baskets?

This post puts the cat among the pigeons: climate economics are fraught with danger.

What’s the big idea?

Calculating the cost of climate change is hard

There are two ways to calculate the downside of climate change. You can tally up what’s happening today, and you can model out what may happen tomorrow.

The present is tough because it involves big questions. Is the damage really due to climate change? Should we focus on direct costs, like the value of crops lost to pestilence, storm or drought? Or should we also factor in indirect harm, like the impact of malnutrition cascading from failed harvests?

The biggest problem with today’s costs, however, is that they’re actually about the past. They’re like driving using the rear view mirror. The road is disappearing behind you and you’re desperately hoping there’s not a hairpin ahead.

The future is even harder because you have to deal with all the same tough questions, and then you have to predict—sorry, model—the future. Which amplifies the uncertainty.

On top of all it all, you have to figure out how to make sense of the numbers without falling over. In actual dollar figures? Amounts are mind-numbingly large. In GDP? That tends to get wacky, particularly for the future, as we’ll see.

Still, these are questions that must be answered. Otherwise, how would politicians come up with their soundbites carefully calibrated funding decisions?

Calculating today’s costs of climate change

The International Monetary Fund (IMF) estimates global GDP today to be around US$115 trillion.

Conventional estimates of annual climate damages are in the region of 0.5-1.5% or more of global GDP annually, i.e. somewhere north of US$ 500 billion to just shy of US$2 trillion per year. In country terms, that’s roughly equivalent to the GDP of Argentina at the low end and Italy at the top.

Why such a range?

For all the reasons mentioned above, and also because, more fundamentally, we don’t actually know what global GDP would have been but for climate change. It’s one of those times when economists come up with terms like ‘counterfactual baselines’ and the rest of us scratch our heads and go: “So it’s a guess then?”

It can feel like a crapshoot, but it’s not a guess. There’s actually plenty of educated math behind the headlines.

And when the math is mathed, the headline isn’t good: climate change is causing big problems, particularly in countries that are most vulnerable to it.

The big question is how bad future problems might get. Sadly, the range gets wider, and the conclusions a lot more debated.

What do people think (of the future)?

One view: a storm in a proverbial teacup

Three percent of GDP. Maybe four.

That’s what Bjørn Lomborg estimates to be the cost of of global warming on GDP by 2100 in his 2020/2024 book False Alarm.

Four percent?

If Lomborg is correct, all this climate concern seems like a storm in the proverbial teacup.

In real terms, a low single-digit swing over a year or so can be the difference between an economic boom and bust. Over a long period, however, it’s really not the end of the world. Particularly if you assume—as almost everyone does—that the world’s economy will continue to grow over the next 75 years.

In simple terms, take the IMF’s US$115  trillion figure. Assuming economic growth of about two percent a year (compounded, not unreasonable), global GDP would increase to better than US$620  trillion by 2100. If climate change caused, say, a four percent hit to that, GDP would hit just US$600  trillion. US$ 20 trillion isn’t a small number—it’s bigger than the size of the entire US economy today—but it does seem like something we could cope with, all things being equal.1

Perhaps Lomborg is off base here, wielding an unreasonably optimistic calculator?

Not a bit of it.

Lomborg relies heavily on one of the most influential climate economists, William Nordhaus (b.1941), and sources like the IPCC.2

Nordhaus is to Lomborg what Mr. Spock is to Captain Kirk. Nordhaus, the professorial deep-thinker. Lomborg, the charismatic front man. A Yale economist, Nordhaus won a Nobel Prize in 2018 for his part in developing a landmark model that connected GDP and climate change. It was ambitious, spectacularly successful, and hugely influential in policy and academic circles. Nordhaus is the opposite of a crank.

Lomborg’s ideas have huge implications. If he’s right, politicians—and the rest of us—should only support climate action if the positives outweigh the negatives.3 Through Lomborg’s lens, there are numerous types of ‘bad’ climate policies, as the subtitle to his book False Alarm suggests: how climate change panic costs us trillions, hurts the poor, and fails to fix the planet.

Which begs the question: is Lomborg right?

Another view: a storm (full stop).

Lomborg’s view is based on a few, rather critical, assumptions:

1. Temperatures will rise by about ~2.5–4°C by 2100;

2. Countries and communities will adapt to climate impacts;

3. There will be gradual changes, i.e. no abrupt system-level shocks; and

4. Economic growth will continue.

None of these are necessarily wrong, at least not as Lomborg frames them. Intuitively, they seem OK. So his view has more than a little appeal.

The temperature rise is about the mid-range of warming projections from the IPCC. Humans are really, really, good at adapting. Whilst there have already been big climate impacts (which are the subject of other posts), system-level shocks are noticeable by their absence. Economic growth has been around for 250 years or more.

Lomborg acknowledges that the real impact of climate change may differ from his projected figures. But, he says, he’s in the ballpark, if his assumptions hold true.

And therein lies the rub.

Here’s what Lomborg’s critics see as big problems:

1. Temperature rise may be greater than ~2.5–4°C by 2100, and there’s a non-linear relationship between temperature and GDP impact, even in Nordhaus’ models. Technically, the relationship is quadratic, but that’s hocus pocus to many. In normal English, it means that if you double the warming you can expect a fourfold hit to GDP.

2. Humans are really good at adapting. But some are better at it than others. Taking a global view can miss regional pain. A global hit of 3–4% might mask local GDP drops of 20–50% in more exposed or poorer regions, whilst cooler, wealthier countries might even benefit slightly. (Maybe.)

3. Even if temperature rise is limited as modelled by Lomborg, the climate impacts are not necessarily gradual; there might be abrupt shocks to the system, and if that happens, all bets are off.

4. Given all of the above, economic growth is not a given.

Lomborg’s response to these criticism? There are lots of “maybes” and “what ifs” in there. Lomborg sees his assumptions as reasonable. Others make take a different view.

So, is it just he-said, she-said?

Not exactly. Because Lomborg faces two more criticisms—math this time—which have to be factored in.

First, the models Lomborg uses generally focus on direct, monetized, damage, e.g. the costs of crop failures we saw earlier. Not many capture indirect effects, like ecosystem loss, poor health, migration or conflict. Calculating damages associated with these indirect effects is hard, but that doesn’t mean they should be ignored.

Second, the models Lomborg uses are generally theoretical. More recent estimates try to estimate future damages by layering in additional empirical, observed data.

Taken together, it is accurate to say that Lomborg’s view of the world reflects a conservative (small “c”) interpretation of damages.

Which is to say that if you tweak the assumptions slightly, and take a broader view of damage, the picture changes very considerably. For instance:

You might give more weight to potential downside scenarios, to include things like feedback loops. You might spot a certain amount of harm is already ‘baked in’. You might assume that persistent negative climate impacts may have compound effects. You might spot that local problems have a tendency to spill over borders. You might want to account for indirect harm, whatever your position on axiology.

If you think any of these things, your assessment of potential harm will inevitably increase beyond Lomborg’s ‘central estimate’ region.

How high do these—frankly more depressing—figures of harm go?

It depends, and there’s a huge range. Losses by century’s end could easily reach double digits. 15-25% impact to GDP is not uncommon. 45% is not unknown.

Even at the lower end of these ‘upper ranges’, the hit wouldn’t just be economic. It would be seismic. Society would be fundamentally altered.

Why you should care.

Rightly or wrongly, economics are at the heart of our choices on climate change. Science is not enough.

In fact, our view of the economic impact of climate change fundamentally influences our outlook and attitude.

If you follow Lomborg, you may conclude that our limited resources are better spent on things like poverty, health and education, which—as Lomborg correctly points out—can have a net positive effect on the environment.

Conversely, if you are more risk sensitive, or have a broader concept of harm, then you worry greatly that Lomborg’s approach underplays the problem. You might also take issue with the idea that a vote for climate is a vote against health or education.4

Make no mistake about it, either way it’s a choice that has consequences.

Lomborg’s way is a bet that the environment won’t bite us in the butt.

The alternative is a bet—although climate scientists would rail against framing it as such, given the weight of evidence—that we can ‘go green’ without crippling the economy. (A key point that warrants its own post, soon.) Said differently, one of those bets is against physics; the other is for innovation.

Turns out, climate economic models don’t just calculate how the physical world impacts money; they reveal how someone views the world, other people, and even the future.5

Curios.

In the heady days of the 1990s, economists would stress-test models by running simulations of extreme population shocks or sudden drops in GDP. This could include a massive, instantaneous decline in industrial output from something like nuclear war.

The early models, mechanically, treated this type of thing as ‘good’ because emissions would drop precipitously—even though it would be catastrophically bad for humanity. The math didn’t care why the emissions dropped, only that they did.

Take note: model simulations, like physics, don’t have a moral compass.

A parting thought.

Humans are unique among animals in their ability to think about the future.

That said, we’re often guilty of short-term bias, don’t deal well with uncertainty, and sometimes let our emotion get the better of rational thought.

These failings can pull in different directions. Short-term bias can downplay longer-term risks like climate change, or health. On the other hand, fear can push us to put money in the wrong place.

Understanding the economic impact of climate change is a logical step to making sense of what to do next. We have to figure out the magnitude of the economic earthquakes, before we start designing buildings to resist them.

Trouble is, the conclusions of economic models are often presented as fact. The reality is that things are often more nuanced than they first appear.

The long and the short of it: beware of anyone telling you different; they are likely selling something. You are free to buy what they’re selling of course—just make sure you check under the hood first to make sure you know what you’re getting into.

Two-sentence takeaway.

Neither the sun nor planetary wobbles can explain the observed warming in the last 150 years. That doesn’t mean they’re not fascinating, or aren’t ultimately going to be responsible for humanity’s demise.

A natural wonder.

The climate has always changed, and it will continue to do so until the heat from our aging star torches the planet about a billion years from now.

The Sun has long been a suspect when it comes to climate change. That’s hardly surprising because, in the grand scheme of things, the Sun has a hand in almost everything on Earth. Food. Weather. Seasons. Animal behavior. Even tides. (A bit.)

The question isn’t whether the Sun influences the Earth’s climate. It does. The question is whether the Sun is responsible for the change seen in the last 150 years.

So, is it the sun?

A vast furnace in outer space

Unsurprisingly, the first thing to focus is the Sun itself, which most people associate with a giant ball of fire.

“…a vast furnace burning in outer space, fire pushing outwards against its own gravity.” (Oppenheimer film, 2023)

Trouble is, that’s not exactly accurate.

Fire requires oxygen, of which there is a profound lack in Space. Even if there was, a sun that was your average bonfire-blaze would have lasted about 8,000 years before it burned out, about 4.299 billion years ago, making any discussion of climate change today entirely pointless.

The Sun is actually is a giant ball of plasma, which generates energy through nuclear fusion. The closest most people get to plasma—not nuclear fusion—is at the office, in the form of fluorescent strip lights, which sounds a lot sexier than the tepid illumination they offer. But the whole plasma and fusion thing is important, because it means scientists have a solid understanding of solar activity.

The sun has natural cycles, so the amount of energy—including heat—that reaches the Earth changes over time. That’s less interesting than it might seem at first, because the variation isn’t all that big to begin with, and can’t explain the warming that is currently going on.1

No-one seriously argues that it does, so we don’t have to dig too much farther on that front. Which means we can turn to a different idea, which is a more complex, but, at one level, intuitive.

Cosmic wobbles cause Earthly worries (Milankovitch Cycles)

In our universe, everything is constant motion. The Moon orbits the Earth. The Earth orbits the Sun. The Sun orbits the Milky Way. And so on, until the cosmic dance becomes so mind-bogglingly large that any normal person’s head explodes.

Someone’s head that didn’t explode when faced with all of this was a man called Milutin Milanković (1879-1958).

Milanković developed an astronomical theory of climate change around 100 years ago, well before it was fashionable.

He described three different wobbles: variations in the Earth’s orbit around the Sun (called eccentricity); changes in the Earth’s tilt over time (called obliquity); and the Earth’s general rotational wobbling of the spinning top kind that was last seen at the cryptic end of Inception (2010) (called precession).

Milanković’s theories are – as far as anyone can tell – correct. They’re also pretty important to our world. As in, life or death important.

Eccentricity changes the distance between Earth and the Sun, which directly impacts how much energy reaches Earth. Obliquity influences the seasons, especially at high latitudes. Precession alters the timing of the seasons. Together, they explain why things like ice ages occur, which is a big deal if you’re deciding whether to build London on two kilometers of ice, or whether to wait for a bit of a thaw.

Milanković wasn’t concerned by climate change in 1941—at least in the modern sense—when penning his wobbly thoughts. But his ideas—which have been anglicized to Milankovitch Cycles—continue to cause a stir.

What’s the big idea?

Confusion about Milankovitch Cycles

Modern climate change is occasionally attributed to natural variability, of which Milankovitch Cycles are one example. Even high-profile political figures like Václav Klaus (former President of the Czech Republic) and Nigel Lawson (former UK Chancellor) have chimed in. Are they onto something that science has missed?

No, it seems, based on the evidence. There is no doubt that there is natural variation in the Earth’s climate. But that’s a bit like saying there’s apple in apple pie. The big question—in fact the only real question when you’re thinking about Milankovitch Cycles—is whether they account for today’s warming. (Disregard, for the moment, other natural factors, like volcanoes, which are addressed in other posts.)

Again, the answer is, simply, no. Milankovitch Cycles cannot describe the rate of warming observed over the last 150 years. This is because real-word measurements, and the Milanković theories themselves, suggest that the climate impact of Milankovitch Cycles take place over millennia.

It’s notable that although ‘natural variability’ gets a good amount of airplay from contrarian politicians, most scientists—even those like Richard Lindzen who question scientific consensus on climate change—stop short of using Milankovitch Cycles as the alibi for modern warming.

We live in a delusion

An ice age of the type predicted by Milankovitch Cycles occurs every 100,000 years or so. The last one ended about 20,000 years ago, so we’re living in a period of relative climate stability called an interglacial period.

In fact, the whole of recorded history has occurred during this interglacial period.

It’s often said that Earth is in a Goldilocks Zone, which refers to the distance of our planet from the sun. Too far away and the Earth would freeze. Too close, and it would burn.

But there’s another dimension we could add to the Goldilocks Zone—time.

Human civilization emerged during a Goldilocks period of Earth’s history. At different times the Earth has been almost completely covered in ice, or had no ice at all. Those would have been awkward times to build life as we know it.

That’s why—as Neil deGrasse Tyson says (see further reading below)—we live in a delusion. We think the current climate is what Earth is, but nothing could be further from the truth.

Global warming is a good thing!

A misleading title, perhaps. But we have prevented the next ice age from happening!

It’s not entirely clear when the next ice age would have occurred in the absence of humans fudging the numbers by adding vast quantities of greenhouse gases to the atmosphere. But the estimate was somewhere between 1,500 and 8,000 years from now. That, admittedly broad, time frame has now been pushed out. How far? Not entirely clear.

Is that reason to be cheery? Not exactly. You can have too much of a good thing it seems, and greenhouse gases fall into that bucket. Not enough and bad things happen. Too much, and bad things happen.

Why you should care.

Contrary to periodic claims that climate change is simple,2 it can be tricky to get the science right, and easy to get it wrong. The purpose of this post, and others like it, is to break down the phenomena that impact Earth’s climate into bite-size chunks. That way, when someone says that the Earth’s climate changes because of natural variation, you can answer, correctly: “Yes! It does. But natural variability cannot account for what’s going on right now. And here’s why…”

Further reading watching.

• Neil deGrasse Tyson interview of Steven Soter about Milankovitch Cycles.

Two-sentence takeaway.

Protecting the environment is not political, but the way you do it is. Even so, no political party has a monopoly on good, or bad, ideas.

Odd introduction.

A woman stands confidently in front of the UN General Assembly. Poised at the dais, she begins:

“Of all the challenges faced by the world community…one has grown clearer than any other in both urgency and importance.”

This new threat, she says, is as menacing as anything the world has faced for centuries. The evidence is in, she continues: the damage plain to see.

What, she asks rhetorically, should we do? Her answer:

“…[W]e are not—we must not try to be—the lords of all we survey. We are not the lords, we are the Lord’s creatures, the trustees of this planet, charged today with preserving life itself. Preserving life with all its mystery and all its wonder. May we all be equal to that task.”

Who is this woman who dares to lecture the world? Who calls for comprehensive pollution controls to deal with industrial excess. Who demands a binding international agreement on greenhouse gas emissions.

The daughter of a grocer, she studied chemistry at Somerville College, Oxford, and worked as a research scientist. But it was not in a scientific capacity that she stood in front of her global audience.

It was as the Prime Minister of the United Kingdom.

In 1989.

In her unmistakable voice, and in her inimitable style, Margaret Thatcher—the quintessential conservative—demanded attention.

A full accounting will record that her speech wasn’t without its flaws, and that her environmental views wavered over time.1

Yet, that the formidable Thatcher—not one to mince words, as any miner from the 80s will attest—supported a frontier issue is powerful evidence to support the claim that the environment is not partisan.

What’s the big idea?

Protecting the environment is not partisan

There’s a trope that liberals care about the environment and conservatives don’t.

It might seem like a fact, because surveys routinely find that liberals demand more action on climate than conservatives. But the reality isn’t quite that simple.

In truth, conservatives and liberals can both lay claim to responsible stewardship, at least judged by history.

Take the US, for example.

For conservatism: National parks? Teddy Roosevelt. The Environmental Protection Agency? Richard Nixon. Clean air? George H.W. Bush.

For liberalism: Reforestation? Franklin D. Roosevelt. Water quality? Lyndon B. Johnson. Energy efficiency? Jimmy Carter.

None of this is to comment on the environmental policies of any political party today. Rather, like Margaret Thatcher’s speech from 1989, it’s support for the claim that the desire to protect the environment is bipartisan.

Read that again: the desire to protect the environment is not partisan.

This conclusion might be obvious, but it doesn’t feel like that sometimes.

Now for the «but».

When the environment does get political

A conservative and liberal may both want to protect the environment, but the way they go about their business can be quite different.

Why?

How long have you got? One paragraph?! (Inhales deeply.)

Liberals lean into collective responsibility and government intervention. They view environmental issues as moral and systemic crises. Conservatives lean into individual stewardship, markets and innovation. They are wary of too much regulation, and the economic disruption that that brings. Each group often hold different views about their their place in nature.

The thing is, though, just because the “how” of left and right might be different, doesn’t mean people from different ends of the political can’t agree.

When the environment transcends political lines

Take Richard Nixon.

When he wasn’t busy making awkward recordings in the Oval Office, he was doing some pretty remarkable stuff for the environment.2

Nixon, a Republican, set in motion landmark legislation that created the Environmental Protection Agency and Clean Air Act, both of which remain front and center when it comes to US efforts to figure out climate change.3

Again, the question has to be asked. Why?

In short, the second half of the last century is a coming-of-age story for environmentalism in the US. In hindsight, it’s hardly surprising, as pesticides like DDT were wreaking havoc, and rivers were, quite literally, catching fire.4 People tend to notice when environmental disasters make the front page.

To his credit, Nixon recognized that Americans wanted action—the public could spot a bad movie when they saw one. So could Nixon, and he seized the zeitgeist. With bipartisan support secured, the rest is history.

So how is that different from today?

What do people think? (Today.)

The fix for DDT and flaming rivers is obvious enough. It’s specific, and, if it gets bad enough, which it did, you knew who to blame.

That’s quite different from climate change, where the causes of the issue—though well enough known—are spread across different countries, industries and consumers.

Put differently, it’s hard to pin down culprits. Even if you spot a problem sector—like fossil fuels—you still face the question of who to go after. At its peak, about 15 US companies made DDT. By contrast, the US fossil fuel sector involves several hundred, and that’s not counting the giant economic system still powered in large part by fossil fuels. You could hit the big players, but the ripple effects—on the sector itself and society-at-large—are more tangled than some claim.

All of this points to today’s biggest political headache when it comes to climate change: the nature of the issue is so big that it lends itself to multiple solutions. That’s a problem, because it breeds division. Liberal sensibilities might push for government action to reign in profligate excess, whilst conservatives might naturally look to free market innovation to change behavior.

In theory, both could work. In practice—especially in a polarized political environment—the “how” becomes more debated than the “why”, and nothing gets done. In contrast to the Nixon era, it’s not a good look.

Why you should care.

Politics shape everything we do—today and, more importantly for collective, long-term challenges like climate change, tomorrow

Even if we agree there is a problem—which is an “if” that is addressed in other posts—the nature of the challenge means that, unlike discrete problems such as DDT and localized pollution, we also have to contend with the politics of “how”.

Until we depoliticize the “how”, or at least find a way to achieve bipartisan support for a “how”, society will remain in deadlock, or—worse—in active conflict. That’s exhausting and, contrary to the intuition of some, is not actually good for anybody.

The good news is that there are ways to agree on the “how”, which will be the subject of Part II and beyond.

Curios.

Around the time Margaret Thatcher delivered her speech to the UN in 1989, two baby girls were born in New York and Pennsylvania respectively. One, Taylor Swift, would grow up to be the biggest pop star in the world. The other, Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, would become a prominent US Congresswoman.

These women, Thatcher, Swift and AOC, may seem cut from different cloth. Different politics. Very different lifestyles. But parallels emerge if you dig a little.

All three rose to fame early, are (or were) media-savvy, iconic, and polarizing. (Swift has even been described as the Margaret Thatcher of music.5) Most importantly—at least for the purposes of this Substack—all three recognize the climate challenge.

The late Dr. Jane Goodall was a firm believer that finding common ground on something was the first step in making a difference. What connects the Iron Lady, the showgirl Swift and the socialist AOC? A desire to be better stewards of the planet. That’s as good a place to start as anywhere.

A parting thought.

This post focuses on Western politics. Specifically, US politics. So it’s hardly representative of the political world writ large. Still, the US is a good starting point, given the polarization of the issue in that country. Other posts will dig into this more, and will address different political arenas.

Two-sentence takeaway.

Hero, antihero, or something else? However history judges fossil fuels, there’s no doubt that the story will be compelling.

What stuff are we talking about?

Monty Python

There’s a scene in Monty Python’s Life of Brian (1979) in which an agitated crowd airs grievances against the Roman Empire. Although it’s a comedy, and way off-topic, it somehow feels apt.

It starts with a pointed question from the troublemaker-in-chief, Reg:

“What have the Romans ever done for us?” Reg chides, looking to stir an insurrection.

An extended silence, until a lone voice in the crowd offers softly:

“The aqueduct?”

The dialogue continues:

Reg: “What?”

Voice in the crowd: “The aqueduct.”

Reg, begrudgingly: “Oh, yeah, yeah, they did give us that. That’s true yeah.”

Another voice chimes in:

Voice in the crowd: “And the sanitation.”

A third voice speaks up:

“Oh yeah, the sanitation Reg. Remember what the city used to be like…”

Reg: “Yeah, alright, I’ll grant you the aqueduct and sanitation are two things that the Romans have done.”

Voice in the crowd: “And the roads.”

Reg: “Yeah, obviously the roads. The roads go without saying don’t they. But apart from that…”

More voices interrupt, each one listing another Roman improvement: Irrigation. Medicine. Education. Wine. Public baths. Public order. Peace.

At which point Reg has had enough: “Peace? Oh, shut up.”

Fast forward 2,000 years.

The present day

Picture the scene—Reg railing against fossil fuels. What have they ever done for us? Are they not the prime suspect when it comes to climate change?

The problem is that, like Reg’s audience in the fictional Roman Empire, voices from the crowd might start to question whether fossil fuels are really all bad.

In the last two centuries fossil fuels have transformed societies around the world, from the way we power homes and fertilize crops, to the way we learn, heal and love. They provide us with many thousands of products. It’s no exaggeration to say that most of us owe our lives to them.

What have fossil fuels ever done for us? Quite a lot, as it happens.

To which Reg might respond: ‘Fossil Fuels? Oh, shut up’.

The argument for the defense

One writer that won’t shut up about the virtues of fossil fuels is Alex Epstein, whose ideas from his many books can be distilled into three sentences:

— Fossil fuels are unmatched in mobility, energy density, and affordability.

— They have enabled modern civilization to develop at unprecedented rates.

— That societies continue to flourish, in luxury, is due almost entirely to fossil fuels.1

By Epstein’s logic, it’s hard to argue that fossil fuels have, to date, been anything but an unqualified good.

Hard, but not impossible.

If we don’t see a steep decline in fossil fuel emissions, it will entrench the already gross inequalities between the world’s richest and poorest countries. So said Simon Stiell, head of the UN’s climate agency in 2024.

Wait.

No. Not that.

The idea that fossil fuels promote inequality is one that Epstein and others fiercely reject. They argue the opposite—that the gap between the world’s haves and have-nots will inevitably increase if the poorest countries don’t get access to the safest, most convenient, cheap and reliable form of energy.

Which happens to be—fossil fuels.

Epstein’s reasoning continues.

Most of the world continues to live in poverty because they don’t have enough fossil fuels. It’s immoral, writers like Epstein conclude, not to permit or even encourage today’s poorest countries to use more, not fewer, fossil fuels.

The argument for the prosecution

A legal hack comes to mind here.

In law, the ‘art of omission’ is deliberately leaving out facts that could weaken an argument. It’s the job of the counsel to expose hidden truths.

Epstein is absolutely right that fossil fuels have been a game changer for billions of people around the world. Climate activists ignoring that fact do so at their own peril—they become sitting ducks for allegations of hypocrisy.

But Epstein has—in the eyes of his critics—engaged in more than a little skullduggery here: he is an expert, they say, in the art of omission.

Here’s the issue.

Epstein’s views are based on three big assumptions:

— Fossil fuels have been, and will remain, a net good.

— The negative impacts of fossil fuels are manageable.

— There’s no alternative to fossil fuels.

These assumptions, Epstein’s critics suggest, are fatally flawed.

— A net good? Fossil fuels are not the pious commodity Epstein claims them to be. They have their moral skeletons, in the form of conflict and questionable business ethics. Not a bad argument, but limited. Try another—that past performance is not a predictor of future success: just because fossil fuels have been useful, doesn’t mean they will continue to be, particularly if you factor the damage they cause.

— Manageable impacts? Writers like Epstein tend to downplay the adverse impact of climate change. This often prompts critics to cry foul from authority—Epstein isn’t a scientist! But that can backfire, because Epstein isn’t claiming that he is. Rather, he is pointing to facts (‘cherry-picked!’ yell critics) that call into question the seriousness of climate change. Its those facts that should be on trial.

— No alternatives? If you wander through a typical city—all concrete jungle and piston-engined bustle—it’s easy to think there are no alternatives to fossil fuels. There are, of course, but the question is—at what cost? This is, in many respects, the heart of the issue: fossil fuels=energy; energy=work; work=value. If climate activists are to ‘win’, they must break at least one of those chains.

So, do the criticisms of Epstein’s assumptions stack up?

What’s interesting about this stuff?

Fossil fuels are complex.

Extracting, refining and manipulating them is hard. Figuring out what to use them for is hard. It’s no surprise, then, that weaning off them, or finding other ways to do the things we currently do with them, is also hard.

Do something different involves science, sure. But it also involves politics, economics, psychology and even philosophy. That’s what makes this stuff so interesting.

It’s also why challenging the assumptions that underpin Epstein-like ideas requires detail that other posts will need to address. Absent detail, it’s too easy to get reductive. Which is to miss the point. Or, at least, to have bad conversations.

Why you should care.

This post, Part I of a few, introduces the idea that fossil fuels are neither saint nor sinner. Perhaps they are, like a Byronic hero, brooding, flawed, with both heroic and villainous qualities.

Whatever the correct the description, and whatever their correct place in history, it’s clear we have to figure out what to do now with fossil fuels. That remains one of the biggest issues of our time, whether you support Epstein or his critics.

Consider this, then, a primer, and look ahead to Part II and beyond for more. In the meantime, be wary of Reg.

Two sentence takeaway

World renowned primatologist who championed three causes: biodiversity loss, climate change and environmental inequity. Adept at blurring lines.

Who was she?

In 1960 a young woman with no qualifications sets out to study primates in Tanzania.

One of her subjects—a chimpanzee she calls David Greybeard—goes about his business.

He strips leaves from a twig, chews one end, and uses it to fish termites out of a mound. That may not sound like much, but it is.

In observing Greybeard’s termite plunder, Goodall is the first person to record another species making and then using tools in the wild.

Later, Goodall and others would go on to document the emotional depth chimpanzees are capable of, and their complex social interaction.

All of it revolutionized our understanding of animals.

Why does she matter?

Her work was groundbreaking. Scientifically, she focused on primatology—the study of primates, but that’s a sterile label for what she actually did.

The game changing aspect of Goodall’s work was that she went into the field, with a patience and tenacity that was, if not unprecedented, close to it. Before Goodall, most studies of primates, and animals more generally (ethology), were on those in captivity.

That was a problem, because it’s hard to recreate the conditions that would inspire Greybeard’s ingenuity. Apart from anything else, introducing notoriously destructive termites into a zoo would have been a tough sell.

So Goodall went into bush and waited. Waited to be accepted by her subjects. Waited to witness chimpanzee behavior in the wild.

And then she went back into humanity to tell her—or more accurately their—story.

It was huge. It ignited the public consciousness, inspired others to follow in her footsteps, and forced science to recognize animals as thinking and feeling beings, not just instinct-driven machines.

Was she funny?

Yes, in a gentle, understated way.

She was widely regarded as warm, engaging, and often delivered anecdotes about her subjects (or herself) that made people laugh.

More than that, she could make heavy topics—like extinction—lighter with a wry comment, and relatable with stories of animal antics.

So not exactly slapstick, but certainly engaging.

Why you should care.

Unsurprisingly, Goodall cared very deeply about the environment.

Still, a primatologist is not exactly a climatologist, so it’s valid to ask how her work is relevant to climate change.

This is where her ability to blur lines comes into play.

In practicing fieldwork as an amateur, she challenged academia. In naming her subjects—like Greybeard—she humanized science. Later, when she focused on conservation, it could be hard to see where research ended and advocacy began.

For all of these things, she received criticism. Critics also questioned whether her commitment to grassroots activism would work for threats like climate change.

In the end, Goodall was not a climate scientist, and did not pretend to be. But her work forced humans to see other animals in a new light. That shift is critical when it comes to think about climate change and what we should value.

That, perhaps, may be her greatest legacy.

Curios.

Goodall was 91 when she died. That’s lucky, because she needed time to do her work.

Even at the start of her career, things took time. When she first got to the Tanzanian national park where Greybeard lived, she had six months of funding. For the first three, she got nothing. Chimpanzees would flee every time her team got near.

Then, one day, three chimpanzees started to walk toward her, instead of the other way around. That was the turning point. Tables turned. Blurred lines.

How she rates.

Reality Check: It’s real, and animals are depending on us.

She dedicated her life to science and conservation. She wasn’t a climate scientist but was in no doubt about the gravity of climate change.

Memeworthiness: 5/10

She was a high profile scientist and an even higher profile campaigner. Her work and legacy is widely regarded.

Outlook: 6/10

Goodall carried a heavy burden, having seen the majesty of nature up close. But she wasn’t hopeless. She recognized nature is resilient, and can return from the brink. More than that, she drew strength from a growing number of people, particularly young people, that were prepared to fight for Planet Earth.

Mainstream media love: 10/10

Goodall passed away in 2025. She was iconic before her death, and her star continues to shine after her passing.

If you want more.

• https://janegoodall.ca/

Two-sentence takeaway.

Modern fertilizer production helps feed about four billion people. That’s a big deal, and a big problem.

What stuff are we talking about?

An incendiary address.

“[This] subject is of interest to the whole world – to every race, to every human being. It is of urgent importance today, and it is a life-and-death question for generations to come…”

This could have been written by any number of of today’s climate activists, but it wasn’t. It’s from a speech delivered more than 125 years ago by Sir William Crookes—a stereotypically bespectacled scientist with impeccable facial hair.

Crookes delivered his address at a hastily-arranged venue in Bristol, England. It was originally slated to be held at the venerable Colston Hall, but that building had suffered a devastating fire just a week before Crookes—the newly-appointed president of the British Academy of Sciences—was due to speak. The blaze prefaced the incendiary remarks Crookes was about to give.

His audience, a distinguished bunch who looked every inch the 19th-century cognoscenti that they were, might have expected Crookes’ 1898 address to be a dull affair. Most inaugural speeches were. If so, they were in for a surprise.

A looming crisis

Crookes described an impending crisis in which the number of mouths to feed would vastly exceed the world’s food supply. Widespread, devastating famine. The global community faced deadly peril, and warned that food would soon become an instrument of war.

Ominously predicting the conflict between Great Powers that would soon arrive, Crookes calculated that England’s wheat reserves—a staple crop then and now—would last just 28 weeks if hostilities broke out.

The problem, Crookes identified, was nitrogen.

Why?

Plants need nitrogen to grow, and nitrogen levels in farmed land tend to decrease over time. Eventually, crops fail as the soil loses its fertility, and people go hungry. It’s a challenge for the old world and the new.

Medieval civilizations worked out, by trial and error, that crop rotation was a natural way of maintaining productivity. By the 1700s, farmers had developed that into a fine art, and started to experiment with other things. Like guano (bird poop), and nitrates—naturally occurring, but rare, chemicals found in the Earth’s crust.

The 18th century fixes turned out to be temporary. Crop rotation was tedious, and guano and nitrates had to be painstakingly scraped from unforgiving lands in South America. Worse, the guano fields that had appeared inexhaustible ran out, and the always-scarce nitrates were increasingly in demand as a key ingredient in explosives.

By the end of the 19th century, time was up. A fast-growing and increasingly voracious population had pushed arable land to its limits.

The good news, in theory

The good news was that there was a solution, at least in theory. Crookes alluded to it. There’s plenty of nitrogen in the air, but plants can’t use it; plants need it in the earth. Science, however, promised a tantalizing but elusive solution—taking nitrogen from the air and forcing it (fixing it) into the soil. In Crookes’ words:

“The fixation of atmospheric nitrogen…is one of the great discoveries awaiting the ingenuity of chemists.”

The bad news was that artificially fixing nitrogen was hard and expensive. He wasn’t kidding. Lab experiments at the time proved it was possible, but in tiny amounts and at vast cost. No-one could justify the exorbitant price of the artificial replacement—even if it was commercially available, which it wasn’t.

The good news, in practice

Fast forward a few years to Germany, around 1910. Two scientists—Fritz Haber and Carl Bosch—were locked in battle to combine airborne nitrogen with hydrogen under high pressure and temperature, to make ammonia—a key ingredient in fertilizer.

Haber figured out the theory. Bosch figured out how to scale.

These two scientists—different in so many ways—eventually joined forces to do what had seemed impossible: the alchemy of air.1 It became known as the Haber-Bosch process, and it would change the world.

Even better news

The Haber-Bosch process was, and remains, a monumental achievement. In fact, it’s hard to overstate how important it is.

Today, roughly half the world’s population is fed by crops grown with synthetic nitrogen fertilizer made using the Haber–Bosch process. It reshaped global geopolitics, as countries rich in guano and nitrates lost influence across the globe. And, like nitrates before it, the ammonia in the fertilizer was useful to blow things up.

Explosions for everyone

Developed just before WWI, the Haber–Bosch process was critical in shoring up Germany’s wartime supply of munitions as British ships blockaded nitrate imports. Without Haber-Bosch, WWI may have been significantly shorter.

By WWII, the horse had bolted—the Haber-Bosch process had become global, meaning everyone had access to unimaginable quantities of explosives.

And it wasn’t just during war that things blew up.

Not so fun fact: two of the largest non-nuclear explosions ever recorded were—indirectly—made possible by the Haber-Bosch process.

Fertilizer ingredients were suddenly available in unprecedented volumes, and had to be stored somewhere. So why not store them in giant heaps, which would harden over time? And why not break up those giant, hardened, potentially explosive, heaps with small amounts of dynamite?

In Oppau, Germany—1921—the world found out.

In defense of the unfortunate and long-deceased workers who planted the dynamite, the practice of using explosives to break up the volatile mix wasn’t new. But the devil only has to win once: 600 people died 2,000 were injured. The plant was flattened.

Some twenty-five years later, the US and France got in on the act. This time, a French cargo ship holding 2,300 tons of fertilizer ignited whilst in Texas City. The blast caused other ships in port and shoreside facilities to join in. All hell broke loose. That 1947 explosion had about the same death toll as Oppau, but it dwarfed the 1921 blast in size. It wasn’t just a plant that got destroyed: half the city was razed.

Still, the benefits of the new technology have vastly outweighed the negatives. For most of its existence, the Haber-Bosch process has flown under the radar keeping billions of people alive.

So…

What’s the problem?

Over time, shortcomings have emerged—beyond just extending the occasional world war and flattening entire city blocks. Fertilizer doesn’t just help crops to grow, it’s also very tasty for other things, like algae. Waterways suffer from fertilizer run-off and—even when it does stay put—fertilizer can cause big (bad) changes in soil chemistry.

In addition—and here’s the kicker for climate change—artificially creating fertilizer is hugely energy intensive.

Here’s why:

N₂(g) + 3H₂(g) ⇌ 2NH₃(g)

That will mean very little to lots of people. Perhaps a visual might help:

Energy, energy, energy

Fertilizer production—specifically making ammonia, its key ingredient—is energy intensive because it involves complex, critical, reactions that demand huge amounts of power to get going.

Here’s the shortest way to explain it, which also explains the equation above.

1. Nitrogen gas (N₂) is pulled from the air. That’s hard, because N₂ really doesn’t want to be pulled from air.

2. Then you add Hydrogen gas (H₂). This comes from natural gas or coal. You may see where this is going.

3. Finally, you add a dash of pressure (a lot), a touch of heat (a lot), and a pinch of metal (catalyst), and you get a chemical reaction between N₂ and H₂ that creates ammonia (2NH₃).

Perhaps unexpectedly, the chemical reaction in step 3 isn’t all that energy intensive, because it’s somewhat self-sustaining (chemists will hate that one). But compressing gases and making hydrogen requires lots of energy. Preferably cheap.

And cheap energy—historically—means lots of greenhouse gas emissions.

What’s interesting about this stuff?

To cut a long story short, producing 1 ton of ammonia using the Haber-Bosch process requires about the same amount of energy as powering one European household for 2 years, or driving 50,000km in something like a Tesla Model 3.

Annual ammonia use for fertilizer is heading toward 200 million metric tons. That’s more than five million humpback whales.

With production and its application (on fields) factored in, fertilizer accounts for somewhere in the region of 3–5% of total global GHG emissions.

Why you should care.

Because fertilizer is quite probably helping to keep you fed. Because fertilizer production is massively energy intensive, so it’s costly in more ways than one. And, as is explored in other notes on this substack, because energy is critical both to understanding climate change and to civilization itself.

Fertilizer remains one of the great challenges for civilization. Not in the way Sir William Crookes thought about it—having enough fertilizer isn’t now the problem. But figuring out how to feed 4 billion people with an environmental footprint that is more manageable than today’s approach?

That’s a big ask. And a story for another post.

Two-sentence takeaway.

Volcanoes have long been a suspect when it comes to climate change, but they’re a pantomime villain. Spectacular, memorable, but ultimately a subplot to a bigger story.

A natural wonder.

On a bright afternoon in August, 1883, a volcanic eruption started on a remote island in Indonesia. It would end up shaking the world. Trouble had been brewing for months, so reports of the first blasts from Krakatoa, a small caldera between in the Strait between Java and Sumatra, were greeted with fascination, not fear.

Over the next 48 hours, however, curiosity gave way to catastrophe.

The scenes were apocalyptic.

The neighboring island of Sebesi, along with its 3,000 inhabitants, was decimated. No one, and no thing was left alive. Noise from Krakatoa’s explosions were recorded at a coastguard station in Australia, thousands of miles away. Even at that distance, it sounded like a gunshot. It had taken four hours to make the 3,000 mile trip. At it’s peak, the sound was estimated to be over 300 decibels.

On Sebesi, just eight miles from the heart of the eruption, there was no sound at all. At that range, the noise was too great to travel through air in the normal way. Instead, the atmosphere was beaten into submission by a shockwave that eviscerated anything living and pulverized everything else.

The eruption triggered a series of tsunamis, the biggest of which was judged to be 30 meters (100 feet) high. Ships in the area faced deadly peril in open water from volcanic fallout, and even deadlier peril if they sought refuge in port, where huge waves tore coastal villages apart. All told, more than 35,000 people died. An unknown, but far greater mass of flora and fauna was destroyed. As a measure of the destruction; the volcano itself, which started as a 2,500 foot peak, was reduced to rubble.

If you’re a fan of distasteful comparisons, Krakatoa unleashed the equivalent of 200 megatons of TNT over the course of 48 hours. That’s five times the mass of TNT used during the whole of WWII. It dwarfed even the largest hydrogen bomb ever detonated, the Russian Tsar Bomba, which had a yield of 50 megatons.

Incredibly, it caused a meaningful shift in Earth’s climate for at least a year.1 Airborne volcanic dust caused dramatic sunsets, which may have inspired the vivid colors in Edvard Munch’s masterpiece, The Scream.

What’s the big idea?

And yet.

Krakatoa had no lasting impact. For all the fire and brimstone of the 1883 eruption, it is, like the eruption of Mount Vesuvius that decimated Pompeii and Herculaneum in Italy centuries before, and the even bigger Pinatubo eruption in the Philippines in 1991, an event retold only by humans. Scientists can identify tell-tale evidence in the geologic record, but no lasting imprint is found in our atmosphere.

Krakatoa is, nevertheless, interesting. Not just because it was the loudest sound in recorded history, but because its eruption in the late 19th century marks an important date in the human-volcano relationship. We’ll come back to that shortly. First, a brief detour into the volcanic equivalent of the Richter Scale.

The Volcanic Explosivity Index

There are about 1,500 active volcanoes on Earth, of which around 60 or so erupt in a year. Each eruption is measured against something called the Volcanic Explosivity Index (VEI). The VEI describes, in effect, how much of the Earth is launched skyward during an eruption. It starts at VEI 0 and ends at VEI 8. Beyond VEI 3, it’s a logarithmic scale, which means each interval represents a tenfold increase in the quantity of material ejected.

In real terms, that means VEI 0 eruptions tend to be rather uninspiring, at least if you’re expecting fireworks. In contrast, VEI 8 eruptions are kind-of-a-big-deal—a thousand cubic kilometers (240 cubic miles) of the planet suddenly and explosively trying to find a new home. A VEI 8 event would mean total devastation for hundreds of kilometers. Massive ash clouds would circle the globe, block sunlight, and likely cause a lengthy volcanic winter. Crop failures and food shortages would lead to panic and life on Earth would be generally dismal.

The good news is that there hasn’t been a VEI 8 in recorded history—the last one occurred almost 75,000 years ago.

The bad news is that we’re due for one any minute, at least on a geological timescale. Bear in mind, however, that that could be another 25,000 years or so. So a go-bag is probably a bit much.

For reference, the Krakatoa eruption came in at VEI 6. For the hours it lasted, Krakatoa released carbon dioxide at a rate that eclipsed emissions from human activities over the same period. Big, but not world-changing big.

Volcanoes versus humans

Humans lose on a one-on-one match up. But the picture changes when we club together.

One seemingly obvious difference between volcanoes and humans is that volcanoes erupt infrequently, while emissions from human activities are constant. However, it’s a bit more complicated than that, now that you’re in the business of comparing human and volcanic ejecta.

That’s because, on the volcanic side of the ledger, you can’t just look at volcanoes when they’re going full jazz hands. You also have to pay attention during their more reflective moods.

That’s because most of the carbon dioxide they release comes from their constant degassing (release of pressure) from underground magma chambers. What’s more, you can’t just look at the showy volcanoes on land. You also have to take into account their submerged cousins, of which there are plenty.

This has led some to suggest that volcanoes are responsible for climate change. Including some very influential people. Some are not scientists, but that doesn’t matter, because it’s their ideas that carry weight.

For example, Nigel Farage—a high-profile figure in UK politics—questions the role of underwater volcanoes along the Pacific Rim, suggesting they may be having an unknown impact on climate change. By his own account, he’s ‘just asking questions’, but he’s not the only one.

So, are underwater volcanoes to blame for climate change?

It’s an interesting question, because the Pacific “Ring of Fire” as it’s known—a particularly active horseshoe of intense seismic and volcanic activity that touches five of the Earth’s seven continents—certainly sounds like it could be important in the grand scheme of things. Its giant expanse also doesn’t lend itself to precise study.

However, volcanologists are a hardy bunch, and don’t let a little damp stand in their way. They, and a cabal of geochemists, environmental geologists and atmospheric scientists have been hard at work for many years to understand just how much volcanoes impact our atmosphere. Their conclusion. Not as much as you’d expect.

Total numbers, and why Krakatoa is still relevant today

All told, volcanoes emit somewhere between 0.3 to 0.6 gigatons of greenhouse gases into the air every year. That pales into insignificance to the roughly 50-60 gigatons attributable to human activities.

It’s not even close. It’s like the difference between a cow and a humpback whale.

In fact, you’d have to go back to the 1870s—around the time of the Krakatoa eruption—to match annual emissions from volcanoes with those from human activities.2

How certain is the big idea?

There are scientists who believe volcanic emissions are underreported. But even those scientists don’t claim to bridge the order of magnitude divide between the generally accepted estimates described above.

Yet volcanoes continue to loom large in climate conversations. Why?

Mostly because it’s hard to get to grips with the fact that volcanoes can be inconsequential when it comes to climate change. For example Mike Huckabee—former Governor of Arkansas in the US—once claimed that “[a] volcano, in one blast, will contribute more [greenhouse gases] than 100 years of human activity.”

…Reaches for a calculator.

Huckabee’s claim dates from 2015. Between 1915 and 2015 humans were responsible for about 1,500 gigatons of greenhouse gases entering the atmosphere. Let’s assume Huckabee was thinking of a VEI 8 eruption. (He probably wasn’t.)

A VEI 8 eruption would release about one gigaton of greenhouse gases into the air—about 1/50th of today’s annual human emissions. It would still be a civilization-altering event, but for different reasons.3 Looking only greenhouse gases, you’d have to invent a whole new VEI level, a volcano the likes of which Earth has never seen. An eruption that would make Huckabee’s claim true would render any discussion about climate change entirely meaningless. Because we’d all be dead.

Why you should care.

Volcanoes make for great pantomime villains. They’re big, brash and demand attention whenever they’re on stage—when one erupts, it’s international news.

And, when they’re not erupting, they’re secretive—there are still unknowns when it comes to working out the exact volumes of greenhouse gases for which volcanoes are responsible when they’re not actively erupting.

So it’s not surprising that plenty of people wonder whether volcanoes are in some way responsible for today’s climate change.

The reality though, is that—unless scientists’ numbers are way, way off—which seems unlikely given the amount of research invested, volcanoes are off the hook.

Put differently, until we find ourselves face-to-face with a really big colossal eruption4, volcanoes aren’t a good reason not to act on climate change.

Two sentence takeaway

What do Deadpool, axolotls and axiology have in common? More than you think; they help explain what we should value, and why different people hold different views.

Odd introduction.

Axolotls are fascinating creatures. Native to Mexico, axolotls are the Deadpool of amphibians. Like Deadpool, they’re juvenile.1 Like Deadpool, they can regrow body parts. Not just limbs, but parts of their spinal cord, heart and even brain. They make salamanders look like amateurs when it comes to self-care.

Axolotls, on the other hand, have almost nothing to do with axiology, which is the study of what we care about.

Other than a little phonetic similarity and one other, rather important, thing.

What’s the big idea?

Axiology is, in environmental terms, the answer to the question: What is worth protecting? Or, more specifically: faced with competing interests, like human flourishing versus ecological protection, which one should we favor?

These are really trick questions, in that there’s rarely black and white answers, just shades of grey. But it is possible to plot where a person’s intuition might fall.

There are four main ways you can go:

• You might lean towards humans being the center of attention. This is anthropocentrism—if push comes to shove, humans win.

• You might believe all living things are worth protecting, roughly equally. That’s biocentrism.

• You might think it’s not just living things that have value, but also abiotic stuff (non-living things) like rivers, mountains and the climate. That’s ecocentrism.

• And finally, like Deadpool, you might see yourself as the most important thing in the universe. That’s called egocentricity—and while it might seem childlike, it often isn’t (see below).2

A visual can help.

What do people think?

Good question—and one that’s occupied the attention of many psychologists and sociologists. The unsatisfactory answer: it varies—by individual, culture and where a person sits in the world.

But—very generally speaking:

• Most people (say 50-60%) lean anthropocentric. They see nature’s value primarily in relation to human use—i.e. food, commodities and things to exploit.

• About a quarter of us (say 20-30%) is egocentric. That doesn’t make anyone selfish—it’s often a position forced by pressures like poverty, insecurity, survival.

• Biocentric and ecocentric are minority views (10-15% and 5-10% respectively), albeit increasing as environmental awareness grows. (It’s more common in communities like Indigenous groups that are big on interconnectedness.)

Unsurprisingly, people holding biocentric or ecocentric views tend to push for more environmental protection, but just because you hold anthropocentric views doesn’t mean you don’t care about the environment.

Why you should care.

This stuff really, really matters when it comes to protecting nature.

Particularly when it comes to public policy and the law.

Historically, governments and laws have been anthropocentric. Civil society was generally designed to regulate human behavior, protect human rights, and get humans organized. Environmental laws, for example, were often created to protect nature because of its benefits to humans, not because nature was inherently worth protecting.

More recently, however, biocentric and ecocentric ideas are beginning to creep in. Nature is getting its own rights in some places: a topic we’ll come back to in another post. And environmental courts are increasingly seeing ecosystem integrity as a goal in its own right.

Whether or not you think this is right depends on where you find yourself on the axiological spectrum.

Curios.

Back to axolotls.

Axolotls are critically endangered. They’re native to a single location—the lakes and canals of Xochimilco, near Mexico City. Their population has plummeted due to urbanization, pollution and invasive species. Bluntly, they’re in trouble.

But here’s the twist.

Despite their bleak outlook in the wild, they are abundant in captivity, and not just as pets. Their Deadpool-like powers of regrowth are helping scientists to understand how humans might one day regenerate damaged tissues or organs.

This somewhat sad state of affairs brings us back to the relationship between axolotls and axiology. Because they are a living example of the balance between environmental protection and human development.

As hard as Mexico is trying to conserve their natural habitat—and they are—axolotls may become functionally extinct in the wild. But even if they do, they will live on in captivity because of their value to humans, for research and recreation.

What you think of this will again depend on your place on the axiological spectrum.

A parting thought.

In Marvel canon, Deadpool is practically unkillable—he can survive decapitation, dismemberment, even total bodily destruction. But his immortality is bound to Earth’s fate: if humans aren’t around, Deadpool doesn’t make sense.

This idea—a character who cannot die, but who lives on a finite planet—is worth remembering: no matter how resilient an individual be, they are still tied to others.

There is no “perfect” place to sit on the axiological spectrum—where you sit depends on variables over which you may have little or no control.

Where you are born. Your culture. Your place in the world. All will influence you axiologically. Just understanding this—narrow—point, may help you understand, even if you do not accept, why others hold the views they do.

Climate change is a big topic, so it can help to break it down into smaller chunks. That’s why most of the posts in this substack are tagged with one of four labels:

🌍 Nature

Posts tagged «nature» look at the wonder, intrigue and debate associated with climate science and the natural world. This covers everything from urban myths to devilishly hard real world problems.

• How do you take the Earth’s temperature?

• The sun, and a brilliant Serbian

• Volcanoes and climate change

👤 People

People are complex, contradictory things. Nowhere is this more true than in the context of climate change. A climate activist flies a private jet. A climate skeptic lives off the land, barely leaving footprints.

Posts tagged «people» summarize and compare people. Not to assess their worldview, but to reveal the humanity behind their words.

• Dr. Richard Lindzen (b. 1940)

• Bjorn Lomborg (b. 1965)

• Svante Arrhenius (1859-1927)

• Dr. Fred S. Singer (1924-2020)

• Dr. Jane Goodall (1934-2025)

• Greta Thunberg (b. 2003)

🏛️ Stuff

If you had a big enough scale, you could weigh all the stuff we make against all life on Earth. For almost all human history, life would tip the scales. But recently the balance has switched—our stuff now outweighs every other living thing on the planet.

Posts tagged «stuff» pick apart the things we make, use and consume, to figure out what really matters when it comes to climate change, and what we can do about it.

• Electric cars: dreams and nightmares

• Fertilizer and climate change

• Monty Python and fossil fuels

💡 Ideas

Ideas are the backbone of every civilization. Ideas like capitalism (and its alternatives), the rule of law (and its alternatives), and axiology (the study of what we care about) shape the modern world. Yet they are routinely given scant attention, particularly when it comes to understanding someone else’s worldview.

Posts tagged «ideas» wrestle with ideas that have an outsize impact on climate change, mainly to work out why people have different opinions, and to identify common ground.

• Counting the costs of climate change

• The political environment (part one)

• Deadpool, axolotls and axiology

What’s coming up

There’s a lot in the pipeline. Here’s a teaser:

• 🏛️Flight - how planes revolutionized the world, and how we can make

• 🏛️Rubbish - the adventure, and impact, of rubbish across the ages

• 🌍 Certainty - what we know, and what we don’t know about climate change

• 💡Taking precautions - the biggest reason why we argue

If there’s anything you’d like to see, send a message.

Two sentence takeaway

Originally a powerful youth voice on climate change. Now a seasoned political activist, whose voice can inspire and unnerve.

About the woman.

The weight of the world on her diminutive frame, seemingly powerless against overwhelming adversaries. Frightened for the future.

Most, almost all, would give up.

But then most are not Greta Thunberg.

In 2018, aged 15, Thunberg skipped school in favor of sitting outside the Swedish Parliament holding a banner “Skolstrejk för klimatet” (“School Strike for Climate”).

What started with an individual truant blew up to a global movement, catapulting Thunberg into the limelight as an unlikely heroine for climate activists.

Why does she matter?

A little more than a year after she started Skolstrejk för klimatet, Thunberg delivered her most famous address, to the United Nations in New York—“How Dare You”.

Passionate, angry, blunt.

Thunberg admonished the audience of political veterans into stunned silence. This was all wrong, she said. She shouldn’t be there. “We are in the beginning of a mass extinction. And all you can talk about is money and fairytales of eternal economic growth. How dare you!”

Thunberg’s speech echoed around the world, inspiring millions, and forcing millions more to ask why a schoolgirl was the one to deliver such a powerful message.

Since then, Thunberg has used her platform to unite activists and bring the climate movement to the masses. Her bestseller—The Climate Book (2022)—reads like a Who’s Who of the climate world, forcing key themes into the public consciousness:

—Take individual action to effect social transformation.

—Set up national conditions so that citizens possess less and share more.

—Cause global action to remake the world.

Thunberg is not without her critics. To many, her ideas are worthy, necessary and past due. To others, they are at best naïve and at worst frightening glimpses of a dystopian future. It’s a conflict that must be addressed.

Is she funny?

She can be. In a dark, ironic way.

Her barbed exchanges with President Trump are folklore, though it’s not entirely clear whether she’s trying to be funny or just pointed. Perhaps a little of a) and b).

Most of the time, however, she’s earnest, direct and somewhat awkward. Frankly, it can make the listener more than a little uncomfortable. But that, in many ways, is the point.

Why you should care.

Thunberg gets both positive and negative press. Her unwavering commitment and fearlessness wins her plaudits from climate activists. Her style, what some would call stunts, and—truth be told—uncompromising approach is an easy target for critics.

Whether she is heroine or villain, she is undoubtedly a cultural touchstone, and was—in the early 2020s—very effective in forcing people in power to have conversations they might not otherwise have had.

Today, Thunberg remains an important figure in the climate conversation, even though she has expanded her political activism beyond climate.

Curios.

Thunberg is a distant relation of climate science pioneer Svante Arrhenius.

She really did feel the weight of the world when she was young, suffering ill-health that seriously affected her and her family, a story vividly retold in her book, Scenes from the Heart (Scener ur hjärtat) (2018). Although Thunberg’s climate-induced anxiety may be on the extreme end, becoming central to her identity, it was and is by no means unique for young people to feel trauma from constant bad news.

How she rates.

Reality Check: It’s real, very real. Existential real.

She’s about as serious about this as you can get. She’s almost the benchmark by which other climate activists are judged. Bear in mind, however, she’s not a scientist.

Memeworthiness: 7/10

She was for a long time the face of the climate movement. A young person, shocked by the science, bold enough to take a stand. Her focus has now evolved beyond climate.

Outlook: 3/10

Contrary to some portrayals, she’s not all doom and gloom. There’s an all-too-easy parody of Thunberg as an angry young woman, long on outrage and short on hope. But beyond her unyielding rhetoric, she does speak about collective action and the power of the individual to make a difference.

Mainstream media love: 8/10

Thunberg’s star has dimmed a little since her political activism has expanded to things other than climate, but she’s still a cultural touchstone.

If you want more.

• The Climate Book (2022). A collection of essays from climate thinkers.

• Scenes from the Heart (2018). Revealing stories about why Thunberg is like she is.

Two sentence takeaway

Decorated physicist who was deeply troubled by what he perceived to be flaws in climate science. Some claims haven’t aged well, but he remains an historic figure.

About the man.

Picture an Austrian designing mines for the US Navy in World War II. Later becoming a rocket scientist—a leading light in the development of early satellites.

That’s an impressive resume. But there’s one more thing.

Dr. Fred S. Singer was a purist. He liked facts, data and the scientific method.

And when he looked at climate science, he didn’t like what he saw. Not one bit. He would speak up, and by doing so, he became an OG of climate skepticism.

Why does he matter?

In 2009, Singer published an 880-page, 6.5-pound book challenging the mainstream view that climate change was a problem (Climate Change Reconsidered).1

By his own admission, it’s a tough read. But if you do, you’ll get a strong impression that Singer was concerned about a cover-up. His concern wasn’t without merit—in 2009, there was more than a whiff of scandal.

In that year, 1,000 emails and 2,000 documents were hacked from a university in England, some of which reeked of collusion by scientists to suppress information that cast doubt on global warming. Christened—unimaginatively—“Climategate”, it wasn’t a good look, and Singer knew it.

When he dug into the science, Singer found problems with surface and satellite measurements. He saw temperatures that were unremarkable—the first decade of the new millennium was nothing to write home about. And though he didn’t deny the planet was warming, he doubted whether man was the cause.

He and others asked probing questions.

The scientific community closed ranks, but the damage was done. A media frenzy took hold, and Climategate cast a heavy shadow over the world’s annual climate summit in that year—Barack Obama’s ill-fated 2009 “Hopenhagen”.

Singer’s principal concern? That scientists were not doing what scientists should do; to dispassionately assess the evidence. Instead, they let science and politics mix. It was, for Singer, a poisonous cocktail.

Was he funny?

Not really.

Blunt. But not exactly funny.

When speaking in English, with a trace of Austrian heritage in his composed delivery, he was the epitome of calm and assured confidence.

He did, however, have a certain dry style: “a polite way of putting it” was a favorite line to package up damning criticisms.

Why you should care.

There’s a misconception that all skeptics are crackpots. They’re not. Singer was educated, competent and credible. If you’re looking for a decorated, thoughtful scientist, you could do far worse than Singer.

That said, a number of his claims haven’t aged well. Temperatures have continued to increase since his 2009 opus, and critics have suggested he cherry-picked data more than he cared to admit.

Still, Singer remains an historic figure in the climate conversation. Today, his views may seem outdated, but he’s absolutely right on one thing: science is not political, but the interpretation of science is political. Which, to be clear, is not a good thing.

Curios.

Singer has something in common with someone across the aisle; climate science pioneer Svante Arrhenius. Both thought that if the planet warmed, it would, or at least could, be beneficial.

He also didn’t like polar bears, or at least found them unhelpful when it came to climate change: “I hate to tell you this, but polar bears like to eat tiny little seal pups.” (2000, PBS Nova.) So maybe he was a little funny.

How he rates.

Reality Check: If the climate is changing, it’s natural

He didn’t dismiss climate change entirely, but was skeptical as to why it was changing, and was fiercely critical of mainstream science. In thousands of pages.

Memeworthiness: 4/10

He’s still around on your favorite social media, but not so much as you’d notice. He’s too much of a scientist to get click-bait attention.

Outlook: 6/10

He didn’t have much good to say about climate change. But then again, he didn’t have much bad to say either.

Mainstream media love: 2/10

Beyond obituaries recalling his controversial take on climate change, Singer gets almost no mainstream media attention these days.

If you want more.

• Biography from the Heartland Institute: Dr. S. Fred Singer. Excellent. Describes his remarkable career and lists the many publications to his name.

Two sentence takeaway

Pioneering scientist who authored the seminal paper on climate change that still holds sway today. Prepared to play the long game.

About the man.

Climate science has a long history.

Work on greenhouse gases started more than a century ago, when moustaches had names like Walrus, Imperial and Chevron, and men weren’t afraid to grow them.

Men like Svante Arrhenius.

Arrhenius is best known for three things.

His moustache, obviously. The fact that he’s a distant relation of Greta Thunberg, Swedishly.1 And a little something called climate science.

He’s a fascinating character. Complex, hard worker, combative. Contented, twice married, family man. Polymath.

Even though he’s most recognized today for his pioneering work on greenhouse gases (more on that shortly), he actually won his Nobel Prize for figuring out electrolytic dissociation. Of course, no one knows what that is, so it’s hardly a surprise that that doesn’t get much attention. (Sorry, chemists.)

Why does he matter?

In 1896, Arrhenius published one of the first scientific papers quantifying how atmospheric CO2 affects the Earth’s temperature (On the Influence of Carbonic Acid).

Don’t read it. It’s impenetrable. Actually, it’s not that bad. Bits of it are quite readable. But it is still old school science.

The biggest takeaway: his monumental and ground-breaking idea that increasing CO2 levels in the air could raise global temperatures. He didn’t exactly start from scratch, but the origin story of modern climate science starts with him.

An interesting aside: Arrhenius believed global warming might be a good thing - to add a little heat to frigid agriculture in Northern latitudes.

Turns out, both ideas would still be around a hundred years on.

Was he funny?

He could be. He was a storyteller and enjoyed talking about science to the public. An early version of Carl Sagan or Neil deGrasse Tyson perhaps.

But he could also be prickly, with a distinct lack of joie de vivre. From a letter in 1898, during a particularly stressful time, Arrhenius writes: “It never occurs to me to go for a walk…I have long forgotten what it is like to read novels or literature.”2

Why you should care.

You may not recognize his name, but you definitely know his work. He did the math on global warming when it wasn’t cool, and he’s known as kind of a bad ass in climate science circles.

That said, for a long time, his climate work was dismissed. A colleague, Nils Ekholm, questioned whether Arrhenius’ admittedly simplistic models were up to snuff. Another contemporary, Knut Ångström, successfully derailed Arrhenius’ legacy for decades with some unwittingly sketchy science.

Eventually, Arrhenius’ ideas regained traction, through the work of scientists like Guy Callendar. Today, Arrhenius is making a bit of a comeback as people realize how much of a pioneer he was.

Curios.

Even in his own lifetime, Arrhenius had a history of proving people wrong.

In 1884, he submitted his PhD thesis. It didn’t go well, barely passing. He wasn’t helped by the fact that one of his examiners was an estranged mentor. And none of them, it seems, liked his radical ideas.

What were those ideas? The very same for which he eventually won his Nobel Prize. Ahead of his time. Happy to play the long game.

How he rates.

Reality Check: It’s real, in theory

He literally wrote the foundational paper. So, yes, he thought something’s amiss. That said, his work was mostly confined to the lab, so he couldn’t fact check his ideas.

Memeworthiness: 4/10

He was a good communicator, but in many ways was a product of his time. Worth a read, or at least a read about if you’re into it. But not one for first-timers.

Outlook: 7/10

Yes, he’s the father of modern climate science, but he also thought that Sweden might benefit from a little warming, so there’s that.

Mainstream media love: 6/10

He’s in good standing, and often referenced in histories of climate science. He doesn’t get a lot of airplay, though, because things have moved on a bit since 1896.

If you want more.

• Biography on Nobel Prize portal: Svante Arrhenius, Laureate. Excellent. Includes his Nobel Prize after dinner speech.

• Encyclopedia.com entry. Readable. Showcases his polymathy.

• Svante Arrhenius by James Walker (2007). Short. Rare.

• Arrhenius: From Ionic Theory to the Greenhouse Effect by Elisabeth Crawford (1996). Long. Rare.

Everyone has an opinion about climate change.

It’s an existential risk. It’s a hoax. We can’t fix it. Or we could, but you won’t like the cure. There are too many people. Or too few. Conspiracy.

Trouble is, opinions often have shaky foundations. How do we separate fact from fiction? How do we make the impenetrable accessible?

That’s what this substack is all about—decoding the world of climate change. Trying to make sense of wildly different views. Simply. With a little humor. No holds barred.

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Nature, people, stuff, ideas

Understanding climate change involves getting to grips with a few different things:

🌍— understanding «nature», the science of climate change;

👤— decoding what «people» really think;

🏛️— figuring out what «stuff» matters; and

💡— working through the «ideas» that explain different worldviews.

All posts in this substack get one of those tags. You can spot them by the emojis. Click the link below to see the contents of this substack.

Contents

Two important footnotes

Footnote 1: Like nature, this substack evolves. Posts can and will develop over time as new data and feedback come in. If there’s something you don’t like, let’s discuss it.

Footnote 2: This one’s important—this substack isn’t designed to make your mind up for you. Instead, it’s intended to give you the information you need to make your own, informed, decisions. All the posts lead with curiosity, not outcome.

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